'which (he wrote) is said to mean if properly accented The three ladies gave a box on the ear to the favourite of the princess.' This suggests that the bleating of sheep may have a richer significance than we are accustomed to suppose; and it may perhaps illustrate the origin as well as the decay of human speech. The only question that it raises for us is the possibility of distinguishing our own homophones by accentuation or by slight differentiation of vowels; and this may prove to be in some cases the practical solution, but it is not now the point in discussion, for no one will deny that such delicate distinctions are both inconvenient and dangerous, and should only be adopted if forced upon us. I shall assume that common sense and universal experience exonerate me from wasting words on the proof that homophones are mischievous, and I will give my one example in a note[8]; but it is a fit place for some general remarks.

The objections to homophones are of two kinds, either scientific and utilitarian, or æsthetic. The utilitarian objections are manifest, and since confusion of words is not confined to homophones, the practical inconvenience that is sometimes occasioned by slight similarities may properly be alleged to illustrate and enforce the argument. I will give only one example.

Utilitarian objections not confined to homophones.

The telephone, which seems to lower the value of differentiating consonants, has revealed unsuspected likenesses. For instance the ciphers, if written somewhat phonetically as usually pronounced, are thus:

0123456789
nawtwuntoothreefawrfaivsixsev'neitnain

by which it will be seen that the ten names contain eight but only eight different vowels, 0 and 4 having the same vowel aw, while 5 and 9 have ai. Both these pairs caused confusion; the first of them was cured by substituting the name of the letter O for the name of the zero cipher, which happens to be identical with it in form,[9] and this introduced a ninth vowel sound ou (= owe), but the other pair remained such a constant source of error, that persons who had their house put on the general telephonic system would request the Post Office to give them a number that did not contain a 9 or a 5; and it is pretty certain that had not the system of automatic dialling, which was invented for quite another purpose, got rid of the trouble, one of these two ciphers would have changed its name at the Post Office.

Æsthetic objections.

In the effect of uniformity it may be said that utilitarian and æsthetic considerations are generally at one; and this blank statement must here suffice, for the principle could not be briefly dealt with: but it follows from it that the proper æsthetic objections to homophones are never clearly separable from the scientific. I submit the following considerations. Any one who seriously attempts to write well-sounding English will be aware how delicately sensitive our ear is to the repetition of sounds. He will often have found it necessary to change some unimportant word because its accented vowel recalled and jarred with another which was perhaps as far as two or three lines removed from it: nor does there seem to be any rule for this, since apparently similar repetitions do not always offend, and may even be agreeable. The relation of the sound to the meaning is indefinable, but in homophones it is blatant; for instance the common expression It is well could not be used in a paragraph where the word well (= well-spring) had occurred. Now, this being so, it is very inconvenient to find the omnipresent words no and know excluding each other: and the same is true of sea and see; if you are writing of the sea then the verb to see is forbidden, or at least needs some handling.

I see the deep's untrampled floor

With green and purple seaweeds strewn: