[230] I have not observed this noticed in our dictionaries as the original form of the phrase. There is no doubt however of the fact; see Stanihurst’s Ireland, p. 33, in Holinshed’s Chronicles. [Rather from torvien, to throw,—Skeat].
[231] Notes and Queries, No. 147.
[232] See Boswell’s Life of Johnson, Croker’s edit. 1848, p. 233.
[233] [The b was purposely foisted into these words by bookmen to suggest their Latin derivation; it did not belong to them in earlier English. The same may be said of the g, intruded into ‘deign’ and ‘feign’.]
[234] A chief phonographer writes to me to deny that this is the present spelling (1856) of ‘Europe’. It was so when this paragraph was written. [Most people would now consider [Yeuroap] as American pronunciation.]
[235] Quintilian has expressed himself with the true dignity of a scholar on this matter (Inst. 1, 6, 45): Consuetudinem sermonis vocabo consensum eruditorum; sicut vivendi consensum bonorum.—How different from innovations like this the changes in the spelling of German which J. Grimm, so far as his own example may reach, has introduced; and the still bolder and more extensive ones which in the Preface to his Deutsches Wörterbuch, pp. liv.-lxii., he avows his desire to see introduced;—as the employment of f, not merely where it is at present used, but also wherever v is now employed; the substituting of the v, which would be thus disengaged, for w, and the entire dismissal of w. They may be advisable, or they may not; it is not for strangers to offer an opinion; but at any rate they are not a seizing of the fluctuating, superficial accidents of the present, and a seeking to give permanent authority to these, but they all rest on a deep historic study of the language, and of the true genius of the language.
[236] Croker’s edit. 1848, pp. 57, 61, 233.
[237] [An incorrect conclusion. Almost all ‘ea’ words were pronounced ‘ai’ down to the eighteenth century. Thus ‘great’ was a true rhyme to ‘cheat’ and ‘complete’, their ordinary pronunciation being ‘grait’, ‘chait’, ‘complait’.]
[238] [i.e. ‘Lunnun’.]
[239] A proposal for correcting, improving and ascertaining the English Tongue, 1711, Works, vol. ix, pp. 139-59.