d hy Mr. J. B. Rundell at a meeting of the ShorU 
 Writers* Association, held on Monday, \Zth March, 1882. 
 
 rections of English Spellings 
 by the Philological Society.” 
 
 I have chosen for the subject of this lecture an explanation of 
 some of the changes of spelling proposed in a pamflet bearing the 
 above title, and publisht for the Filological Society by Tmbner 
 and Co. (1881). It has, however, occurd to me that as some of 
 my hearers may not have been present on one or two former 
 occasions when I hav been allowed the privilege of addressing a 
 few words to this Association on the subject of English Spelling 
 Seform, it might be well if I preceded this explanation by a few 
 words on the general subject, and followed it by some remarks on 
 the light in which, as far as I can make it out, these “ Partial 
 Coreclions ” ar regarded by the English Spelling Eeform Associa¬ 
 tion, of which, in common with our worthy President, Mr T. J. 
 Woods, I have the honor to be a member. 
 
 Most of us hav herd of the criticism which Artemus Ward past 
 upon Chaucer. “ Chaucer,” he said, “ was a good poet, but a 
 bad speller.” We might, after a somewhat similar fashion, 
 say of English that it is a grand and noble language, but 
 that its spelling is atrocious ; that the excellence of its literature 
 is quite unrivald and the badness of its spelling nearly so. We 
 look in vain in Europe for a rival in the latter respect, and find 
 one in the distant plains of Thibet, the home of the Grand 
 Lama, where prayers ar daily ground on strips of paper out of a 
 ^-7 revolving cylinder. 
 
 The test which we ar accustomd to apply to a system of 
 spelling is that there shall be no difficulty in deciding on the 
 spelling of a word clearly and distinctly pronounced, or in pro¬ 
 nouncing in the proper way a written or printed word which we 
 hav never seen before. This test may be applied with almost 
 rigorous severity to Italian and Spanish, and even to Welsh, a 
 language which it is usual to hold up to much ridicule. In 
 Italian, for instance, we can put before an e an u, ue, and before 
 that successivly a b, bue, and an a, abue, and an m, mabue, and an i, 
 imabue, and a e, Cimabue, and the only letter which varies its 
 value according to its position is the last named. All the others 
 ar sounded in connection j ust as they would be if separate. The 
 first letter, moreover, is always sounded as ch in chair before i 
 and e, and like k before a and o. Learning to read and to spell in 
 Italian is therefore nearly as easy as it is for a cat to lap milk. 
 
 If we try the same experiment with our own style of spelling 
 we shall find powers varying with changes of position, and 
 the absence of any rule by which to trace these varying powers. 
 We find that becomes changed; that over becomes cover, 
 
 hovery or mover ; that anger may be hanger or danger ; that allow 
 
 
2 
 
 becomes tallow; that inger is pronounced one way in singer, 
 another way inanother in gingery that eas in fleas and 
 pleas is pronounced one way, and in ideas quite differently; and 
 that 00 has different sounds in good, floods and blood. 
 
 All this is laughable when the difficulties hav been sur¬ 
 mounted, but it is not matter for laughter but often of tears, be¬ 
 tween the teachers and the taught in National and Board schools. 
 The natural good sense of a child tells him that eye ess should 
 spell ice, and ay ess, ace,' 2 Lndi you ess, use (noun) and bee eye tee 
 bite, and he has to learn, contrary to sound reason, that the letters 
 which he has called by their names make the words is, as, us and 
 bit, but when he comes to biter he finds that the letters eye tee do 
 spell ite after all, but he never finds out, nor can his teachers tell 
 him, why he must write two fs where only one is sounded in 
 order to show when the i retains its old sound in it. This is the 
 bitter truth. 
 
 Until of late years it was generally alleged, as it is now by 
 some unenlightend people, that to simplify spmling by using the 
 same letters always to represent the same sound would be to 
 destroy the landmarks of language. Now, the leading filologists, 
 both here and in America, ar the most eager for the change, and 
 this both on scientific and filanthropic grounds. Until recently 
 the present President of the Filological Society in England was a 
 Vice-President of the English Spelling Reform Association. The 
 reason why he is no longer willing to hold the latter office, and 
 why, as we shall see later on, he does not join in approving the 
 “ partial corections” of the Society of which he is still president, 
 is that he thinks partial patching both troublesome and useless. 
 He thinks the present spelling is so bad that it is beyond patching, 
 and that it should be replaced. Three at least of the former pre¬ 
 sidents of the Filological Society ar Vice-Presidents of the 
 English Spelling Reform Association, viz.. Dr. Richard Morris, 
 whose English Grammar is a standard school work; Mr. Henry 
 Sweet, who was specially charged to prepare the list of ‘‘ partial 
 corections” we ar about to consider; and Dr. J. H. Murray, of 
 Mill Hill School, who is editing the forthcoming great Dictionary 
 of the English language. 
 
 It is the same in America, where such men as Professor 
 Whitney and March, ar active members of a Spelling Reform 
 Association. The Home Journal, an American newspaper which 
 circulates among the best families in the United States, has 
 adopted some partial changes of spelling, such as / for ph in 
 words like filosofy, fotograf, &c. Its issue for the 14th April, 1880, 
 (a copy of which I hav here) contains expressions of opinion 
 from more than a hundred of the chief professors and authors in 
 America in favor of simplified spelling for the English language. 
 I hav selected one or two of these expressions of opinion, and 
 will read them to you. 
 
 From Francis J. Child, Fh. D., Professor of Rhetoric and History 
 
3 
 
 at Harvard University, formerly President of the American Filo- 
 logical Association ; author of many works on early English 
 literature.—“ One of the most useful things just now is to break 
 down the respect which a great foolish public has for the estab¬ 
 lished spelling. Some have a religious awe, and some have an 
 earth-born passion for it. At present I don’t much care how 
 anybody spells, so he spell different from what is established. 
 Any- particular individual spelling is likely to be more rational 
 than the ordinary. The peculiar circulation of the Home Journal 
 makes whatever it does moro than commonly useful. Households 
 that can bear filosofy and will take fysic [better still Jizik'] give 
 grounds of hope for better things. 
 
 From Francis A. March, LL.D., Professor of English Lan¬ 
 guage and Comparative Filology at Lafayette College ; author of 
 a treatise on the “ Filosofy of Sir William Hamilton,” “ Anglo- 
 Saxon Grammar,” Filological Study of the English Language,” 
 etc.; editor of “Latin Hymns,” “Eusebius,” etc.:— 
 
 “ The changes in spelling, the omission of silent letters and 
 the substitution of / for ph, are wisely made. 
 
 i^is the proper equivalent in the Roman alfabet of the Greek^. 
 
 The use of the ph came into Latin in the Post-Augustan period 
 through an affectation of greeklings, at Rome, imitating the 
 Athenian pronunciation. 
 
 The fashion passed away, and the MSS. of the later Emperors 
 use /, as do the Italian and Spanish people, the direct inheritors 
 of Latin.”— Easton, Fa., Feb., 1880. 
 
 An editorial paragraph in the Home Journal says :— 
 
 “ The opinions of the eminent educators, authors and scholars, 
 given on the first page of the Home Journal, are commended to 
 the attention of the public, and especially to the consideration of 
 newspapers which are hesitating to adopt a briefer spelling. 
 These men are of the very class that determine good usage and 
 make the standard of language. A change which they approve 
 is virtually beyond doubt of general approval in the end. A 
 newspaper which goes with them can hardly be said to go alone 
 or to lack good company.” 
 
 I will now turn to the pamflet of the Filological Society. 
 The circumstances which gave birth to it are thus set forth:— 
 
 History of Spelling Reform within the Filological Society .— 
 Spelling Reform was at first a purely filanthropic moovment, 
 opozed by nearly all filologists, both within the Society and outside 
 of it, on etymological grounds. But a change of opinion 
 gradually came about, so that in 1889 the Society apointed a 
 comittee to report on the possibl improovment of English spelling 
 (Trans. 1870, p. 19 foil.), and authorized Messrs. Ellis & Fry to 
 print specimens of their proposed reforms in the Transactions 
 (1870, Part I.) The question was further discust at two meet- 
 
4 
 
 ings in November, 1870. Neither the comittee nor the meeting 
 was able to cum to an agreement. The general opinion was 
 that it would be better to wait till a complete scheme of reform 
 had been agreed on by foneticians than to attempt to introduce a 
 partial one. 
 
 After the successful introduction of partial reforms in America, 
 many apeals wer made to the Society to take sum practical steps 
 to forward the moovment. So the then Prezident, Dr Murray 
 (editor of the Society’s great English dictionary), took up the 
 subject in his retiring adress on the 21st May, 1880, and laid 
 down the general principles on which an imediate partial reform 
 miht be based, and gave exampls of the changes he would sugest. 
 Theze propozals wer favorably receevd, and a motion was 
 past unanimously, asking Mr. Sweet to draw up notes to 
 serve as a basis for discussion. Mr. Sweet acordingly drew up a 
 statement of the general principls indicated by Dr Murray, and 
 the changes sugested by them, which wer discust at two meet¬ 
 ings on July 9th and 16th, 1880, the votes being taken only 
 as a provizional expression of opinion. Mr. Sweet then drew 
 up sura further notes, which wer discust at three meetings, 
 on November 5th, 19th, and 26th, the rezults of the meetings 
 in July being at the same time revized and confirmd. Mr. 
 Sweet was than authorized to prepare a statement of theze re¬ 
 zults, which was finaly adopted at the special general meeting 
 on January 28th (Mr. Sweet’s notes form Apendix IV. to the 
 Trans, for 1880-1). 
 
 Samples of the proposed partial changes wer then given on 
 the Black Board. 
 
 He is abuv abuse. 
 
 He aproovd of the catalog and the apolog. 
 
 The aturney feind (feigned) to be fild with aw. 
 
 To argu against this beleef is useless. 
 
 Our cuzin broht in the breef with the bred at brekfast. 
 
 The hole quire was there. 
 
 The anker is weighd. 
 
 The ded man required no beer. 
 
 The company in the amfitheater wer delited with the cuplet. 
 
 He and his cumpanions had the curage to visit the cuntry in 
 spite of the colera. 
 
 As I should not like to be open to the accusation of not fairly 
 stating conclusions from which I most reluctantly disagree, 
 I hav copied out at length some remarks which Mr Alexander 
 J. Ellis, the President of the Eilological Society, has reprinted 
 from his last presidential address, setting forth the grounds of 
 his deeply-rooted objections to the proposed ‘ partial corections.’ 
 
 (From Mr Ellis’s Pamflet on English Spelling Reform,” re¬ 
 printed from his Annual Address to the Eilological Society, May, 
 1881, p. 3). “ It is, I consider, altogether a mistake to treat the 
 
 improvement of our orthography as simply a scientific or philologic 
 
5 
 
 problem. Any alteration whatever of our present thought- 
 -symbols defaces them, and destroys their identity. We have 
 passed through a quagmire of change. During the last hundred 
 years we have acquired a certain solidity of ground to walk on. 
 Let us keep it. I have not the slightest veneration for our spell¬ 
 ing. I do not think it sacred in the least degree. But I recog¬ 
 nise in it a practical uniformity wherever the English language 
 is now written and printed, and the quantity of matter that is at 
 present printed monthly in English-speaking countries far exceeds 
 what was printed yearly a century ago. People can, and do 
 acquire, the use of our spelling during childhood, with pain and 
 grief no doubt, and with great waste of time, and the recollection 
 of this very pain and grief and waste of time makes them 
 shudder at the idea of a new spelling-book such as has lately 
 been issued in Germany, and such as logically follows from our 
 “ partial corrections,” nay, which is absolutely contained in the 
 pamphlet we have issued, that I should dread committing to 
 memory. By these changes we also do harm to science by injuring 
 the fixedness of our point of reference. And, at the same time, 
 we do not advance the solution of the social problem per¬ 
 ceptibly. Our spelling is fixed to this extent, that School 
 Inspectors and Civil Service Examiners are able to ^ pluck» 
 for ‘ bad spelling.’ They would certainly not allow aw^ ey 
 owy qeu, for aye^ awe, eye, owe, queue in the midst of other un¬ 
 changed words. Slight as the change is, the words are unrecognis¬ 
 able, because the sound of an English written word cannot be 
 analysed into the sounds of its parts, but is essentially that be¬ 
 longing to the whole symbol as such. There is no harm in such 
 spellings as part of a complete system. The harm is in their 
 fortuitous, unsystematic use, which could not even be appre¬ 
 ciated by those unacquainted with our present spelling, and 
 even such persons would be very loth to make them part 
 of their daily habit of writing. Indeed, I cannot conceive 
 who would be benefited by such changes. But I quite 
 well know who would be injured—myself among the num¬ 
 ber. The old familiar look of words seems to be gra¬ 
 tuitously changed. I find no compensation for it whatever. 
 And I find real injuries to the history of words by a mixture of 
 the phonetic contrivances of different centuries, which, I learn by 
 referring to the minute book of the Society, I illustrated in our 
 discussion of Nov., 1870, by supposing a man to walk about with 
 a wig of James II., covered by Chaucer’s cowl, and topped by a 
 modern chimney pot. A century hence such changes would 
 seem contrived to make the phonetic usages of the past look 
 like those of the present. Besult, confusion worse confounded. 
 
 Idem, (p. 10).—It [partially corrected spelling] could not 
 act on school teaching except by descending from the literary 
 classes, and then it would leave the social misfortune almost as 
 great as ever. I mean that if, after some centuries, our nomic 
 
6 
 
 were replaced by this partially corrected spelling, and children had 
 to he taught to read and write it, without any regard to another 
 spelling beyond, the difference in the time and difficulty between 
 learning then and learning now would be practically inappreciable. 
 A great strain would have been laid on the world of letters, the 
 habits of spellers would have been harassed and unsettled for 
 years, and no social advantage whatever would accrue. No! the 
 battle of spelling reform must not be fought in literature, it 
 must be fought in education. We must begin with the school- 
 child, who is ignorant of literature. We must lighten his task 
 by an instrument he can use afterwards, and the gradual use of 
 this instrument afterwards will, in somewhat more or less than 
 three generations after its general school use, lead to its super¬ 
 seding nomic. It is to the construction of such an instrument 
 that I invite your attention, by describing the conditions by 
 which it will have to be determined.” 
 
 Idem. (p. 18).—You will also, I think, sufficiently see why 
 such partial corrections as have been proposed are, to my mind, 
 entirely beside the point at issue—the education of the people 
 —and can have no good social effect whatever. No one can 
 look through the pamphlet that has been issued by our 
 Society without feeling that the matter has there been viewed 
 in an almost purely literary manner, with only an occasional 
 excursus into the social field. Such proposals are very interest¬ 
 ing to those who make them. For myself, I do not see of what 
 public advantage they can be. To my mind, the one practical 
 result of the labors of our Society, on the ‘ Partial corrections 
 of English Spelling,’ and of the two very able men who have 
 been entrusted with preparing the work, is unhappily to prove 
 that such partial corrections are impossible; that our spelling to 
 be of use must remain exactly what it is, without any change 
 whatever; that it is past literary tinkering, and that our only 
 hope is in such a subsidiary orthography as that which I have just 
 attempted to describe.” 
 
 I should be glad now to be permitted to turn to some remarks 
 made by Dr Murray in his address as President of the Filo- 
 logical Society, on the 21st May, 1880, a year before the address 
 by Mr Ellis from which the extracts I hav just red wer taken. 
 
 Dr Murray says (Address p. 31),—“My own opinion is that at 
 present and for a long time to come, until indeed the general 
 principles of phonology are understood by men of education, no 
 complete or systematic scheme of Spelling Reform has the least 
 chance of being adopted in this country, and I do not think that 
 the promulgation or advocacy of such bears any practical fruit. 
 I wish it were otherwise, but we must look at facts and existing 
 conditions, and at the lessons of experience. And the latter seem 
 to me to afford abundant proof that partial and progressive reforms 
 in accordance with well-established existing analogies can be in- 
 
7 
 
 troduced and carried through. The whole history of written 
 language is the record of such gradual and partial reformation.” 
 
 (Page 35).—‘‘ A more extended use of z in the body of wordsj 
 as chozen, like frozen : praize^ raize, like blaze, glaze, without at 
 present touching on the inflexional s, leave, ways, grows, which 
 does not present a serious practical difficulty; and the correction 
 of some of the worst individual monstrosities, as foreign, sovereign, 
 scent, island, scythe, rhyme, scissors, ache, debt, doubt, peo'ple, par-^ 
 liament, court, would, sceptic (foren, sovren, sent, iland, sythe^ 
 rime, cisors or sisors [etymol. cisos, French ciseauaP\ ake, det, dout, 
 peple, parlament, cort, woud, skeptic skeleton']) and we should 
 have a fair beginning which science could support, and only pre¬ 
 judice—yet, alas! how great that only —could oppose.” 
 
 Mr James Spedding, the well known editor of Bacon, who at 
 the time of his lamented accidental death, was one of the Vice- 
 Presidents of the English Spelling Reform Association, once 
 wrote to me as follows :—“ The rejection of superfluous letters, 
 which has always been going on more or less, and has succeeded 
 in simplifying the spelling of a great many words, would no doubt 
 be a considerable convenience : but it leaves the main evil un¬ 
 remedied, and very little diminished. It fails to make the spelling 
 a direction for the pronunciation, or the pronunciation a direction 
 for the spelling. As long as the reform falls short of this, I for 
 one do not care to disturb old customs. I like the irregularities 
 in themselves, just as I like old gables and old-fashioned furniture. 
 Though not convenient or comfortable, they are picturesue, and 
 full of interesting associations. The loss of the ‘ old familiar 
 faces ’ would be to me a real loss: and I would not exchange 
 them for anything less than a system of notation which tells me 
 in all cases how each word is to be spoken. 
 
 “ I agree that the new must be grafted on the old—that a gen¬ 
 eral custom cannot be changed but by degrees. But the gradua¬ 
 tion of the change which I look for is of a difi'erent kind. I am 
 for introducing a true and perfect phonetic notation into elemen¬ 
 tary schools simply as the shortest way of teaching children to 
 read ; and into the course of every scholar’s education, simply as 
 the most convenient mode of communication upon matters involv¬ 
 ing the pronunciation of words. I would have the Ilniversities 
 require of every pupil, as a condition of his degree, that he shall 
 be able to describe in writing the pronunciation of a word no less 
 than the way in which it is commonly printed. Having thus 
 educated a rising generation to understand and use a phonetic 
 alphabet, I would leave the rest to chance and the force of utility. 
 As soon as the majority found such a system the more convenient, 
 they would prefer it, and it would come into fashion.” 
 
 When men of such eminence and approved ability as the present 
 and two past presidents of the Filological Society difier so widely 
 on a question of practical procedure, it is pretty safe to conclude 
 that both sides must be in the right, and that all that is necessary 
 
8 
 
 is just to shift, and if possible, interchange, the points of view. 
 Only one thing, if I might humbly offer my own opinion, is 
 necessary to render Mr Ellis’s position impregnable. This is 
 the assumption that only one of the two courses can be tried at 
 the same time. As far, however, as I am able to judge, both can 
 be tried at once, and one would help the other. Some people 
 might attempt to break down the idea of sacredness which attaches 
 to the present rigidity of spelling; others would try to undermine 
 it, by introducing into schools a concurrent system of spelling 
 which should, in the course of generations, put the present out of 
 use. Until prolonged experience shall hav proved the contrary, 
 there will always be a fear lest putting fonetic spelling before 
 the eyes of children will tend to unsettle their future ability to 
 spell in the orthodox fashion. And while literary people, and 
 the printers of papers and books, rigidly follow this orthodox 
 spelling, who will say that the rising generation may disregard it P 
 If we wish that a sensible custom should supersede a senseless 
 and inconvenient one, we cannot too soon indicate our want of 
 respect for the latter. To say that it is not sacred, and yet that 
 it should he treated as if it were ; that it ought to be abolished, 
 and at the same time that its uniformity is an advantage and 
 should be respected; is only to confuse us. Granted that to 
 undermine and prepare for a future prodigious landslip is 
 better than merely to scarify and render unsightly {to our eyes 
 alone, be it understood,) the picturesque surface of the field, it 
 yet seems to me that to encourage the surface mutilators is the 
 best way to make everybody aware that the long neglected good 
 work is now being taken in hand, and to win willing recruits for 
 the sturdy and dogged band at work in the mines below. With¬ 
 out the surface changes which appear as mutilations only to eyes 
 already prejudiced, no one will know that the good work has been 
 undertaken at all, and at present few know that it can, or even 
 ought to be taken in hand. 
 
 At the same time I think that the Filological Society’s proposals 
 should by no means be accepted as a whole. The result would 
 be too great a disfiguration to be accepted without the compensating 
 advantage of consistency. If, however, we cannot get those who 
 wish our present mode of spelling to be discontinued, to look 
 with a friendly eye upon those who are willing to go only as far 
 as spellingwith two/’^ and the omission of numerous 
 silent c’s, there is small hope of speedy success. I would rather 
 say, “ If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them,” 
 
 Frice \d., 4(f. per dozen. 
 
 Fred. Pitman, 20 Paternoster row, London, E,C, 
 Isaac Pitman, Phonetic Institute, Bath.