Saxon sign for _th_, which, as many contractions
certainly did, may have survived in writing long after it was banished
from print, and which would be easily confounded with _d_. Can Mr.
White find an example of _dod_ for _doth_, where the word could not be
doubtful to the compositor? The inability of foreigners to pronounce the
_th_ was often made a source of fun on the stage. Puttenham speaks of
_dousand_ for _thousand_ as a vulgarism. Shakspeare himself makes Caius
say _dat_, and "by my _trot_"; and in Marston's "Dutch Courtezan," (Act
ii. Sc. 1,) we find Francischina, (a Dutch woman,) saying, "You have
brought mine love, mine honor, mine body, all to _noting_!"--to which
her interlocutrix answers, "To nothing!" It is plain that Marston did
not harden his _th_s into _t_s, nor suppose that his audience were in
the habit of doing so. How did Ben Jonson pronounce the word? He shall
answer for himself (_Vision of Delight_).--

"Some that are proper find signify o'thing,
And some another, and some that are _nothing_."

But perhaps he pronounced _thing, ting_? If _he_ did, Herrick as surely
did not, for he has

"Maides should say, or virgins sing,
Herrick keeps, as holds, _nothing_,"

where the accent divides the word into its original elements, and where
it is out of the question that he should lay the emphasis on a bit of
broken English. As to the _h_s which Mr. White adduces in such names as
_Anthony_ and such words as _authority_, they have no bearing on the
question, for those words are not English, and the _h_ in them is
perhaps only a trace of that tendency in _t_ to soften itself before
certain vowels and before _r_, as _d_ also does, with a slight sound of
_theta_, especially on the thick tongues of foreigners. Shakspeare makes
Fluellen say _athversary_; and the Latin _t_ was corrupted first to _d_
and then to _dth_ in Spanish. The _h_ here has not so much meaning as
the _h_ which has crept into _Bosporus_, for that is only the common
change of _p_ to _f_, corresponding to _v_ for _b_. So when Mr. White
reads _annotanize_ rather than _anatomize_, because the Folio has
_annothanize_, we might point him to Minsheu's "Spanish Dictionary,"
where, in the earlier editions, we find _anathomia_. In _lanthorn_,
another word adduced by Mr. White, the _h_ is a vulgarism of spelling
introduced to give meaning to a foreign word, the termination being
supposed to be derived from the material (horn) of which lanterns