mes; nor can they be spoken of otherwise; yet, as the simple characters are better known and more easily exhibited than their written names, the former are often substituted for the latter, and are read as the words for which they are assumed. Hence the orthography of these words has hitherto been left too much to mere fancy or caprice. Our dictionaries, by a strange oversight or negligence, do not recognize them as words; and writers have in general spelled them with very little regard to either authority or analogy. What they are, or ought to be, has therefore been treated as a trifling question: and, what is still more surprising, several authors of spelling-books make no mention at all of them; while others, here at the very threshold of instruction, teach falsely--giving "he" for Aitch, "er" for Ar, "oo" or "uu" for Double-u, "ye" for Wy, and writing almost all the rest improperly. So that many persons who think themselves well educated, would be greatly puzzled to name on paper these simple elements of all learning. Nay, there can be found a hundred men who can readily write the alphabetic names which were in use two or three thousand years ago in Greece or Palestine, for one who can do the same thing with propriety, respecting those which we now employ so constantly in English:[88] and yet the words themselves are as familiar to every school-boy's lips as are the characters to his eye. This fact may help to convince us, that the grammar of our language has never yet been sufficiently taught. Among all the particulars which constitute this subject, there are none which better deserve to be everywhere known, by proper and determinate names, than these prime elements of all written language.
OBS. 4.--Should it happen to be asked a hundred lustrums hence, what were the names of the letters in "the Augustan age of English literature," or in the days of William the Fourth and Andrew Jackson, I fear the learned of that day will be as much at a loss for an answer, as would most of our college tutors now, were they asked, by what series of names the Roman youth were taught to spell. Might not Quintilian or Varro have obliged many, by recording these? As it is, we are indebted to Priscian, a grammarian of the sixth century, for almost all we know about them. But even the information which may be had, on this point, has been strangely overlooked by our common Latin grammarians.[89] What, but the greater care of earlier writers, has made the Greek names better known or more important than the Latin? In every nation that is not totally illiterate, custom must have established for the letters a certain set of names, which are the only true ones, and which are of course to be preferred to such as are local or unauthorized. In this, however, as in other things, use may sometimes vary, and possibly improve; but when its decisions are clear, no feeble reason should be allowed to disturb them. Every parent, therefore, who would have his children instructed to read and write the English language, should see that in the first place they learn to name the letters as they are commonly named in English. A Scotch gentleman of good education informs me, that the names of the letters, as he first learned them in a school in his own country, were these: "A, Ib, Ec, Id, E, Iff, Ig, Ich, I, Ij, Ik, Ill, Im, In, O, Ip, Kue, Ir, Iss, It, U, Iv, Double-u, Ix, Wy, Iz;" but that in the same school the English names are now used. It is to be hoped, that all teachers will in time abandon every such local usage, and name the letters as they ought to be named; and that the day will come, in which the regular English orthography of these terms, shall be steadily preferred, ignorance of it be thought a disgrace, and the makers of school-books feel no longer at liberty to alter names that are a thousand times better known than their own.
OBS. 5.--It is not in respect to their orthography alone, that these first words in literature demand inquiry and reflection: the pronunciation of some of them has often been taught erroneously, and, with respect to three or four of them, some writers have attempted to make an entire change from the customary forms which I have recorded. Whether the name of the first letter should be pronounced "Aye," as it is in England, "Ah," as it is in Ireland, or "Aw," as it is in Scotland, is a question which Walker has largely discussed, and clearly decided in favour of the first sound; and this decision accords with the universal practice of the schools in America. It is remarkable that this able critic, though he treated minutely of the letters, naming them all in the outset of his "Principles" subsequently neglected the names of them all, except the fir
