Italian) had gone out of use. There is plenty of French accent down to the end of Elizabeth's reign. In Daniel we have riches' and counsel', in Bishop Hall comet', chapëlain, in Donne pictures', virtue', presence', mortal', merit', hainous', giant', with many more, and Marston's satires are full of them. The two latter, however, are not to be relied on, as they may be suspected of Chaucerizing. Herrick writes baptime. The tendency to throw the accent backward began early. But the incongruities are perplexing, and perhaps mark the period of transition. In Warner's "Albion's England we have creator', and creature' side by side with the modern creator and creature. Envy and envying occur in Campion (1602), and yet envy' survived Milton. In some cases we have gone back again nearer to the French, as in rev'enue for revenue. I had been so used to hearing imbecile pronounced with the accent on the first syllable, which is in accordance with the general tendency in such matters, that I was surprised to find imbec'ile in a verse of Wordsworth. The dictionaries all give it so. I asked a highly cultivated Englishman, and he declared for imbeceel'. In general it may be assumed that accent will finally settle on the syllable dictated by greater ease and therefore quickness of utterance. Blasphemous, for example, is more rapidly pronounced than blasphem'ous, to which our Yankee clings, following in this the usage of many of the older poets. American is easier than American, and therefore the false quantity has carried the day, though the true one may be found in George Herbert, and even so late as Cowley.

To come back to the matter in hand. Our "uplandish men" retain the soft or thin sound of the u in some words, such as rule, truth (sometimes also pronounced truth, not trooth), while he says noo for new, and gives to view and few so indescribable a mixture of the two sounds with a slight

nasal tincture that it may be called the Yankee shibboleth. In rule the least sound of a precedes the u. I find reule in Pecock's "Repressor." He probably pronounced it rayoolë, as the old French word from which it is derived was very likely to be sounded at first, with a reminiscence of its original regula. Tindal has rueler, and the Coventry Plays have preudent. As for noo, may it not claim some sanction in its derivation, whether from nouveau or neuf, the ancient sound of which may very well have been noof, as nearer novus? Beef would seem more like to have come from buffe than from bœuf, unless the two were mere varieties of spelling. The Saxon few may have caught enough from its French cousin peu to claim the benefit of the same doubt as to sound; and our slang phrase a few (as “I licked him a few") may well appeal to un peu for sense and authority. Nay, might not lick itself turn out to be the good old word lam in an English disguise, if the latter should claim descent as, perhaps, he fairly might, from the Latin lambere? The New England ferce for fierce, and perce for pierce (sometimes heard as fairce and pairce), are also Norman. antiquity I cite the rhyme of verse and pierce in Chapman and Donne, and in some commendatory verses by a Mr. Berkenhead before the poems of Francis Beaumont. Our pairlous for perilous is of the same kind, and is nearer Shakespeare's parlous than the modern pronunciation. One other Gallicism survives in our pronunciation. Perbaps I should rather call it a semi-Gallicism, for it is the result of a futile effort to reproduce a French sound with English lips. Thus for joint, employ,royal, we have jynt, emply, ryle, the last differing only from rile (roil) in a prolongation of the y sound. In Walter de Biblesworth I find solives Englished by gistes. This, it is true, may have been pronounced jeests, but the pronunciation jystes must have pre

For its

ceded the present spelling, which was no doubt adopted after the radical meaning was forgotten, as analogical with other words in oi. In the same way after Norman-French influence had softened the l out of would (we already find woud for veut in N. F. poems), should followed the example, and then an I was put into could, where it does not belong, to satisfy the logic of the eye, which has affected the pronunciation and even the spelling of English more than is commonly supposed. I meet with eyster for oyster as early as the fourteenth century. I find dystrye for destroy in the Coventry Plays, viage in Bishop Hall and Middleton the dramatist, bile in Donne and Chrononhotonthologos, line in Hall, ryall and chyse (for choice) in the Coventry Plays. In Chapman's "All Fools" is the misprint of employ for imply, fairly inferring an identity of sound in the last syllable. Indeed, this pronunciation was habitual till after Pope, and Rogers tells us that the elegant Gray said naise for noise, just as our rustics still do. Our cornish (which I find also in Herrick) remembers the French better than cornice does. While, clinging more closely to the Anglo-Saxon in dropping the g from the end of the present participle, the Yankee now and then pleases himself with an experiment in French nasality in words ending in n. It is not, so far as my experience goes, very common, though it may formerly have been more so. Capting, for instance, I never heard save in jest, the habitual form being kepp'n. But at any rate it is no invention of ours. In that delightful old volume, “ Ane Compendious Buke of Godly and Spiritual Songs," in which I know not whether the piety itself or the simplicity of its expression be more charming, I find burding, garding, and cousing, and in the State Trials uncerting used by a gentleman. The n for ng I confess preferring.

Of Yankee preterites I find risse and rize for rose in Mid

*

dleton and Dryden, clim in Spenser, chees (chose) in Sir John Mandevil, give (gave) in the Coventry plays, shet (shut) in Golding's Ovid, het in Chapman and in Weever's Epitaphs, thriv and smit in Drayton, quit in Ben Jonson and Henry More, and pled in the fastidious Landor. Rid for rode was anciently common. So likewise was see for saw, but I find it in no writer of authority, unless Chaucer's seie was so sounded. Shew is used by Hector Boece, Giles Fletcher, and Drummond of Hawthornden. Similar strong preterites, like snew, thew, and even mew, are not without example. I fine sew for sowed in Piers Ploughman. Indeed, the anomalies in English preterites are perplexing. We have probably transferred flew from flow (as the preterite of which I have heard it), to fly, because we had another preterite in fled. Of weak preterites the Yankee retains growed, blowed, for which he has good authority, and less often knowed. His sot is merely a broad sounding of sat, no more inelegant than the common got for gat, which he further degrades into gut. When he says darst, he uses a form as

old as Chaucer.

The Yankee has retained something of the long sound of the a in such words as axe, wax, pronouncing them exe, wex (shortened from aix, waix.) He also says hev and hed (have, had) for have and had. In most cases he follows an Anglo-Saxon usage. In aix for axle he certainly does. I find wex and aisches (ashes) in Pecock, and exe in the Paston Letters. Chaucer wrote hendy. Dryden rhymes can with men, as Mr. Biglow would. Alexander Gill, Milton's teacher, in his "Lagonomia," cites hez for hath as peculiar to Lincolnshire. I find hayth in Collier's "Bibliographical Account of Early English Literature," under the date 1584, and Lord Cromwell so wrote it. Sir Christo* Cited in Warton's Obs. Faery Q.

pher Wren wrote belcony. Thaim for them was common in the sixteenth century. We have an example of the same thing in the double form of the verb thrash, thresh. While the New-Englander cannot be brought to say instead for instid (commonly 'stid where not the last word in a sentence) he changes the i into e in red for rid, tell for till, hender for hinder, rense for rinse. I find red in the old interlude of "Thersytes," tell in a letter of Daborne to Henslowe, and also I shudder to mention it-in a letter of the great Duchess of Marlborough, Atossa herself! It occurs twice in a single verse of the Chester Plays, which I copy as containing another Yankeeism :

"Tell the day of dome, tell the heames blow."

From this word blow is formed blowth, which I heard again this summer after a long interval. Mr. Wright* explains it as meaning "a blossom." With us a single blossom is a blow, while blowth means the blossoming in general. A farmer would say that there was a good blowth on his fruit-trees. The word retreats farther inland and away from the railways, year by year. Wither rhymes hinder with slender, and Lovelace has renched for rinsed. In "Gammer Gurton" is sence for since; Marlborough's Duchess so writes it, and Donne rhymes since with Amiens and patience, Bishop Hall and Otway with pretence, Chapman with citizens, Dryden with providence. Indeed, why should not sithence take that form?

E sometimes takes the place of u, as jedge, tredge, bresh. I find tredge in the interlude of " Jack Jugler,” bresh in a citation by Collier from "London Cries" of the middle of the seventeenth century, and resche for rush (fifteenth century) in the very valuable "Volume of Vocabularies," edited

* Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English.