that Voltaire saw the best society in England, and
Voltaire tells his countrymen that _handkerchief_ was pronounced
_hankercher_. I find it so spelt in Hakluyt and elsewhere. This enormity
the Yankee still persists in, and as there is always a reason for such
deviations from the sound as represented by the spelling, may we not
suspect two sources of derivation, and find an ancestor for _kercher_
in _couverture_ rather than in _couvrechef_? And what greater phonetic
vagary (which Dryden, by the way, called _fegary_) in our _lingua
rustica_ than this _ker_ for _couvre_? I copy from the fly-leaves of my
books, where I have noted them from time to time, a few examples of
pronunciation and phrase which will show that the Yankee often has
antiquity and very respectable literary authority on his side. My list
might be largely increased by referring to glossaries, but to them eyery
one can go for himself, and I have gathered enough for my purpose.

I will take first those cases in which something like the French sound
has been preserved in certain single letters and diphthongs. And this
opens a curious question as to how long this Gallicism maintained itself
in England. Sometimes a divergence in pronunciation has given as two
words with different meanings, as in _genteel_ and _jaunty_, which I
find coming in toward the close of the seventeenth century, and wavering
between _genteel_ and _jantee_. It is usual in America to drop the _u_
in words ending in _our_--a very proper change recommended by Howell two
centuries ago, and carried out by him so far as his printers would
allow. This and the corresponding changes in _musique_, _musick_, and
the like, which he also advocated, show that in his time the French
accent indicated by the superfluous letters (for French had once nearly
as strong an accent as Italian) had gone out of use. There is plenty of
French accent down to the end of Elizabeth's reign. In Daniel we have
_riches'_ and _counsel'_, in Bishop Hall _comet'_, _chapelain_, in Donne
_pictures'_, _virtue'_, _presence'_, _mortal'_, _merit'_, _hainous'_,
_giant'_, with many more, and Marston's satires are full of them. The
two latter, however, are not to be relied on, as they may be suspected
of Chaucerizing. Herrick writes _baptime_. The tendency to throw the
accent backward began early. But the incongruities are perplexing, and
perhaps mark the period of transition. In Warner's 'Albion's England' we
have _creator'_ and _cre