XX.
Origin and spirit of Phonography—William Bullokar the earliest regular advocate of it—Charles Butler—Dr. Jones and his theory examined.
I. The phonetic system of orthography, which may be regarded as empirical and fallacious, only forms part of such an inquiry as the present by reason of the presence in our earlier literature of a few books which were apparently designed, more or less, for educational purposes.
The fundamental theory of the promoters of this principle, both in former times and in our own, seems to have been that the sound should govern the written character, and that all laws of philology and grammar should defer to popular pronunciation. It is, of course, begging the question, in the first place; and one of the warmest enthusiasts on the subject admits that the very pronunciation, which is the product of sound, and on which he relies, differs in different localities.
The writers on behalf of phonetics possessed, no doubt, their own honest convictions; but they have at no period succeeded in carrying with them any appreciable number of disciples. Between 1580 and 1634, William Bullokar and Charles Butler endeavoured at various dates to establish their peculiar creed; but it never gained footing or currency, and its influence has left no trace on our language, except in the literary or calligraphic essays of persons unable to read and write, or in one or two isolated cases where the new heresy for the moment infected a man like Churchyard, the old soldier-poet, for on no other hypothesis can we explain the uncouth spelling of his little poem on the Irish Rebellion of 1598, which is an orthographical abortion, out of harmony with the usual style of the author, and surpassing in foolishness the wildest suggestions of the professed adherents and supporters of the doctrine.
Bullokar published his large Grammar in 1580, and his Brief one in 1586; and he also put forth in 1585 a version of Æsop’s Fables, the title of which is a curiosity:—“Æsopz Fablz in Tru Ortography with Grammar-Notz. Her-vntoo ar also iooined the Short Sentencz of the Wyz Cato: both of which Autorz are translated out-of Latin intoo English by William Bullokar.
Gev’ God the praiz
That teacheth all waiz.
When Truth trieth,
Erroor flieth.”
Butler became a convert in later life to the views previously entertained and promulgated by Bullokar, bringing out a third edition of his History of Bees in 1634, adapted to the new standard; and in his English Grammar, published a twelvemonth before, he enunciated the same orthographical dogmas. He was of Magdalen College, Oxford, and prepared, as early as 1600, a Latin text-book on Rhetoric for the use of his College. This was more popular and successful than his phonetic excursus, and is quoted even still now and again, because it contains a slight allusion to Shakespear.
But perhaps the most strenuous and elaborate attempt to reform us in this particular direction was made by Dr. Jones, who drew up a Practical Phonography, “Or the New Art of Rightly Spelling and Writing Words by the Sound thereof,” for the use of the Duke of Gloucester, son of Queen Anne, somewhere before 1701, in which year he communicated the fruit of his researches to the public. His description of the art as a new one must be interpreted by his ignorance of the previous labours of Bullokar and Butler, and as a proof that the proposal had met with no response; and the fact that the Doctor’s own volume is almost unknown may be capable of a similar explanation.
I have no means of judging what kind of reception was accorded to Dr. Jones at the time; but the tone of that gentleman’s Preface was certainly not propitiatory or diffident; for he freely speaks of the miserable ignorance of the world and of his own condescension to the undertaking, in order to remove or enlighten it; and yet, from another point of view, he addressed himself to the task of instituting a grammatical code based on that very ignorance of which he complains. For you have not to travel beyond the introductory remarks to stumble on the following directions for the pronunciation and ergo the spelling of half-a-dozen familiar words and proper names:—Aron, baut (bought), Mair, Dixnary, pais (pays), and Wooster; and at the same time on the very threshold of his text he allows “that English Speech is the Art of signifying the Mind by human Voice, as it is commonly used in England, (particularly in London, the Universities, or at Court).”