or _cnapa_, a boy.]

{225} [Mr. Fitzedward Hall in 1873 says 'antecedents' is "not yet a
generation old" (_Mod. English_, 303). Landor in 1853 says "the
French have lately taught (it to) us" (_Last Fruit of an Old
Tree_, 176). De Quincey, in 1854 calls it "modern slang" (_Works_
xiv, 449); and the earliest quotation, 1841, given in the N.E.D.,
introduces it as "what the French call their antecedents".]

{226} See Whewell, _History of Moral Philosophy in England_, pp.
xxvii.-xxxii.

{227} For a fuller treatment of the subject of this lecture, see my
_Select Glossary of English Words used formerly in senses
different from their present_, 2nd ed. London, 1859.

V

CHANGES IN THE SPELLING OF ENGLISH WORDS

When I announce to you that the subject of my lecture to-day will be
English orthography, or the spelling of the words in our native
language, with the alterations which this has undergone, you may perhaps
think with yourselves that a weightier, or, if not a weightier, at all
events a more interesting subject might have occupied this our
concluding lecture. I cannot admit it to be wanting either in importance
or in interest. Unimportant it certainly is not, but might well engage,
as it often has engaged, the attention of those with far higher
acquirements than any which I possess. Uninteresting it may be, by
faults in the manner of treating it; but I am sure it ought as little to
be this; and would never prove so in competent hands{228}. Let us then
address ourselves to this matter, not without good hope that it may
yield us both profit and pleasure.

I know not who it was that said, "The invention of printing was very
well; but, as compared to the invention of writing, it was no such great
matter after all". Whoever it was who made this observation, it is clear
that for him use and familiarity had not obliterated the wonder which
there is in that, whereat we probably have long ceased to wonder at
all--the power, namely, of representing sounds by written signs, of
reproducing for the eye that which existed at first only for the ear:
nor was the estimate which he formed of the relative value of these two
inventions other than a just one. Writing indeed stands more nearly on a
level with speaking, and deserves rather to be compared with it, than
with printing; which, with all its utility, is yet of altogether another
and inferior type of greatness: or, if this