This last statement needs modification in the case of one letter. In modern times there has been a tendency to represent the sound of t in the preterite and past participle by d, or, rather, ed. As compared with the usage of the past, this practice has made a good deal of headway. It is the substitution of a formal regularity of spelling which appeals to the eye over its proper use to indicate the sound to the ear. We have not yet got so far as to write sleeped for slept or feeled for felt, but we have frequently dwelled for dwelt and builded for built. This is all proper enough if the d sound is given to the ending by pronouncing the word, as is often done, as a dissylable. But no reason can be pleaded for it if t is heard as the termination. In this matter we are far behind our fathers.
Take the usage of Spenser, as illustrated on this point in the first canto of the first book of the Faerie Queene. This contains about five hundred lines. In every case whenever a preterite or past participle has the sound of t, it is spelled with t. In this one canto—and it fairly represents all the others—can be found the preterites advaunst, approcht, chaunst, enhaunst, forst, glaunst, grypt, knockt, lept, lookt, nurst, pusht, y-rockt, stopt, and tost. Along with these are to be seen as past participles accurst, enforst, mixt, past, promist, stretcht, vanquisht, and wrapt. Now, to a certain extent this is an unfair illustration. No one can read the Faerie Queene without becoming aware that Spenser was a good deal of a spelling reformer. Necessarily, he was largely dominated by the ignoble idea that orthography should have a close connection with the pronunciation. Still, though in certain particulars he took very advanced ground, he only practiced on a large scale what on a small scale was followed by very many of his contemporaries and immediate successors.
We pass on now to the consideration of the six sounds for which the alphabet has no special sign whatever. Two of them are the surd and sonant sounds, already considered, for which the digraph th has become the common representative. It may be right to add that this same digraph is also equivalent in a few cases to the simple t, as in thyme and Thames. The four other sounds can be recognized perhaps most easily in the ch of church, the ng of bring, the sh of ship, and the s of pleasure. But here, as elsewhere in our orthography, reigns the usual lawlessness. The signs here given represent other sounds than those just specified. Take the case of ng. Any one can detect at once the difference in the pronunciation of this digraph by contrasting it as heard in singer and as heard in finger. Nor has ch been limited to the sound indicated in chair, cheer, child, choose, and churn. It has another, perhaps more frequently denoted by sh in the beginning, middle, and end of words, as, for illustration, in chaise, machine, and bench. It has likewise the sound of k in many words, especially in those of Greek origin, such as character, mechanic, monarch. The uncertainty caused by this variety of pronunciation is particularly noticeable in words in which arch appears as the initial syllable. In archangel, for instance, ch has one pronunciation, in archbishop it has another. The difference between the two must therefore be painfully learned. There is, furthermore, the sporadic example of choir, in which ch has the sound of kw, ordinarily represented by qu. But choir was a late seventeenth-century importation into the language. Though to some extent it has replaced the original form quire, it has invariably retained the pronunciation of that word.
Finally, there are the two sounds specified above, as denoted by the s of pleasure and the sh of ship. The former has a respectable number of signs to indicate it. Besides the s found in such words as measure, usury, enclosure, it is represented by si, as seen in decision, evasion, occasion; by z, as in azure, razure, seizure; by zi, as in glazier, grazier, vizier. It is, however, the second of these sounds that has the greatest variety of signs to denote it. In this respect it rivals many of the vowels or vowel combinations, and surpasses some of them. It is heard in the ce of ocean, and in particular in no small number of words mainly scientific, with the ending aceous, such as cretaceous and cetaceous; in the ci of words like social, gracious, suspicion; in the s of sure, sugar, censure, nauseate; in the t of satiate, expatiate, substantiate; in the ti of martial, patient, nation, and the vast number of words which have the termination tion; in xi in anxious, obnoxious, complexion; in sci in conscience, prescience; in si, as seen in no small number of words, such as mansion, vision, explosion. Finally, to illustrate the confusion which in the case of these signs has been still further confounded, we may instance the ci of social with the pronunciation just indicated, and the ci of the related word society with a pronunciation entirely different. A precisely similar observation could be made of ti in the case of the words satiate and satiety.
Enough has certainly now been said to put beyond question the fact of the irrepressible conflict which goes on in our language between orthography and orthoepy, and to make clear its nature. The treatment of the subject has, indeed, been far from complete. Nothing whatever has been said on the large subject of the representation of sounds in the unaccented syllables. No account has been given of the usage of some of the letters or combinations of letters. In particular, in the matter of doubling the letters both in accented and unaccented syllables, contradictions and incongruities abound with us on a scale which ought to bring peculiar happiness to those devotees of the present orthography who believe that the worse a language is spelled the more distinctly it is to its credit. Still, of this characteristic there has been no consideration. Furthermore, page after page could have been taken up with illustrative examples of the anarchy of all sorts which reigns in every nook and corner of our spelling. We write, for instance, knowledge with a d; but the place with the same terminating syllable where we go presumably to acquire it, which we call a college, we are careful to write without a d. In the past one finds at times the forms knowlege and colledge. It is nothing but an accident of usage that we are not employing them now instead of the ones we have adopted.
It would be easy to go on multiplying examples of these inconsistencies. But though all that could be said is far from having been said, surely enough has been given to prove beyond possibility of denial the existence of the chaotic condition which prevails. Furthermore, while the subject has been by no means exhausted, the same statement cannot safely be made of the patience of the reader, to say nothing of that of the writer. If any one of the former body finds it tedious to wade through the account of the situation which has been given in the preceding pages, let him bear in mind how much more tedious it was for the author to prepare it. If he finds it exceedingly tedious, let him take to himself a sort of consolation in the reflection of how easily it could have been made even more so. Instead, therefore, of complaining of the abundance of minute detail which I have supplied, he ought to be thankful to me for keeping back so much of it as I have done. Moreover, as Heine pointed out long ago, the reader has at his command a resource to which he can always betake himself when his powers of endurance give out. He can skip. This is a blessed privilege denied to the writer.
Incomplete, however, as has been the survey of the subject, it has been sufficient to give a fairly satisfactory idea of the way in which the orthography represents, or rather misrepresents, the pronunciation. It makes manifest beyond dispute the truth of the intimation conveyed at the outset that the form of a particular word is often, with us, little more than a fortuitous concourse of unrelated letters in which neither they nor the combinations into which they enter can be relied upon to indicate any particular sound. In addition, hundreds of those which appear in the spelling have no office in the pronunciation. Genuine derivation has led to the retention of some, spurious derivation to the introduction of others. There are, consequently, few of the common words of our language which cannot be spelled with perfect propriety in different ways, sometimes in half a dozen different ways, if the analogy be followed of words similarly formed and pronounced. Our orthography is, therefore, often a matter of contention and always a matter of study. Knowledge of the accepted form of words must be gained in each case independently, for there exists no general principle, the observance of which will guide the learner to a correct conclusion.
As an inevitable result, the acquisition of spelling never calls into exercise, with us, the reasoning faculties. On the contrary, its direct effect is to keep them in abeyance. The ability to spell properly is an intellectual act only to the extent that attention and recollection are intellectual acts. It can and not unfrequently does characterize persons who are very far from being gifted with much mental power. All who attain proficiency in it are compelled to spend time which, under proper conditions, could have been far more profitably employed. There are men who do not attain it at an early age, and some even who never attain it at all. Moore, for illustration, speaking of Byron, tells us that spelling was “a very late accomplishment with him.”[25] The case of William Morris was far worse. This poet never learned to spell at all. The fact is recorded by his biographer. In speaking of the beauty of his handwriting, he had to admit the failure of his orthography to reach the standard set by it. “The subsidiary art of spelling,” he writes, “was always one in which he was liable to make curious lapses. ‘I remember,’ the poet once said, ‘being taught to spell and standing on a chair with my shoes off because I made so many mistakes.’ In later years several sheets of The Life and Death of Jason had to be cancelled and reprinted because of a mistake in the spelling of a perfectly common English word; a word, indeed, so common that the printer’s reader had left it as it was in the manuscript, thinking that Morris’ spelling must be an intentional peculiarity.”[26]
The ignorance which exists in regard to the orthographic situation is bad enough; but the superstition which has been born of it is still worse. It is assumed to have come down to us pure and perfect from a remote past. Hence, it must be religiously preserved in all its assumed sacredness and genuine uncouthness. Even improvements which could be made with little difficulty, which would have no other result than bringing about with the least possible friction uniformity in certain classes of words—these slight alterations are assailed with almost as much earnestness and virulence as would be encountered by sweeping changes designed to make the spelling really phonetic.
As men are more apt to be interested in particular illustrations than in general discussion, it may be worth while to follow up the survey of the situation which has just been given with an account in detail of the history of a special class of words. In this once prevailed the tendency to bring about absolute uniformity. The movement was arrested before the desired result was attained. It left a few over thirty examples as exceptions to the general practice. In the derivatives of some of these it went back to the regular rule and consequently contributed exceptions to the exceptions. This condition of things has endeared these anomalies to the hearts of thousands. The class itself consists of the words ending in or or our. About the proper way of spelling this termination controversy has raged for more than a hundred years. The examination of the whole class can be best carried on by selecting one of the words belonging to it as typical of all. To its story the next chapter will be largely confined.