Part 3

Far be it from me to appear as the defender of the "American spelling" which the British journalists denounce. This "American spelling" is less absurd than the British spelling only in so far as it has varied therefrom. Even in these variations there is abundant absurdity. Once upon a time most words that now are spelled with a final _c_ had an added _k_. Even now both British and American usage retains this _k_ in _hammock_, although both British and Americans have dropped the needless letter from _havoc_; while the British retain the _k_ at the end of _almanack_ and the Americans have dropped it. Dr. Johnson was a reactionary in orthography as in politics; and in his dictionary he wilfully put a final _k_ to words like _optick_, without being generally followed by the publick--as he would have spelled it. Music was then _musick_, although, even as late as Aubrey's time, it had been _musique_. In our own day we are witnessing the very gradual substitution of the logical _technic_ for the form originally imported from France--_technique_. As yet, so far as I have observed, no attempts have been made to modify the foreign spelling of _clique_ and _oblique_.

I am inclined to think that technic is replacing _technique_ more rapidly--or should I say less slowly?--in the United States than in Great Britain. We Americans like to assimilate our words and to make them our own, while the British have rather a fondness for foreign phrases. A London journalist recently held up to public obloquy as an "ignorant Americanism" the word _program_, although he would have found it set down in Professor Skeat's _Etymological Dictionary_. "_Programme_ was taken from the French," so a recent writer reminds us, "and in violation of analogy, seeing that, when it was imported into English, we had already _anagram_, _cryptogram_, _diogram_, _epigram_, etc." The logical form _program_ is not common even in America, and British writers seem to prefer the French form, as British speakers still give a French pronunciation to _charade_, which in America has long since been accepted frankly as an English word. So we find Mr. Andrew Lang, in his _Angling Sketches_, referring to the _asphalte_: surely in our language the word is either _asphaltum_ or _asphalt_.

Here, if the excursus may be permitted, I should like to note also that the American willingness to acknowledge the English language as good enough for the ordinary purposes of speech shows itself in our acceptance of certain words of foreign origin as now fully naturalized, and therefore so to be treated. The Americans are inclined to consider that _formula_, for example, and _criterion_ and _memorandum_ and _cherub_ and _bureau_ are now good English words, forming their plurals by the addition of an _s_. Our first cousins, once removed, across the Atlantic seem to be still in doubt; and therefore we find them making the plurals of these words in accordance with the rules of the various languages from which the several words were derived. So in British books we meet the Latin plurals, _formulae_ and _memoranda_; the Greek plural, _criteria_; the Hebrew plural, _cherubim_; and the French plural, _bureaux_. Oddly enough, the writers who use these foreign plurals are unwilling to admit that the word thus modified is a foreign word, for more often than not they print it without italics, although frankly foreign words are carefully italicized. Possibly it is idle to look for any logic in anything which has to do with modern English orthography on either side of the ocean.

Perhaps, however, there is less even than ordinary logic in the British journalist's objection to the so-called "American spelling" of _meter_; for why should any one insist on _metre_ while unhesitatingly accepting its compound _diameter_? Mr. John Bellows, in the preface to his inestimable French-English and English-French pocket dictionary, one of the very best books of reference ever published, informs us that "the Act of Parliament legalizing the use of the metric system in this country [England] gives the words meter, liter, gram, etc., spelled on the American plan." Perhaps now that the sanction of law has been given to this spelling, the final _er_ will drive out the _re_ which has usurped its place. In one of the last papers that he wrote, Lowell declared that "_center_ is no Americanism; it entered the language in that shape, and kept it at least as late as Defoe." "In the sixteenth and in the first half of the seventeenth century," says Professor Lounsbury, "while both ways of writing these words existed side by side, the termination _er_ is far more common than that in _re_. The first complete edition of Shakespeare's plays was published in 1623. In that work _sepulcher_ occurs thirteen times; it is spelled eleven times with _er_. _Scepter_ occurs thirty-seven times; it is not once spelled with _re_, but always with _er_. _Center_ occurs twelve times, and in nine instances out of the twelve it ends in _er_." So we see that this so-called "American spelling" is fully warranted by the history of the English language. It is amusing to note how often a wider and a deeper study of English will reveal that what is suddenly denounced in Great Britain as the very latest Americanism, whether this be a variation in speech or in spelling, is shown to be really a survival of a previous usage of our language, and authorized by a host of precedents.

Of course it is idle to kick against the pricks of progress, and no doubt in due season Great Britain and her colonial dependencies will be content again to spell words that end in _er_ as Shakespeare and Ben Jonson and Spenser spelled them. But when we get so far towards the orthographic millennium that we all spell _sepulcher_, the ghost of Thomas Campbell will groan within the grave at the havoc then wrought in the final line of "Hohenlinden," which will cease to end with even the outward semblance of a rhyme to the eye. We all know that

"On Linden, when the sun was low, All bloodless lay the untrodden snow, And dark as winter was the flow Of Iser, rolling rapidly,"

and those of us who have persevered may remember that with one exception every fourth line of Campbell's poem ends with a y--the words are _rapidly_, _scenery_, _revelry_, _artillery_, _canopy_, and _chivalry_--not rhymes of surpassing distinction, any of them, but perhaps passable to a reader who will humor the final syllable. The one exception is the final line of the poem--

"Shall be a soldier's _sepulchre_."

To no man's ear did _sepulchre_ ever rhyme justly with _chivalry_ and _canopy_ and _artillery_, although Campbell may have so contorted his vision that he evoked the dim spook of a rhyme in his mind's eye. A rhyme to the eye is a sorry thing at best, and it is sorriest when it depends on an inaccurate and evanescent orthography.

Dr. Johnson was as illogical in his keeping in and leaving out of the _u_ in words like _honor_ and _governor_ as he was in many other things; and the makers of later dictionaries have departed widely from his practice, those in Great Britain still halting half-way, while those in the United States have gone on to the bitter end. The illogic of the great lexicographer is shown in his omission of the _u_ from _exterior_ and _posterior_, and his retention of it in the kindred words _interiour_ and _anteriour_; this, indeed, seems like wilful perversity, and justifies flood's merry jest about "Dr. Johnson's Contradictionary." The half-way measures of later British lexicographers are shown in their omission of the _u_ from words which Dr. Johnson spelled _emperour_, _governour_, _oratour_, _horrour_, and _dolour_, while still retaining it in _favour_ and _honour_ and a few others.

The reason for his disgust generally given by the London man of letters who is annoyed by the "American spelling" of _honor_ and _favor_ is that these words are not derived directly from the Latin, but indirectly through the French; this is the plea put forward by the late Archbishop Trench. Even if this plea were pertinent, the application of this theory is not consistent in current British orthography, which prescribes the omission of the _u_ from _error_ and _emperor_, and its retention in _colour_ and _honour_--although all four words are alike derived from the Latin through the French. And this plea fails absolutely to account for the _u_ which the British insist on preserving in _harbour_ and in _neighbour_, words not derived from the Latin at all, whether directly or indirectly through the French. An American may well ask, "If the _u_ in _honour_ teaches etymology, what does the _u_ in _harbour_ teach?" There is no doubt that the _u_ in _harbour_ teaches a false etymology; and there is no doubt also that the _u_ in _honour_ has been made to teach a false etymology, for Trench's derivation of this final _our_ from the French _eur_ is absurd, as the old French was _our_, and sometimes _ur_, sometimes even _or_. Pseudo-philology of this sort is no new thing. Professor Max Mueller tells us that the Roman prigs used to spell _cena_ (to show their knowledge of Greek), _coena_, as if the word were somehow connected with [Greek: koine].

Thus we see that the _u_ in _honour_ suggests a false etymology; so does the _ue_ in _tongue_, and the _g_ in _sovereign_, and the _c_ in _scent_, and the _s_ in _island_, and the _mp_ in _comptroller_, and the _h_ in _rhyme_; and there are many more of our ordinary orthographies which are quite as misleading from a philological point of view. As Professor Hadley mildly put it, "our common spelling is often an untrustworthy guide to etymology." But why should we expect or desire spelling to be a guide to etymology? If it is to be a guide at all, we may fairly insist on its being trustworthy, and so we cannot help thinking scorn of those who insist on retaining a superfluous _u_ in _honour_.

But why should orthography be made subservient to etymology? What have the two things in common? They exist for wholly different ends, to be attained by wholly different means. To bend either from its own work to the aid of the other is to impair the utility of both. This truth is recognized by all etymologists, and by all students of language, although it has not yet found acceptance among men of letters, who are rarely students of language in the scientific sense. "It may be observed," Mr. Sweet declares, "that it is mainly among the class of half-taught dabblers in philology that etymological spelling has found its supporters;" and he goes on to say that "all true philologists and philological bodies have uniformly denounced it as a monstrous absurdity both from a practical and a scientific point of view." I should never dare to apply to the late Archbishop Trench and the London journalists who echo his errors so harsh a phrase as Mr. Sweet's "half-taught dabblers in philology;" but when a fellow-Englishman uses it perhaps I may venture to quote it without reproach.

As I have said before, the alleged "American spelling" differs but very slightly from that which prevails in England. A wandering New-Yorker who rambles through London is able to collect now and again evidences of orthographic survivals which give him a sudden sense of being in an older country than his own. I have seen a man whose home was near Gramercy Park stop short in the middle of a little street in Mayfair, and point with ecstatic delight to the strip of paper across the glass door of a bar proclaiming that CYDER was sold within. I have seen the same man thrill with pure joy before the shop of a _chymist_ in the window of which _corn-plaisters_ were offered for sale. And this same New-Yorker was carried back across the years when he noted the extra _g_ in the British _waggon_--an orthographic fifth wheel, if ever there was one; he smiled at the _k_ which lingers at the end of the British _almanack_; he wondered why a British house should have _storeys_ when an American house has _stories_; and he disliked intensely the wanton _e_ wherewith British printers have recently disfigured _form_ which in the latest London typographical vocabularies appears as _forme_. This _e_ in _form_ is a gratuitous addition, and therefore contrary to the trend of spelling reform, which aims at the suppression of all arbitrary and needless letters. Most of the American modifications of the Johnsonian orthography have been labor-saving devices, like the dropping of _u_ in _color_ and of one _l_ in _traveler_, in an effort at simplification, and in accord with the irresistible tendency of mankind to cut across lots.

The so-called "American spelling" differs from the spelling which obtains in England only in so far as it has yielded a little more readily to the forces which make for progress, for uniformity, for logic, for common-sense. But just how fortuitous and chaotic the condition of English spelling is nowadays both in Great Britain and in the United States no man knows who has not taken the trouble to investigate for himself. In England, the reactionary orthography of Samuel Johnson is no longer accepted by all. In America, the revolutionary orthography of Noah Webster has been receded from even by his own inheritors. There is no standard, no authority, not even that of a powerful, resolute, and domineering personality.

Perhaps the attitude of philologists towards the present spelling of the English language, and their opinion of those who are up in arms in defence of it, have never been more tersely stated than in Professor Lounsbury's recent and most admirable _Studies in Chaucer_, a work which I should term eminently scholarly, if that phrase did not perhaps give a false impression of a book wherein the results of learning are set forth with the most adroit literary art, and with an uninsistent but omnipresent humor, which is a constant delight to the reader:

"There is certainly nothing more contemptible than our present spelling, unless it be the reasons usually given for clinging to it. The divorce which has unfortunately almost always existed between English letters and English scholarship makes nowhere a more pointed exhibition of itself than in the comments which men of real literary ability make upon proposals to change or modify the cast-iron framework in which our words are now clothed. On one side there is an absolute agreement of view on the part of those who are authorized by their knowledge of the subject to pronounce an opinion. These are well aware that the present orthography hides the history of the word instead of revealing it; that it is a stumbling-block in the way of derivation or of pronunciation instead of a guide to it; that it is not in any sense a growth or development, but a mechanical malformation, which owes its existence to the ignorance of early printers and the necessity of consulting the convenience of printing-offices. This consensus of scholars makes the slightest possible impression upon men of letters throughout the whole great Anglo-Saxon community. There is hardly one of them who is not calmly confident of the superiority of his opinion to that of the most famous special students who have spent years in examining the subject. There is hardly one of them who does not fancy he is manifesting a noble conservatism by holding fast to some spelling peculiarly absurd, and thereby maintaining a bulwark against the ruin of the tongue. There is hardly one of them who has any hesitation in discussing the question in its entirety, while every word he utters shows that he does not even understand its elementary principles. There would be something thoroughly comic in turning into a fierce international dispute the question of spelling _honor_ without the _u_, were it not for the depression which every student of the language cannot well help feeling in contemplating the hopeless abysmal ignorance of the history of the tongue which any educated man must first possess in order to become excited over the subject at all." (_Studies in Chaucer_, vol. iii., pp. 265-7.)

Pronunciation is slowly but steadily changing. Sometimes it is going further and further away from the orthography; for example, _either_ and _neither_ are getting more and more to have in their first syllable the long _i_ sound instead of the long _e_ sound which they had once. Sometimes it is being modified to agree with the orthography; for example, the older pronunciations of _again_ to rhyme with _men_, and of _been_ to rhyme with _pin_, in which I was carefully trained as a boy, seem to me to be giving way before a pronunciation in exact accord with the spelling, _again_ to rhyme with _pain_, and _been_ to rhyme with _seen_. These two illustrations are from the necessarily circumscribed experience of a single observer, and the observation of others may not bear me out in my opinion; but though the illustrations fall to the ground, the main assertion, that pronunciation is changing, is indisputable.

No doubt the change is less rapid than it was before the invention of printing; far less rapid than it was before the days of the public-school and of the morning newspaper. There are variations of pronunciation in different parts of the United States and of Great Britain as there are variations of vocabulary; but in the future there will be a constantly increasing tendency for these variations to disappear. There are irresistible forces making for uniformity--forces which are crushing out Platt-Deutsch in Germany, Provencal in France, Romansch in Switzerland. There is a desire to see a standard set up to which all may strive to conform. In France a standard of pronunciation is found at the performances of the Comedie Francaise; and in Germany, what is almost a standard of vocabulary has been set in what is now known as _Buehne-Deutsch_.

In France the Academy was constituted chiefly to be a guardian of the language; and the Academy, properly conservative as it needs must be, is engaged in a slow reform of French orthography, yielding to the popular demand decorously and judiciously. By official action, also, the orthography of German has been simplified and made more logical and brought into closer relation with modern pronunciation. Even more thorough reforms have been carried through in Italy, in Spain, and in Holland. Yet neither French nor German, not Italian, Spanish, or Dutch, stood half as much in need of the broom of reform as English, for in no one of these languages were there so many dark corners which needed cleaning out; in no one of them the difference between orthography and pronunciation as wide; and in no one of them was the accepted spelling debased by numberless false etymologies. Sometimes it seems as though our orthography is altogether vile; that it is most intolerable and not to be endured; that it calls not for the broom of reform, but rather for the besom of destruction.

For any elaborate and far-reaching scheme of spelling reform, seemingly, the time has not yet come, although, for all we know, we may be approaching it all unwittingly, as few of us in 1860 foresaw the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. In the mean while, what is needed on both sides of the Atlantic, in the United States as well as in Great Britain, is a conviction that the existing orthography of English is not sacred, and that to tamper with it is not high-treason. What is needed is the consciousness that neither Samuel Johnson nor Noah Webster compiled his dictionary under direct inspiration. What is needed is an awakening to the fact that our spelling, so far from being immaculate at its best, is, at its best, hardly less absurd than the hap-hazard, rule-of-thumb, funnily phonetic spelling of Artemus Ward and of Josh Billings. What is needed is anything which will break up the lethargy of satisfaction with the accepted orthography, and help to open the eyes of readers and writers to the stupidity of the present system and tend to make them discontented with it.

So the few and slight divergences between the orthography obtaining in Great Britain and the orthography obtaining in the United States are not to be deplored. The _cyder_ on the door of the London bar-room and the _catalog_ in the pages of the New York _Library Journal_ both subserve the useful purpose of making people alive to the possibilities of an amended orthography. Thus the so-called "American spelling" helps along a good cause--and so, also, do the British assaults upon it.

1892

THE LITERARY INDEPENDENCE OF THE UNITED STATES

On the evening of the Tuesday following the first Monday next November, after the citizens of the several States shall have cast their ballots for the candidates of their choice, the boys of New York, in accord with their immemorial custom on election night, will illuminate the streets of the city with countless bonfires, not knowing, any of them, that they are thus commemorating Guy Faux and the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot. And yet such is the fact, as Doctor Eggleston has ascertained beyond all question. What British boys are pleased to remember on the 5th of November, American boys have forgotten, although they keep alive the memorial fires on the evening of the Tuesday following the first Monday in November, be that the 5th or not, as the almanac may declare. In like manner the "dressing up as a Guy" still survives also in New York, in the parades of the "fantasticals" on Thanksgiving Day--the last Thursday in November. So hard is it for old customs to die out. Perhaps the British 5th of November was in its turn a survival of some pagan rite ignorantly lingering as late as the Gunpowder Plot, and thereafter identified with the fate of Guy Faux.

We cannot help being the descendants of our ancestors; and no tariff, however high and however complicated by _ad valorem_ duties, can keep out of these United States the traditions, the beliefs, the habits, the feelings of the immigrants whose children we are. That those who have left a great country, England or France or Germany, should look back to that country as the centre of light, is natural--perhaps it is inevitable. But that their children should continue to do so, natural enough for a while, is not inevitable. Even though the colonist succeeds in breaking the political tie which binds him to the country whence his fathers came, there is no real independence unless he lays aside also the habit of intellectual deference; and that is as arduous, as difficult, and as long a task as any one ever undertook. None the less is it absolutely necessary if a people is to speak with its own voice and not with borrowed tongues--if its independence is to be complete and final.

In Mr. Henry Cabot Lodge's interesting and stimulant volume called _Studies in History_ there is no essay more interesting or more stimulating than that on "Colonialism in the United States." In two-score pages Mr. Lodge distinguishes colonialism from provincialism, with which it is sometimes confounded, and then shows how the thirteen United States, having once been colonies, still breathed the colonial spirit long after their political independence was fully established. He recalls the fact that one half of the people disliked Washington's proclamation of neutrality as between France and Great Britain, because it seemed "hostile to France," while the other approved of it for the same reason. We Americans at the beginning of this century were still engaged in fighting over again all the battles of Europe. But Washington was an American, not a European, and so was Hamilton; and they kept us true to the line of our national development.