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Nothing is considered a more shocking mark of defective education than false spelling, or bad spelling, or misspelling—all which terms are used to express one's spelling a word in some way which the critic does not approve; that is, does not consider the right way. But this is plainly assuming that there is but one right way. Begging his pardon, is he quite certain that there must be true and false, good and bad, right and wrong ways of spelling every word in every language, or even in our own? It seems very doubtful. At all events, we must, I think, tether the critic to his own particular period, and not let him range up and down at his pleasure, condemning the past and legislating for the future.

No doubt there is at this time a common and usual way of spelling most words, which may claim to be called the right way, or orthography. It is equally certain, that for any individual writer to depart from that way, is anything but a mark of wisdom. At the same time, it would not be difficult to specify a considerable number of words, of which the spelling has only recently been made what it is, and about which, even now, doubts may be raised.

But this is hardly worth mentioning, for it is clear that there is, generally speaking, a mode of spelling the English language which is followed by all well-educated persons; and as, according to Quintilian, the consensus eruditorum forms the consuetudo sermonis, so this usage of spelling, adopted by general consent of the learned, becomes a law in the republic of literature. My object is not to insist on what is so plain and notorious, but rather to call attention to a fact which many readers do not know, and many others do not duly consider. I mean this fact—that three or four hundred years ago there was no such settled rule. Not that a different mode was recognised, but that there was no recognised mode. There was no idea in the minds of persons who had occasion to write, that any such thing existed, for in fact it did not exist; and the adoption of this or that mode was a matter of taste or accident, rather than of duty or propriety. Thus it was that the writer who spelt (or spelled, for we have some varieties still) a word variously in different parts of the same book or document, and even the printer whose own name appeared one way on the title-page and another on the colophon, was not contradicting his contemporaries or himself: he was not breaking the law, for there was none to break—or, at least, none that could be broken in that way. He would, perhaps, have said to the same effect, though not so elegantly as Quintilian: 'For my part, except where there is any established custom to the contrary, I think everything should be written as it is sounded; for the use of letters is to preserve sounds, and render them, as things which they have been holding in trust, to the reader.' In short, the people of England, in these old times, had a law of their own, though it did not manifest itself in a fixed mode of spelling, but differed from ours, and, indeed, was based on a very different principle. Perhaps I might say, that they were brought up, not to the Spelling-book, but the Horn-book.

By this, I mean that the critic of modern times has been no doubt well drilled in the spelling-book, soundly rated if he was guilty of a misspelling, and made to understand that it was next to impossible for him to commit a more disgusting barbarism; while his many-times-great-grandfather (the scholar of Lily, perhaps we might almost say of Busby) went through no such discipline. He was, as I have said, brought up on the horn-book.

Now, I grant that, generally, the major includes the minor; and a man's being able to read is prima facie evidence that he knows his letters; yet it is possible that the modern many-times-great-grandson may indulge in as much laxity respecting letters, as his ancestor did with regard to words. Just try the experiment. Go round to half-a-dozen printers, and ask them to print for you the first letter of the alphabet. They will understand you, and you will understand me, without my puzzling the workman who is to print this—if it is printed—by naming the letter here. Apply to them, I say, successively to print this letter for you. It is not likely that any one of them will ask you: 'What shape will you have it?' because that is not a technical mode of expression among printers; but if any one should do so, you would perhaps answer with some surprise: 'Why, the right shape to be sure. Do not you know your letters, and are not your first, second, and third letters, and all through the alphabet, of the right shape? Only take care that you do not make this first one in the shape of the second, or third, or any of those which follow, for the whole set are distinguished from one another simply and purely by their shape.'

As I have said, however, if you applied to a practical man, he would not put the question in this form. At the same time, he certainly would put it in another. He would perhaps say: 'What type will you have? Shall it be Roman, Italic, Black-letter, Script, or any of the grotesque inventions of modern fancy?' You immediately become aware that your order is too indefinite to be acted on without some further specification. As, however, it is immaterial to you in a matter of mere experiment, you say at once 'Roman.' Does that settle it?—not at all: the question of form and shape is as wide open as ever. The Upper Case and Lower Case in a printing-office differ as much as the Upper House and Lower House in parliament or convocation. Is it to be a great 'A,' or a little 'a?' A great 'A,' I need not tell you, though quite the same in sound and value, is no more like a little 'a,' than a great 'B' is like a little 'b.'

As to writing also, as well as printing—set half-a-dozen critics separately and apart to write a capital 'A,' and see how far the letters which they will produce agree in form and shape—I do not say with any in the printer's stock, for not one will do that, we may be certain, but with each other. One scribe will probably make something like an inverted cornucopia, or wiredrawn extinguisher; and one will cross it with a dash, and another with a loop; while another will make a letter wholly different—something that shall look like a pudding leaning against a trencher set on edge—something that is only a great 'A' by courtesy, being in fact nothing but an overgrown little 'a;' bearing the same proportion to a common 'a' as an alderman does to a common man, and looking as if it had been invented by some municipal scribe or official whose eye was familiar with the outline of recumbent obesity.

But notwithstanding these and many other variations, you freely allow that each of your friends has made a capital 'A.' You do not dream of saying that one is right, and all the rest are wrong. The taste and the skill of their penmanship may be various, and the judgment of good and bad goes so far, but it knows better than to go further. Your toleration on this point is unbounded. If you can but make it out, you say, without the least emotion of resentment or contempt: 'Mr A. always makes his Bs in this way;' and 'Mrs C. always makes her Ds in that way.' Their Bs and Ds forsooth! Yes: 'every man his own alphabet-maker.' Why not, if you do but understand him? Right or wrong, the fact is that, come in what shape it may, you take what stands for 'A' to be 'A,' with all the rights and qualities annexed to that letter. Except so far as taste is concerned, you do not think of rebuking the self-complacent type-founder, who prides himself on having produced a new form which all the world will admit to be a genuine 'A,' as soon as they make out that it was meant for one.

I have thought it worth while to say all this about letters, because I believe that it will illustrate what was once upon a time nearly true as to words. The principle of those who had occasion to write in those early times was, so far as circumstances allowed, just opposite to that of the modern critics who find fault with their practice. They made that which, notwithstanding its fluctuations, we may call 'the constant quantity' to be the sound, exactly as we do with the multiform As and Bs just noticed. On the other hand, modern purists consider, not altogether incorrectly as to the fact, that the notation has somehow been settled and fixed, and they are disposed to force the sound into conformity. 'B, y, spells by,' said Lord Byron; and what he settled for himself, the spelling-book has settled for the rest of the world and all the words in it.

The circumstances of those who wrote English some centuries ago, may be considered as bearing some analogy to those of modern English authors who have occasion to write down Oriental words in English letters, and who are therefore obliged to make the characters which we use represent sounds which we do not utter. Of course there can only be an approximation. Writers feel that there is a discretion, and use it freely. It is easy for one after another to imagine that he has improved on the spelling of his predecessors. How many variegations and transmogrifications has the name of one unhappy Eastern tongue undergone since the days when Athanasius Kircher discoursed of the Hanscreet tongue of the Brahmins? I am almost afraid to write the name of Vishnoo, for I do not remember to have seen it in any book published within these five years; and what it may have come to by this time, I cannot guess. To a certain point, I think, this progressive purification of the mode of representing Eastern sounds has been acceptable to the world of letters; but the reading-public have shewn that there is a point at which they may lose patience. They not long ago decided that Haroun Alraschid, and Giafar, and Mesrour, and even the Princess Badroulboudour, and the fair slave Nouzhatoul-aouadat, had all 'proper names,' and refused to part with the friends of their youth for a more correctly named set of persons never before heard of.

This by the way, however; for the main object of these remarks is to convey and impress the idea, that what naturally seems to us the strange and uncouth spelling of former times, was not a proof of the gross, untaught ignorance which it would now indicate. The purpose of the writer in those days was, not to spell accurately words which there was no strict rule for spelling, but to note down words in such a way as to enable those who had not heard them to reproduce them, and to impart their sense through the eye to those who should only see them. One of the finest proofs and specimens of this which we possess, is to be found in a sort of historical drama, now about three hundred years old, written by Bishop Bale, one of the most learned men of his time, and still existing, partly in his hand-writing, and partly in another hand, with his autograph corrections.[A] Certainly the prelate and the scribe between them did, as we should consider it, most atrociously murder the king and queen's English—for I suppose it would be hard to say how much of it belonged to Edward, and how much to Elizabeth; and there is something quite surprising in the prolific ingenuity with which they evade what we should consider the obvious and natural spelling. For instance, one of the dramatis personÆ, and a very important one, is an allegorical person called 'Civil Order;' but I believe that the word 'civil' thus spelled never occurs in the whole work, though seven other modes of spelling it are to be found there. What then? You know what the writer means by cyvill, cyvyll, cyvyle, sivyll, syvyll, sivile, and syvile. Only say it out, and don't be afraid. It is mere nervousness that hinders people from reading old spelling. Clear your throat, and set off at full speed, and the top of your voice, with the following paragraph. Do not stop to think; take the raspers without looking at them, and you will find that you get over the ground wonderfully:—

'The suttle munkych rewlars in furdewhodes rewled the pepell with suttyll rewles. But some of the pepyll were sedycyows scysmatyckes, and did puplyshe them for dysgysyd ipocryts, full of desseyvable gylle and covytous hydolatrie of luker. And these sysmatykes could in no wysse indewer that lords, nowther dewks, nor yet the kings mageste, nor even the empowr, should ponnysh any vylayn. Because, say they, peples in general, as well as peplys in particular (that is, yehe man and his ayers), hath an aunchant and ondowghted right to do his dessyer attonys. "Yea sewer," said a myry fellawe (for such as be myrie will make myrye jests)—"even as good right as a pertre to yield peres, and praty pygys to eat them."'

It is, of course, only for the spelling, or various spellings, of these words that the bishop is responsible, they being here arbitrarily brought together from various parts of his work merely to form a specimen. There can be no doubt that he would have pronounced the words 'people' and 'merry' in one uniform manner wherever they occur; but it is curious to consider how little we can judge respecting the pronunciation of our forefathers. Their litera scripta manet; but how they vocalised it, we cannot always decide. If the reader takes up any edition of Sternhold and Hopkins, printed less than a hundred years ago, he may, I believe, read in Psalm lxxix—

Any one who is aware how many of what are called 'vulgarisms' in pronunciation are in fact 'archaisms,' will naturally think that the ancient pronunciation of 'spoil,' like the modern vulgar one, was 'spile.' But if he goes to one old black letter—say that printed by John Windet for the assignees of Richard Day in 1593—he will find in the fourth line 'defoile;' and if he goes to another edition he may find 'defoyle;' and he will learn that in speculating on such matters, he must be on his guard against modernisers, and go to originals. Even then the rhymes of our ancestors teach us much less of their pronunciation than we might expect; and the curious glimpses which we sometimes get from them, and from other sources, are only enough to make us wish for more. Take, for instance, Master Holofernes's vituperation of Don Adrian de Armado in Love's Labour Lost, and see what you can make of it: 'I abhor such phantasms, such insociable and point-devise companions, such rackers of orthography, as to speak dout fine, when he should say doubt; det, when he should pronounce debt; d, e, b, t; not d, e, t; he clepeth a calf, cauf; half, hauf; neighbour vocatur nebour; neigh abbreviated ne: this is abominable, which we would call abhominable.' Such a passage is curious, coming from one of whom it was asked: 'Monsieur, are you not lettered?' and answered: 'Yes, yes; he teaches boys the Horn-book.'