“For goodness growing to a plurisy
Dies of his own too much”,
but that he too derived ‘plurisy’ from pluris. This, even with the “small Latin and less Greek”, which Ben Jonson allows him, he scarcely would have done, had the word presented itself in that form, which by right of its descent from πλευρά (being a pain, stitch, or sickness in the side) it ought to have possessed. Those who for ‘crucible’ wrote ‘chrysoble’ (Jeremy Taylor does so) must evidently have done this under the assumption that the Greek for gold, and not the Latin for cross, lay at the foundation of this word. ‘Anthymn’ instead of ‘anthem’ (Barrow so spells the word), rests plainly on a wrong etymology, even as this spelling clearly betrays what that wrong etymology is. ‘Rhyme’ with a ‘y’ is a modern misspelling; and would never have been but for the undue influence which the Greek ‘rhythm’ has exercised upon it. Spenser and his cotemporaries spell it ‘rime’. ‘Abominable’ was by some etymologists of the seventeenth century spelt ‘abhominable’, as though it were that which departed from the human (ab homine) into the bestial or devilish.
In all these words which I have adduced last, the correct spelling has in the end resumed its sway. It is not so with ‘frontispiece’, which ought to be spelt ‘frontispice’ (it was so by Milton and others), being the low Latin ‘frontispicium’, from ‘frons’ and ‘aspicio’, the forefront of the building, that part which presents itself to the view. It was only the entirely ungrounded notion that the word ‘piece’ constitutes the last syllable, which has given rise to our present orthography[275].
Wrong Spelling
You may, perhaps, wonder that I have dwelt so long on these details of spelling; that I have bestowed on them so much of my own attention, that I have claimed for them so much of yours; yet in truth I cannot regard them as unworthy of our very closest heed. For indeed of how much beyond itself is accurate or inaccurate spelling the certain indication. Thus when we meet ‘syren’, for ‘siren’, as so strangely often we do, almost always in newspapers, and often where we should hardly have expected (I met it lately in the Quarterly Review, and again in Gifford’s Massinger), how difficult it is not to be “judges of evil thoughts”, and to take this slovenly misspelling as the specimen and evidence of an inaccuracy and ignorance which reaches very far wider than the single word which is before us. But why is it that so much significance is ascribed to a wrong spelling? Because ignorance of a word’s spelling at once argues ignorance of its origin and derivation. I do not mean that one who spells rightly may not be ignorant of it too, but he who spells wrongly is certainly so. Thus, to recur to the example I have just adduced, he who for ‘siren’ writes ‘syren’, certainly knows nothing of the magic cords (σειραί) of song, by which those fair enchantresses were supposed to draw those that heard them to their ruin[276].
Correct or incorrect orthography being, then, this note of accurate or inaccurate knowledge, we may confidently conclude where two spellings of a word exist, and are both employed by persons who generally write with precision and scholarship, that there must be something to account for this. It will generally be worth your while to inquire into the causes which enable both spellings to hold their ground and to find their supporters, not ascribing either one or the other to mere carelessness or error. It will in these cases often be found that two spellings exist, because two views of the word’s origin exist, and each of those spellings is the correct expression of one of these. The question therefore which way of spelling should continue, and wholly supersede the other, and which, while the alternative remains, we should ourselves employ, can only be settled by settling which of these etymologies deserves the preference. So is it, for example, with ‘chymist’ and ‘chemist’, neither of which has obtained in our common use the complete mastery over the other[277]. It is not here, as in some other cases, that one is certainly right, the other as certainly wrong: but they severally represent two different etymologies of the word, and each is correct according to its own. If we are to spell ‘chymist’ and ‘chymistry’, it is because these words are considered to be derived from the Greek word, χυμός, sap; and the chymic art will then have occupied itself first with distilling the juice and sap of plants, and will from this have derived its name. I have little doubt, however, that the other spelling, ‘chemist’, not ‘chymist’, is the correct one. It was not with the distillation of herbs, but with the amalgamation of metals, that chemistry occupied itself at its rise, and the word embodies a reference to Egypt, the land of Ham or ‘Cham’[278], in which this art was first practised with success.
‘Satyr’, ‘Satire’
Of how much confusion the spelling which used to be so common, ‘satyr’ for ‘satire’, is at once the consequence, the expression, and again the cause; not indeed that this confusion first began with us[279]; for the same already found place in the Latin, where ‘satyricus’ was continually written for ‘satiricus’ out of a false assumption of the identity between the Roman satire and the Greek satyric drama. The Roman ‘satira’,—I speak of things familiar to many of my hearers,—is properly a full dish (lanx being understood)—a dish heaped up with various ingredients, a ‘farce’ (according to the original signification of that word), or hodge-podge; and the word was transferred from this to a form of poetry which at first admitted the utmost variety in the materials of which it was composed, and the shapes into which these materials were wrought up; being the only form of poetry which the Romans did not borrow from the Greeks. Wholly different from this, having no one point of contact with it in its form, its history, or its intention, is the ‘satyric’ drama of Greece, so called because Silenus and the ‘Satyrs’ supplied the chorus; and in their naïve selfishness, and mere animal instincts, held up before men a mirror of what they would be, if only the divine, which is also the truly human, element of humanity, were withdrawn; what man, all that properly made him man being withdrawn, would prove.
‘Mid-wife’, ‘Nostril’
And then what light, as we have already seen, does the older spelling of a word often cast upon its etymology; how often does it clear up the mystery, which would otherwise have hung about it, or which had hung about it till some one had noticed and turned to profit this its earlier spelling. Thus ‘dirge’ is always spelt ‘dirige’ in early English. This ‘dirige’ may be the first word in a Latin psalm or prayer once used at funerals; there is a reasonable probability that the explanation of the word is here; at any rate, if it is not here, it is nowhere[280]. The derivation of ‘mid-wife’ is uncertain, and has been the subject of discussion; but when we find it spelt ‘medewife’ and ‘meadwife’, in Wiclif’s Bible, this leaves hardly a doubt that it is the wife or woman who acts for a mead or reward[281]. In cases too where there was no mystery hanging about a word, how often does the early spelling make clear to all that which was before only known to those who had made the language their study. For example, if an early edition of Spenser should come into your hands, or a modern one in which the early spelling is retained, what continual lessons in English might you derive from it. Thus ‘nostril’ is always spelt by him and his cotemporaries ‘nosethrill’; a little earlier it was ‘nosethirle’. Now ‘to thrill’ is the same as to drill or pierce; it is plain then here at once that the word signifies the orifice or opening with which the nose is thrilled, drilled, or pierced. We might have read the word for ever in our modern spelling without being taught this. ‘Ell’ tells us nothing about itself; but in ‘eln’ used in Holland’s translation of Camden, we recognize ‘ulna’ at once.