egligence of later writers has produced.
Every language has its anomalies, which, though inconvenient, and in
themselves once unnecessary, must be tolerated among the imperfections
of human things; and which require only to be registered, that they may
not be increased, and ascertained, that they may not be confounded: but
every language has likewise its improprieties and absurdities, which it
is the duty of the lexicographer to correct or proscribe.

As language was at its beginning merely oral, all words of necessary or
common use were spoken, before they were written; and while they were
unfixed by any visible signs, must have been spoken with great
diversity, as we now observe those, who cannot read, catch sounds
imperfectly, and utter them negligently. When this wild and barbarous
jargon was first reduced to an alphabet, every penman endeavoured to
express, as he could, the sounds which he was accustomed to pronounce or
to receive, and vitiated in writing such words as were already vitiated
in speech. The powers of the letters, when they were applied to a new
language, must have been vague and unsettled, and, therefore, different
hands would exhibit the same sound by different combinations.

From this uncertain pronunciation arise, in a great part, the various
dialects of the same country, which will always be observed to grow
fewer and less different, as books are multiplied; and from this
arbitrary representation of sounds by letters proceeds that diversity of
spelling, observable in the Saxon remains, and, I suppose, in the first
books of every nation, which perplexes or destroys analogy, and produces
anomalous formations, that being once incorporated, can never be
afterwards dismissed or reformed.

Of this kind are the derivatives _length_ from _long_, _strength_ from
_strong_, _darling_ from _dear_, _breadth_ from _broad_, from _dry_,
_drought_, and from _high_, _height_, which Milton, in zeal for analogy,
writes _highth_: "Quid te exempta juvat spinis de pluribus una?" to
change all would be too much, and to change one is nothing.

This uncertainty is most frequent in the vowels, which are so
capriciously pronounced, and so differently modified, by accident or
affectation, not only in every province, but in every mouth, that to
them, as is well known to etymologists, little regard is to be shown in
the deduction of one language from another.

Such defects are not errours in orthography, but spots of barba