ature'_ side by side with the modern _creator_
and _creature_. _E'nvy_ and _e'nvying_ occur in Campion (1602), and yet
_envy'_ survived Milton. In some cases we have gone back again nearer to
the French, as in _rev'enue_ for _reven'ue_, I had been so used to
hearing _imbecile_ pronounced with the accent on the first syllable,
which is in accordance with the general tendency in such matters, that I
was surprised to find _imbec'ile_ in a verse of Wordsworth. The
dictionaries all give it so. I asked a highly cultivated Englishman, and
he declared for _imbeceel'_. In general it may be assumed that accent
will finally settle on the syllable dictated by greater ease and
therefore quickness of utterance. _Blas'-phemous_, for example, is more
rapidly pronounced than _blasphem'ous_, to which our Yankee clings,
following in this the usage of many of the older poets. _Amer'ican_ is
easier than _Ameri'can_, and therefore the false quantity has carried
the day, though the true one may be found in George Herbert, and even so
late as Cowley.

To come back to the matter in hand. Our 'uplandish man' retains the soft
or thin sound of the _u_ in some words, such as _rule_, _truth_
(sometimes also pronounced _tr[)u]th_, not _trooth_), while he says
_noo_ for _new_, and gives to _view_ and _few_ so indescribable a
mixture of the two sounds with a slight nasal tincture that it may be
called the Yankee shibboleth. Voltaire says that the English pronounce
_true_ as if it rhymed with _view_, and this is the sound our rustics
give to it. Spenser writes _deow_ (_dew_) which can only be pronounced
with the Yankee nasality. In _rule_ the least sound of _a_ precedes the
_u_. I find _reule_ in Pecock's 'Repressor.' He probably pronounced it
_rayoole_, as the old French word from which it is derived was very
likely to be sounded at first, with a reminiscence of its original
_regula_. Tindal has _reuler_, and the Coventry Plays have _preudent_.
In the 'Parlyament of Byrdes' I find _reule_. As for _noo_, may it not
claim some sanction in its derivation, whether from _nouveau_ or _neuf_,
the ancient sound of which may very well have been _noof_, as nearer
_novus_? _Beef_ would seem more like to have come from _buffe_ than from
_boeuf_, unless the two were mere varieties of spelling. The Saxon _few_
may have caught enough from its French cousin _peu_ to claim the benefit
of the same doubt as to sound; and our slang phrase _a few_ (as 'I
licked him a few')