[225] [Mr. Fitzedward Hall in 1873 says ‘antecedents’ is “not yet a generation old” (Mod. English, 303). Landor in 1853 says “the French have lately taught (it to) us” (Last Fruit of an Old Tree, 176). De Quincey, in 1854 calls it “modern slang” (Works xiv, 449); and the earliest quotation, 1841, given in the N.E.D., introduces it as “what the French call their antecedents”.]
[226] See Whewell, History of Moral Philosophy in England, pp. xxvii.-xxxii.
[227] For a fuller treatment of the subject of this lecture, see my Select Glossary of English Words used formerly in senses different from their present, 2nd ed. London, 1859.
V
CHANGES IN THE SPELLING OF ENGLISH WORDS
When I announce to you that the subject of my lecture to-day will be English orthography, or the spelling of the words in our native language, with the alterations which this has undergone, you may perhaps think with yourselves that a weightier, or, if not a weightier, at all events a more interesting subject might have occupied this our concluding lecture. I cannot admit it to be wanting either in importance or in interest. Unimportant it certainly is not, but might well engage, as it often has engaged, the attention of those with far higher acquirements than any which I possess. Uninteresting it may be, by faults in the manner of treating it; but I am sure it ought as little to be this; and would never prove so in competent hands[228]. Let us then address ourselves to this matter, not without good hope that it may yield us both profit and pleasure.
I know not who it was that said, “The invention of printing was very well; but, as compared to the invention of writing, it was no such great matter after all”. Whoever it was who made this observation, it is clear that for him use and familiarity had not obliterated the wonder which there is in that, whereat we probably have long ceased to wonder at all—the power, namely, of representing sounds by written signs, of reproducing for the eye that which existed at first only for the ear: nor was the estimate which he formed of the relative value of these two inventions other than a just one. Writing indeed stands more nearly on a level with speaking, and deserves rather to be compared with it, than with printing; which, with all its utility, is yet of altogether another and inferior type of greatness: or, if this is too much to claim for writing, it may at any rate be affirmed to stand midway between the other two, and to be as much superior to the one as it is inferior to the other.
The intention of the written word, that which presides at its first formation, the end whereunto it is a mean, is by aid of symbols agreed on beforehand, to represent to the eye with as much accuracy as possible the spoken word.
Imperfection of Writing