Think seriously, return duly,

With the corners of the leaves not turned down."

The Substitution of the Letter "I" for "J" in the Names of "John, James, Jane," &c.

—Will you permit me to ask the reason of the absurd, and sometimes inconvenient, custom of substituting I for J in MS. spelling of the names John, James, Jane, &c.? If it be correct in MS., why is it not equally correct in print? Let us, then, just see how the names would read in print with such spelling: Iohn, Iames, Iane, &c.! Besides, if it be correct to put I for J in John, it must, of course, be equally correct to put J for I in Isaac, and to turn it into Jsaac. Indeed, if you happen in a subscription list, or a letter, or anything else intended for the press, to write in the MS. the letter I (which rightly stands as the initial in that case), as the initial of some person named Isaac, it is ten to one but the compositor substitutes J in its place in print. I have found Sir I. Newton in my MS. thus metamorphosed into Sir J. Newton in print. I see in "The Clergy List" more than one name which ought to be I, turned into a J. Now, Sir, it is folly to pretend that I and J are synonymous letters, or that they express the same meaning, unless we are prepared to allow Isaac to be spelt with a J or I, according to the writer's pleasure or caprice. May I, then, be permitted to ask whether it is not high time for every one to write I when he means I, and to write J when he means J? If compositors would always print MSS. as they are written in this particular, the palpable absurdity of putting I for J would, I am sure, soon be evident to all, and soon shame people out of the fashion. What if U and V were treated with as little ceremony as I and J? So it once was. Thus T. Rogers, in his work on the Thirty-nine Articles, A.D. 1586, will furnish an example. In it we read: "Such is the estate principally of infants elected vnto life, and saluation, and increasing in yeers." But this old-fashioned mode of spelling has long become obsolete: may the substitution of I for J soon become the same.

C. D.

Daniel de Foe.

—A son of Daniel shines in Pope's Dunciad. Does the following notice refer to a son of that son? It is extracted from an old Wiltshire paper:

"On the 2 Jan. 1771, two young men, John Clark and John Joseph De Foe, said to be a grandson to the celebrated author of the True Born Englishman, &c., were executed at Tyburn for robbing Mr. F——, the banker, of a watch and a trifling sum of money on the highway."

And the writer then proceeds to moralise on the inequality of that code of laws, which could visit with death the author of a burglary committed on another man, who, by the failure of his bank, had recently produced an unexampled scene of distress, in the ruin of many families, and was yet suffered to go scatheless.

My next notice, which is also extracted from a Wiltshire paper, is dated 1836.