uld, the sounds which he was accustomed to pronounce
or to receive, and vitiated in writing such words as were already
vitiated in speech. The powers of the letters, when they were applied
to a new language, must have been vague and unsettled, and
therefore different hands would exhibit the same sound by different
combinations.

From this uncertain pronunciation arise in a great part the various
dialects of the same country, which will always be observed to grow
fewer, and less different, as books are multiplied; and from this
arbitrary representation of sounds by letters proceeds that diversity
of spelling observable in the Saxon remains, and I suppose in the
first books of every nation, which perplexes or destroys analogy,
and produces anomalous formations, which, being once incorporated can
never be afterward dismissed or reformed.

Of this kind are the derivatives _length_ from _long_, _strength_ from
_strong_, _darling_ from _dear_, _breadth_ from _broad_, from _dry_,
_drought_, and from _high_, _height_, which Milton, in zeal for
analogy, writes highth. 'Quid te exempta juvat spinis de pluribus
una?' To change all would be too much, and to change one is nothing.

This uncertainty is most frequent in the vowels, which are so
capriciously pronounced, and so differently modified, by accident or
affectation, not only in every province, but in every mouth, that to
them, as is well known to etymologists, little regard is to be shown
in the deduction of one language from another.

Such defects are not errors in orthography, but spots of barbarity
impressed so deep in the English language, that criticism can
never wash them away: these, therefore, must be permitted to remain
untouched; but many words have likewise been altered by accident, or
depraved by ignorance, as the pronunciation of the vulgar has been
weakly followed; and some still continue to be variously written,
as authors differ in their care or skill: of these it was proper
to inquire the true orthography, which I have always considered as
depending on their derivation, and have therefore referred them to
their original languages; thus I write _enchant_, _enchantment_,
_enchanter_, after the French, and _incantation_ after the Latin; thus
_entire_ is chosen rather than _intire_, because it passed to us not
from the Latin _integer_, but from the French _entier_.

Of many words it is difficult to say whether they were immediately
received from the Latin o