“So, again, with freaks in dealing with language; certainly all such freaks tend to impair the power and beauty of language; and how far more common they are with us than with the French! To take a very familiar instance. Every one has noticed the way in which the Times chooses to spell the word ‘diocese’; it always spells it diocess, deriving it, I suppose, from Zeus and census. The Journal des Débats might just as well write ‘diocess’ instead of ‘diocèse,’ but imagine the Journal des Débats doing so! Imagine an educated Frenchman indulging himself in an orthographic antic of this sort, in the face of the grave respect with which the Academy and its dictionary invest the French language! Some people will say these are little things. They are not; they are of bad example. They tend to spread the baneful notion that there is no such thing as a high correct standard in intellectual matters; that every one may as well take his own way; they are at variance with the severe discipline necessary for all real culture; they confirm us in habits of wilfulness and eccentricity which hurt our minds and damage our credit with serious people.”
No one will question the earnestness with which these words are spoken. The difficulty with them is that they are at variance with the severe discipline necessary for all real culture—the discipline which forbids us to discuss magisterially matters we know nothing about. Consequently, they are of particularly bad example because of the eminence of the writer. What are we to think of the opinions of an author who could presume to express himself in this manner on what he called correct orthography? Where did he get his knowledge of that somewhat elusive substance? How was he enabled to pronounce authoritatively on the proper spelling of a word about whose origin and history he had not taken the slightest pains to inform himself? Arnold supposed that the London Times may have derived diocess from Zeus and census. Where did he himself think it came from?
Still, as these words of his have been more than once triumphantly quoted as an unintended, and therefore all the more crushing, argument against spelling reform by a leading man of letters, it may be worth while to give a brief account of the actual facts in regard to the appearance of diocese in our speech, and the changes of form it underwent—so far, at least, as dictionaries of various periods have recorded the usage. By so doing one may gain some conception of the amount of research necessary to pronounce positively upon the orthographic history of even a single word. He will further learn to recognize the wisdom of refraining from the expression of large judgments upon the correctness or incorrectness of a particular spelling which are based upon limited knowledge. To clear the ground, it is to be said—though it seems needless to say it—that the first part of the word diocese has nothing to do with Zeus, though one gets the impression that its genitive Dios was in some way associated with it in Arnold’s mind. It comes remotely from a Greek word meaning the management of a household. After its appearance in our language in the fourteenth century, various were the forms it assumed. Students of Chaucer are well aware that his spelling of it was diocise. But it occurs but once in his writings, and then as a ryme to gyse, the modern guise. Later, under Latin influence, and for phonetic reasons, it became commonly either diocesse or dioces.
Between these two forms the language seems finally to have made a sort of compromise by recognizing the claims of both. It dropped the e from the one or it added an s to the other, just as one is disposed to look at it. Though there were other forms, diocess became accordingly the standard. Such it remained for a long period. But its triumph was slow and, comparatively speaking, late. Diocesse is the form given, for example, in Minsheu’s Guide to the Tongues, which appeared in 1617. In Edward Phillips’ dictionary of 1658, entitled A New World of Words, it is dioces. But in later editions—certainly in that of 1696—diocess is the spelling found. Such also was the form of the word in Bullokar’s dictionary of 1684; in the Glossographia Anglicana Nova of 1719; and in Edward Cocker’s English dictionary of 1724—the only editions of these works I have had the opportunity to consult. On the other hand, in Coles’s English dictionary of 1713, it is diocese. This is repeated in the edition of 1717. It is the earliest instance I have met of the modern spelling, though others may exist.
Before the publication of the dictionary of Dr. Johnson in 1755, the two principal works of this character which the early part of the eighteenth century produced were that of Bailey, and that of Dyche improved and completed by Pardon. The former was the first to appear. It indeed seems always to have outranked in popular estimation its successor and rival. It came out first in 1721. Before the end of the century it had passed through a very large number of editions. At the outset its spelling of the word under consideration was diocess. So it remained in the half dozen editions that followed. But after 1730 diocese took its place, and held it during the whole of the eighteenth century. On the other hand, Dyche’s dictionary, which began to be published in 1735, not only authorized diocess, but clung to it in subsequent editions. Later in the century—certainly in the seventeenth edition of 1794—it permitted the alternative spelling diocese. This practice, indeed, can be met much earlier. For instance, in the second edition of Benjamin Martin’s dictionary, which appeared in 1754, both diocese and diocess are given.
It was the choice of diocess by Doctor Johnson that turned the tide for a while in one direction. For the rest of the century it settled the spelling, so far as the practice of most men was concerned. He was followed by nearly all the later lexicographers. This was true in particular of Sheridan and Walker. These two were widely accepted as authorities, especially the latter. The edition of Walker’s dictionary, which came out in 1802, just after his death, but containing his latest revisions, was long regarded by our fathers as a sort of orthographic and orthoepic statute-book. It still showed diocess as the only way of spelling this particular word. So did the dictionary of James Sheridan Knowles, which was first published in 1835. It continued to retain this form of the word in the editions of 1845 and 1877. It is found even in the edition of Walker, as revised by Davis, which appeared in 1861. On the other hand, Smart’s revision of the same work, or remodelling, as he called it, was largely responsible for the prevalence and general adoption of diocese. This dictionary was first published in 1836. It had a wide circulation, and for a long time its successive editions were regarded as authoritative works of reference.
This survey of the matter is by no means exhaustive, but it is sufficiently complete to render certain the results reached. It shows that a long contest went on between the two forms of the word, and that the later gradually triumphed over the earlier. It shows too that diocess, though slowly going out of fashion, continued still in the best of use long after Arnold had reached maturity. As always happens, indeed, there was a certain body of conservatives who refused to accept what was in their eyes the new-fangled monstrosity. The ancient usage was good enough for them. Among these the London Times, owing to its position in the newspaper world, occupied a specially prominent place. It not impossibly felt that in standing by the time-honored diocess it was resisting an insidious attempt to ruin the language.
All, therefore, that Arnold needed to do, before expressing his opinions, or rather his prejudices, in the matter was to learn these easily accessible facts. To use his own phraseology, it was incumbent upon him to let his mind play about the subject until he had fully informed himself upon it. His failure to do this led him to fall into the mistake he did. A note to the later edition of his essays conveys the glad tidings that the London Times has at last renounced the error of its ways, and has succumbed to the authority of fashion. Like the rest of us, it now spells the word diocese. But the irrevocable printed page will continue to stand and bear perpetual witness to the blunder of its critic.
One is not, indeed, astonished at the lack of familiarity with the facts just recorded on the part of a man of letters. They lie outside of his particular province. They are not, indeed, generally known. Nor are they in themselves so exciting as to attract the attention, still less the study, of anybody, without some external provocation. Ignorance of them is, therefore, nothing discreditable. Indeed, we may almost expect it from those who have made the study of literature their pursuit in contradistinction to that of language. It gives one, however, a sort of shock to find that this same ignorance has been occasionally exhibited by linguistic scholars of the previous generation. A kind of sanction is given to Arnold’s assertion by the remark of Richard Gordon Latham on this same word diocese. In his revision, published in 1871, of Todd’s edition of Johnson’s dictionary, he observed under it that it was “once ignorantly spelled diocess.” No wonder that the Times succumbed to this combined attack of learning and letters marching under a common banner of inadequate investigation and erroneous assertion.
I have gone at great length into the consideration of this particular example, not entirely from the eminence of the author who chose to furnish it. As much were these details supplied in order to make manifest how patient and protracted must be the study which will authorize any one to pronounce decisively upon a question of disputed spelling. As long as the advocates of the existing orthography confine themselves merely to the expression of their prejudices and opinions, they are comparatively safe, even though their prejudices have no foundation in reason and their opinions have behind them no trace of investigation. The moment, however, they attempt to fortify their notions by illustrations and argument, they are lost.