Shipowners overcame this trouble, however, by raising the whole of the "quarter-deck"—the part of the deck, that is, which lies behind the after end of the "bridge-house"—and by that means they made the after-hold deeper than the other. Thus the commonest type of all, the "raised quarter-deck, well-decker," came into existence, a type of which many examples are to be seen on the sea.[70]
In the following paragraphs Professor Thomas R. Lounsbury of Yale University criticizes the use of final e in English words. You will note that he uses a combination of the historical method and the method by standards.
There seems to be something peculiarly attractive to our race in the letter e. Especially is this so when it serves no useful purpose. Adding it at random to syllables, and especially to final syllables, is supposed to give a peculiar old-time flavor to the spelling. For this belief there is, to some extent, historic justification. The letter still remains appended to scores of words in which it has lost the pronunciation once belonging to it. Again, it has been added to scores of others apparently to amplify their proportions. We have in our speech a large number of monosyllables. As a sort of consolation to their shrunken condition an e has been appended to them, apparently to make them present a more portly appearance. The fancy we all have for this vowel not only recalls the wit but suggests the wisdom of Charles Lamb's exquisite pun upon Pope's line that our race is largely made up of "the mob of gentlemen who write with ease." The belief, in truth, seems to prevail that the final e is somehow indicative of aristocracy. In proper names, particularly, it is felt to impart a certain distinction to the appellation, lifting it far above the grade of low associations. It has the crowning merit of uselessness; and in the eyes of many uselessness seems to be regarded as the distinguishing mark of any noble class, either of things or persons. Still, I have so much respect for the rights of property that it seems to me every man ought to have the privilege of spelling and pronouncing his own name in any way he pleases.
The prevalence of this letter at the end of words was largely due to the fact that the vowels, a, o, and u of the original endings were all weakened to it in the break-up of the language which followed the Norman conquest. Hence, it became the common ending of the noun. The further disappearance of the consonant n from the original termination of the infinitive extended this usage to the verb. The Anglo-Saxon tellan and helpan, for instance, after being weakened to tellen and helpen, became telle and helpe. Words not of native origin fell under the influence of this general tendency and adopted an e to which they were in no wise entitled. Even Anglo-Saxon nouns which ended in a consonant—such, for instance, as hors and mús and stán—are now represented by horse and mouse and stone. The truth is, that when the memory of the earlier form of the word had passed away an e was liable to be appended, on any pretext, to the end of it. The feeling still continues to affect us all. Our eyes have become so accustomed to seeing a final e which no one thinks of pronouncing, that the word is felt by some to have a certain sort of incompleteness if it be not found there. In no other way can I account for Lord Macaulay's spelling the comparatively modern verb edit as edite. This seems to be a distinction peculiar to himself.
In the chaos which came over the spelling in consequence of the uncertainty attached to the sound of the vowels, the final e was seized upon as a sort of help to indicate the pronunciation. Its office in this respect was announced as early as the end of the sixteenth century; at least, then it was announced that an unsounded e at the end of a word indicated that the preceding vowel was long. This, it need hardly be said, is a crude and unscientific method of denoting pronunciation. It is a process purely empirical. It is far removed from the ideal that no letter should exist in a word which is not sounded. Yet, to some extent, this artificial makeshift has been, and still is, a working principle. Were it carried out consistently it might be regarded as, on the whole, serving a useful purpose. But here, as well as elsewhere, the trail of the orthographic serpent is discoverable. Here as elsewhere it renders impossible the full enjoyment of even this slight section of an orthographic paradise. Here, as elsewhere, manifests itself the besetting sin of our spelling, that there is no consistency in the application of any principle. Some of our most common verbs violate the rule (if rule it can be called), such as have, give, love, are, done. In these the preceding vowel is not long but short. There are further large classes of words ending in ile, ine, ite, ive, where this final e would serve to mislead the inquirer as to the pronunciation had he no other source of information than the spelling.
Still, in the case of some of these words, the operation of this principle has had, and is doubtless continuing to have, a certain influence. Take, for instance, the word hostile. In the early nineteenth century, if we can trust the most authoritative dictionaries, the word was regularly pronounced in England as if spelled hós-tĭl. So it is to-day in America. But the influence of the final e has tended to prolong, in the former country, the sound of the preceding i. Consequently, a usual, and probably the usual, pronunciation there is hos-tīle. We can see a similar tendency manifested in the case of several other adjectives. A disposition to give many of them the long diphthongal sound of the i is frequently displayed in the pronunciation of such words as agile, docile, ductile, futile, infantile. Save in the case of the last one of this list, the dictionaries once gave the ile nothing but the sound of il; now they usually authorize both ways.
Were the principle here indicated fully carried out, pronunciations now condemned as vulgarisms would displace those now considered correct. In accordance with it, for instance, engine, as it is spelled, should strictly have the i long. One of the devices employed by Dickens in Martin Chuzzlewit to ridicule what he pretended was the American speech was to have the characters pronounce genuine as gen-u-īne, prejudice as prej-u-dīce, active and native as ac-tӯve and na-tīve. Doubtless he heard such pronunciations from some men. Yet, in these instances, the speaker was carried along by the same tendency which in cultivated English has succeeded in turning the pronunciation hos-tĭl into hos-tīle. Were there any binding force in the application of the rule which imparts to the termination e the power of lengthening the preceding vowel, no one would have any business to give to it in the final syllable of the words just specified any other sound than that of "long i." The pronunciations ridiculed by Dickens would be the only pronunciations allowable. Accordingly, the way to make the rule universally effective is to drop this final e when it does not produce such an effect. If genuine is to be pronounced gen-u-ĭn, so it ought to be spelled.[71]
Now it is evident that unless the critic's standards are fair and sensible, unless they are known to be sound and essential, his criticism is likely to be valueless. If my ideas of the qualities of ideal tennis courts are erratic or queer, my judgment of the individual court will be untrustworthy. Your first duty as critic, then, is to look at your standards. In judging such things as ice cream freezers, motorcycles, filing systems, fertilizers, rapid-firing guns, and other useful devices, you will find no great difficulty in choosing your standards. When you come to literature and the arts, however, you find a difficult task. For who shall say exactly what a lyric poem shall do? Or who shall bound the field of landscape painting? No sooner does Reynolds begin painting, after he has formulated the laws of his art and stated them with decision, than he violates them all. No sooner did musicians settle just what a sonata must be than a greater musician appeared who transcended the narrower form. Moreover, in the field of literature and the arts we often find great difficulty in surmounting the cast of our individual minds; we like certain types and are unconsciously led to condemn all others. The great critic rises superior to his peculiar likes and prejudices, but most of us are hindered by them. One great benefit to be derived from writing this particular kind of criticism is in gaining humility—humility at the greatness of some of the works of the past, before which, when we really look at them, we are moved to stand uncovered, and humility at the lack of real analysis that we have made before we attempt the criticism, and finally humility at the tremendous effort we must make to write criticism at all worthy of the subjects. But the difficulty of writing such criticism well should make you exert yourself to the utmost to acquire skill before you attempt this form.