A heart that is humble might hope for it here.’”
But the alliteration is scarcely appreciable, unless the rendering be accompanied by undue aspiratory efforts. Whenever we hear a run of words rhyming alliteratively in H, it is highly probable that only half the pleasure we experience is conveyed to us by ear, and that the other half is of a subjective nature, and arises from our knowing the letter H to enter into the formation of the words, and the alliteration would be almost lost to us were we ignorant of their orthography. Hence, it is rather from an association of ideas, than from an effect produced on the organs of hearing, that we derive the pleasure; and the modern H, indicating as it does merely a like modification in the phonation of the several vowels to which it is prefixed, cannot be regarded as having a distinct sound of its own, nor, consequently, as constituting a perfect alliterative rhyme. Do not the mute H’s of the following words give results nearly as satisfactory as the H’s in the above quotation?—
The heir that is honest will honour the hour!
Considering, then, the faintness and the nature of the Aspirate of to-day, and its insufficiency for purposes of alliteration, we seem at liberty to conclude that the Anglo-Saxon and Early English H, so much affected of the early poets, was stronger than our own, and had, in all probability, retained much of the pristine power of its Teutonic harshness.
That the sound of the Anglo-Saxon H bore a resemblance to that of an unvocalized y (see page [37]), is made manifest by the free interchange of h and y in ancient MSS. The substitution of surds for sonants, and vice versâ, is common to the early stages of the development of all orthographical codes.
Mr Ellis, whose researches have thrown great light on these matters, gives as his opinion—
In Anglosaxon, a final h was equal to the ch of loch, or German dach. In the thirteenth century the sound of H seems to have been very uncertain, and in the fourteenth it was lost in those words before which a vowel was elided. In the sixteenth it was pronounced or not, differently from the present custom.[[4]]
There exists a belief—perhaps on no very firm foundation—that the Normans could not, or would not, aspirate their H’s; and the idea gains some support in the period of decadence of the strong English H having commenced subsequently to the Norman invasion. It is, however, not easy to understand how these Norsemen should have learned to entirely abandon the use of H in consequence of a century and a half’s residence in Neustria. Salesbury, a Welsh linguist, exhumed by Mr Ellis, implies moreover that, as late as the sixteenth century, the French still aspirated at least some of their H’s, and Littré, in his admirable dictionary, declares the Norman Aspirate to be in a state of good preservation (“très-nettement conservé”) in our own day. The old Norse H had been, according to Rask, Grimm, and Ellis, a vigorous and thriving aspirate; Rapp gives it as having been equal to kh. But presuming that, prior to the Invasion, the Normans had become droppers of H’s, would enable one to account for the unsettled state of the English H in the thirteenth century, when English reappeared as a national speech (1258). Also, according to this latter view, a habit of not aspirating would have been greatly in vogue for a time, and for a Saxon to have dropped his H’s would have been equivalent to an announcement of good breeding and aristocratic acquaintances, or of his being in the habit of frequenting the court and other haunts of the Norman nobility. But when the language of the vanquished began to overcome that of the conqueror, the Aspirate must have entered upon a new era, and H’s again have prevailed in the land. Still the new H had not the vigour of the old one—the guttural of the Anglo-Saxon. In the fourteenth century, as mentioned by Mr Ellis, its employment was subject to various rules; and this will have probably been the period during which the first mute H’s received public recognition, being tolerated as a sort of compromise or concession made to an aristocracy little partial to H’s. Throughout the remaining centuries there have been rules of some sort governing—though very laxly—the employment of the Aspirate. But the powers of H were gradually, surely, and steadily waning, until, at length, its strong guttural sound finally and completely evanesced towards the latter half of last century.
Presuming that the reader consents to recognise the antique origin, the unbroken line of descent, and the rough, sturdy ancestry of our English H, it may be interesting to notice that in 1847 appeared the second edition of a critical work on the English Language,[[5]] written in German (by a fellow of Cambridge), purporting among other things to prove to the omniscient Teuton, that in England the aspiration of H’s is altogether a modern invention, a fanciful outcome of recent orthoepical dogmatism; and that by good speakers it is practically ignored. Concerning this writer, Mr Ellis says, “His principal argument is the retention of an, mine, thine, &c., before words beginning with H, in the authorised version of 1611. The lists of words with mute H given by Palgrave, Salesbury, &c., were of course unknown to him. If, however, he had been aware of the loose manner in which H is inserted and omitted in Layamon, the ‘Genesis and Exodus,’ Prisoner’s Prayer, and other writings of the thirteenth century, he would doubtless have considered his point established. In practice, I understand from a gentleman who conversed with him, he omitted the H altogether.”