592 Sl.Ml'Lil-lCATION OF KXCLISH. 



single scholar in English, lo wliutn other scholars would feel 

 that deference is due, who is opposed to this movement in itself. 

 He may, perhaps, think it inexpedient, tho even of such 1 

 know none personally, lie may think it useless to attack prac- 

 tices so strongly intrenclir behind a barrier of ignorant belief 

 and prejudice. But he will not condemn it on the ground of 

 justice or right." 



Among the member^ of the Simplihed Spelling Board (in 

 October. 1909) I find, in addition to many distmguished Ameri- 

 cans, the following English names : — William Archer, Henry 

 Bradley, F. J. Furnivall, Sir James A. 14. Murray, Walter \V. 

 Skeat, T. G. Tucker, and Joseph Wright. 



Nevertheless, in spite of this consensus of expert opinion, 

 as Professor Lounsbury says, " The superstition as to the sanc- 

 tity of our sjielling is so strongly intrencht behind a barrier 

 of ignorant belief and violent prejudice, and this so fortified by 

 use and wont, that even to carry its outworks will require the 

 time and eiifort of years of struggle." 



In concluding this section of my paper, I should like to 

 point out that, in spite of our countless grammars and pedants, 

 with the single exception of Wordsworth, " there is," according 

 to De Quincey, " not one celebrated author of this day [a century 

 ago] who has written two pages consecutively without some 

 flagrant impropriety in the grammar, or some violation more or 

 less of the vernacular idiom." This is certainly e(|ually true 

 of the century whicli has elapsed since De Quincey wrote these 

 words, and among the ofllenders I could name some living Pro- 

 fessors of the English T.anguage and Literature in the Uni- 

 versities of the United Kingdom, if their composition be judged 

 "by the standard and canons of the pedants. The man who 

 never makes a mistake never makes anything. We need not, 

 however, imitate the conscious carelessness of Byron, of whom 

 one critic says : " We have heard about his slips of grammar 

 till we are tired ; they have evei: lieen magnified till the\ almost 

 dwarf his slips of morality." 



Simplification of Other Languages. 



There are two nota1)le examples of languages in which an 

 attempt at simplification has been made, w^., French and Dutch, 

 so that we have at least two precedents, without troubling about 

 a modern reform in German spelling. 



As regards French, at the end of July, 1900, the Ministre 

 de ^Instruction piibliquc gave his formal approval to certain 

 licenses (tolerances) in spelling and syntax suggested to him 

 by a special Commission of the Conseil supericur de i'lnstruc- 

 Hon puhlique. 



These licenses are in the direction of simplification, parti- 

 cularly of the elimination of antiquated anomalies, quaint irregu- 

 larities, and exceptional peculiarities. It is true that they have 



