thority, and thereby endanger the
cause which they are presumed to aid, the mischief is too general and
extensive in its operation to be neglected or endured. There is nothing
belonging to the stage which demands such strict discipline as its
orthoepy, because there is none in which it can so immediately and
powerfully affect the public. On this point therefore we are determined
to sacrifice nothing to ceremony; being convinced that debasing the
language is essentially as injurious, though legally not so punishable,
as defacing the current coin of a country.

Without pointing to individuals by name, we request the ladies and
gentlemen of the green-room to consult all the acknowledged authorities
for the pronunciation of the words: true, rude, brute, shrewd, rule, in
which the u is by some of them sounded very improperly; _true_ so as to
rhyme to _few_, _new_, &c. _rule_ as if it were to rhyme to _mule_, and
so on; whereas true ought to be pronounced as if it were spelled _troo_,
and rhymed to _do_; rule as if spelled _rool_, and so on; and thus they
will find them in the dictionaries of acknowledged authority.

Since we are on the subject we will now advert to some other words which
are often most lamentably mispronounced, not only contrary to the
pronunciation established by all learned men and orators in Great
Britain, but exactly in that way in which skilful actors often pronounce
them in Europe when they wish to mimic the most low and ignorant classes
of society. Of this description is the pronunciation of the word
"sacrifice." For these words we refer all whom it may concern to the
dictionaries of the best orthoepists, by which they will be instructed
that it is not pronounced say-crifice but sac-rifize. If the former be
really the pronunciation, the old ladies who smoke short pipes in the
chimney corners of English and Irish cottages, are right, and Burke,
Fox, Pitt, Windham, Curran, Grattan, Sheridan, and in short every man
who speaks in a public assembly in England or Ireland, are wrong. We are
not sure whether Mr. Kemble, who, as an excellent critic has observed,
is always seeking for novelty and always running into error, may not
lately have added that patch to his motley garb of new readings; but his
authority is disallowed. Even Garrick, whose claims were of a very
superior kind, when he attempted to render the English language, already
too unstable, more so, by his innovations, was repelled with helpless
c