Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper/Volume 18/Number 450/The Spelling of the English Language

THE SPELLING OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

Various attempts have been made from time to time to reduce the horribly confused arthography of our language to some system and method. Ormin, author of a metrical paraphrase of the New Testament, who lived in the 13th century, wrote a work on a simple but most admirable phonetic system of his own, the principal feature of which is that the consonant after a short vowel is inevitably doubled. No writer was noted after Ormin until the middle of the 16th century, when several arose to draw attention to the great and growing evil of a corrupt orthography.

Sir John Checke, "who first taught Cambridge, and King Edward, Greek," and Sir Thomas Smith were the two first to attempt a reform; but the latter far outstripped the former in his work Derecta et emendata Linguæ Anglicæ Scriptione Dialogus, published at Paris, in 1668. In 1860 was published the "Alvearle, or Quadruple Dictionarie," of John Baret, which contains many very valuable observations upon the imperfections of our alphabet, &c; in one part Baret says: "Some sluggish had perchance (which would have all men sleepe with him quietlie in sloth and securitie, becaus he would not have his idloneese espied) will saie I am too curious about orthographie, and what need I beat my braine about so fruteles and trifling a metter; other come that wallowe in wealth and being in some fat office of writing have filled their barnes and bagges with old orthographie, say all is well enough, and that it is impossible to amend it, and but follie to go about to make it any better."

The names of John Hart, William Bullokar, Richard Mulcater, Richart Stanyburt, Peter Bales, Alexander Hume, Alexander Gil, alexander Top, Ben Jonson, Rev. Charles Butler, Richard Hodges, Owen PRice, Bishop Wilkins, William Holder, Francis Lodwick, John Byron, John Jones, Thomas Crampe, Dean Swift, James Elphinstone, Benjamin Franklin, Joshua Steele, Joseph Elison include all the subsequent reformers.

However, all other attempts at change sink into insignificance before the standard of revolt raised by John Pinkerton. Of him De Quincey says: "The monster Pinkerton proposed a revolution which would have left us nothing to spell." He proposed the letter "a" as a plural termination in place of "s," thus "pena" for "pens," "papera" for "papers;" the accented "é" for "y" final in all substantives; the "i" for "y" in all adjectives.