; and I am
surely speaking within bounds when I say, that for every miscalled element
in discourse, ten succeeding words are lost to the greater part of an
audience."--_Ibid._, p. 350. These quotations plainly imply both the
practicability and the importance of teaching the pronunciation of our
language analytically by means of its present orthography, and agreeably to
the standard assumed by the grammarians. The first of them affirms that it
has been done, "with the best success," according to some ancient method of
dividing the letters and explaining their sounds. And yet, both before and
afterwards, we find this same author complaining of our alphabet and its
subdivisions, as if sense or philosophy must utterly repudiate both; and of
our orthography, as if a ploughman might teach us to spell better: and, at
the same time, he speaks of softening his censure through modesty. "The
deficiencies, redundancies, and confusion, of the system of alphabetic
characters in this language, prevent the adoption of its subdivisions in
this essay."--_Ib._, p. 52. Of the specific sounds given to the letters, he
says, "The first of these matters is under the rule of every body, and
therefore is very properly to be excluded from the discussions of that
philosophy which desires to be effectual in its instruction. How can we
hope to establish a system of elemental pronunciation in a language, when
great masters in criticism condemn at once every attempt, in so simple and
useful a labour as the correction of its orthography!"--P. 256. Again: "I
_deprecate noticing_ the faults of speakers, in the pronunciation of the
alphabetic elements. It is better for criticism to be modest on this point,
till it has the sense or independence to make our alphabet and its uses,
look more like the work of what is called--wise and transcendent humanity:
till the pardonable variety of pronunciation, and the _true spelling by
the vulgar_, have satirized into reformation that pen-craft which keeps up
the troubles of orthography for no other purpose, as one can divine, than
to boast of a very questionable merit as a criterion of education."--_Ib._,
p. 383.

OBS. 4.--How far these views are compatible, the reader will judge. And it
is hoped he will excuse the length of the extracts, from a consideration of
the fact, that a great master of the "pen-craft" here ridiculed, a noted
stickler for needless Kays and Ues, now commonly rejected, while he boasts
that his gr