allow philologist; yet, since I received your
last Number, I have lighted on a passage in that volume of "omnifarious
information" Croker's _Boswell_, which will not be deemed inapplicable.

Boswell, during a sojourn at Lichfield in 1776, expressed a doubt as to the
correctness of Johnson's eulogy on his townsmen, as "speaking the purest
English," and instanced several provincial sounds, such as _there_
pronounced like _fear_, _once_ like _woonse_. On this passage are a
succession of notes: Burney observes, that "David Garrick always said
_shupreme, shuperior_." Malone's note brings the case in point to ours when
he says, "This is still the vulgar pronunciation in Ireland; the
pronunciation in Ireland is doubtless that which generally prevailed in
England in the time of Queen Elizabeth." And Mr. Croker sums up the case
thus:

"No doubt the English settlers carried over, and may have in some cases
preserved, the English idiom and accent of their day. Bishop Kearny, as
well as his friend Mr. Malone, thought that the most remarkable
peculiarity of Irish pronunciation, as in _say_ for _sea_, _tay_ for
_tea_, was _the English mode, even down to the reign of Queen Anne_;
and there are rhymes in Pope, and more frequently in Dryden, that
countenance that opinion. But rhymes cannot be depended upon for minute
identity of sound."--Croker's _Notes_, A.D. 1776.

If this explanation be adopted, it will account for the examples I have
been furnishing, and others which I find even among the harmonious rhymes
of Spenser (he might, however, have caught the brogue in Ireland); yet am I
free to own that to me popular pronunciation scarcely justifies the
committing to paper such loose rhymes as ought to grate on that fineness of
ear which is an essential faculty in the true poet; "here or awa'," in
England or Ireland, I continue to set them down to "slip-slop composition."

It may not be inappropriate to notice, that among Swift's eccentricities,
we find a propensity to "out-of-the-way rhymes." In his works are numerous
examples of couplets made apparently for no other purpose but to show that
no word could baffle him; and the anecdote of his long research for a rhyme
for the name of his old enemy Serjent _Betsworth_, and of the curious
accident by which he obtained it, is well known; from which we may conclude
that he was on the watch for occasions of exhibiting such rhymes as
_rakewell_ and _sequel_, _ch