surmounted the difficulty of registering
sounds with great accuracy.]

{230} I have not observed this noticed in our dictionaries as the
original form of the phrase. There is no doubt however of the
fact; see _Stanihurst's Ireland_, p. 33, in Holinshed's
_Chronicles_. [Rather from _torvien_, to throw,--Skeat].

{231} _Notes and Queries_, No. 147.

{232} See Boswell's _Life of Johnson_, Croker's edit. 1848, p. 233.

{233} [The _b_ was purposely foisted into these words by bookmen to
suggest their Latin derivation; it did not belong to them in
earlier English. The same may be said of the _g_, intruded into
'deign' and 'feign'.]

{234} A chief phonographer writes to me to deny that this is the present
spelling (1856) of 'Europe'. It was so when this paragraph was
written. [Most people would now consider [Yeuroap] as American
pronunciation.]

{235} Quintilian has expressed himself with the true dignity of a
scholar on this matter (_Inst._ 1, 6, 45): Consuetudinem sermonis
vocabo _consensum eruditorum_; sicut vivendi consensum
bonorum.--How different from innovations like this the changes in
the spelling of German which J. Grimm, so far as his own example
may reach, _has_ introduced; and the still bolder and more
extensive ones which in the _Preface_ to his _Deutsches
Woerterbuch_, pp. liv.-lxii., he avows his desire to see
introduced;--as the employment of _f_, not merely where it is at
present used, but also wherever _v_ is now employed; the
substituting of the _v_, which would be thus disengaged, for _w_,
and the entire dismissal of _w_. They may be advisable, or they
may not; it is not for strangers to offer an opinion; but at any
rate they are not a seizing of the fluctuating, superficial
accidents of the present, and a seeking to give permanent
authority to these, but they all rest on a deep historic study of
the language, and of the true genius of the language.

{236} Croker's edit. 1848, pp. 57, 61, 233.

{237} [An incorrect conclusion. Almost all 'ea' words were pronounced
'ai' down to the eighteenth century. Thus 'great' was a true rhyme
to 'cheat' and 'complete', their ordinary pronunciation being
'grait', 'chait', 'complait'.]

{238} [i.e. 'Lunnun'.]

{239} _A proposal for correcting, improving and ascertaining the English