1889.] 



315 



gives best promise of general adoption. The Spelling Reform Association 

 publish as one of their rules for immediate use, ' Omit silent e after a 

 short vowel,' and five of the eleven new spellings recommended by the 

 Philological Association are examples of it — definit, giv, hav, mpiii, liv. 

 * * * Feign, Old English fein, fain, from Old French faindre, has 

 assumed the g of Latin Jingo. * * * Fonetik is the very Greek 

 <pujyrjTCK-6^, the natural old form of it in Roman letters; <p(iip is fur; 

 ipd-jai, fari; Pabius, <I>d^uiz, and the like. But when the Greeklings at 

 Rome began to affect a pure Athenian accent, and retained in words 

 newly taken from Greek the old sound for <p, which had been that of p 

 followed by h, they wn*ote ph in such words to represent their way of 

 sounding it. The fashion past away at Rome. The Italians, like the 

 Spaniards, have returned to/." 



"The first question is," says Prof. Max Miiller, "in what sense can the 

 present spelling of English be called historical? We have only to go 

 back a very short way in order to see the modern upstart character of what 

 is called historical spelling. We now write pleasure, measure, and 

 feather, but not very long ago, in Spenser's time, these words were spelt 

 plesure, mesure, fether. Tj^ndale wrote frute ; the i in fruit is a mere 

 restoration of the French spelling. * * * The b [of debt] was likewise 

 reintroduced in doubt, but the p was not restored in count (French 

 compter, Latin computare), where p had at least the same right as b in 

 doubt. Thus, receipt resumes the Latin p, but deceit does without it. To 

 deign keeps the g, to disdain does without it. * * * If we wisht to 

 write historically, we ought to write sabn instead of psnlm, for the initial 

 p being lost in pronunciation was dropt in writing at a very earlj^ time 

 (A. S. sealm), and was reintroduced simply to please some ecclesiastical 

 etymologists ; also neiiew (French neveu) instead of nephew, which is both 

 unetymological and unhistorical. * * .* There are, in fact, many spell- 

 ings which would be at the same time more historical and more fonetic. 

 Why write little, when no one pronounces little, and when the old spell- 

 ing was lytel? Why girdle, when the old spelling was girdel ? The same 

 rule applies to nearly all words ending in le, such as sickle, ladle, apple, 

 etc., where the etymology is completely obscured by the present orthog- 

 rafy. Why ascent, but dissent, when even Milton still wrote sent? * * * 

 Why accede, precede, secede, but exceed, 2'>i'oceed, succeed? Why, indeed, 

 except to waste the precious time of children V 



And Dr. James A. H. Murray, the editor of the mammoth new his- 

 torical Dictionary, says: "Let us recommend the restoration of the 

 historical t after breath consonants, which printers during the past century 

 have industriously perverted to ed, writing fetcht, bluslit, pickt, drest, 

 winkt, like Shakespeare, and Herbert, and Milton, and Addison, and as 

 we actually do in lost, past, left, felt, meant, burnt, blest, taught. Laughed 

 for laught is not a whit less monstrous than taughed, soughed, would be 

 for taugJit, sought; nor is worked for icorkt less odious than wroughed 

 would be for wrought. * * * The termination of the" agent our should 



