e commonly to be sought. Thus
Hammond writes _fecibleness_ for _feasibleness_, because, I suppose, he
imagined it derived immediately from the Latin; and some words, such as
_dependant, dependent, dependance, dependence_, vary their final
syllable, as one or another language is present to the writer.

In this part of the work, where caprice has long wantoned without
control, and vanity sought praise by petty reformation, I have
endeavoured to proceed with a scholar's reverence for antiquity, and a
grammarian's regard to the genius of our tongue. I have attempted few
alterations, and among those few, perhaps, the greater part is from the
modern to the ancient practice; and, I hope, I may be allowed to
recommend to those, whose thoughts have been, perhaps, employed too
anxiously on verbal singularities, not to disturb, upon narrow views, or
for minute propriety, the orthography of their fathers. It has been
asserted, that for the law to be _known_, is of more importance than to
be _right_. "Change," says Hooker, "is not made without inconvenience,
even from worse to better." There is in constancy and stability a
general and lasting advantage, which will always overbalance the slow
improvements of gradual correction. Much less ought our written language
to comply with the corruptions of oral utterance, or copy that which
every variation of time or place makes different from itself, and
imitate those changes which will again be changed, while imitation is
employed in observing them.

This recommendation of steadiness and uniformity does not proceed from
an opinion, that particular combinations of letters have much influence
on human happiness; or that truth may not be successfully taught by
modes of spelling fanciful and erroneous: I am not yet so lost in
lexicography, as to forget that _words are the daughters of earth, and
that things are the sons of heaven_. Language is only the instrument of
science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the
instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be
permanent, like the things which they denote.

In settling the orthography, I have not wholly neglected the
pronunciation, which I have directed, by printing an accent upon the
acute or elevated syllable. It will sometimes be found, that the accent
is placed, by the author quoted, on a different syllable from that
marked in the alphabetical series; it is then to be understood, that
custom has var