pleasure of the "Autocrat," who trusses him, falcon-like, before his
million readers and adorers? Why should the Frenchman call his wooden
shoe a _sabot_ and his old shoe a _savate_, both from the same root?
Alas, we must too often in philology take Rabelais's reason for Friar
John's nose! With regard to the pronunciation of the vowels in Queen
Bess's days, so much is probable,--that the _a_ in words from the French
had more of the _ah_ sound than now, if rhymes may be trusted. We find
_placed_ rhyming with _past_; we find the participle _saft_ formed
from _save_. One relic of this occurs to us as still surviving in
that _slang_ which preserves for us so many glossologic
treasures,--_chauffer_,--_to chafe_, (in the sense of angering,)--_to
chaff_. The same is true of our Yankee _ch[)a]mber, d[)a]nger_, and
_m[)a]nger_, cited by Mr. White.

If we have apprehended the bearing of Mr. White's quotation from
Butler's English Grammar, we think he has misapprehended Butler. We wish
he had not broken the extract off so short, with an _etc_. What did
Butler mean by "_oo_ short"? Mr. White draws the inference that _Puck_
was called _Pook_, and that, since it was made to rhyme with _luck_,
that word and "all of similar orthography" were pronounced with an _oo_.
Did our ancestors have no short _u_, answering somewhat to the sound of
that vowel in the French _un_? We have little doubt of it; and since Mr.
White repeats so often that we Yankees have retained the Elizabethan
words and sounds, may we not claim their pronunciation of _put_ (like
_but_) and _sut_ for _soot_, as relics of it? If they had it not, how
soon did it come into the language? Already we find Lord Herbert of
Cherbury using _pundonnore_, (_point d'honneur_,) which may supply Dr.
Richardson with the link he wants between _pun_ and _point_, for the
next edition of his Dictionary. Alexander Gill, head-master of St.
Paul's School and Milton's teacher, published his "Logonomia Anglica" in
1621, a book which throws more light on the contemporary pronunciation
of English than any other we know of. He makes three forms of _u_:
the _tenuis_, as in _use_,--the _crassa brevis_, as in _us_,--and the
_longa_, as in _ooze_. The Saxons had, doubtless, two sounds of _oo_,
a long and a short; and the Normans brought them a third in the French
liquid _u_, if they had it not before. We say _if_, because their organs
have boggled so at the sound in certain combinations, ending in such