A History of English Language

A history of the english language 198
be made in deference to “prerogative,” that is, the right of language to continue a
common custom, as in employing an analogous spelling for where, here, there. In such a
case he becomes frankly the apologist, justifying the common practice. He is really more
interested in having everyone adopt the same spelling for a given word than he is in
phonetic consistency. It is not so much a question of whether one should write where as
that one should adopt a single spelling and use it regularly instead of writing where,
wher, whear, wheare, were, whair, etc. To this end he prints in the latter part of his book
a General Table giving the recommended spelling for some 7,000 of the most common
words. Mulcaster’s spelling is not always the one that ultimately came to be adopted. In
spite of his effort for the most part to follow current usage, he seems sometimes to have
gone counter to the tendency of his own and later times. He advocates spelling guise,
guide, guest, and the like without the u and writes băble, dăble, indicating the length of
the vowel by a short mark over it. But his book had the great merit—or demerit—of
standardizing a large number of current spellings, justifying them, and advocating the
consistent use of them.
It is impossible to say how influential Mulcaster’s work was. The effect of his precepts
seems to be evident in certain later writers. Ben Jonson quotes from him, often without
acknowledgment. That English spelling developed along the lines laid down by him is
certain, but this may have been due largely to the fact that it was already developing
along these lines and would have done so even without the help of his book.
During the first half of the next century the tendency toward uniformity increased
steadily. The fixation of English spelling is associated in most people’s minds with the
name of Dr. Johnson, and a statement in the preface of his dictionary, published in 1755,
might lend color to this idea. In reality, however, our spelling in its modern form had
been practically established by about 1650. In The New World of English Words
published in 1658 by Milton’s nephew Edward Phillips, the compiler says: “As for
orthography, it will not be requisite to say any more of it then may conduce to the readers
direction in the finding out of words,” and he adds two or three remarks about Latin praebeing
rendered in English by pre-, and the like. Otherwise he seemed to think that the
subject did not call for any discussion. And in reality it did not. The only changes we
should make in the sentence just quoted are in the spelling then (for than) and the
addition of an apostrophe in readers. A closer scrutiny of the preface as a whole 7 would
reveal a few other differences such as an occasional e where we have dropped it (kinde),
ll and sse at the end of words (gratefull, harshnesse), -ick for -ic (logick), and a
contracted form of the past participle (authoriz’d, chanc’t). Even these differences are not
very noticeable. Spelling was one of the problems that the English language began
consciously to face in the sixteenth century. During the period from 1500 to 1650 it was
fairly settled. 8
157. The Problem of Enrichment.
In 1531 Sir Thomas Elyot, statesman as well as scholar, published what has been
described as the first book on education printed in English. He called it The Governour
because it had to do with the training of those who in the future would be occupied at
court. The dedication to Henry the Eighth is couched in the following terms: