nour, labour, favour, behaviour_,
and _endeavour_, shall have become as unfashionable as _authour, errour,
terrour_, and _emperour_, are now, let the proof-reader strike out the
useless letter not only from these words, but from all others which shall
bear an equally antiquated appearance.

OBS. 5.--I have suggested the above-mentioned imperfections in _Dr.
Johnson's_ orthography, merely to justify the liberty which I take of
spelling otherwise; and not with any view to give a preference to that of
_Dr. Webster_, who is now contending for the honour of having furnished a
more correct _standard_. For the latter author, though right in some things
in which the former was wrong, is, on the whole, still more erroneous and
inconsistent. In his various attempts at reformation in our orthography, he
has spelled many hundreds of words in such a variety of ways, that he knows
not at last which of them is right, and which are wrong. But in respect to
_definitions_, he has done good service to our literature; nor have his
critics been sufficiently just respecting what they call his "innovations."
See Cobb's Critical Review of the Orthography of Webster. To omit the _k_
from such words as _publick_, or the _u_ from such as _superiour_, is
certainly _no innovation_; it is but ignorance that censures the general
practice, under that name. The advocates for Johnson and opponents of
Webster, who are now so zealously stickling for the _k_ and the _u_ in
these cases, ought to know that they are contending for what was obsolete,
or obsolescent, when Dr. Johnson was a boy.

OBS. 6.--I have before observed that some of the grammarians who were
contemporary with Johnson, did not adopt his practice respecting the _k_ or
the _u_, in _publick, critick, errour, superiour_, &c. And indeed I am not
sure there were any who did. Dr. Johnson was born in 1709, and he died in
1784. But Brightland's Grammar, which was written during the reign of Queen
Anne, who died in 1714, in treating of the letter C, says, "If in any Word
the harder Sound precedes (_e_), (_i_), or (_y_), (_k_) is either added or
put in its Place; as, _Skill, Skin, Publick_: And tho' the additional (_k_)
in the foregoing Word be an _old Way_ of Spelling, yet it is now very
justly left off, as being a superfluous Letter; for (_c_) at the End is
always hard."--Seventh Edition, Lond., 1746, p. 37.

OBS. 7.--The three
grammars of Ash, Priestley, and Lowth, all appeared, in their first
e