by a synod of grammarians
upon principles of science. But who can hope to prevail on nations to
change their practice, and make all their old books useless? or what
advantage would a new orthography procure equivalent to the confusion
and perplexity of such an alteration?

Some ingenious men, indeed, have endeavoured to deserve well of their
country, by writing honor and labor for honour and labour, red for read
in the preter-tense, sais for says, repete tor repeat, explane for
explain, or declame for declaim. Of these it may be said, that as they
have done no good they have done little harm; both because they have
innovated little, and because few have followed them.

The English language has properly no dialects; the style of writers has
no professed diversity in the use of words, or of their flexions and
terminations, nor differs but by different degrees of skill or care.
The oral diction is uniform in no spacious country, but has less
variation in England than in most other nations of equal extent. The
language of the northern counties retains many words now out of use,
but which are commonly of the genuine Teutonick race, and is uttered
with a pronunciation which now seems harsh and rough, but was probably
used by our ancestors. The northern speech is therefore not barbarous,
but obsolete. The speech in the western provinces seems to differ from
the general diction rather by a depraved pronunciation, than by any
real difference which letters would express.

* * * * *

ETYMOLOGY.

Etymology teaches the deduction of one word from another, and the various
modifications by which the sense of the same word is diversified; as horse,
horses; I love, I loved.

Of the ARTICLE.

The English have two articles, an or a, and the.

AN, A.

A has an indefinite signification, and means one, with some reference to
more; as This is a good book; that is, one among the books that are good;
He was killed by a sword; that is, some sword; This is a better book for a
man than a boy; that is, for one of those that are men than one of those
that are boys; An army might enter without resistance; that is, any army.

In the senses in which we use a or an in the singular, we speak in the
plural without an article; as these are good books.

I have made an the original article, because it is only the Saxon an,