Letters. Golding rhymes _wax_ with
_wexe_ and spells _challenge_ _chelenge_. Chaucer wrote _hendy_. Dryden
rhymes _can_ with _men_, as Mr. Biglow would. Alexander Gill, Milton's
teacher, in his 'Logonomia' cites _hez_ for _hath_ as peculiar to
Lincolnshire. I find _hayth_ in Collier's 'Bibliographical Account of
Early English Literature' under the date 1584, and Lord Cromwell so
wrote it. Sir Christopher Wren wrote _belcony_. Our _fect_ is only the
O.F. _faict_. _Thaim_ for _them_ was common in the sixteenth century. We
have an example of the same thing in the double form of the verb
_thrash_, _thresh_. While the New Englander cannot be brought to say
_instead_ for _instid_ (commonly _'stid_ where not the last word in a
sentence), he changes the _i_ into _e_ in _red_ for _rid_, _tell_ for
_till_, _hender_ for _hinder_, _rense_ for _rinse_. I find _red_ in the
old interlude of 'Thersytes,' _tell_ in a letter of Daborne to
Henslowe, and also, I shudder to mention it, in a letter of the great
Duchess of Marlborough, Atossa herself! It occurs twice in a single
verse of the Chester Plays,

'_Tell_ the day of dome, _tell_ the beames blow.'

From the word _blow_ (in another sense) is formed _blowth_, which I
heard again this summer after a long interval. Mr. Wright[24] explains it
as meaning 'a blossom.' With us a single blossom is a _blow_, while
_blowth_ means the blossoming in general. A farmer would say that there
was a good blowth on his fruit-trees. The word retreats farther inland
and away from the railways, year by year. Wither rhymes _hinder_ with
_slender_, and Shakespeare and Lovelace have _renched_ for _rinsed_. In
'Gammer Gurton' and 'Mirror for Magistrates' is _sence_ for _since_;
Marlborough's Duchess so writes it, and Donne rhymes _since_ with
_Amiens_ and _patience_, Bishop Hall and Otway with _pretence_, Chapman
with _citizens_, Dryden with _providence_. Indeed, why should not
_sithence_ take that form? Dryden's wife (an earl's daughter) has _tell_
for _till_, Margaret, mother of Henry VII., writes _seche_ for _such_,
and our _ef_ finds authority in the old form _yeffe_.

_E_ sometimes takes the place of _u_, as _jedge, tredge, bresh_. I find
_tredge_ in the interlude of 'Jack Jugler,' _bresh_ in a citation by
Collier from 'London Cries' of the middle of the seventeenth century,
and _resche_ for _rush_ (fifteenth century) in the very valuable 'Volume
of Vocabularies' edited by Mr. Wright. _Resce_ is one of