Page:Critical Pronouncing Dictionary (Walker, 4th edition, London, 1806).pdf/14

10 But the utility of a work of this kind is not confined to those parts of language where the impropriety is gross and palpable; besides such imperfections in pronunciation as disgust every ear not accustomed to them, there are a thousand insensible deviations, in the more minute parts of language, as the unaccented syllable may be called, which do not strike the ear so forcibly as to mark any direct impropriety in particular words, but occasion only such a general imperfection as gives a bad impression upon the whole. Speakers with these imperfections pass very well in common conversation; but when they are required to pronounce with emphasis, and for that purpose to be more distinct and definite in their utterance, here their ear fails them; they have been accustomed only to loose cursory speaking, and, for want of firmness of pronunciation, are like those painters who draw the muscular exertions of the human body without any knowledge of anatomy. This is one reason, perhaps, why we find the elocution of so few people agreeable when they read or speak to an assembly, while so few offend us by their utterance in common conversation. A thousand faults lie concealed in a miniature, which a microscope brings to view; and it is only by pronouncing on a larger scale, as speaking may be called, that we prove the propriety of our elocution. As, therefore, there are certain deviations from analogy which are not at any rate tolerable, there are others which only, as it were, tarnish the pronunciation, and make it less brilliant and agreeable. There are few who have turned their thoughts on this subject, without observing that they sometimes pronounce the same word or syllable in a different manner; and as neither of these manners offend the ear, they are at a loss to which they shall give the preference: but as one must necessarily be more agreeable to the analogy of the language than the other, a display of these analogies, in a Dictionary of this kind, will immediately remove this uncertainty: and in this view of the variety we shall discover a fitness in one mode of speaking, which will give a firmness and security to our pronunciation, from a confidence that it is founded on reason, and the general tendency of the language. See Principles, No. 530, 547, 551, etc.

But, alas! reasoning on language, however well founded, may be all overturned by a single quotation from Horace:

This, it must be owned, is a succinct way of ending the controversy; and, by virtue of this argument, we may become critics in language, without the trouble of studying it: not that I would be thought, in the most distant manner, to deny that Custom is the sovereign arbiter of language; far from it. I acknowledge its authority, and know there is no appeal from it. I wish only to dispute, where this arbiter has not decided; for, if once Custom speak out, however absurdly, I sincerely acquiesce in its sentence.

But what is this custom to which we must so implicitly submit? Is it the usage of the multitude of speakers, whether good or bad? This has never been asserted by the most sanguine abettors of its