No More Learning

I find _reule_ in Pecock's 'Repressor. ' He probably pronounced it
_rayoole_, 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 _reuler_, and the Coventry Plays have _preudent_.
In the 'Parlyament of Byrdes' I find _reule_. 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
_boeuf_, 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, it 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. For its 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. Perhaps 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_, _r[)y]le_, the last differing only from _rile_ (_roil_) in a
prolongation of the _y_ sound.
I find _royal_ so pronounced in the
'Mirror for Magistrates. ' 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 preceded 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 _l_ was foisted 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 _viage_
in Bishop Hall and Middleton the dramatist, _bile_ for _boil_ in Donne
and Chrononhotonthologos, _line_ for _loin_ in Hall, _ryall_ and _chyse_
(for choice) _dystrye_ for _destroy_, 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 Spirituall 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.