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NOTES AND QUERIES. DO s. VIL JAX. 19, 1007.

a standard English not an impossible everywhere phonetic English without branding the latter idea as one broached only " for the purpose of misleading and making mischief." I will not believe that any one would write in ' N. & Q.' with that intent or in that humour ; and did I think the imputation personal, I should repel it with a positive denial. Further, I think that, although these pages are devoted to the literary and studious, not many of these would represent the motive of the great majority of their practical and intelligent countrymen who, though their abilities have not been directed to the academic study of their language, have nevertheless a clear judgment as to the impracticability of the proposed spelling change as " the crass ignorance of an obstinate and indocile public." May not their vision be the clearer as unaffected by the enthusiasm begotten of study ?

MB. STREET has ably and temperately demonstrated the obstacles against the establishment of a standard ; and as the strenuous and worthy American President appears to have deferred to public opinion, it seems likely that the standard will not be set up either at New York or London, but that the old language occasionally emended and enriched as heretofore will be suffered to pursue its rugged course, and that we may still enjoy its analysis. W. L.

I have great sympathy with the simpli- fication of spelling, and particularly with the artistic appearance of print. I have given practical effect to some of the ideas I have on this subject in the course of the five hundred pages of my ' Swimming ' biblio- graphy. Dire was the prospect of lashings from the press which printers, publishers, and friends held out to me. But the press never took any notice of the spelling. It reviewed the book most favourably from an easy standpoint, but not from a biblio- graphical, educational, scholarly, or scientific point of view, as I had hoped.

To get into the very simple alterations in spelling I made took my printers a very long time, during which period I had to fight them day by day. I insisted on the spelling being altered to mine, notwith- standing that I had to pay for all their mistakes. Often I made such marginal comments that I fully expected them to say, " Mr. Thomas, we are not accustomed to being spoken to in this manner, and we must request you to find another printer.'*

But they did not : they kept their temper. If there was all this trouble with a few alterations, what would it be with many ?

So far as I know, I am the only person who has dared to publish an English educa- tional book with any simplified spellings. But then I had not to earn my living. I am glad to see PROF. SKEAT'S admirable note& on spelling reform, for I fear that very few scholars whose opinions one would like to hear will speak. At all events, I observe that those who have advocated reforms take good care that they follow the old spellings in their books.

Any sudden, wholesale change I believe to be impossible. But much might be done by degrees. Similar improvements have been made in music, but each has been objected to and fought step by step. Wilson in * A new dictionary of music ' (p. 264) says : " Every innovation tending to im- provement was stigmatised as immorality, sedition, and infidelity." This is much the position taken up by most of our present scholars, schoolmasters, and such-like inter- ested in education. From them no reforms will emanate, any more than national reforms emanate from rulers.

Instead of simplification or reform, the modern tendency seems to take a backward step, as, for example, putting French endings we do not pronounce, or leaving out letters instead of keeping words in their original form, as " typist " (which should be pronounced " typ ist ") instead of " typeist." I have always known the word " wasteful," but lately I have seen the word " waste " so altered by the omission of the e that for some time I did not know what was meant by " wastrel." PROF. SKEAT says (vi. 450) : " If a German meets a new- English word, it may easily happen that its spelling affords no clue to the sound." " Wastrel " is an instance of an Englishman finding a word which affords no clue to the sound. I do not know whether to pro- nounce it " wastrel " (like " mass ") or like wasteful."

To go on with the present muddle, how- ever, is preferable to the tyranny of coercion. To be dictated to by an " Academy " would be the worst thing that could happen for the language. Such a body would probably begin by insisting on disfiguring our letters- with accents a brainless and practically useless expedient. These accents have been enforced in France, and, worse still,* in Spain, where, contrary to the opinions 11 of scholars, a sort of Inquisition compels^ all the printers to adopt some new accents ih&