ng of the root; so that, to take
his very forcible example, the adjective Christian, the derivative of
Christ, has by virtue of its shortened vowel been enabled to carry
a much looser signification than it could have acquired had it been
phonetically indissociable from the intense signification of the
name Christ. This freedom of the derivative from the root varies
indefinitely in different words, and it very much complicates my
present lesser statement of the literary advantage of phonetic variety
in inflexions and derivatives.

The examples above are all Latin words, and since Latin words came
into English through different channels, these particular vowels can
have different histories.]

Once become sensible of such beauty, and of the force of sounds,
a writer will find himself in trouble with _no_ and _know_. These
omnipresent words are each of them essentially weakened by the
existence of the other, while their proximity in a sentence is now
damaging. It is a misfortune that our Southern dialect should have
parted entirely with all the original differentiation between them;
for after the distinctive _k_ of the verb was dropped, the negative
still preserved (as it in some dialects still preserves) its broad
open vowel, more like _law_ than _toe_ or _beau_, and unless that be
restored I should judge that the verb _to know_ is doomed. The third
person singular of its present tense is _nose_, and its past tense
is _new_, and the whole inconvenience is too radical and perpetual
to be received all over the world. We have an occasional escape by
using _nay_ for _no_, since its homophone _neigh_ is an unlikely
_neigh_bour; but that can serve only in one limited use of the word,
and is no solution.

[Sidenote: Punnage.]

In talking with friends the common plea that I have heard for
homophones is their usefulness to the punster. 'Why! would you have
no puns?' I will not answer that question; but there is no fear of
our being insufficiently catered for; whatever accidental benefit
be derivable from homophones, we shall always command it fully and
in excess; look again at the portentous list of them! And since the
essential jocularity of a pun (at least when it makes me laugh) lies
in a humorous incongruity, its farcical gaiety may be heightened by
a queer pronunciation. I cannot pretend to judge a sophisticated
taste; but, to give an example, if, as I should urge, the _o_ of the
word _petrol_ should be preserved, as it