CHAPTER IIATTITUDE OF THE EDUCATED
The unintelligent opposition of the intelligent! I have specified this as the most formidable of the active forces hostile to reform of English orthography. No duty is imposed upon those who have that end in view more arduous than that of propagating knowledge among the educated classes. It is hard to enlighten the ignorant man. But as regards this particular subject, his mind is practically a blank page. As he has not mastered the conventional spelling, he not only has no knowledge of it, but he is aware that he has no knowledge of it. But in the case of the educated man there is nothing of this open-mindedness. In his opinion he knows already everything about the subject that can be known or that is necessary to be known. It is only within a very recent period that he has begun to suspect his limitations. Only within a recent period has he exhibited any hesitation about exposing tothe gaze of the public the scantiness of the intellectual wardrobe with which he is clad.
This imputation of ignorance of the subject has been much resented. Nowhere has the resentment been keener than where the ignorance is manifestly profoundest. To the fact itself not any opprobrium necessarily attaches. No educated man considers it discreditable to lack knowledge of the chemical constituents of the food he eats, or of the things he sees and handles every day. If, indeed, because of his familiarity with these objects, he fancies that he is competent to form a judgment about their properties and draws conclusions as to their use, then his course becomes objectionable. It is exactly so in language. Pronunciation, and the proper way of representing it in spelling, and the ways in which it has been represented at various periods—these are subjects which demand long and severe study before one has a right even to state facts. Naturally, still less has he a right to draw conclusions. He who presumes to sit in judgment upon the questions in controversy without having undergone this preliminary training, no matter if he possess ability, has little reason to complain if his pretensions meet with a good deal of contempt from those who have paid even a comparativelyslight attention to the subject. That his utterances are received with favor by a public as ignorant as himself is no evidence of his fitness to discuss the matter in dispute. It is simply proof of the existence of that wide-spread belief in the community, that because a person may have attained deserved eminence in some field of literary activity, about which he knows a great deal, he is therefore entitled to speak with authority in some other field of which he knows little or nothing.
This unintelligent hostility of the intelligent is an obstacle peculiarly difficult to overcome, because it is based upon the combination of the minimum of knowledge with the maximum of prejudice. These characteristics frequently meet, too, in those who on other disputed subjects have the right to demand respectful attention to all they choose to say. To this class belong many men of letters—not by any means all of them, and far more of them in England than in America. Some of these have made themselves conspicuous by the violence of their utterances, some by the extent of their misapprehension of the question at issue, and some by the display of a store of misinformation so vast and varied that one gets the impression that no small share oftheir lives must have been spent in accumulating it. To many persons it does not seem to occur that before discussing English orthography it is desirable to equip one’s self with at least an elementary knowledge of its character and history. As the acquisition of this preliminary information is not deemed essential, there is little limit to the surprising statements made upon this subject and the more surprising facts by which they are fortified. The annals of fatuity will in truth be searched in vain for utterances more fatuous than some of those produced in the course of the controversy aroused by the President’s order. There is a strong temptation to substantiate this assertion by illustrating it from sayings and writings of those who took a part in it opposed to spelling reform. But it is not desirable to impart to the discussion of the subject a personal character by selecting such examples from the utterances of living persons. That the statement of the ignorance of men of letters is not unwarranted, however, can be shown as well by bringing in the testimony of the dead. In this instance it will be taken from an author of the past generation, of highest literary eminence.
Many will remember an essay of Matthew Arnold on the influence of academies, thatpanacea for all literary and linguistic ills so constantly held before our eyes. According to him they raised the general standard of knowledge so high that no one could wantonly run counter to its requirements and escape with impunity. The force of critical opinion would control the vagaries and correct the extravagant assertions of the most learned. In the case of our own tongue he adduced an illustration of the injury wrought to the language by the lack of such a central authority. It was taken from what he told us was one of those eccentric violations of correct orthography in which men of our race wilfully indulge. The offender was the LondonTimes. That paper for a good part of the nineteenth century was addicted to printing the worddioceseasdiocess.
This act aroused Arnold’s indignation. It is clear from his words that resentment for the course of the LondonTimesin this matter had long been rankling in his bosom. A lawless practice of such a sort could not have been possible, he felt, in a country where speech had been subjected to the beneficial sway of an academy. Only in a land where no restraining influence was exerted upon the performances of the educated class could such a violation oflinguistic knowledge and literary good taste be permitted. Here are his words:
“So, again, with freaks in dealing with language; certainly all such freaks tend to impair the power and beauty of language; and how far more common they are with us than with the French! To take a very familiar instance. Every one has noticed the way in which theTimeschooses to spell the word ‘diocese’; it always spells it diocess, deriving it, I suppose, fromZeusandcensus. TheJournal des Débatsmight just as well write ‘diocess’ instead of ‘diocèse,’ but imagine theJournal des Débatsdoing so! Imagine an educated Frenchman indulging himself in an orthographic antic of this sort, in the face of the grave respect with which the Academy and its dictionary invest the French language! Some people will say these are little things. They are not; they are of bad example. They tend to spread the baneful notion that there is no such thing as a high correct standard in intellectual matters; that every one may as well take his own way; they are at variance with the severe discipline necessary for all real culture; they confirm us in habits of wilfulness and eccentricity which hurt our minds and damage our credit with serious people.”
No one will question the earnestness with which these words are spoken. The difficulty with them is that they are at variance with the severe discipline necessary for all real culture—the discipline which forbids us to discuss magisterially matters we know nothing about. Consequently, they are of particularly bad example because of the eminence of the writer. What are we to think of the opinions of an author who could presume to express himself in this manner on what he called correct orthography? Where did he get his knowledge of that somewhat elusive substance? How was he enabled to pronounce authoritatively on the proper spelling of a word about whose origin and history he had not taken the slightest pains to inform himself? Arnold supposed that the LondonTimesmay have deriveddiocessfromZeusandcensus. Where did he himself think it came from?
Still, as these words of his have been more than once triumphantly quoted as an unintended, and therefore all the more crushing, argument against spelling reform by a leading man of letters, it may be worth while to give a brief account of the actual facts in regard to the appearance ofdiocesein our speech, and the changes of form it underwent—so far, at least,as dictionaries of various periods have recorded the usage. By so doing one may gain some conception of the amount of research necessary to pronounce positively upon the orthographic history of even a single word. He will further learn to recognize the wisdom of refraining from the expression of large judgments upon the correctness or incorrectness of a particular spelling which are based upon limited knowledge. To clear the ground, it is to be said—though it seems needless to say it—that the first part of the worddiocesehas nothing to do with Zeus, though one gets the impression that its genitiveDioswas in some way associated with it in Arnold’s mind. It comes remotely from a Greek word meaning the management of a household. After its appearance in our language in the fourteenth century, various were the forms it assumed. Students of Chaucer are well aware that his spelling of it wasdiocise. But it occurs but once in his writings, and then as a ryme togyse, the modernguise. Later, under Latin influence, and for phonetic reasons, it became commonly eitherdiocesseordioces.
Between these two forms the language seems finally to have made a sort of compromise by recognizing the claims of both. It dropped theefrom the one or it added ansto the other, justas one is disposed to look at it. Though there were other forms,diocessbecame accordingly the standard. Such it remained for a long period. But its triumph was slow and, comparatively speaking, late.Diocesseis the form given, for example, in Minsheu’sGuide to the Tongues, which appeared in 1617. In Edward Phillips’ dictionary of 1658, entitledA New World of Words, it isdioces. But in later editions—certainly in that of 1696—diocessis the spelling found. Such also was the form of the word in Bullokar’s dictionary of 1684; in theGlossographia Anglicana Novaof 1719; and in Edward Cocker’s English dictionary of 1724—the only editions of these works I have had the opportunity to consult. On the other hand, in Coles’s English dictionary of 1713, it isdiocese. This is repeated in the edition of 1717. It is the earliest instance I have met of the modern spelling, though others may exist.
Before the publication of the dictionary of Dr. Johnson in 1755, the two principal works of this character which the early part of the eighteenth century produced were that of Bailey, and that of Dyche improved and completed by Pardon. The former was the first to appear. It indeed seems always to have outranked in popular estimation its successor and rival. Itcame out first in 1721. Before the end of the century it had passed through a very large number of editions. At the outset its spelling of the word under consideration wasdiocess. So it remained in the half dozen editions that followed. But after 1730diocesetook its place, and held it during the whole of the eighteenth century. On the other hand, Dyche’s dictionary, which began to be published in 1735, not only authorizeddiocess, but clung to it in subsequent editions. Later in the century—certainly in the seventeenth edition of 1794—it permitted the alternative spellingdiocese. This practice, indeed, can be met much earlier. For instance, in the second edition of Benjamin Martin’s dictionary, which appeared in 1754, bothdioceseanddiocessare given.
It was the choice ofdiocessby Doctor Johnson that turned the tide for a while in one direction. For the rest of the century it settled the spelling, so far as the practice of most men was concerned. He was followed by nearly all the later lexicographers. This was true in particular of Sheridan and Walker. These two were widely accepted as authorities, especially the latter. The edition of Walker’s dictionary, which came out in 1802, just after his death, but containing his latest revisions, was long regarded by ourfathers as a sort of orthographic and orthoepic statute-book. It still showeddiocessas the only way of spelling this particular word. So did the dictionary of James Sheridan Knowles, which was first published in 1835. It continued to retain this form of the word in the editions of 1845 and 1877. It is found even in the edition of Walker, as revised by Davis, which appeared in 1861. On the other hand, Smart’s revision of the same work, or remodelling, as he called it, was largely responsible for the prevalence and general adoption ofdiocese. This dictionary was first published in 1836. It had a wide circulation, and for a long time its successive editions were regarded as authoritative works of reference.
This survey of the matter is by no means exhaustive, but it is sufficiently complete to render certain the results reached. It shows that a long contest went on between the two forms of the word, and that the later gradually triumphed over the earlier. It shows too thatdiocess, though slowly going out of fashion, continued still in the best of use long after Arnold had reached maturity. As always happens, indeed, there was a certain body of conservatives who refused to accept what was in their eyes the new-fangled monstrosity.The ancient usage was good enough for them. Among these the LondonTimes, owing to its position in the newspaper world, occupied a specially prominent place. It not impossibly felt that in standing by the time-honoreddiocessit was resisting an insidious attempt to ruin the language.
All, therefore, that Arnold needed to do, before expressing his opinions, or rather his prejudices, in the matter was to learn these easily accessible facts. To use his own phraseology, it was incumbent upon him to let his mind play about the subject until he had fully informed himself upon it. His failure to do this led him to fall into the mistake he did. A note to the later edition of his essays conveys the glad tidings that the LondonTimeshas at last renounced the error of its ways, and has succumbed to the authority of fashion. Like the rest of us, it now spells the worddiocese. But the irrevocable printed page will continue to stand and bear perpetual witness to the blunder of its critic.
One is not, indeed, astonished at the lack of familiarity with the facts just recorded on the part of a man of letters. They lie outside of his particular province. They are not, indeed, generally known. Nor are they in themselves so exciting as to attract the attention, still lessthe study, of anybody, without some external provocation. Ignorance of them is, therefore, nothing discreditable. Indeed, we may almost expect it from those who have made the study of literature their pursuit in contradistinction to that of language. It gives one, however, a sort of shock to find that this same ignorance has been occasionally exhibited by linguistic scholars of the previous generation. A kind of sanction is given to Arnold’s assertion by the remark of Richard Gordon Latham on this same worddiocese. In his revision, published in 1871, of Todd’s edition of Johnson’s dictionary, he observed under it that it was “once ignorantly spelleddiocess.” No wonder that theTimessuccumbed to this combined attack of learning and letters marching under a common banner of inadequate investigation and erroneous assertion.
I have gone at great length into the consideration of this particular example, not entirely from the eminence of the author who chose to furnish it. As much were these details supplied in order to make manifest how patient and protracted must be the study which will authorize any one to pronounce decisively upon a question of disputed spelling. As long as the advocates of the existing orthography confinethemselves merely to the expression of their prejudices and opinions, they are comparatively safe, even though their prejudices have no foundation in reason and their opinions have behind them no trace of investigation. The moment, however, they attempt to fortify their notions by illustrations and argument, they are lost.
This is the moral of the tale told of Arnold. There are circumstances in which no amount of genius can make up for the lack of a little accurate knowledge. It is not often given to an essayist to exemplify himself a practice he vehemently condemns in the very paragraph containing the condemnation. If academies really exerted the power with which Arnold credited them; if they could exercise a controlling influence over public opinion; if they could establish so broad a basis of intelligence that men would be prevented from giving utterance to crude and hasty dicta; if they could keep writers from palming off upon the public the results of imperfect knowledge acting through the medium of perfect prejudice—if these things were so, it is quite clear that in this particular instance it would have been the utterances of Matthew Arnold that would have been suppressed, and not the assumed orthographical vagaries of the LondonTimes. In Germany,where there is no academy, but where there is a broad and lofty level of linguistic intelligence, observations of a similar character would have met with immediate and crushing exposure and censure. In England and America, where there is a broad and deep level of linguistic ignorance, this blundering statement has long been hailed by many as a proper rebuke to the miscreants who are seeking to defile the sacred altar of English orthography.
An extravagant outburst like the one just cited—it could easily be paralleled from recent utterances—coming from a man occupying a far higher position than any literary defender of the present spelling, reveals what a fathomless abyss of ignorance and prejudice must be filled up or bridged over before there can be even a calm discussion of the subject by the mass of educated men. If we are unable to treat with respect the utterances of great men who are capable of falling into errors like the one just exposed, how can we be expected to be impressed by the words of little men who cite these easily detected blunders as an authoritative justification for their own hostility? Because they deal with language as an art, they fancy they know all about it as a science. There is no intention of conveying the impression that men of lettersare more remarkable than others for erroneous assertions on this subject. As a class they are probably less so. In their ranks, too, are to be found some of the most earnest sympathizers with the movement for the simplification of the spelling. These, too, stand in the first rank. It must not be assumed, therefore, that those among them who have gained an unenviable notoriety by the blunders into which they have fallen in opposing it are more ignorant than other men. They have simply had furnished them by their position unequalled opportunities to make their ignorance conspicuous.
Now, to any real student of the subject, it is evident that both in French and in English the most conservative of courses has been contemplated and taken, so far as any change in orthography has been recommended. No attempt has been made to introduce phonetic spelling. Any intention of that sort has been distinctly disclaimed by those among us who have set the reform on foot. Yet it is a charge from which they have been unable to escape. One of the most striking as well as most entertaining features of the controversy that went on was the persistent assertion of those concerned in the movement, that they had no design or desire to introduce phonetic spelling;and the equally persistent assertion of their assailants that it was the very thing they were aiming to introduce. One side laid down precisely what it sought to do. The other side denounced it for doing the very thing it disclaimed doing. One side declared that it purposely limited its efforts to the removal of some of the anomalies in our present orthography, and the obstacles put by these in the way of its acquisition. The other employed two methods of attack: on the one hand, it inveighed against its opponents for going as far as they did; on the other, it reproached them for their inconsistency in not going further.
Any one who has the slightest conception of what a reform of our spelling on pure phonetic principles means will absolve those now urging reform from putting forward any scheme of that sort. It requires, indeed, a singular innocence of all knowledge of this particular subject to make such a charge. Certain changes recommended would, indeed, have brought particular words nearer a phonetic standard. But if everything proposed were to be universally adopted—and even ten times more—the real disease which afflicts our orthography would be but partially alleviated. It would do little more than set us on the road to a thorough-goingreform. No one, indeed, who comprehends what is required, in a language so lawless as ours, to bring about a perfect accordance between orthography and orthoepy, is ever likely to underrate the difficulties which stand in the way of the establishment of phonetic spelling, even were men as eager for its adoption as they are now hostile to it. In the present state of feeling, therefore, no one need distress himself about its immediate coming.
But why should any one distress himself at all? Little is there more extraordinary to witness in these days of assumed general enlightenment than the horror which many estimable persons seem to feel at the danger of being devoured by this dreadful ogre which they call phonetic spelling. They have no idea what it is, but they know from its name that it must be something frightful. Now, written language was designed to be phonetic. Its intention, however incomplete its realization, was to represent invariably the same sound by the same letter or by the same combination of letters. This idea lies at the root of the conception of the alphabet; otherwise the alphabet would have had no reason for its existence. To picture to the eye the sound which has fallen upon the ear, so that it should never be mistaken for anythingelse, was the problem that presented itself to the man or men who devised that invention which, imperfect as it is, still remains the greatest and most useful to which the human mind has given birth. To represent a sound by one character in one place and by another in another would have seemed to them as absurd as it would to a painter to have the figure of a horse stand for a horse in one picture, and in another picture for a different animal. Of course, in this comparison the symbol is in one case real, and in the other arbitrary; but the underlying principle is the same.
So far as the original invention of the alphabet failed to secure the individual representation of every sound then used, the invention was itself incomplete and imperfect. So far, again, as the characters of the alphabet have been diverted from their original design of representing particular sounds, it is not an application of the invention, but a perversion of it to inferior purposes, and to purposes for which it is not really fitted. One general statement applicable to all languages can be safely made. So far as written speech deviates from the phonetic standard, it fails to fulfil the object for which it was created. It shows to what an extent the English race has wandered away in feelingand opinion from the original motives which led men to seek the representation of the spoken word by written characters, that its members have come to look upon the perfect accordance of orthography and orthoepy as a result, not merely impracticable—which is a thoroughly defensible proposition—but as something in itself undesirable, as something fraught with ruin to the speech itself. The written word was devised to suggest the sound of the spoken word. Yet this ideal is more than discredited with us; it is treated as if it were in some way peculiarly monstrous. Yet all there is of value in our existing orthography is due to what still survives of the phonetic element. This is a condition of things which will be brought out fully when the orthographic situation comes to be considered.
The real life of a language consists in its sounds, not in the signs intended to represent them. The one is the soul of speech; the other can hardly be considered a necessary bodily framework, for the former could and does exist without the latter. In earlier times, when language was learned almost exclusively by the ear, this fact would naturally force itself upon the attention of every reflecting man. But with the spread of education, when acquaintance witha tongue is acquired largely through the eye, the knowledge of the symbolic representation of sounds has come to predominate in the minds of the men of our race over the knowledge of the sounds themselves. While all of us are familiar with the one, but few are with the other. Ask any person of ordinary attainments the number of letters in the English alphabet. He will unhesitatingly answer twenty-six; though the chances are that he will be ignorant of the fact that some of the twenty-six are really supernumerary. But extend the inquiry further. Go with it to the vast body of educated men, excluding those whose pursuits require of them more or less the study of phonetics. These being excepted, ask any single person belonging to the most highly cultivated class—opponents of spelling reform to be preferred—how many are the sounds which the letters of the alphabet and their combinations are called upon to represent. Ask him how many are the sounds which he is in the habit of employing himself in his own utterance. The chances are fifty to one that he will be utterly at a loss what to reply. He has learned the symbols of things; he has not learned the things themselves.
That this should be so in the case of our own tongue is not particularly surprising. It is, perhaps,inevitable. The attention of the men of our race has been more than distracted from any consideration of the subject by the character of our orthography. Their minds have been thrown into a state of bewilderment. As a single illustration, take the representation of the sound usually termed “longi.” This third so-called vowel of our alphabet is not really a vowel, but a diphthong. Its sound is most commonly represented by the single letter itself, seen, for instance, in such a word asmind. But some idea of the uncertainty and range attending its use, with the consequent perplexity to its users, can be gathered from a few selected examples. It is represented byaiinaisle; byayinaye; byeiinheight; byeyineye; byieinlie; byoiinchoir; byuyinbuy; byyintry; and byyeindye. Or, reverse the operation, and see how many sounds the same sign can represent. Take the combinationou, and observe the differences of its pronunciation in the wordsabout,young,youth,four,fought,would, andcough.
English orthography, therefore, instead of teaching the English-speaking man the knowledge and distinction of sounds, takes the speediest and most effectual means of preventing his attaining any such knowledge. It not merely fails to call his attention to it, it forces him todisregard it, to look upon it as an element not properly to be considered. He does not come to forget, he has never learned to know that there is a particular value that belongs or ought to belong to any vowel or combination of vowels. When he grows up, he is naturally ready to despise what he is unable to comprehend. The educated class has with us come generally to look upon the alphabet as a mere mechanical contrivance. They have so largely lost sight of the object for which it exists, that in many cases they are almost disposed to resent the proposition that they should employ it for the purposes for which it was created. It would be thinking too meanly of human nature to believe that men would delight in this condition of things did they once come fully to appreciate it. But to that point few of them ever arrive. Accordingly, ignorance of the real evil disposes them to look with distrust upon any attempt to remedy it.
In truth, as a consequence of the confusion which exists in the written speech, the English race, as a race, has no acquaintance whatever with sounds. It has largely lost the phonetic sense. One whole important domain of knowledge, which ought to have come to it through the spelling, has entirely disappeared from recognitionwithout their being aware of it. Examples of the prevalent lack of any conception of the distinction of sounds and of their proper representation are brought constantly to the attention of those engaged in the work of instruction. But the comments and communications which appear in the course of any controversy on spelling reform, especially those intended to be satirical, furnish the most striking illustrations of this all-prevailing, all-pervading ignorance. There is rarely furnished a more edifying spectacle than the attempt made, in some cases by men of very genuine ability, to write what they call phonetically. In every discussion there are sure to come up with unfailing regularity certain examples that indicate the density of the darkness in which the minds of men are enveloped. Several years ago a series of articles appeared in a Western periodical attacking the reform of the orthography. In one of them occurred this observation: “We are asked,” said the author, “to spellarewithout thee, because the letter is not pronounced. Very well: then drop thea, for that is not pronounced either.” In the same spirit the writer went on to say that fanatical advocates of change should denote the wordsseeandseasimply byc—“spelling only the letter sounded.”
Here was a person producing a series of articles on orthography who was so utterly unacquainted with the primary elemental facts of orthoepy as to fancy that the sound of r and of c by themselves is the same as the name we give to those letters; who did not know that the name cannot be pronounced unless a vowel precedes therin one case and follows thecin the other. Exactly the same examples were adduced in the course of the latest controversy. It is perfectly clear that not one of those who made use of them had the slightest conception of what was essential to convey the representation of a given sound. Any arbitrary symbol, pronounced in a particular way, seemed to them all-sufficient. Their action evinced hardly higher intelligence than would have been shown by considering the wordfiveas phonetically represented by the Arabic numeral 5, which in all languages conveys the same meaning, and in all languages has a different pronunciation. One characteristic there is which denotes most distinctly the infantile state of knowledge that still continues to prevail on the whole subject. By most men any bad spelling is invariably termed phonetic spelling. That is all the idea of the latter they have. The spelling of Chaucer would in their eyes be indistinguishablein character from that of Josh Billings.
More than once have advocates of spelling reform been rebuked for the arrogance manifested by them in their references to the inaccurate assertions and loose thinking which largely make up the chatter of the uninformed on this subject. On the contrary, much of this gabble seems to me to have been treated with singular leniency. Especially has this been the case when it comes from men who have shown knowledge on other subjects and ability in other directions. These have too often missed opportunities, which were fairly obtrusive, of remaining silent on this matter. But no such forbearance is due to the rank and file of the noisy intruders into a controversy they do not understand. There was a writer who gravely informed us that it is an insuperable objection to a change in our orthography, that it would make necessary a new formative period in the history of the language. For fear that the full force of this terrible indictment should be overlooked, he proceeded to put the words containing it in italics. What possible conception could exist in the mind of such an objector as to what constitutes a formative period in the history of a language? Does spelling reform introducenew words? Does it give new meanings to old ones? Does it destroy existing inflections? Does it add any to their number? Does it vary in the slightest the order of words in the sentence? Does it cause the least modification of the least important rule of syntax? A new spelling meaning a new language! Fancy a boy refusing to wash his face, on the ground that if the dirt were removed he would not be the same boy. Fancy a man objecting to putting on a new suit of clothes, on the ground that by so doing he could never be again what he was before; that the integrity of his character and the continuity of his traditions would be destroyed; that he would no longer be the same man to those who had known him and loved him. This is not a travesty of the argument which has been advanced. It is the argument itself, applied not to the dress of the body, but to that of the speech. The men who hold such opinions are really in the same grade of intellectual development as regards language, as in literature are those who fancy that beginning a line with a capital letter is the one essential thing which constitutes poetry.
But of all the educated opponents of spelling reform, I have to confess that the most entertaining to me are women. As devotion to thepresent orthography is a matter of sentiment and not one of reason, it is perhaps not strange that some of the most violent opponents of the present movement are to be found among the members of that sex with which appeals addressed to the feelings are peculiarly potent. It must not, however, be assumed for a moment that this characterization is meant to apply to all women. On the contrary, among them can be found not only many of the most earnest advocates of reform, but an especially large proportion of the most intelligent and clear-headed. This observation is particularly true of those of them who are connected directly or indirectly with the profession of teaching. To the hands of women, indeed, the business of the instruction of the very young is almost entirely committed. They make themselves familiar with the character of the orthography from the side of both theory and practice. They have, in consequence, forced upon their attention, as have few men, the absurdities and anomalies of our present spelling, the unnecessary and utterly irrational obstacles it puts in the path of the learner; the time and toil which must be spent, or rather wasted, in mastering rules to which the exceptions are as numerous as the examples, and in which exceptions aboundto the exceptions. The intelligent among them naturally come to know whereof they speak, and to have decided opinions born of experience and observation.
But experience and observation of this sort have not been forced upon the majority of even educated women. Acquaintance with the real nature of our orthography is not, in their eyes, a matter of intrinsic importance. Accordingly, in the case of those who feel intensely on this subject and exhibit a virulent hostility toward reform of the spelling, we can observe the peculiar mental effervescence which is produced when the maximum of emotion is allowed to operate upon the minimum of knowledge. With them the question is not at all one of argument. It is entirely one of taste, as they regard taste; though occasionally there seems to be an honest even if unfounded belief that arguments have been employed. It is their sensibilities that are outraged, not their reason. I confess to liking the attitude of these opponents of spelling reform, and to receiving gratification from their extremest utterances. They are entirely free from the sham in which men indulge, of pretending to be influenced in their beliefs on this subject by logical principles. Sojourning in that upper rarefied air of sentiment in whichcommon-sense staggers and reason swoons, there is an indefinable charm in the irrationality they display in resolutely ignoring facts they find inconvenient to consider and arguments they disdain to comprehend.
No pleasure, indeed, can be conceived more delightful than in listening to the discussion of this subject by its female opponents. As this is largely a book of personal confessions, I may be permitted to say that I like to hear them talk and to read what they write. They feel about reform of the spelling as did in another way certain of their high-born sisters who have left behind memorials of their experiences when the great cataclysm of the French revolution took place. It was apparently not the scenes of horror and massacre that shocked these scions of noble families; not the victims carted in tumbrils to the guillotine; not the fusillades which swept the streets and stained the pavements with the blood of those who felt fighting for the old régime. Nor was it the question of right or wrong, of relieving oppression, of establishing justice. Not one of these things seems to have made a particular impression upon their minds. What really affected them was something altogether different. The revolution was in such bad taste. Men like Dantonand his associates did not behave in a gentlemanly way. They were not really nice. Just so—if we can compare small things with great—is the impression one gets of the attitude of many women who are hostile to the new spellings proposed. Such may be nearer the pronunciation. They may be nearer the derivation or some other old thing for which nobody cares. But these new spellings are not really nice.
This devotion of woman to the fixed orthography is largely a modern sentiment. There was little of it in the past, either in theory or practice. In fact, high position and sex were once largely regarded as entitling those belonging to either to be exempt from orthographic trammels. Richardson represents Charlotte Grandison as describing one of her lovers as “spelling pretty well for a lord.” But in this same particular several of the most noted women in the past have also been defective. There was nothing then of the superstition of the sacredness of the orthography which now prevails. They apparently did not deem it possible to secure the leisure to make themselves as attractive as they wished to be, were they compelled to waste their time in memorizing the exact spelling of words whose forms they had thesense to see exhibited no sense. As time went on their indifference not unfrequently came to disturb those of their lords and masters who were getting to be punctilious on this point. Swift, who in one way or another was always in a state of anxiety about the English language, had frequent occasion to chasten Stella on the subject. “I drink no aile (I suppose you mean ale),” he writes to her under date of September 29, 1710. “Who are these wiggs,” he asks again on October 8, “who think I am turned Tory? Do you mean Whigs?” “Pray, Stella,” he says, in April of the following year, “explain those two words of yours to me, what you mean byVillianandDainger.” “Rediculous, madam?” he expostulated, on another occasion; “I suppose you mean ridiculous: let me have no more of that; it is the author of theAtlantis’spelling.”[15]One infers from this remark that the then noted Mrs. Manley was as notorious for the scandalous form in which her words appeared in her manuscript as she was for the scandalous meaning they conveyed when appearing in print.
One could fill page after page with the extraordinary views on spelling reform whichhave come from men and women of education and sometimes of genuine ability. The controversy, indeed, which has been going on of late has brought out more sharply than ever before the existence of the singular situation which prevails in regard to it. The highly trained expert opinion is practically all on one side; the large preponderance of educated lay opinion is apparently on the other. Several eminent men have taken part in the discussion in opposition to change. But in all their ranks cannot be found a single one who would be recognized by special students of English as entitled to speak with authority. Not a single one of the latter class has come forward in opposition. Some of them are very possibly indifferent; but so far as they have spoken—and many have spoken—they have pronounced in its favor. If there is among them one who entertains hostility, he is sufficiently in awe of his professional brethren to deem it wise to keep his opinion to the sanctity of private intercourse. No applause of the multitude could make up to him for the condemnation that would be his from his peers. By ranging himself among the opponents of spelling reform he would be well aware that he would distinctly lose caste. He would be placed in a dilemma on one of whosetwo horns he would be impaled. He would be looked upon as guilty either of lack of knowledge or of lack of judgment.
This is a state of things that could not well exist in the case of any other subject than language. Nor, indeed, could it well happen with any other race than the English, where on both sides of the Atlantic ignorance of our tongue and of its history has been sedulously cultivated for centuries. Accordingly, the raggedest of penny-a-liners or the callowest of story-tellers considers himself as much entitled to speak with authority on the subject as he who has devoted years of study to its consideration. Of course, this is a state of things that cannot continue permanently. In the long run the opinions of the few who know will triumph over the clamors of the many who do not know. Indeed, a distinct advance has already been achieved. The subject is no longer treated with indifference. It calls forth hostile criticism, ridicule, vituperation. Furthermore, certain things can no more be said which were once said with smug satisfaction. We are now a long way beyond that provincial faith in Worcester which permitted, fifty years ago, so eminent a man of letters as Oliver Wendell Holmes to remark that Boston had for one of its distinctions “its correcthabit of spelling the English language.” In these days an author of his high grade would be saved by his inevitable association with English scholars from perpetrating an observation so singularly crude. Views of such a sort now find their home only in the congenial clime of the remote rural districts. For slow as has been the progress in this matter, it has been steady. In the immediate future it is destined to advance at a much more rapid rate. The leading universities of America are regularly sending out a small body of trained special students of our speech. In the face of this steadily increasing number of experts whose opinions are based upon adequate investigation and full knowledge, sciolists will in time conclude for their own safety to learn a little before they talk much.
Yet, neither now nor in the past has the advocacy of spelling reform been confined to the specialists in English study. It has embraced scholars of all lands who paid attention to our language or to some form of its literature. Long ago Grimm pointed out that the greatest obstacle to the predominating influence of the English tongue was the character of its orthography. But without going so far back, let us select as types of advocates of reform threerepresentative men of the generation which has just passed away. They are Professor Max Müller, of Oxford; Professor Child, of Harvard; and Professor Whitney, of Yale. Of course, these scholars were cranks—“crazy cranks,” if you will. Much learning had made them mad—insanity from that cause being something from which the critics of their orthographical views feel the sense of absolute immunity. Of course, we know further that professors are a simple, guileless folk, constantly imposed upon by arguments whose speciousness is at once seen by the clearer vision of the men engaged in the struggle and turmoil of practical life. To them unhappily has never been given the easy omniscience which is enabled to understand the whole of a subject without mastering a single one of its details. Still, as a member of this unpractical fraternity, and sharing in its intellectual limitations, I cannot get over the impression that there are difficulties connected with English orthography which even the very youngest newspaper writer cannot settle summarily, and questions which he cannot answer satisfactorily offhand.
In truth, the real nature of our spelling and the real difficulties connected with its reformation are not in the least understood by thevast majority of the educated class. Otherwise it would be impossible for men, sometimes of genuine ability, to give public utterance to the views they entertain. One has only to read articles in magazines and communications sent to the newspapers to gain a view both vivid and depressing of the wide-spread ignorance that prevails. It is manifest, indeed, that the nature of these difficulties is not always understood, even by those who are earnest in their desire for reform of some kind. Accordingly, before the subject can be discussed intelligently, some knowledge of the general orthographic situation must be secured. The irrepressible conflict that goes on in our speech between spelling and pronunciation can never be really appreciated, save by him who has mastered a portion at least of the details in which that conflict has reached its highest degree of intensity.
To set these details forth is anything but an agreeable task. The subject of sounds and the methods taken to represent them cannot, by the wildest stretch of the imagination, be termed exhilarating. But some notion of it must be gained by him who seeks to get any conception of what must be deemed the main trouble affecting English orthography. This is the reason,and to some must be the excuse, for presenting the results of a piece of drudgery as wearisome as it is thankless. The dose I shall try to make as palatable as possible; but there is no disguising the fact that it is a dose. But it is only by swallowing it, or something akin to it, that men can get any conception of the real evils that afflict English spelling, and of the methods that must be taken to palliate them; for in the present state of public opinion, it is hopeless to attempt to cure them. To a consideration of the orthographic situation the next chapter will therefore be devoted.