These lines were written by one of the most accomplished ladies of the sixteenth century, “the friend of scholars and the patron of literature.” Dr. Nott, who has supplied this literary curiosity, has modernized the passage word by word; and though the idiom of the times is preserved, it no longer wears any appearance of vulgarity or of illiteracy.
“My very good lord,—Here I send you, in token of the New Year, a glass of setyll set in silver gilt; I pray you take it (in) worth. An I were able, it should be better. I would it were worth a thousand crowns.”
The domestic correspondence, as appears in letters of the times, seems to indicate that the writers imagined that, by conferring larger dimensions on their words by the duplication of redundant consonants, they were augmenting the force, even of a monosyllable![1]
In such disorder lay our orthography, that writers, however peculiar in their mode of spelling, did not even write the same words uniformly. Elizabeth herself wrote one word, which assuredly she had constantly in her mind, seven different ways, for thus has this queen written the word sovereign. The royal mistress of eight languages seemed at a loss which to choose for her command. The orthography of others eminent for their learning was as remarkable, and sometimes more eruditely whimsical, either in the attempt to retrace the etymology, or to modify exotic words to a native origin; or, finally, to suit the popular pronunciation. What system or method could be hoped for at a time when there prevailed a strange discrepancy in the very names of persons, so variously written not only by their friends but by their owners? Lord Burleigh, when Secretary of State, daily signing despatches with the favourite Leicester, yet spelt his name Lecester; and Leicester himself has subscribed his own name eight different ways.[2]
At that period down to a much later, every one seems to have been at a loss to write their own names. The name of Villers is spelt fourteen different ways in the deeds of that family. The simple dissyllabic but illustrious name of Percy, the bishop found in family documents, they had contrived to write in fifteen different ways.
This unsettled state of our orthography, and what it often depended on, our orthoepy, was an inconvenience detected even at a very early period. The learned Sir John Cheke, the most accomplished Greek scholar of the age, descended from correcting the Greek pronunciation to invent a system of English orthography. Cheke was no formal pedant; with an enlarged notion of the vernacular language, he aimed to restore the English of his day to what then he deemed to be its purity. He would allow of no words but such as were true English, or of Saxon original; admitting of no adoption of any foreign word into the English language, which at this early period our scholar deemed sufficiently copious. He objected to the English translation of the Bible, for its introduction of many foreign words; and to prove them unnecessary he retranslated the Gospel of St. Matthew, written on his own system of a new orthography. His ear was nice, and his Attic taste had the singular merit of giving concision to the perplexed periods of our early style. But his orthography deterred the eyes of his readers; however the learned Cheke was right in his abstract principle, it operated wrong when put in practice, for every newly-spelt word seemed to require a peculiar vocabulary.
When Secretaries of State were also men of literature, the learned Sir Thomas Smith, under Elizabeth, composed his treatise on “The English Commonwealth,” both in Latin and in English—the worthy companion of the great work of Fortescue. Not deterred by the fate of his friend, the learned Cheke, he projected even a bolder system, to correct the writing of English words. He designed to relieve the ear from the clash of supernumerary consonants, and to liquify by a vowelly confluence. But though the scholar exposed the absurdity of the general practice, where in certain words the redundant letters became mutes, or do not comprehend the sounds which are expressed, while in other words we have no letters which can express the sounds by which they are spoken, he had only ascertained the disease, for he was not equally fortunate in the prevention. An enlargement of the alphabet, ten vowels instead of five, and a fantastical mixture of the Roman, the Greek, and the Saxon characters, required an Englishman to be a very learned man to read and write his maternal language. This project was only substituting for one difficulty another more strange.
Were we to course the wide fields which these early “rackers of orthography” have run over, we should start, at every turn, some strange “winged words;” but they would be fantastic monsters, neither birds with wings nor hares with feet. Shakspeare sarcastically describes this numerous race: “Now he is turned ORTHOGRAPHER his words are a very fantastical banquet; just so many strange dishes.” Some may amuse. One affords a quaint definition of the combination of orthoepy with orthography, for he would teach “how to write or paint the image of man’s voice like to the life or nature.”[3] The most popular amender of our defective orthography was probably Bullokar, for his work at least was republished. He proposed a bold confusion, to fix the fugitive sounds by recasting the whole alphabet, and enlarging its number from twenty-four to more letters, giving two sounds to one letter, to some three; at present no mark or difference shows how the sounded letters should be sounded, while our speech (or orthography) so widely differed; but the fault, says old Bullokar, is in the picture, that is, the letters, not the speech. His scheme would have turned the language into a sort of music-book, where the notes would have taught the tones.[4] I extract from his address to his country a curious passage. “In true orthographie, both the eye, the voice, and the eare must consent perfectly without any let, doubt, or maze. Which want of concord in the eye, voice, and ear I did perceive almost thirtie yeares past by the very voice of children, who, guided by the eye with the letter, and giving voice according to the name thereof, as they were taught to name letters, yielded the eare of the hearer a degree contrary sound to the word looked for; hereby grewe quarrels in the teacher, and lothsomeness in the learner, and great payne to both, and the conclusion was that both teacher and learner must go by rote, or no rule could be followed, when of 37 parts 31 kept no square, nor true joint.”
All these reformers, with many subsequent ones, only continued to disclose the uneasy state of the minds of the learned in respect to our inveterate orthography; so difficult was it, and so long did it take to teach the nation how to spell, an art in which we have never perfectly succeeded. Even the learned Mulcaster, in his zealous labour to “the right writing of the English tongue,” failed, though his principle seems one of the most obvious in simplicity. This scholar, a master of St. Paul’s school, freed from collegiate prejudices, maintained that “words should be written as they were spoken.” But where were we to seek for the standard of our orthoepy? Who was to furnish the model of our speech, in a land where the pronunciation varied from the court, the capital, or the county, and as mutable from age to age? The same effort was made among our neighbours. In 1570 the learned Joubert attempted to introduce a new orthography, without, however, the aid of strange characters. His rule was only to give those letters which yield the proper pronunciation; thus he wrote, œuvres, uvres; françoise, fransaise; temps, tems.
Among the early reformers of our vernacular idiom, the name of Richard Mulcaster has hardly reached posterity. Our philologer has dignified a small volume ostensibly composed for “the training of children,”[5] by the elevated view he opened of far distant times from his own of our vernacular literature—and he had the glory of having made this noble discovery when our literature was yet in its infancy.