Selected quad for the lemma: book_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
book_n	call_v	time_n	word_n	2,366	5	3.5780	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A40485	Friendly advice to the correctour of the English press at Oxford concerning the English orthographie		1682 (1682)	Wing F2215; ESTC R6439	13,360	14

eo as people ei as heir their eu Feud Eunuch oa Oak choak coast ou loud south thou and most or all our words derived from Latine Substantives as Doctour Amour Ardour which it hath pleased you to change very arbitrarily into or In oi moist soil ui as guilt quilt io as mention nation vision where the four last letters make but one syllable pronounced in Prose or Verse unless when the Verse requires a diaeresis or seperation as the Latines do sometimes writing pictaei for pictae The French Grammars tell us that Tongue hath one Tripthongs as beautè which also our Tongue hath writing beautie Now when a Language is thus setled by consent for private heads to break the Rule under pretence of meliorating the same is to bring in confusion and to make our writing as different as our pronunciation which will be no small inconvenience and is such a violence void of prudence that none of those we call the Learned Languages would ever endure though subject to the like discrepancie in speaking and writing as ours is and no learned men before this Age and it is well if they of this Age be learneder then other men did ever attempt to reforme a Language in this manner so that it may seem rather an emptie affectation to seem some bodie than really to be so But if that humour be prevalent in them it were a great deal better they should remove their Press from Oxford to Smolensko or some noted Citie between the Mos●ovites and Polacks whose Slavonian or Sarmatian Language is so crouded thick with consonants which cannot all be heard they seem extremely to need and call for such a Procustes as Oxford hath who may lengthen or shorten words as they agree best with his Cratch But the truth is that a fundamental errour against the Analogy of all Tongues hath mightily abused you to conceive that Pronounciation should be any certain Rule of Orthographie when as it self is very uncertain and your reformations many of them do not answer the true pronunciation so that I scarce know where to have you in such inconstancies who sometime would have pronuciation a Rule of spelling and sometimes your not the common spelling a Rule of true pronunciation But possibly you had before you for a Precedent Augustus Cesar For surely you must imagine your self above the condition of a subject who undertake to give us Laws of writing and speaking our own tongue of whom Suetònius in his Life writes Videtur potius corum sequi opimonem qui perinde scribendum ac loquendum existiment He seemed to be of their opinion who conceive we ought to write as we speake And therefore Suetonius himself as it follows wonders very much at what others wrote of him that he was such a severe and punctual observer of Orthographie that Legato Consulari successorem dederit ut rudi indocto cujus manu Ixi pro Ipsi scriptum animadvertit i. e. He turned a Deputy-Consul out of his Office and put another into his room because under his own hand he wrote Ixi for Ipsi as an ignorant illiterate Fellow From hence it may be most probably gathered that in those days Ixi was vulgarly pronounced for Ipsi and yet Augustus as well learned as wise would not suffer such emendations upon such grounds And the difficulty of reconciling Augustus his opposite practises is not so great as it seemed to Suetonius For either we are to understand the Emperour of Phrase rather then Words or Orthographie as if he avoided the finery or gallantry of Language unbecoming the Majesty of so great a Prince and chose to write plainly but yet truly as he spake or else he might look upon the correction of a Language as a matter above the capacity of persons who are as subject to the Laws of speaking as they are of living under their Sovereign Tiberius Cesar desired and endeavoured to add but one Letter more to the Roman Alphabet but common consent and custome would not allow it him Brave but certainly not grave spirits are they who at their private pleasures should ambitiously become the Authors of adding or taking away a letter from a word as will appear now we come to a more particular examination of your alterations made in our Mother Tongue in some few of many instances to be given I confess I am not much versed in the English Prints at Oxford I have only seen a Bible in Quarto there printed but never read one Page in it as being unwilling to read so sacred a Volumne when I should be sure to meet with many errours though but Grammatical But I have been told by a principal Bookseller in London that men would not buy that Impression for your Heterodox spelling found therein I am better acquainted with two other Books printed at Oxford the one named The Ladies Calling the other The Government of the Tongue in which I do not pretend to instance in half the Cacographies there found but such few as the entrance into them offers to every eye And lest you should loose time in teaching us new words the very first word and that of the Preface gives us a notable instance of your extraordinary faculty of divising words never heard of before in our Language where you say The Editor to the Reader And surely it was your modesty so to write for had you said The Editor to the Lector it would have made a greater noise and procured you greater admiration amongst women to whom you write And yet again you went so far that if as it often happens bad Latire words make good English ones the Ladies to whom you write might scar you had greater mind to eat them than instruckt them But if you had pleased to have suffered it to smell of the English Tongue so far as to have written Editour a small glimse had been given to a good guesser to know your meaning but writing Editor none unlearned above the English Tongue ●an tell whether the word be Hebrew Arabick or Ethiopick for it comes as near them as English I dare say never an English man in London ever spake or wrote such a word though you once promised such a form of the English Tongue was spoken in London and Oxford I pray be pleased to turn to your Dr. Heilin's Animadversions on that Ingenious and Learned Gentleman Mr. Hammond Lestrange his History of King Charles the First and not fa● from the beginning you shall find a few Verses against such boisterous wor●s which will fit your foot exactly but I think not requisite here to repeat them But the truth is that ever since Mr. Holliday set your stile at Oxford a Gog who in his latter days both distasted and detested his own strains you have but too commonly and justly deserved the censure of Augustus Cesar of whom Suetonius in his Life chap. 86. thus writes M. Antonium quidem ut insanum increpat quasi ea scribentem quae

observe that most English words are formed by the addition of the said two letters and sometimes three to the original verb but now upon this new device we must be constrained to make an e on purpose to diversifie our persons which also must be done in nowns substantive when we would of singular make them plural Formerly and more compendiously and simply we made all Plurals by onely s added as bonds words lights c. and therefore ever after a double ss in the last syllable was added an e standing not as many imagined alltogether useless but in readiness to receive another s when there was an occasion to use the plural number as wickednesse made the plural wickednesses and Excesse Excesses and distresse distresses But if a man shall write in the singular wickedness and excess and distress he cannot make of them the plural number by adding another s but must be forced to take a whole syllable so to do contrary to the common grounds of our English Tongue against which yet it seems somewhat of the latest to speak fashion having so far prevailed ever since and scarce before the late Rebellion under Charles the first when some men struck at the ancient established Lawes of Church and State others busying themselves in murthering or mutulating English words which they also called Reformation I do remember in the Rebellious times to have met with a Parliamentarie Primer which would take off the unnecessarie ceremonies from words and taught Children to read and write trubl and battl and duble for trouble and battle or battel and double very learnedly and a fit precedent for Oxford Presse to follow And what should I here mention the innumerable insolences of that Presse in leaving out e the termination of words as in Calm Som Sarcasm Press with which the foresaid books abound I adde to these sort of changes another absurdity in taking away consonants too as for example writing there Diabolic Topic Stomac Dublick in stead of the known words Diabolick Topick publick or as sometimes they were written Diabolique Topique Publique but never but from Oxford with a c terminating them unless from France where I find them so spelt but what have we to do to conforme our English to their Language And yet I suppose as one of Fashion rather than substance followed them when you also wrot vertu and valu for vertue and value as the English Tongue requires But being almost as much tired in writing as I may suppose you may be in reading this I shall only mention your Masterpiec of refining or reforming our Language in constant writing Tho for though and thro for through in The Government of the Tongue thus printing the words Psalm 139. v. 9 Their Tongues go thro the world which if it doth appear to be done with any good judgment and reason besides your old Sic volo Sic jubeo I am content to set down under the severe censure of a troublesome quarreller but if not I hope you will please to prevent a Schisme in our Language to return to true Orthographie I cannot imagine what put you upon such a faileur besides a vain designe of softning our Language and so to confound the rules of spelling that the weake and ignorant may justifie their involuntarie slips from such voluntarie errours as you commit or from a more generall ground whereby now of late dayes Libertie of writing is become as reasonable as libertie of beleiving and worship And so there should remain no such thing as true and false spelling in the English Tongue Or perhaps you considering that the vowel and two letters g h which you rob the foresaid words of partaking of the nature of aspirations you thought it advisable to spare us our breath the better to cool our porrage as I may so write in imitation of you teaching us to regulate our Pens by our Tongues But I might argue first against your tho and thro because being but parts of words they can signify nothing at all standing by themselves as the very first page almost of some Logicks tell us so that the syllables in domus being seperated signifie just nothing though both do and must as entire words doe But what ever you may ordain that relique of a word for you can give us no reason why it should retain the same force in pronunciation as when it enjoyed all its letters For in our Language Initial letters do varie their value according to their terminations For instance Tho in though is not to be pronounced as Tho in Thought For it is manifest to any ordinarie observer of the English speech that th hath a double force ever since we lost the use of the Saxon ð of which you may read so much spoken by Mr. Gill in his Logonomia and Mr. Butler in his English Grammar For there remains still so great affinity between the Saxon or Teutonick as Verstegan pleases to call our Language ð and our th that we sometimes write some words with the one and sometimes with the other without any exception as murther or murder and I know some countries in England where the common people wer wont to say It is very thark or ð ark in stead of dark which I once took to be a greater corruption than in truth it is therefore you writing only Tho we cannot tell whether we should pronounce it as o or as tho in thought and thorow untill we have taken our horses and rod to the Oxonian Oracle For if you should and upon your own grounds you ought to write thi for thigh we could not tell whether we should pronounce it as thie or as thigh without recourse had to the said Oracle But it should seem the authour of this rare and civillzed way of writing never considerd the force of ugh cut off by him which is not so aspirate as he might imagine for some countries and that adjacent to Oxford shire pronounce though as we generally do cough and rough and laugh and enough as if they were written Thoff coff ruff enuff Now would I fain know whether your Tho come or ought to be so pronounced And if so why we may not write Co and Ra and La for all that belongs to them I must ingenuously confess I being but a simple Davus and no Oedipus cannot understand nor unriddle this and you being but an Editor and not Cadmus i.e. a Master of Letters or maker of Languages I am not bound to believ you though you should tell me your meaning But there remains one reason more against tho for though which I hope you will believe to be valid when your senses shall convince you and that is that in our ancienter English Tongue tho signifies quite another thing from what you intend it as may appear from Chauncer who uses it two wayes But neither of them in your sense For with him it signifies Then and not Though as in those verses quoted out of him by his