language
takes a long time to crystallize down into accepted forms, correct and
incorrect. You may see Dutchess with a t at Blenheim, well within the
eighteenth century, and forgo has only recently decided to give up its
e. In the days of manuscripts men spelt pretty much as they pleased,
making very free even with their own names; and uncritical copyists,
caring only to reproduce the word, and not troubling about the exact
orthography of their original, did nothing to check the ever-growing
variety. Such licence was agreeable for the imaginative, but it made
despairing work for the compilers of dictionaries. Some of their
difficulties may be given as examples. In the early days of minuscule
writing, when writing-material was still scarce, to save space it was
common to write the letter e with a reversed cedilla beneath it to
denote the diphthongs -ae and -oe. In the Middle Ages the cedilla was
commonly dropped, leaving the e plain; and so mostly it remained until
the sixteenth century revived the diphthong, or at least the two
double letters.

At all periods down to 1600, some hands are found in which it is
impossible to distinguish between c and t; and hence in mediaeval
times, and even later, such forms as fatio, loto, pecieris, licterae
are not infrequently found for facio, loco, petieris, litterae. An
extreme example of the confusion which this variability must have
caused is in the case of the fourteenth-century annalist, Nicholas
Trivet, whose surname sometimes appears as Cerseth or Chereth.

The doubling of consonants, too, was often a matter of doubt, and the
Middle Ages, possibly again for reasons of space, used many words with
single consonants instead of two--difficilimus, Salustius, consumare,
comodum, opidum, fuise. The letter h was the source of infinite
trouble. Sometimes it was surprisingly omitted, as in actenus, irundo,
Oratius, ortus--in the latter cases perhaps under Italian influence;
sometimes it appears unexpectedly, as in Therentius, Theutonia,
Thurcae, Hysidorus, habundare, and even haspirafio; or in abhominor,
where it bolstered up the derivation from homo: or it might change its
place from one consonant to another, as in calchographus, cartha.
Papias found it a great trouble, and indeed was quite muddled with it,
placing hyppocrita, hippomanes among the h's, but hippopedes and
several others under the i's, though without depriving them of initial
h. In France, h between two short i's was c