Chapter 11

Imperfection of Writing

It never fulfils this intention completely, and by degrees more and more imperfectly. Short as man’s spoken word often falls of his thought, his written word falls often as short of his spoken. Several causes contribute to this. In the first place, the marks of imperfection and infirmity cleave to writing, as to every other invention of man. All alphabets have been left incomplete. They have superfluous letters, letters, that is,which they do not want, because other letters already represent the sound which they represent; they have dubious letters, letters, that is, which say nothing certain about the sounds they stand for, because more than one sound is represented by them—our ‘c’ for instance, which sometimes has the sound of ‘s’, as in ‘city’, sometimes of ‘k’, as in ‘cat’; they are deficient in letters, that is, the language has elementary sounds which have no corresponding letters appropriated to them, and can only be represented by combinations of letters. All alphabets, I believe, have some of these faults, not a few of them have all, and more. This then is one reason of the imperfect reproduction of the spoken word by the written. But another is, that the human voice is so wonderfully fine and flexible an organ, is able to mark such subtle and delicate distinctions of sound, so infinitely to modify and vary these sounds, that were an alphabet complete as human art could make it, did it possess eight and forty instead of four and twenty letters, there would still remain a multitude of sounds which it could only approximately give back[229].

Alphabets Inadequate

But there is a further cause for the divergence which comes gradually to find place between men’s spoken and their written words. What men do often, they will seek to do with the least possible trouble. There is nothing which they do oftener than repeat words; they will seek here then to save themselves pains; they will contracttwo or more syllables into one; (‘toto opere’ will become ‘topper’; ‘vuestra merced’, ‘usted’; and ‘topside the other way’, ‘topsy-turvey’[230]); they will slur over, and thus after a while cease to pronounce, certain letters; for hard letters they will substitute soft; for those which require a certain effort to pronounce, they will substitute those which require little or none. Under the operation of these causes a gulf between the written and spoken word will not merely exist; but it will have the tendency to grow ever wider and wider. This tendency indeed will be partially counterworked by approximations which from time to time will by silent consent be made of the written word to the spoken; here and there a letter dropped in speech will be dropped also in writing, as the ‘s’ in so many French words, where its absence is marked by a circumflex; a new shape, contracted or briefer, which a word has taken on the lips of men, will find its representation in their writing; as ‘chirurgeon’ will not merely be pronounced, but also spelt, ‘surgeon’, and ‘synodsman’ ‘sidesman’. Still for all this, and despite of these partial readjustments of the relations between the two, the anomalies will be infinite; there will be a multitude of written letters which have ceased to be sounded letters; a multitude of words will exist in one shape upon our lips, and in quite another in our books.

It is inevitable that the question should arise—Shall these anomalies be meddled with? shall it be attempted to remove them, and bring writing and speech into harmony and consent—a harmony and consent which never indeed in actual fact at any period of the language existed, but which yet may be regarded as the object of written speech, as the idea which, however imperfectly realized, has, in the reduction of spoken sounds to written, floated before the minds of men? If the attempt is to be made, it is clear that it can only be made in one way. The alternative is not open, whether Mahomet shall go to the mountain,orthe mountain to Mahomet. The spoken word is the mountain; it will not stir; it will resist all interference. It feels its own superior rights, that it existed the first, that it is, so to say, the elder brother; and it will never be induced to change itself for the purpose of conforming and complying with the written word. Men will not be persuaded to pronounce ‘would’ and ‘debt’, because they write ‘would’ and ‘debt’ severally with an ‘l’ and with a ‘b’: but what if they could be induced to write ‘woud’ and ‘det’, because they pronounce so; and to deal in like manner with all other words, in which there exists at present a discrepancy between the word as it is spoken, and the word as it is written?

Phonetic Systems

Here we have the explanation of that which in the history of almost all literatures has repeated itself more than once, namely, the endeavour to introduce phonetic writing. It has certain plausibilities to rest on; it has its appeal to the unquestionable fact that the written word was intended to picture to the eye what the spoken word soundedin the ear. At the same time I believe that it would be impossible to introduce it; and, even if itwerepossible, that it would be most undesirable, and this for two reasons; the first being that the losses consequent upon its introduction, would far outweigh the gains, even supposing those gains as great as the advocates of the scheme promise; the second, that these promised gains would themselves be only very partially realized, or not at all.

Alphabets Imperfect

In the first place, I believe it to be impossible. It is clear that such a scheme must begin with the reconstruction of the alphabet. The first thing that the phonographers have perceived is the necessity for the creation of a vast number of new signs, the poverty of all existing alphabets, at any rate of our own, not yielding a several sign for all the several sounds in the language. Our English phonographers have therefore had to invent ten of these new signs or letters, which are henceforth to take their place with oura,b,c, and to enjoy equal rights with them. Rejecting two (q,x), and adding ten, they have raised their alphabet from twenty-six letters to thirty-four. But to procure the reception of such a reconstructed alphabet is simply an impossibility, as much an impossibility as would be the reconstitution of the structure of the language in any points where it was manifestly deficient or illogical. Sciolists or scholars may sit down in their studies, and devise these new letters, and prove that we need them, and that the introduction of them would be a great gain, and a manifest improvement; and this may be all very true; but if they think they caninduce a people to adopt them, they know little of the ways in which its alphabet is entwined with the whole innermost life of a people. One may freely own that all present alphabets are redundant here, are deficient there; our English perhaps is as greatly at fault as any, and with that we have chiefly to do. Unquestionably it has more letters than one to express one and the same sound; it has only one letter to express two or three sounds; it has sounds which are only capable of being expressed at all by awkward and roundabout expedients. Yet at the same time we must accept the fact, as we accept any other which it is out of our power to change—with regret, indeed, but with a perfect acquiescence: as one accepts the fact that Ireland is not some thirty or forty miles nearer to England—that it is so difficult to get round Cape Horn—that the climate of Africa is so fatal to European life. A people will no more quit their alphabet than they will quit their language; they will no more consent to modify the oneab extrathan the other. Cæsar avowed that with all his power he could not introduce a new word, and certainly Claudius could not introduce a new letter. Centuries may sanction the bringing in of a new one, or the dropping of an old. But to imagine that it is possible to suddenly introduce a group of ten new letters, as these reformers propose—they might just as feasibly propose that the English language should form its comparatives and superlatives on some entirely new scheme, say in Greek fashion, by the terminations ‘oteros’ and ‘otatos’; or that we should agree to set up a dual; or that our substantivesshould return to our Anglo-Saxon declensions. Any one of these or like proposals would not betray a whit more ignorance of the eternal laws which regulate human language, and of the limits within which deliberate action upon it is possible, than does this of increasing our alphabet by ten entirely novel signs.

But grant it possible, grant our six and twenty letters to have so little sacredness in them that Englishmen would endure a crowd of upstart interlopers to mix themselves on an equal footing with them, still this could only be from a sense of the greatness of the advantage to be derived from this introduction. Now the vast advantage claimed by the advocates of the system is, that it would facilitate the learning to read, and wholly save the labour of learning to spell, which “on the present plan occupies”, as they assure us, “at the very lowest calculation from three to five years”. Spelling, it is said, would no longer need to be learned at all; since whoever knew the sound, would necessarily know also the spelling, this being in all cases in perfect conformity with that. The anticipation of this gain rests upon two assumptions which are tacitly taken for granted, but both of them erroneous.

The first of these assumptions is, that all men pronounce all words alike, so that whenever they come to spell a word, they will exactly agree as to what the outline of its sound is. Now we are sure men will not do this from the fact that, before there was any fixed and settled orthography in our language, when therefore everybody was more or less a phonographer, seeking to write down theword as it sounded tohim, (for he had no other law to guide him,) the variations of spelling were infinite. Take for instance the word ‘sudden’; which does not seem to promise any great scope for variety. I have myself met with this word spelt in the following fifteen ways among our early writers: ‘sodain’, ‘sodaine’, ‘sodan’, ‘sodayne’, ‘sodden’, ‘sodein’, ‘sodeine’, ‘soden’, ‘sodeyn’, ‘suddain’, ‘suddaine’, ‘suddein’, ‘suddeine’, ‘sudden’, ‘sudeyn’. Again, in how many ways was Raleigh’s name spelt, or Shakespeare’s? The same is evident from the spelling of uneducated persons in our own day. They have no other rule but the sound to guide them. How is it that they do not all spell alike; erroneously, it may be, as having only the sound for their guide, but still falling all into exactly the same errors? What is the actual fact? They not merely spell wrong, which might be laid to the charge of our perverse system of spelling, but with an inexhaustible diversity of error, and that too in the case of simplest words. Thus the little town of Woburn would seem to give small room for caprice in spelling, while yet the postmaster there has made, from the superscription of letters that have passed through his hands, a collection of two hundred and forty-four varieties of ways in which the place has been spelt[231]. It may be replied that these were all or nearly all from the letters of the ignorant and uneducated. Exactly so;—but it is for their sakes, and to place them on a level with the educated, or rather to accelerate their education by the omission of a useless yet troublesome discipline, that the change is proposed. I wish to show you that after the change they would be just as much, or almost as much, at a loss in their spelling as now.

Pronouncing Dictionaries

And another reason which would make it quite as necessary then to learn orthography as now, is the following. Pronunciation, as I have already noticed, is far too fine and subtle a thing to be more than approximated to, and indicated in the written letter. In a multitude of cases the difficulties which pronunciation presented would be sought to be overcome in different ways, and thus different spelling, would arise; or if not so, one would have to be arbitrarily selected, and would have need to be learned, just as much as the spelling of a word now has need to be learned. I will only ask you, in proof of this which I affirm, to turn to any Pronouncing Dictionary. That greatest of all absurdities, a Pronouncing Dictionary, may be of some service to you in this matter; it will certainly be of none in any other. When you mark the elaborate and yet ineffectual artifices by which it toils after the finer distinctions of articulation, seeks to reproduce in letters what exists, and can only exist, as the spoken tradition of pronunciation, acquired from lip to lip by the organ of the ear, capable of being learned, but incapable of being taught; or when you compare two of these dictionaries with one another, and mark the entirely different schemes and combinations of letters which they employ for representing the same sound to the eye; you will then perceive how idle the attempt to make the written in language commensurate with thesounded; you will own that not merely out of human caprice, ignorance, or indolence, the former falls short of and differs from the later; but that this lies in the necessity of things, in the fact that man’svoicecan effect so much more than ever hislettercan[232]. You will then perceive that there would be as much, or nearly as much, of thearbitraryin spelling which calls itself phonetic as in our present, that spelling would have to be learned just as really then as now. We should be unable to dismiss the spelling card even after the arrival of that great day, when, for example, those lines of Pope which hitherto we have thus spelt and read,

“But errs not nature from this gracious end,From burning suns when livid deaths descend,When earthquakes swallow, or when tempests sweepTowns to one grave, whole nations to the deep”?

when I say, instead of this they should present themselves to our eyes in the following attractive form:

“But ¿ erz not nɛtiur from ðis grɛcus end,from burniŋsunz when livid deθs dɨsend,when erθkwɛks swolɵ, or when tempests swɨptounz tu wun grɛv, hɵl nɛconz tu ðe dɨp”.

Transcriber’s note regarding phonetic symbols

Losses of Phonetic Spelling

The scheme would not then fulfil its promises. Its vaunted gains, when we come to look closely at them, disappear. And now for its losses. There are in every language a vast number of words, which the ear does not distinguish from one another, but which are at once distinguishable to the eye by the spelling. I will only instance afew which are the same parts of speech; thus ‘sun’ and ‘son’; ‘virge’ (‘virga’, now obsolete) and ‘verge’; ‘reign’, ‘rain’, and ‘rein’; ‘hair’ and ‘hare’; ‘plate’ and ‘plait’; ‘moat’ and ‘mote’; ‘pear’ and ‘pair’; ‘pain’ and ‘pane’; ‘raise’ and ‘raze’; ‘air’ and ‘heir’; ‘ark’ and ‘arc’; ‘mite’ and ‘might’; ‘pour’ and ‘pore’; ‘veil’ and ‘vale’; ‘knight’ and ‘night’; ‘knave’ and ‘nave’; ‘pier’ and ‘peer’; ‘rite’ and ‘right’; ‘site’ and ‘sight’; ‘aisle’ and ‘isle’; ‘concent’ and ‘consent’; ‘signet’ and ‘cygnet’. Now, of course, it is a real disadvantage, and may be the cause of serious confusion, that there should be words in spoken languages of entirely different origin and meaning which yet cannot in sound be differenced from one another. The phonographers simply propose to extend this disadvantage already cleaving to our spoken languages, to the written languages as well. It is fault enough in the French language, that ‘mère’ a mother, ‘mer’ the sea, ‘maire’ a mayor of a town, should have no perceptible difference between them in the spoken tongue; or again that in some there should be nothing to distinguish ‘sans’, ‘sang’, ‘sent’, ‘sens’, ‘s’en’, ‘cent’; nor yet between ‘ver’, ‘vert’, ‘verre’ and‘vers’.Surely it is not very wise to propose gratuitously to extend the same fault to the written languages as well.

This loss in so many instances of the power to discriminate between words, which however liable to confusion now in our spoken language, are liable to none in our written, would be serious enough; but far more serious than this would be the loss which would constantly ensue, of all whichvisibly connects a word with the past, which tells its history, and indicates the quarter from which it has been derived. In how many English words a letter silent to the ear, is yet most eloquent to the eye—thegfor instance in ‘deign’, ‘feign’, ‘reign’, ‘impugn’, telling as it does of ‘dignor’, ‘fingo’, ‘regno’, ‘impugno’; even as thebin ‘debt’, ‘doubt’, is not idle, but tells of ‘debitum’ and ‘dubium’[233].

Pronunciation Alters

At present it is the written word which is in all languages their conservative element. In it is the abiding witness against the mutilations or other capricious changes in their shape which affectation, folly, ignorance, and half-knowledge would introduce. It is not indeed always able to hinder the final adoption of these corrupter forms, but does not fail to oppose to them a constant, and very often a successful, resistance. With the adoption of phonetic spelling, this witness would exist no longer; whatever was spoken would have also to be written, let it be never so barbarous, never so great a departure from the true form of the word. Nor is it merely probable that such a barbarizing process, such an adopting and sanctioning of a vulgarism, might take place, but among phonographers it already has taken place. We all probably are aware that there is a vulgar pronunciation of the word ‘Europe’, as though it were ‘Eurup’. Now it is quite possible that numerically more persons in England may pronounce the word inthis manner than in the right; and therefore the phonographers are only true to their principles when they spell it in the fashion which they do, ‘Eurup’, or indeed omitting the E at the beginning, ‘Urup’[234]with thus the life of the first syllable assailed no less than that of the second. What are the consequences? First its relations with the old mythology are at once and entirely broken off; secondly, its most probable etymology from two Greek words, signifying ‘broad’ and ‘face’, Europe being so called from theBroadline orfaceof coast which our continent presented to the Asiatic Greek, is totally obscured. But so far from the spelling servilely following the pronunciation, I should be bold to affirm that if ninety-nine out of every hundred persons in England chose to call Europe ‘Urup’, this would be a vulgarism still, against which the written word ought to maintain its protest, not sinking down to their level, but rather seeking to elevate them to its own[235].

Changes of Pronunciation

And if there is much in orthography which is unsettled now, how much more would be unsettled then. Inasmuch as the pronunciation of words is continually altering, their spelling would of course have continually to alter too. For the fact that pronunciation is undergoing constant changes, although changes for the most part unmarked, or marked only by a few, would be abundantly easy to prove. Take a Pronouncing Dictionary of fifty or a hundred years ago; turn to almost any page, and you will observe schemes of pronunciation there recommended, which are now merely vulgarisms, or which have been dropped altogether. We gather from a discussion in Boswell’sLife of Johnson[236], that in his time ‘great’ was by some of the best speakers of the language pronounced ‘greet’, not ‘grate’: Pope usually rhymes it with ‘cheat’, ‘complete’, and the like; thus in theDunciad:

“Here swells the shelf with Ogilby thegreat,There, stamped with arms, Newcastle shines complete”.

Spenser’s constant use of the word a century and a half earlier, leaves no doubt that such was the invariable pronunciation of his time[237]. Again,Pope rhymes ‘obliged’ with ‘beseiged’; and it has only ceased to be ‘obleeged’ almost in our own time. Who now drinks a cup of ‘tay’? yet there is abundant evidence that this was the fashionable pronunciation in the first half of the last century; the word, that is, was still regarded as French: Locke writes it ‘thé’; and in Pope’s time, though no longer written, it was still pronounced so. Take this couplet of his in proof:

“Here thou, great Anna, whom three realmsobey,Dost sometimes counsel take, and sometimestea”.

So too a pronunciation which still survives, though scarcely among well-educated persons, I mean ‘Room’ for ‘Rome’, must have been in Shakespeare’s time the predominant one, else there would have been no point in that play on words where inJulius CæsarCassius, complaining that in allRomethere was notroomfor a single man, exclaims,

“Now is itRomeindeed, androomenough”.

Samuel Rogers too assures us that in his youth “everybody said ‘Lonnon’[238]not ‘London’; that Fox said ‘Lonnon’ to the last”.

The following quotation from Swift will prove to you that I have been only employing here an argument, which he employed long ago against the phonographers of his time. He exposes thus the futility of their scheme[239]: “Another cause which has contributed not a little to the maiming of our language, is a foolish opinion advanced oflate years that we ought to spell exactly as we speak: which, besides the obvious inconvenience of utterly destroying our etymology, would be a thing we should never see an end of. Not only the several towns and counties of England have a different way of pronouncing, but even here in London they clip their words after one manner about the court, another in the city, and a third in the suburbs; and in a few years, it is probable, will all differ from themselves, as fancy or fashion shall direct; all which, reduced to writing, would entirely confound orthography”.

This much I have thought good to say in respect of that entire revolution in English orthography, which some rash innovators have proposed. Let me, dismissing them and their innovations, call your attention now to those changes in spelling which are constantly going forward, at some periods more rapidly than at others, but which never wholly cease out of a language; while at the same time I endeavour to trace, where this is possible, the motives and inducements which bring them about. It is a subject which none can neglect, who desire to obtain even a tolerably accurate acquaintance with their native tongue. Some principles have been laid down in the course of what has been said already, that may help us to judge whether the changes which have found place in our own have been for better or for worse. We shall find, if I am not mistaken, of both kinds.

‘Grogram’

There are alterations in spelling which are for the worse. Thus an altered spelling will sometimes obscure the origin of a word, concealing it from those who, but for this, would at once haveknown whence and what it was, and would have found both pleasure and profit in this knowledge. I need not say that in all those cases where the earlier spelling revealed the secret of the word, told its history, which the latter defaces or conceals, the change has been injurious, and is to be regretted; while, at the same time, where it has thoroughly established itself, there is nothing to do but to acquiesce in it: the attempt to undo it would be absurd. Thus, when ‘grocer’ was spelt ‘grosser’, it was comparatively easy to see that he first had his name, because he sold his wares not by retail, but in thegross. ‘Coxcomb’ tells us nothing now; but it did when spelt, as it used to be, ‘cockscomb’, thecombof acockbeing then an ensign or token which the fool was accustomed to wear. In ‘grogram’ we areentirelyto seek for the derivation; but in ‘grogran’ or ‘grograin’, as earlier it was spelt, one could scarcely miss ‘grosgrain’, the stuff of acoarse grainor woof. How many now understand ‘woodbine’? but who could have helped understanding ‘woodbind’ (Ben Jonson)? What a mischievous alteration in spelling is ‘divest’ instead of ‘devest’[240]. This change is so recent that I am tempted to ask whether it would not here be possible to return to the only intelligible spelling of this word.

‘Pigmy’

‘Pigmy’ used formerly to be spelt ‘pygmy’, and so long as it was so, no Greek scholar could see the word, but at once he knew that by it wereindicated manikins whose measure in height was no greater than that of a man’s arm from the elbow to the closedfist[241]. Now he may know this in other ways; but the word itself, so long as he assumes it to be rightly spelt, tells him nothing. Or again, the old spelling, ‘diamant’, was preferable to the modern ‘diamond’. It was preferable, because it told more of the quarter whence the word had reached us. ‘Diamant’ and ‘adamant’ are in fact only two different adoptions on the part of the English tongue, of one and the same Greek, which afterwards became a Latin word. The primary meaning of ‘adamant’ is, as you know, the indomitable, and it was a name given at first to steel as the hardest of metals; but afterwards transferred[242]to the most precious among all the precious stones, as that which in power of resistance surpassed everything besides.

‘Cozen’, ‘Bless’

Neither are new spellings to be commended, which obliterate or obscure the relationship of a word with others to which it is really allied; separating from one another, for those not thoroughly acquainted with the subject, words of the same family. Thus when ‘jaw’ was spelt ‘chaw’, none could miss its connexions with the verb ‘to chew’[243]. Now probably ninety-nine out of a hundred who use both words, are entirely unaware of any relationship between them. It is the same with ‘cousin’ (consanguineus), and ‘to cozen’ or to deceive. I do not propose to determine which of these words should conform itself to the spelling of the other. There was great irregularity in the spelling of both from the first; yet for all this, it was then better than now, when a permanent distinction has established itself between them, keeping out of sight that ‘to cozen’ is in all likelihood to deceive under show of kindred and affinity; which if it be so, Shakespeare’s words,

“Cousinsindeed, and by their unclecozenedOf comfort”[244],

will be found to contain not a pun, but an etymology[245]. The real relation between ‘bliss’ and ‘to bless’ is in like manner at present obscured[246].

The omission of a letter, or the addition of a letter, may each effectually do its work in keeping out of sight the true character and origin of a word. Thus the omission of a letter. When the first syllable of ‘bran-new’ was spelt ‘brand’ with a final ‘d’, ‘brand-new’, how vigorous an image did the word contain. The ‘brand’ is thefire, and ‘brand-new’ equivalent to ‘fire-new’ (Shakespeare), is that which is fresh and bright, as being newly come from the forge and fire. As now spelt, ‘bran-new’ conveys to us no image at all. Again, you have the word ‘scrip’—as a ‘scrip’ of paper, government ‘scrip’. Is this the same word with the Saxon ‘scrip’, a wallet, having in some strange manner obtained these meanings so different and so remote? Have we here only two different applications of one and the same word, or two homonyms, wholly different words, though spelt alike? We have only to note the way in which the first of these ‘scrips’ used to be written, namely with a final ‘t’, not ‘scrip’ but ‘script’, and we are at once able to answer the question. This ‘script’ is a Latin, as the other is an Anglo-Saxon, word, and meant at first simply awritten(scripta) piece of paper—a circumstance which since the omission of the final ‘t’ may easily escape our knowledge. ‘Afraid’ was spelt much better in old times with the double ‘ff’, than with the single ‘f’ as now. It was then clear that it was not another form of ‘afeared’, but wholly separate from it, the participle of the verb ‘to affray’, ‘affrayer’, or, as it is now written, ‘effrayer’[247].

‘Whole’, ‘Hale’, ‘Heal’

In the cases hitherto adduced, it has been the omission of a letter which has clouded and concealed the etymology. The intrusion of a letter sometimes does the same. Thus in the early editions ofParadise Lost, and in all writers of that time, you will find ‘scent’, an odour, spelt ‘sent’. It was better so; there is no other noun substantive ‘sent’, with which it is in danger of being confounded; while its relation with ‘sentio’, with ‘resent’[248], ‘dissent’, and the like, is put out of sight by its novel spelling; the intrusive ‘c’, serves only to mislead. The same thing was attempted with ‘site’, ‘situate’, ‘situation’, spelt for a time by many, ‘scite’, ‘scituate’, ‘scituation’; but it did not continue with these. Again, ‘whole’, in Wiclif’s Bible, and indeed much later, occasionally as far down as Spenser, is spelt ‘hole’, without the ‘w’ at the beginning. The present orthography may have the advantage of at once distinguishing the word to the eye from any other; but at the same time the initial ‘w’, now prefixed, hides its relation to the verb ‘to heal’, with which it is closely allied. The ‘whole’ man is he whose hurt is ‘healed’ or covered[249](we say of the convalescent that he ‘recovers’)[250]; ‘whole’being closely allied to ‘hale’ (integer), from which also by its modern spelling it is divided. ‘Wholesome’ has naturally followed the fortunes of ‘whole’; it was spelt ‘holsome’ once.

Of ‘island’ too our present spelling is inferior to the old, inasmuch as it suggests a hybrid formation, as though the word were made up of the Latin ‘insula’, and the Saxon ‘land’. It is quite true that ‘isle’isin relation with, and descent from, ‘insula’, ‘isola’, ‘île’; and hence probably the misspelling of ‘island’. This last however has nothing to do with ‘insula’, being identical with the German ‘eiland’, the Anglo-Saxon ‘ealand’[251]and signifying the sea-land, or land girt, round with the sea. And it is worthy of note that this ‘s’ in the first syllable of ‘island’ is quite of modern introduction. In all the earlier versions of the Scriptures, and in the Authorized Version as at first set forth, it is ‘iland’; while in proof that this is not accidental, it may be observed that, while ‘iland’ has not the ‘s’, ‘isle’ has it (see Rev. i. 9). ‘Iland’ indeed is the spelling which we meet with far down into the seventeenth century.

Folk-etymologies

What has just been said of ‘island’ leads me as by a natural transition to observe that one of the most frequent causes of alteration in the spelling of a word is a wrongly assumed derivation. It is then sought to bring the word into harmony with,and to make it by its spelling suggest, this derivation, which has been erroneously thrust upon it. Here is a subject which, followed out as it deserves, would form an interesting and instructive chapter in the history of language[252]. Let me offer one or two small contributions to it; noting first by the way how remarkable an evidence we have in this fact, of the manner in which not the learned only, but all persons learned and unlearned alike, crave to have these words not body only, but body and soul. What an attestation, I say, of this lies in the fact that where a word in its proper derivation is unintelligible to them, they will shape and mould it into some other form, not enduring that it should be a mere inert sound without sense in their ears; and if they do not know its right origin, will rather put into it a wrong one, than that it should have for them no meaning, and suggest no derivation at all[253].

There is probably no language in which such a process has not been going forward; in which it is not the explanation, in a vast number of instances, of changes in spelling and even in form, which words have undergone. I will offer a few examples of it from foreign tongues, before adducing any from our own. ‘Pyramid’ is a word, the spelling of which was affected in the Greek by anerroneous assumption of its derivation; the consequences of this error surviving in our own word to the present day. It is spelt by us with a ‘y’ in the first syllable, as it was spelt with theυcorresponding in the Greek. But why was this? It was because the Greeks assumed that the pyramids were so named from their having the appearance offlamegoing up into a point[254], and so they spelt ‘pyramid’, that they might findπῦρor ‘pyre’ in it; while in fact ‘pyramid’ has nothing to do with flame or fire at all; being, as those best qualified to speak on the matter declare to us, an Egyptian word of quite a different signification[255], and the Coptic letters being much better represented by the diphthong ‘ei’ than by the letter ‘y’, as no doubt, but for this mistaken notion of what the word was intended to mean, they would have been.

Once more—the form ‘Hierosolyma’, wherein the Greeks reproduced the Hebrew ‘Jerusalem’, was intended in all probability to express that the city so called was thesacredcity of theSolymi[256]. At all events the intention not merely of reproducing the Hebrew word, but also of making it significant in Greek, of findingἱερόνin it, is plainly discernible. For indeed the Greeks were exceedingly intolerant of foreign words, till they had laid aside their foreign appearance—of all words which they could not thus quicken with a Greek soul; and, with a very characteristic vanity, an ignoring of all other tongues but their own, assumed with no apparent misgivings that all words, from whatever quarter derived, were to be explained by Greek etymologies[257].

‘Tartar’ is another word, of which it is at least possible that a wrongly assumed derivation hasmodified the spelling, and indeed not the spelling only, but the very shape in which we now possess it. To many among us it may be known that the people designated by this appellation are not properly ‘Tartars’, but ‘Tatars’; and you sometimes perhaps have noted the omission of the ‘r’ on the part of those who are curious in their spelling. How, then, it may be asked, did the form ‘Tartar’ arise? When the terrible hordes of middle Asia burst in upon civilized Europe in the thirteenth century, many beheld in the ravages of their innumerable cavalry a fulfilment of that prophetic word in the Revelation (chap. ix.) concerning the opening of the bottomless pit; and from this belief ensued the change of their name from ‘Tatars’ to ‘Tartars’, which was thus put into closer relation with ‘Tartarus’ or hell, out of which their multitudes were supposed to have proceeded[258].

Another good example in the same kind is the German word ‘sündflut’, the Deluge, which is now so spelt as to signify a ‘sinflood’, the plague orfloodof waters brought on the world by thesinsof mankind; and probably some of us have before this admired the pregnant significance of the word. Yet the old High German word had originally no such intention; it was spelt ‘sinfluot’, that is, the great flood; and as late as Luther, indeed in Luther’s own translation of the Bible, is so spelt as to make plain that the notion of a‘sin-flood’ had not yet found its way into, even as it had not affected the spelling of, the word[259].

‘Currants’

But to look now nearer home for our examples. The little raisins brought from Greece, which play so important a part in one of the national dishes of England, the Christmas plum-pudding, used to be called ‘corinths’; and so you would find them in mercantile lists of a hundred years ago: either that for the most part they were shipped from Corinth, the principal commercial city in Greece, or because they grew in large abundance in the immediate district round about it. Their likeness in shape and size and general appearance to our own currants, working together with the ignorance of the great majority of English people about any such place as Corinth, soon brought the name ‘corinths’ into ‘currants’, which now with a certain unfitness they bear; being not currants at all, but dried grapes, though grapes of diminutive size[260].

‘Court-cards’

‘Court-cards’, that is, the king, queen, and knave in each suit, were once ‘coat-cards’[261]; having their name from the long splendid ‘coat’ (vestis talaris) with which they were arrayed. Probably ‘coat’ after a while did not perfectly convey its original meaning and intention; being no more in common use for the long garment reaching down to the heels; and then ‘coat’ was easily exchanged for ‘court’, as the word is now both spelt and pronounced, seeing that nowhere so fitly as in a Court should such splendidly arrayed personages be found. A public house in the neighbourhood of London having a few years since for its sign “The GeorgeCanning” is already “The George andCannon”,—so rapidly do these transformations proceed, so soon is that forgotten which we suppose would never be forgotten. “Welshrarebit” becomes “Welshrabbit”[262]; and ‘farced’ or stuffed ‘meat’ becomes “forced meat”. Even the mere determination to make a wordlookEnglish, to put it into an English shape, without thereby so much as seeming to attain any result in the way of etymology, this is very often sufficient to bring about a change in its spelling, and even in its form[263]. It is thus that ‘sipahi’ has become ‘sepoy’; and only so could ‘weissager’ have taken its present form of ‘wiseacre’[264].

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