The chief subject, however, of Mr. Ellis's labours was a branch of 

 philology which he called " Phonetics," or the science of pronuncia- 

 tion. A few years after leaving Cambridge, he associated himself 

 with Mr. Isaac Pitman in arranging a system of printing called 

 phonotypy, which, by the aid of several new letters added to the 

 Roman alphabet, gave the means of accurately representing the various 

 sounds used in spoken language. In 1844, he published a description 

 of this in a little work called " Phonetics ; a familiar System of the 

 Principles of that Science " ; and this was followed by several other 

 works, pointing out the disadvantages of the ordinary orthography, 

 and advocating a general adoption of phonetic spelling. For many 

 years ho laboured industriously, and at considerable cost, to further 

 this " Spelling Reform," and, as a means of exhibiting his views more 

 completely, he undertook the transformation, into the new ortho- 

 graphy, of many well known and standard works, such as the New 

 Testament, the ' Pilgrim's Progress,' some of Shakespeare's plays. 

 ' Paradise Lost,' ' Rasselas,' and so on. He also brought out on the same 

 plan a monthly magazine called the ' Phonetic Journal,' and after- 

 wards a weekly newspaper entitled the ' Phonetic News.' The latter 

 6rst appeared on the 6th January, 1849, and it ran for three months, 

 attracting much public attention from the strangeness of its typo- 

 graphy, and the boldness of the aim embodied in its design. 



The object aimed at was, however, far too gigantic to have a chance 

 of success, and Mr. Ellis afterwards contented himself with using his 

 system as a means of enabling him to describe and discuss pro- 

 nunciation with greater accuracy of detail than previously, par- 

 ticularly as exemplified in the varieties of existing dialects. With 

 this view, he modified it considerably in order to simplify the print- 

 ing arrangements. In 1886, he produced what he called " Paloeotype, 

 or the Representation of Spoken Sounds by Ancient Types " ; and in 

 1870, he laid before the Society of Arts an elaborate paper with a 

 more popular educational aim, " On a Practical Method of Meeting the 

 Spelling Difficulty in School and in Life." In this he proposed, not. 

 as before, to abolish the ordinary spelling, but to use concurrently 

 with it a phonetic orthography formed only of ordinary types, which 

 he called " Glossic " ; the objects were, as he put it : 



Too fasilitait lerning too reed. 

 Too maik lerning too spel unneseseri. 



Too ashnilait reeding and reiting too hearing and specking. 

 Too make dhi riseevd proanuneiaishen or Ingglish aksesibl too aul reeden, 

 proavinahel and foren. 



Mr. Ellis was not long in finding a worthy nse for the phonetic 

 instrument which he had thus elaborated. In the course of his 

 work upon it, he had occasion to look into the history of Englis 



