ds, "Phonetic spelling!" Yet Landor was not
very exacting. In the "Last Fruit off an Old Tree," he says, through his
medium, Pericles, who is giving advice to Alcibiades: "Every time we
pronounce a word different from another, we show our disapprobation of
his manner, and accuse him of rusticity. In all common things we must do
as others do. It is more barbarous to undermine the stability of a
language than of an edifice that hath stood as long. This is done by the
introduction of changes. Write as others do, but only as the best of
others; and, if one eloquent man forty or fifty years ago spoke and
wrote differently from the generality of the present, follow him, though
alone, rather than the many. But in pronunciation we are not indulged in
this latitude of choice; we must pronounce as those do who favor us with
their audience." Landor only claimed to write as the best of others do,
and in his own name protests to Southey against misconstruction. "One
would represent me as attempting to undermine our native tongue;
another, as modernizing; a third, as antiquating it. _Wheras_" (Landor's
spelling) "I am trying to underprop, not to undermine; I am trying to
stop the man-milliner at his ungainly work of trimming and flouncing; I
am trying to show how graceful is our English, not in its stiff
decrepitude, not in its riotous luxuriance, but in its hale mid-life. I
would make bad writers follow good ones, and good ones accord with
themselves. If all cannot be reduced into order, is that any reason why
nothing should be done toward it? If languages and men too are
imperfect, must we never make an effort to bring them a few steps
nearer to what is preferable?"

It is my great good fortune to possess a copy of Landor's works made
curious and peculiarly valuable by the author's own revisions and
corrections, and it is most interesting to wander through these volumes,
wherein almost every page is a battle-field between the writer and his
arch-enemy, the printer. The final _l_ in _still_ and _till_ is
ignominiously blotted out; _exclaim_ is written _exclame_; a _d_ is put
over the obliterated _a_ in _steady_; _t_ is substituted _t_ is
substituted for the second _s_ in _confessed_ and kindred words;
_straightway_ is shorn of _gh_; _pontiff_ is allowed but one _f_. Landor
spells _honor_ in what we call the modern way, without the _u_; and the
_r_ and _e_ in _sceptre_ change places. A dash of the pen cancels the
_s_ in _isle_ and th