for _virtuous_. Thomas Fuller called
_volume vollum_, I suspect, for he spells it _volumne_. However, _per
contra_, Yankees habitually say _colume_ for _column_. Indeed, to
prove that our ancestors brought their pronunciation with them from the
Old Country, and have not wantonly debased their mother tongue, I need
only to cite the words _scriptur_, _Israll_, _athists_, and
_cherfulness_ from Governor Bradford's 'History.' So the good man wrote
them, and so the good descendants of his fellow-exiles still pronounce
them. Brampton Gurdon writes _shet_ in a letter to Winthrop. _Purtend_
(_pretend_) has crept like a serpent into the 'Paradise Of Dainty
Devices;' _purvide_, which is not so bad, is in Chaucer. These, of
course, are universal vulgarisms, and not peculiar to the Yankee. Butler
has a Yankee phrase, and pronunciation too, in 'To which these
_carr'ings-on_ did tend.' Langham or Laneham, who wrote an account of
the festivities at Kenilworth in honor of Queen Bess, and who evidently
tried to spell phonetically, makes _sorrows_ into _sororz_. Herrick
writes _hollow_ for _halloo_, and perhaps pronounced it (_horresco
suggerens_!) _hollo_, as Yankees do. Why not, when it comes from _hola_?
I find _ffelaschyppe_ (fellowship) in the Coventry Plays. Spenser and
his queen neither of them scrupled to write _afore_, and the former
feels no inelegance even in _chaw_ and _idee_. _'Fore_ was common till
after Herrick. Dryden has _do's_ for _does_, and his wife spells _worse_
_wosce_. _Afeared_ was once universal. Warner has _ery_ for _ever a_;
nay, he also has illy, with which we were once ignorantly reproached by
persons more familiar with Murray's Grammar than with English
literature. And why not _illy_? Mr. Bartlett says it is 'a word used by
writers of an inferior class, who do not seem to perceive that _ill_ is
itself an adverb, without the termination _ly_,' and quotes Dr. Mosser,
President of Brown University, as asking triumphantly, 'Why don't you
say '_welly_?' I should like to have had Dr. Messer answer his own
question. It would be truer to say that it was used by people who still
remembered that _ill_ was an adjective, the shortened form of _evil_,
out of which Shakespeare and the translators of the Bible ventured to
make _evilly_. This slurred _evil_ is 'the dram of _eale_' in 'Hamlet.'
I find, _illy_ in Warner. The objection to _illy_ is not an etymological
one, but simply that it is contrary to good usage,--a very s