He who pretends to teach the proper fashion of speaking and writing,
cannot deal honestly, if ever he silently prefer a suggested improvement,
to any established and undisturbed usage of the language; for, in grammar,
no individual authority can be a counterpoise to general custom. The best
usage can never be that which is little known, nor can it be well
ascertained and taught by him who knows little. Inquisitive minds are ever
curious to learn the nature, origin, and causes of things; and that
instruction is the most useful, which is best calculated to gratify this
rational curiosity. This is my apology for dwelling so long upon the
present topic.

OBS. 7.--The names originally given to the letters were not mere notations
of sound, intended solely to express or make known the powers of the
several characters then in use; nor ought even the modern names of our
present letters, though formed with special reference to their sounds, to
be considered such. Expressions of mere sound, such as the notations in a
pronouncing dictionary, having no reference to what is meant by the sound,
do not constitute words at all; because they are not those acknowledged
signs to which a meaning has been attached, and are consequently without
that significance which is an essential property of words. But, in every
language, there must be a series of sounds by which the alphabetical
characters are commonly known in speech; and which, as they are the
acknowledged names of these particular objects, must be entitled to a place
among _the words_ of the language. It is a great error to judge otherwise;
and a greater to make it a "trifling question" in grammar, whether a given
letter shall be called by one name or by an other. Who shall say that
_Daleth, Delta_, and _Dee_, are not three _real words_, each equally
important in the language to which it properly belongs? Such names have
always been in use wherever literature has been cultivated; and as the
forms and powers of the letters have been changed by the nations, and have
become different in different languages, there has necessarily followed a
change of the names. For, whatever inconvenience scholars may find in the
diversity which has thence arisen, to name these elements in a set of
foreign terms, inconsistent with the genius of the language to be learned,
would surely be attended with a tenfold greater. We derived our letters,
and their names too, from the Romans; but this is no good reaso