THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 10 1 



*' s " was employed for the " zee " sound until the fifteenth century, 

 and even to-day the province of these letters seems to be undefined. 

 There is a large class of words spelt with " ise " and "ize" in- 

 differently. Webster favored a more general adoption of " ize," and 

 in this Dr. Murray, the celebrated lexicographer, agrees, though not 

 to the extent of general change of " ise " to " ize " when so sounded. 

 He favors the change only when derivations from Greek " z '' occur. 

 In the addition of W, V, J and Z to the alphabet, the phonetic 

 principle was observed, and the question may well be asked if this 

 does not furnish a precedent for other changes, the importance of 

 which I shall endeavor, in a subsequent part of my paper, to show. 



Etymology. — The favorite exception, practically the only ex- 

 ception, taken to the movement for reformed spelling is that the ob- 

 servance of the phonetic principle in spelling English would obscure 

 or destroy the etymology of its words. Max Muller advises the 

 amateur etymologist to leave the subject alone. I shall, therefore, 

 trust to the opinions of the most celebrated etymologists of the cen- 

 tury to prove the utter fallacy of the contention that phonetic spell- 

 ing would interfere with, or conceal^ the etymology of English words. 



Professor Skeat, of Cambridge, says, " It is really a gross mis- 

 nomer to call that spelling ' etymological ' which imitates the spell- 

 ing of a dead language. Every student is, or should be, aware that 

 the only true etymological spelling is one which is phonetic. It is 

 the sound of the spoken word which is to be accounted for, and all 

 symbols which disguise this sound are faulty and worthless. If our 

 old writers had not used a phonetic system we should have no true 

 data to go by." 



The same authority, in his " Principles of English Etymology," 

 chapter XVI., says: "The subject of English spelling has to some 

 extent been considered in Lecture VIII of Archbishop Trench's well- 

 known and, in the main, excellent work, entitled ' English Past and 

 Present.' But a perusal of that chapter will show that it merely dis- 

 cusses certain spellings from a supposed ' etymological ' point of 

 view, and does not at all attempt to deal with the only question of 

 real importance, namely, what is the true history of our spelling, and 

 how came we to spell words as we do. I make particular reference 

 to this chapter because I believe that it has unfortunately done more 

 harm than good, as it is altogether founded on a false principle, such 

 as no scientific etymologist would endorse in the present state of our 



