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BERKELEY 
 
 LiBftA«M)WRITING IN SCHOOLS. 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 
 cALWftyat JHer Majesty's Inspectors say. 
 
 Mr Bkrnays speaks of the common fault in copy-books of having one heading 
 in each page. 
 
 Darnell's Copy-Books were the first in which the copy was 
 repeated on tne page. 
 
 Mr Danby says— The greatest obstacle to the acquirement of this art (writing) 
 is the strong wish of children and parents that round hand should be too soon 
 forsaken for a small running hand. 
 
 Mr Howard says— My assistant and I encourage in the lower classes of 
 schools a good round and large writing, not too large, however, to be beyond 
 the powers of little fingers ; this in upper classes results in a clear and distinct 
 writing, such as Lord Palmerston was wont to praise. 
 
 Mr KiNT. say%— A bold firm style of writing without flourishes is now becoming 
 general. 
 
 Darnell's Universal Twopenny Copy-Books give full and 
 complete instruction in large and round hands. 
 
 Mr Pennethorne says— The art of large handwriting seems to have died out 
 with the old masters. 
 
 Darnell's Universal Twopenny Copy-Books pay particular 
 attention to large and round hands. 
 
 Mr Trkmenhrkre says — Those who publish and those who employ copy- 
 books wherein the text is not larger than ordinary adult writing, betray a mis- 
 conception of their proper use. In the lower standards their true function is to 
 teach children to accomplish on paper with the pen what they can already do 
 with the pencil on slate. The same steadiness and boldness in the use of the new 
 instrument has to be acquired, and hence the text nuist be large. Still large, 
 though not so large, should they be in the copy-books used by the upper 
 standards. Here they are of value in correcting the slovenly curtailments of 
 fanciful affectations, the malformations or misproportions, which all persons are 
 so apt to slide into precisely because they have learnt to write small and to write 
 (juickly. The defects can only be cured by " harking back," so to say, and 
 reforming the hand in these particulars. Evidently then the text should be 
 large. 
 
 Darnell's Universal Twopenny Copy-Books will be found 
 to completely fulfil these requirements. 
 
 Mr Wilkinson says — The general character of writing is formed in the earlier 
 stages. Where writing is neglected in earlier stages, it is usually small, cramped, 
 irregular, and consequently barely legible in the upper standard. 
 
 Darnell's Universal Twopenny Copy-Books, if used, will 
 prevent this. 
 
 Mr Stkwart says— I very much doubt if there is one of them whose annual 
 specimens of penmanship can stand a comparison with the handwriting found in 
 copy-l)ooks prepared for their scholars by teachers of the old school twenty-five 
 or thirty years ago.. 
 
 Darnell's Universal Twopenny Copy-Books, if used, woidd 
 insure this. 
 
 ' Forfurthtr particulars respecting DamelVs Co^jhBooks see opposite. 
 
GEORGE DARNELL'S COPY-BOOKS, 
 
 after over a quarter of a century of public favour, are everywhere acknow- 
 ledged as the b6st for simplicity and thoroughness. They are used in 
 nearly all the best schools in Great Britain and the Colonies, and are 
 adapted to the New Educational Code. 
 
 i 
 ADVANTAGES OF THE SYSTEM. 
 
 I. — It is the production of an experienced Schoolmaster. 
 II. — It gradually advances from the Simple Stroke to a Superior Small Hand. 
 III. — The assistance given in the Primal Lessons is reduced as the learner pro- . 
 
 gresses, until all guidance is safely withdrawn. 
 IV. — The number and variety of the copies secure attention, and prevent pupils 
 
 copying their own writing, as in books with single head-lines. 
 V. — The system insures the progress of the learner, and greatly lightens the 
 labours of the teacher. 
 
 DARNELLS LARGE POST COPY-BOOKS. A sure and certain 
 road to a Good Handwriting. i6Nos. 6^. each. Being a series of SIXTEEN 
 COPY-BOOKS, by GEORGE DARINTELL, the first ten of which 
 have on every alternate line appropriate and carefully wrjtten copies in 
 pencil-coloured ink, to be first written over and then imitated, the remain- 
 ing' numbers having black head-lines for imitation only, the whole gradu- 
 ally ADVANCING FROM A SIMPLE STROKE TO A SUPERIOR SMALL HAND. 
 
 No. 
 
 1. Elementary (Strokes, &c.) 
 
 2. Single Letters. 
 
 3. 4. Large Text (Short Word). 
 
 5. Text, Large Text, and Figures. 
 
 6. Round Text, Capitals, and Figures. 
 
 No. 
 
 7. Text, Round and Small. 
 
 8, 9, 10. Text, Round, Small & Figures. 
 II, 12. Round, Small and Figures. 
 13, 14. Round and Small. 
 15, 16. Small Hand. 
 
 DARNELL'S UNIVERSAL COPY-BOOKS, on the same plan. 
 16 Nos., Fcap. 4to, ar/. each., A/'.B. — Contents same as Post Copy-Books. 
 
 DARNELL'S FOOLSCAP COPY-BOOKS. A sure guide to a 
 
 Good Handwriting, on the same plan. 24 Nos. 3^/. each. Green covers. 
 Or, on a superior paper, marble covers, 4^. each. 
 
 No. 
 9. Round, Small, and Figures. 
 
 10, II. Round and Small. 
 
 12, 13, 15. Round, Small, and Figures. 
 
 14. Round and Small. 
 
 16 to 20. Small Hand. 
 
 21. Ornamental Hands. 
 
 22 to 24. Ladies' Angular Writing. 
 
 No. 
 
 1. Elementary (Strokes, &c.; 
 
 2. Single Letters. 
 
 3. 4. Large Text (Short Words). 
 
 5. Text, Large Text, and Figures. 
 
 6. Text, Round, and Capitals. 
 
 7. Round, Small, and Figures. 
 
 8. 'Text, Small, and Figures. 
 
 ** For teaching writing, I would recommend the teaching of Darnell's Copy- 
 Books. I HAVE NOTICED A MARKED IMPROVEMENT WHEREVER THEY HAVE 
 
 BEEN USED." — Report of Mr M aye {^National Society's Organizer of ScJiools) to 
 tJie Worcester Diocesan Board of Education. 
 
 " As to the necessity of some one proposing a new way to teach writing, I do 
 not think it is needed. Let a London clerk inspect one of Mr Darnell's Copy- 
 Books (I believe they are most generally in use in our schools), and I think he 
 will say that, with a moderate amount of care on the part of the teacher, the 
 RESULT MUST BE A LEGIBLE CLEAR HANDWRITING." — An Essex Schoolmaster; 
 National Society's Monthly Paper. 
 
 GRIPPITH & PARRAN, 
 West Corner St Paul's Churchyard, London. 
 
 E. P. DUTTON & CO., NEW YORK. 
 
SPECIAL SUBJECT READING BOOKS. 
 
 Messrs Griffith & Farran are issuing a New Series of 
 
 HISTORY READERS, 
 
 specially adapted to the requirements of the Education Department, 
 as expressed in the Circular to Her Majesty's Inspectors, 
 No. 187. They are written by Mr. H. Major, B.A., B.Sc, 
 
 who is well known as the author of many popular series of School 
 Books ; and Teachers may place the utmost confidence in their 
 suitability to the purpose. 
 
 N.B. — Special pains have been taken to secure a strong and 
 durable binding. 
 
 HISTORY READER, PART I.— BRITISH HISTORY, 
 
 from B.C. 55 to A.D. 1066, with Descriptions of Manners and 
 Customs, Biographies, and Pictures of Former States of Life as 
 contrasted with the Present. Arranged in forty Sections, each 
 containing sufficient matter for a Reading Lesson of due length. 
 For Standard II. in Elementary Schools, and Juniors in Pub- 
 lic and Private Schools. Uniform with Mr Blakiston's 
 ** Glimpses of the Globe." Cloth limp, price is. 
 
 HISTORY READER, PART II.— Intended for the use 
 
 of Standard III. From a.d. 1066 to A.D. 1485. Uniform 
 with the above. 128 pp. Cloth, price is. 
 
 HISTORY READER, PART III- Intended for the use 
 
 of Standard IV. From A.D. 1485 to A.D. 1688. Containing 
 about 192 pp. Cloth, price is. 6d. 
 
 HISTORY READER, PART IV.— From a.d. 1688 to 
 A.I). 1880. Intended for the use of Standards V. and VI. 
 Containing about 192 pp. Uniform with the above. Cloth, 
 price IS. dd. 
 
 Prospcciu.c.^ may be had post free on application. 
 
 GRIFFITH & FARRAN, West Corner of 
 St. Paul's Churchyard, London. 
 
THE LETTER H. 
 
 PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 
 
HARRY HAWKINS'S H -BOOK ; showing how he learned to 
 aspirate his H's. Eighth Thousand. Sewed, 6d. 
 
 " We commend the little work to the notice of all masters and 
 mistresses." — Teacher. 
 
 A WORD TO THE WISE, OR HINTS ON THE CURRENT 
 
 Improprieties of Expression in Writing and Speaking. By Parry 
 GwYNNE. Fifteenth Thousand. i8mo, sewed 6d., or cloth, gilt 
 edges, IS. 
 
 "All who wish to mind their /V and q's should consult this little 
 volume." — Getitleman's Magazine. 
 
 A COMPENDIOUS GRAMMAR, AND PHILOLOGICAL HAND- 
 
 book of the English Language, for the Use of Schools and 
 Candidates for the Army and Civil Service Examinations. By John 
 George Colquhoun, Esq., Barrister-at-Law. Fcap. 8vo, cloth, 
 2s. 6d. 
 
 " A real and very useful accession to the list of English manuals." — 
 Educational Times. 
 
 " We are not acquainted with any single volume that in such a small 
 compass contains so much useful information." — Schtlasttc Re^ster. 
 
 •'Just the book we should like to see in Training Colleges, and 
 placed in the hands of Pupil Teachers." — National Schoolmaster. 
 
 GRIFFITH AND FARRAN, 
 
 WEST corner ST PAUl's CHURCHYARD, LONDON". 
 E. P. DUTTON AND CO., NEW YORK. 
 
THE LETTER H 
 
 PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE 
 
 WITH RULES FOR THE SILENT H, BASED ON MODERN USAGE; 
 AND NOTES ON IVN. 
 
 By ALFRED LEACH. 
 
 A breath can make them 
 
 Goldsmith. 
 
 GRIFFITH & FARRAN 
 
 SUCCESSORS TO NEWBERY AND HARRIS, 
 
 WEST CORNER ST PAUL'S CHURCHYARD, LONDON 
 
 E. P. BUTTON & CO., NEW YORK 
 
 iMDCCCLXXX. 
 
The rii^hts of frans/afion mid of reproduction are reseiTed, 
 

 PREFACE. 
 
 The contradictory rules that are given for the 
 employment of H's, and the confusion that 
 reigns in our best Pronouncing Dictionaries, 
 constitute an apology for the appearance of this 
 publication. To promote an uniform pronun- 
 ciation based on the sole authority of con- 
 temporary usage, is one of its purposes. To 
 draw attention to the nature of the present 
 English Aspirate, is another. To seek redress 
 for the digraph WH, is a third. To render the 
 subjects as interesting to the general reader as 
 the matter would allow, has been the great 
 desire of the writer. 
 
 It is with gratitude that I beg to express 
 my thanks to the gentlemen whose kind cour- 
 tesy I have acknowledged on page 56 ; and to 
 Professor Bain, Professor Skeat, and His Emi- 
 nence Cardinal Archbishop Manning, to whose 
 kindness I am indebted for assistance in the 
 
 457 
 
6 PREFACE. 
 
 form of valuable comments and advice. I beg 
 also to thank the Rev. W. H. Bleaden, curate 
 to the Bishop of Aberdeen and Orkney ; and 
 John Davidson, Esq., Memb. Arts Club, Lon- 
 don, for the friendly help they have given me. 
 
 A. L. 
 
 Yrnu Villa, Thofnton Heath, 
 October 1880. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PACE 
 
 Preamble, ..... 9 
 
 Origin and Descent, . . . .17 
 
 Original Alphabets — Primitive forms of H — 
 Classic Forms. 
 
 Distribution, . . • . . 22 
 
 Phonetic Significance of Early H's — Aryan 
 and Other H's. 
 
 History of the English H, . . .27 
 
 Raucity of the Anglo-Saxon H — Norman 
 Influences — Dechne of the English H. 
 
 Modern Aspirates, .... 35 
 Definitions — Terms of Convenience — Varie- 
 ties of H — Vocalized and Unvocalized Breath 
 — The H in Speech — Physiological Phona- 
 tion of Aspirated Vowels. 
 
 Silent H, . . . . . .46 
 
 Orthoepists — Early Records of Silent H^s— 
 Modern Pronouncing Dictionaries — Modern 
 Usage— An American Hypothesis Considered. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Digraphs, ...... 62 
 
 Review of the Principal Digraphs of H — The 
 Perfect Digraph WH — Phonic Analysis of 
 W— WH = AV=An Unvocalized W. 
 
 Permutation, . . . . .76 
 
 Philological Science— Grimm's Law — The 
 Future of H. 
 
 Appendix, . . . . . 83 
 
 Rev. W. W. Skeat, M.A., on Silent H's. 
 
PREAMBLE. 
 
 A WRITER in a high-class American periodical * 
 recently expressed his surprise that no English 
 orthoepist or phonologist had made the subject 
 of Aspirates and their misuse one of examina- 
 tion, or of more than a mere passing remark. 
 True it is that in works where dissertations 
 on single vowels occupy pages, and paragraph 
 after paragraph teems with analyses of in- 
 dividual consonants, " poor letter H " is often 
 summed up in a sentence. And yet it is no 
 exaggeration to say that, socially, H is of 
 English letters the most important, and that a 
 systematic trifling with half the vowels and 
 consonants of the alphabet would not be 
 visited with such severe social reprobation 
 as is the omission or misplacement of an H. 
 
 The fraternity of English Grammarians have, 
 it might seem, conspired to withhold from us 
 the means of propitiating this demon Aspirate, 
 which a study of its attributes would afford. 
 Mr Punchy that excellent censor of British 
 
 * English in England. By R. Grant White. In the 
 March number of the Atlantic Monthly Magazitte, 1880. 
 
lO THE LETTER H. 
 
 manners and customs, has been the chief (not 
 to say only) constant attendant to the English 
 H-evil ; but the fleam of his satire — an in- 
 strument as powerful, and often more effective, 
 than the Thor-hammer of the Times — has 
 scarified the abusers of H, without removing 
 much of the abuse. 
 
 The American writer alluded to above enters, 
 with the characteristic daring of his countrymen, 
 upon the treacherous grounds of statistical defi- 
 nition, and states that, in England, " of the forty 
 millions of people, there cannot be more than 
 two millions who are capable of a healthy, well- 
 breathed H." He is treading in safer paths 
 when he says : 
 
 There is a gradation, too, in the misuse of this letter. 
 It is silent when it should be heard, but it is also added, 
 or rather prefixed, to words in which it has no place. 
 Now the latter fault is the sign and token of a much lower 
 condition in life than the former. 
 
 He appears, however, to write in ignorance of 
 
 the customs of many good speakers, and of the 
 
 opinions of several English orthoepists, when he 
 
 adds: " Only Englishmen of the very uppermost 
 
 class and finest breeding say //ome and //otel ; 
 
 all others, 'ome and 'otel!' Further on, he says : 
 
 H, in speech, is an unmistakable mark of class dis- 
 tinction in England, as every observant person soon 
 
PREAMBLE. 1 I 
 
 discovers. I remarked upon this to an English gentle- 
 man, an officer, who replied — 'It's the greatest blessing 
 in the world ; a sure protection against cads. You meet 
 a fellow who is well-dressed, behaves himself decently 
 enough, and yet you don't know exactly what to make of 
 him ; but get him talking, and if he trips upon his H's that 
 settles the question. He's a chap you'd better be shy of.' 
 
 This writer's friend, the " English gentleman," 
 is spokesman to a large class. As the chemist 
 employs a compound of sulphur in order to 
 decide by the reaction whether a substance 
 belongs to the group of higher or of baser 
 metals, so does society apply the H-test to 
 unknown individuals, and group them according 
 to their comportment under the ordeal. There 
 can be no doubt that a tendency of the age is 
 to over-rate the value of H as a critical test for 
 refinement and culture. 
 
 Although instances of well-educated persons 
 who aspirate their vowels wrongly are extremely 
 rare, the partial or even complete omission of 
 Aspirates is far from being an absolute criterion 
 of ignorance or vulgarity. The writer has in his 
 mind's eye a very excellent and scholarly gentle- 
 man, one of the high dignitaries of an order of pro- 
 fessional speakers, who, by strange anomaly, is a 
 sad non-conformist in the matter of H's. But — 
 need one add } — such deviations from rule are 
 as rare in their occurrence as the credentials of 
 
I 2 THE LETTER H. 
 
 learning and social rank must be exceptional 
 that can obtain forgiveness for them in society ; 
 and any man about to choose for himself an 
 eccentricity is not advised to select the uncom- 
 mon one of erudite H-dropping. 
 
 The prevalent disregard shewn for the rules 
 of aspiration by classes of moderately well- 
 educated persons, may be traced to several 
 causes. Young children do not manifest any 
 fine appreciation of the difference between 
 aspirated and unaspirated vowels, and readily 
 acquire a tendency to neglect or misuse the H, 
 so that, unless correctness of aspiration be made 
 a canon of the nursery, these infantile transgres- 
 sions are liable to develop into deeply rooted 
 habit. At a great many middle and lower class 
 schools H-dropping is fostered rather than de- 
 stroyed ; the boys, with all that ingenuous 
 ruffianism that preceding generations so admired 
 in the youth of Britain, discountenance forcibly 
 anything like " affectation," and, if H-droppers 
 be in the majority, render it expedient in the 
 youthful orthoepist to sink his singularity of 
 right in deference to the dominant powers of 
 wrong. A correct pronunciation, when once 
 discarded, is not easily regained — lost H's have 
 a knack of turning up in wrong places, when 
 
PREAMBLE. 1 3 
 
 they return at all. Schoolmasters are not always 
 models^of correctness, and a staff of H-dropping 
 ushers is not likely to impress school-boys with 
 a regard for the Aspirate. Nor is it only in 
 educational institutes of an inferior order that 
 neglect, and even intolerance, is shewn respect- 
 ing the full and proper employment of H. The 
 writer could point out more than one of our very 
 best English schools where (within the last three 
 decades) school-boy tyranny forbade that WH 
 should be pronounced other than W; and *'wip" 
 and " weel " were the only recognized renderings 
 of whip and wheel. The uncertainty attending 
 the words in which the H should be silent, is 
 doubtless also partly accountable for its indis- 
 criminate employment. 
 
 Before inquiring into the history and nature 
 of Aspirates and their symbols, it may not 
 be uninteresting to take a cursory glance at 
 the extraordinary misuse of H in the Metro- 
 polis. The " Cockney Problem " has long 
 been a puzzle to all except superficial obser- 
 vers. One may speculate reasonably as to 
 the probable cause of the Londoner dropping 
 his H's when he ought to aspirate them ; but 
 why he persists in placing H's where they 
 should not be, seems beyond the powers of 
 
14 THE LETTER H. 
 
 reason to explain. The problem is not solved 
 by saying that an H is prefixed in order to 
 emphasize certain words in a sentence, unless 
 at the same time it can be shown that the 
 speaker is consistent in his manner of using it, 
 and that he is not in the habit of putting H's 
 before unemphatic words. This cannot be 
 shown ; whereas the reverse can be demonstrated. 
 To take an extreme instance : the Cockney 
 will wrongly aspirate even the little words of 
 a metrical composition, which are neither im- 
 portant nor emphatic ; and this, moreover, when 
 they are out of accent. In his colloquial speech, 
 Horkney koysters^ 'amshire 'a^n, and 'am and 
 heggSy are expressions he employs with a pro- 
 voking impartiality for the proper and improper 
 use of the H. Stress may have something to 
 do with some of these anomalous uses of the 
 Aspirate, but to what extent is very far from 
 clear. Eggs are perhaps brought more to the 
 fore by becoming heggSy and an H may add 
 to the importance of oysters ; but by what 
 occult method of ratiocination he vindicates his 
 invidious distinction between the rightful claims 
 of ham and the imaginary requirements of eggs 
 must be left for those to explain who can. 
 Various are the suggestions that have been 
 
PREAMBLE. 1 5 
 
 made relative to this phenomenon of misplaced 
 H's ; and if assurance could constitute authority, 
 or the outcome of guess-work be accepted as 
 proof, many of the suggestions would be amply 
 supported in their demands for universal regard 
 and acceptance. Some have believed that 
 aspiration of the vowels is dictated solely by 
 a desire to improve their sounds ; others, that a 
 tendency exists to aspirate every initial vowel (as 
 in Hindostanee), but that exceptions are made 
 wherever they favour fluency and adapt them- 
 selves to ease of articulation. Some, again, say 
 that a pervert method of aspirating had an 
 early origin and has undergone a process of 
 gradual development until the acme of depravity 
 has been reached by the present generation. 
 Or, to add to the list, one might submit that the 
 employment of H's is subjected merely to the 
 purposeless choice of individual speakers ; but 
 that the habit of class-conformity, so inherent in 
 Londoners, is the cause of the prevalent misuse 
 of the Aspirate by certain portions of the com- 
 munity. Each of these theories, however, is 
 found, when tested, to be of very restricted 
 application, or little other than hypothesis : the 
 Emphatic Theory must be acknowledged to be 
 weak ; that of Euphony jars with fact ; the 
 
1 6 THE LETTER H. 
 
 Theory of Adaptation is observed to disagree 
 with practice ; the Theory of Development has 
 no historical basis ; and that of Elective Aspira- 
 tion is arbitrary, and would compel us to re- 
 nounce our speculations concerning a subject it 
 cannot satisfactorily explain. 
 
 One may ask and attempt to answer the ques- 
 tion : Why has H-dropping been made the butt 
 of ridicule in the present century only ? Perhaps 
 one reason is that, formerly, the words in which 
 silent H's were expected to occur were slightly 
 more numerous and even less clearly agreed upon 
 than they are to-day. But a better explanation 
 may be that the H of the past was too distinctly 
 audible to be omitted or inserted unconsciously; 
 whereas the modern dropper of H's is ludicrous 
 in that he remains in blissful ignorance of his 
 errors. It is certain that had H-dropping struck 
 our forefathers as risible, or ridiculous, or had it 
 been regarded as the trade-mark of vulgarity, it 
 would have been made capital of by the satirists 
 of the period. During the latter half of the last, 
 and beginning of the present century, however, 
 the strong English H gave place to the delicate 
 vowel-aspirate, with all the anarchial confusion 
 of laws, use, license and abuse which accom- 
 panies it to-day ; ancWthe H became appre- 
 ciable to refined ears only. 
 
ORIGIN AND DESCENT. 
 
 Many attempts have been made to discover the 
 origin of Chirography — the art of writing. Look- 
 ing back, far back, over the populous plains of 
 Time, the eye of Research seems to have per- 
 ceived four or five germinal spots whence 
 sprang the primitive parents of all known 
 Alphabets. 
 
 The early " untutored savage," who chanced 
 to be provided with an idea he deemed worth 
 recording for the benefit of his fellows, had 
 recourse to what artistic talent he possessed, 
 and roughly expressed his idea in the language 
 of permanent sign. Two circumstances will 
 have conspired to lighten his labours : the first, 
 that a habit of making known his ideas by 
 means of an outward code of signals, will per- 
 haps, have been even more familiar to him than 
 that of expressing them through the medium of 
 speech ; the second, that the burden of his 
 thoughts will not have been heavy with deep or 
 intricate abstractions difficult to express. His 
 rude inscriptions gave rise, in course of time, to 
 the word-painting of China, the picture-writing 
 
 B 
 
15 THE LETTER H. 
 
 of Mexico, and to the hieroglyphs of Egypt. 
 Our business is with the last. 
 
 The truncated sparrows and cavo rilievo 
 crocodiles, constituting the sculptured eloquence 
 of the ancient Egyptians, were found too 
 cumbersome for general purposes ; so they ulti- 
 mately became converted into two varieties of 
 a running hand — the hieratic and the demotic 
 characters. These were Alphabets. One of 
 the characters — a figure suggestive of a circle, 
 of dissolute habits, with a stroke through it — 
 seems to have been the founder of the House 
 of H. The latest edition of the Encyclopcedia 
 Britannicay however, gives FQ as being the 
 earliest representative of the H's. The char- 
 acter first alluded to had this form, Q. The 
 Phoenicians, who derived their Alphabet from 
 Egypt, appear to have been desirous of "squar- 
 ing the circle,'* for in their hands this became^ , 
 or N . The Greek letter was at first □ ; but 
 later on it changed its appearance, becoming H- 
 As such it figures in the Sigean inscription of 
 the sixth century, B.C. Had the Greeks imported 
 their letters directly from Egypt, one might 
 have supposed tJieta (0, or ^), and not eta (H), 
 to have been the immediate descendant of the 
 Egyptian symbol given above. The Samaritan 
 
ORIGIN AND DESCENT. 1 9 
 
 *^0J^, the Chaldean and square Hebrew H (cheth 
 or ketJi), bear marks of a common origin with the 
 Phoenician H, although their general appearance 
 has been brought into conformity with the 
 general appearance of the alphabets to which 
 they respectively belong. 
 
 The astonishing changes of shape seen in 
 early letters, are also accounted for by the nature 
 of the processes by which they were usually 
 formed, as when a scribe would endeavour to 
 write quickly with a metal style on a soft tablet; 
 or an explanation of them may be found in the 
 alterations that will, from time to time, have 
 suggested themselves to the fancy of the cali- 
 graphist. Extreme credulity and extreme scepti- 
 cism are, as a rule, found blended in the natures 
 of those people who refuse to believe that a 
 chain can have existed if any of its links happen 
 to be lost ; and lest any such persons find the 
 differences of form in the above H's to be an 
 obstacle to a belief in their descent from a com- 
 mon ancestor, some specimens of evolution quite 
 as wonderful are selected from more modern 
 typography, and given below — 
 
 Ibf <?^H JH H 
 
 Tradition asserts that the Greeks received 
 
20 THE LETTER H. 
 
 their alphabet from the Phoenician Cadmus 
 (1493 B.C.). There is reason to beheve that H 
 had its formal representative among their oldest 
 letters, although Pliny states it to have been 
 introduced after the Trojan War. Mr H. N. 
 Coleridge* says, with regard to the Greek : — 
 " After H (or tj) was appropriated to express the 
 long E, the rough breathing was not indicated 
 in writing at all till the time of Aristophanes of 
 Byzantium, who divided the H, and made one- 
 half of it (h) the mark of the aspirate, and the 
 other half of it ( "-I) that of the /ene. By degrees 
 
 these marks became "" and ^ ; and hence, 
 
 in the cursive character ' and ' marking the 
 vowels." These last signs (* and '), Professor 
 Geddes humorously styles, "the ghosts of a 
 vanished consonant." 
 
 " This practice of spiritualizing, or of sending 
 letters aloft, that were supposed to have a turn 
 for climbing, has always existed in languages 
 {Encyclop. Brit.y 1842)." As examples we have 
 the two dots and the line "" that hover over 
 some words, and may generally be recognised 
 as being the shades of a departed e. 
 
 The Romans derived their alphabet from the 
 
 * The Greek Classic Poets^ 1 834. 
 
, ORIGIN AND DESCENT. 2 I 
 
 Greeks; and the Roman characters are those 
 now in general European use. 
 
 The claims of H to a high respectability are 
 conclusively established by a genealogical re- 
 view of its ancient lineage. It may be that 
 
 " Some storied urn, or animated bust '' 
 
 may yet be the means of calling back the forms 
 and "fleeting breath" of many of the unknown 
 and rude forefathers of H, that are now lying 
 in the great mysterious Asiatic burial ground. 
 
DISTRIBUTION. 
 
 Our attention may now advert to the phonetic 
 significance and distribution of the symbols of 
 which we have just considered the historical 
 aspect. 
 
 The sounds represented by the earliest alpha- 
 betical characters can only be a subject for con- 
 jecture ; the sounds of those we have had under 
 consideration were probably very pronounced, 
 ranging from that of a strongly guttural kchy to 
 that of the jerked breath occurring in a short, 
 emphatic, English "bah!" 
 
 We have seen that the Greek character 
 was early mutilated; but the rough-breathing 
 powers of the Greek H were transferred to the 
 sign ' and we may conclude that the Greeks were 
 at one time very partial to the asper, their 
 writers finding it necessary to prefix a special 
 sign, the lene ( ^ ), when vowels were not to be 
 aspirated. 
 
 In Latin also the H was at first harsh ; but 
 later on indications occur of the decline and fall 
 of the Roman H in the fact of Quintilian com- 
 plaining of the h-dropping propensities of his 
 
DISTRIBUTION. 23 
 
 contemporaries. In his time, Latin writers 
 already afifected great freedom even in the 
 orthography of words containing an H ; its 
 presence or absence in such words as ho7iestus^ 
 ahcemiSy &c., being apparently viewed with con- 
 siderable indifference. Cicero strongly censures 
 its gratuitous introduction into words. The 
 Romans are thus responsible for ancient (if not 
 venerable) precedents in eclectic H-dropping. 
 
 The Sclav and Latin languages have treated 
 the Aspirate with spare courtesy, having let it 
 become the mere " shadow of a sound/' or 
 allowed the letter to dwindle into an altogether 
 insignificant symbol. In Italian, "that soft 
 bastard Latin," the H is practically a dead 
 letter, and has left no legitimate offspring. The 
 Tuscan dialect, however, has afforded a local 
 habitation to all the banished H's of Italy ; and 
 the saying, ''Lingua toscana in bocca romana^' 
 may be held to be an indirect allusion to the 
 dislike that the Italians bear to the Aspirate. 
 In French, the H is never an Aspirate; it 
 merely hardens the vowels in certain words, e.g.y 
 haie, hameaUy hieroglyplUy &c., and its office is a 
 sinecure in others. When it hardens a vowel, 
 it forbids a liaison with the last consonant of 
 the preceding word. But in Spain, letter H is 
 
24 THE LETTER H. 
 
 treated with systematic barbarity. Not only is 
 its presence disregarded, but, since the days of 
 the Almoravids (eleventh century), or even from 
 an earlier date, its rightful office as an Aspirate 
 has been usurped by letter J. Besides this, its 
 literal identity has been allowed to get con- 
 fusedly mixed up with that of the letter F ; so 
 that Latin words while undergoing the process 
 of acclimatization on Spanish soil have been 
 observed to exchange an H for an F, e.g., Lat., 
 facere = Sp., hacer, which is nevertheless pro- 
 nounced *'acer." A reverse permutation oc- 
 curred in the Sabine fircus (a buck) and the 
 Latin hircus. 
 
 The Slavonic tongues are weak or deficient 
 in H's. In Russian H has the value of N. 
 
 Turning to the Teutonic and Keltic stocks, 
 one notices a marked contrast in the fortunes 
 of H. In High German it has retained an 
 important and prominent position ; although, 
 generally speaking, it is less conspicuous in Low 
 German tongues. The simple Aspirate, and the 
 other and harsher varieties of H, were univers- 
 ally received into the Keltic languages ; the 
 Cymric branch shewing a slight preference for 
 the former, and the Gaelic for the more guttural 
 variety. Prof. Geddes remarks : " The Gaelic 
 
DISTRIBUTION. 25 
 
 alphabet contains a letter to which, apart from 
 a partial parallel in Greek, I am not aware of an 
 exact parallel in any tongue. It begins no words, 
 heads no vocabulary in the dictionary, and yet 
 is found everywhere diffused over a Gaelic page." 
 Something partly similar appears to exist in 
 Sanscrit, a highly aspirated language with 
 seemingly no purely initial H. Max MuUer* 
 and most other writers give S ^s being the 
 Sanskrit H, whereas some affirm it more pro- 
 perly to represent gh, 
 
 Arabic and other Shemitic languages abound 
 with Aspirates ; in the former, at least, they do 
 stalwart service. Throughout that large group 
 of languages which resist systematic classifica- 
 tion, and are chiefly known through the works 
 of Tylor, Lubbock, and others, or still more 
 recently through the agency of the missionaries, 
 — e.g.^ the languages of North America and of 
 Polynesia — Aspirates are copiously distributed. 
 The Maoris are wont to substitute an H for 
 several of the European speech-sounds, against 
 which their vocal organs rebel. 
 
 In English, the omission of H's that ought to 
 be heard, is peculiar to England, and especially 
 
 * The Sacred Books of the East (1879). The Up- 
 anishads, page Iv. 
 
26 THE LETTER H. 
 
 marked in London and the Southern counties. 
 The Lowland Scotch are free from the defect ; 
 and the people of the Highland districts and the 
 North run to the opposite extreme, and give to 
 their H's a strong guttural sound. The Irish 
 and Welsh are also free from it. Men of Eng- 
 lish parentage and American birth, New Eng- 
 landers, Virginians, &c., are correct in their use 
 of the Aspirate (vide Atlantic Monthly, No. 
 269). That the Americans are without this 
 H-trait, may be accounted a result of the pre- 
 dominance of North British and Irish immi- 
 grants. 
 
 His Eminence Cardinal Manning, when 
 favouring the writer with some valuable notes 
 on the subject of Aspirates, gave, as his opinion, 
 that the dropping of H's in England cannot be 
 explained by foreign influences. The Aspirate 
 IS put on and put off in certain counties — as in 
 Middlesex and Gloucestershire — with long local 
 traditions ; and he believes that, like the Greek 
 digamma, it refuses all submission to criticism. 
 
HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH H. 
 
 There is something startling in the announce- 
 ment that were William Shakespeare to hear 
 one of his plays read by a good speaker of our 
 own day, it would be less intelligible to him than 
 if spoken in the Somersetshire dialect. So great 
 is the change in English pronunciation. This 
 fact prepares us for the discovery that great 
 alterations have taken place in the significance 
 of individual letters ; and that the phonetic 
 value of letter H has changed also. 
 
 Dr Johnson, in 1755, wrote: "Grammarians 
 of the last age directed that an should be used 
 before H, whence it appears that the English 
 anciently aspirated less." 
 
 "The great Doctor uttered many hasty things." — 
 
 Thackeray, 
 
 Dr Johnson's suppressed premiss is negatived 
 by his own proteg^^ Goldsmith, in whose writings 
 a7i occurs before every variety of H ; a fact 
 which shows that an and the Aspirate were not 
 generally considered to be incompatibles. That 
 their juxtaposition does not of itself offend the 
 
28 THE LETTER H. 
 
 modern ear, may be proven by uttering the 
 words " than have " and " they have^' in which 
 the Aspirate is heard to follow the n and the 
 vowel-sound with equal grace and fluency. 
 There are, moreover, many reasons for enter- 
 taining an opinion directly opposed to that ex- 
 pressed by the great lexicographer ; and for 
 believing the powers of the English H to have 
 been steadily on the decline since the days of 
 primitive English. In all Aryan languages, H 
 has a tendency to mollify and decay ; and its 
 powers are always found to be most strongly 
 marked in Germanic tongues that are in nearest 
 historical relation with their common Teutonic 
 ancestor. 
 
 Inductively, one is led to believe that the 
 English Aspirate is less strong than formerly. 
 This belief will acquire support from the follow- 
 ing argument : — 
 
 It will be remembered that prior to the in- 
 troduction of terminal rhymes, the laws of 
 Prosody were based upon principles slightly 
 different from those of to-day ; our ancestors, 
 preferring an identity of consonant-sounds to an 
 assonance of vowels, required that syllables to 
 rhyme should begin with the same letter — the 
 
HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH H. 29 
 
 system being known as ALLITERATION. If we 
 bear in mind how much must have depended on 
 the distinctness and strength of the aUiterative 
 rhymes of early verse, where the metrical 
 management and rhythmical cadence were far 
 from being irreproachable, we shall readily con- 
 cede that the bard will have selected for his use 
 the strongest and most distinct rhymes that the 
 language could supply. " Rhymes to the eye," 
 as they are called, would have been utterly 
 useless, from the fact of poetry being then com- 
 posed for oral rendering, and the hearers 
 generally ignorant of spelling. It is, therefore, 
 agreeable to reason to conclude that all sounds 
 employed in alliterative rhyming were distinctly 
 audible, strong, and emphatic. Now, on looking 
 over alliterative verses of the seventh to 
 thirteenth centuries, one cannot fail to be struck 
 by the frequent occurrence of rhymed H's : 
 their proportion being, in many poems, in excess 
 of that of any other letter. Modern poets, it is 
 true, have not unfrequently pressed H into 
 service as an alliterative rhyme, but in so doing 
 they have afforded ample proof of the inefficiency 
 of the modern English Aspirate, when acting in 
 that capacity. One of the best specimens of 
 
30 THE LETTER H. 
 
 modern alliterative H-rhymes is that in one of 
 Moore's American poems : — 
 
 "And I said, * If there^s peace to be found in the world, 
 A /iea,rt that is tumble might ^ope for it /^ere.' " 
 
 But the alliteration is scarcely appreciable, un- 
 less the rendering be accompanied by undue 
 aspiratory efforts. Whenever we hear a run of 
 words rhyming alliteratively in H, it is highly 
 probable that only half the pleasure we experi- 
 ence is conveyed to us by ear, and that the other 
 half is of a subjective nature, and arises from 
 our knowing the letter H to enter into the forma- 
 tion of the words, and the alliteration would be 
 almost lost to us were we ignorant of their 
 orthography. Hence, it is rather from an associa- 
 tion of ideas, than from an effect produced on 
 the organs of hearing, that we derive the 
 pleasure ; and the modern H, indicating as it 
 does merely a like modification in the phona- 
 tion of the several vowels to which it is prefixed, 
 cannot be regarded as having a distijict sound 
 of its own, nor, consequently, as constituting a 
 perfect alliterative rhyme. Do not the mute 
 H's of the following words give results nearly as 
 satisfactory as the H's in the above quotation.^ — 
 
 The ht\x that is //onest will //onour the //our ! 
 
HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH ,H. 3 I 
 
 Considering, then, the faintness and the 
 nature of the Aspirate of to-day, and its in- 
 sufficiency for purposes of alliteration, we seem 
 at liberty to conclude that the Anglo-Saxon 
 and Early English H, so much affected of the 
 early poets, was stronger than our own, and 
 had, in all probability, retained much of the 
 pristine power of its Teutonic harshness. 
 
 That the sound of the Anglo-Saxon H bore 
 a resemblance to that of an unvocalized y (see 
 page 37), is made manifest by the free inter- 
 change of h and y in ancient MSS. The sub- 
 stitution of surds for sonants, and vice versdy is 
 common to the early stages of the development 
 of all orthographical codes. 
 
 Mr Ellis, whose researches have thrown great 
 light on these matters, gives as his opinion — 
 
 In Anglosaxon^ a final h was equal to the ch of 
 loch, or German dach. In the thirteenth century the 
 sound of H seems to have been very uncertain^ and in the 
 fourteenth it was lost in those words before which a vowel 
 was elided. In the sixteenth it was pronotmced or not^ 
 differently from the present custoin/*" 
 
 There exists a belief — perhaps on no very 
 firm foundation — that the Normans could not, 
 or would not, aspirate their H's ; and the idea 
 
 * Early English Pronunciation, with especial reference 
 to Shakespeare and Chaucer. By Alex. J. Ellis, F.R.S. 
 
32 « THE LETTER H. 
 
 gains some support in the period of decadence 
 of the strong English H having commenced 
 subsequently to the Norman invasion. It is, 
 however, not easy to understand how these 
 Norsemen should have learned to entirely aban- 
 don the use of H in consequence of a century 
 and a half's residence in Neustria. Salesbury, 
 a Welsh linguist, exhumed by Mr Ellis, im- 
 plies moreover that, as late as the sixteenth 
 century, the French still aspirated at least some 
 of their H's, and Littr6, in his admirable dic- 
 tionary, declares the Norman Aspirate to be in 
 a state of good preservation (" trh-7tettement co7i- 
 serv^'') in our own day. The old Norse H had 
 been, according to Rask, Grimm, and Ellis, a 
 vigorous and thriving aspirate ; Rapp gives it as 
 having been equal to kh. But presuming that, 
 prior to the Invasion, the Normans had become 
 droppers of H's, would enable one to account 
 for the unsettled state of the English H in the 
 thirteenth century, when English reappeared 
 as a national speech (1258). Also, according to 
 this latter view, a habit of not aspirating would 
 have been greatly in vogue for a time, and for a 
 Saxon to have dropped his H's would have been 
 equivalent to an announcement of good breeding 
 and aristocratic acquaintances, or of his being 
 
HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH. H. 33 
 
 in the habit of frequenting the court and other 
 haunts of the Norman nobility. But when the 
 language of the vanquished began to overcome 
 that of the conqueror, the Aspirate must have 
 entered upon a new era, and H's again have 
 prevailed in the land. Still the new H had not 
 the vigour of the old one — the guttural of the 
 Anglo-Saxon. In the fourteenth century, as men- 
 tioned by Mr Ellis, its employment was subject to 
 various rules ; and this will have probably been 
 the period during which the first mute H's received 
 public recognition, being tolerated as a sort of 
 compromise or concession made to an aristocracy 
 little partial to H's. Throughout the remaining 
 centuries there have been rules of some sort 
 governing — though very laxly — the employment 
 of the Aspirate. But the powers of H were gradu- 
 ally, surely, and steadily waning, until, at length, 
 its strong guttural sound finally and completely 
 evanesced towards the latter half of last century. 
 Presuming that the reader consents to re- 
 cognise the antique origin, the unbroken line of 
 descent, and the rough, sturdy ancestry of our 
 English H, it may be interesting to notice that 
 in 1847 appeared the second edition of a critical 
 work on the English Language,* written in 
 
 * Kritishes Lehrgebdndcs der euglischcn Sprache. Leipzig. 
 C 
 
34 I'HE LETTKR H. 
 
 German (by a fellow of Cambridge), purporting 
 among other things to prove to the omniscient 
 Teuton, that in England the aspiration of H's 
 is altogether a modern invention, a fanciful 
 outcome of recent orthoepical dogmatism ; and 
 that by good speakers it is practically ignored. 
 Concerning this writer, Mr Ellis says, " His 
 principal argument is the retention of an^ mine^ 
 thine, &c., before words beginning with H, in 
 the authorised version of 1611. The lists of 
 words with mute H given by Palgrave, Sales- 
 bury, &c., were of course unknown to him. If, 
 however, he had been aware of the loose manner 
 in which H is inserted and omitted in Layamon, 
 the 'Genesis and Exodus,* Prisoner's Prayer, 
 and other writings of the thirteenth century, he 
 would doubtless have considered his point esta- 
 blished. In practice, I understand from a 
 gentleman who conversed with him, he omitted 
 the H altogether." 
 
MODERN ASPIRATES. 
 
 The English H has been variously classified, 
 and still more variously and vaguely defined. 
 Some phonologists have discovered in it the 
 properties of a vowel; most have agreed to 
 regard it as a consonant. Webster declared it 
 to be " not strictly a vowel nor an articulation, 
 but a letter sui generis'' — a negative classification 
 that may be accepted to-day. The letter has 
 been termed the symbol of a guttural breathing, 
 an evanescent breathing, a mere breathing, a 
 strong breathing, a whisper, and "a propulsed 
 aspiration" (B, H. Smart) \ and some affirm it 
 to be " no sound at all." 
 
 The English H represents an action rather 
 than a sound. When the action indicated ac- 
 companies the utterance of a vowel, a change is 
 produced in the vowel-sound ; hence. Bishop 
 Wilkins (1668) called the H a "guttural vowel" 
 — not, however, a particularly happy definition. 
 
 In stating H to be "a letter siii generis^' 
 
 Webster enounced a truth that many have 
 
 Lseemed inclined to overlook. Consonants are 
 
36 THE LETTER H. 
 
 distinct sounds that precede or follow other 
 consonants and vowels; but the Aspirate be- 
 comes part of any vowel it accompanies. This 
 may be otherwise expressed by saying, that in 
 aspirating we emit a noiseless current of un- 
 vocalised breath that gradually vocalises itself 
 into an aspirated vowel. The truth of the 
 assertion may be tested by pronouncing an 
 aspirated vowel, e.g., "ha," and observing that 
 no change in position of the vocal organs occurs 
 during the act. In uttering a syllable consist- 
 ing of a consonant and a vowel, a change of 
 position is requisite to the formation of each 
 constituent element — for example, in the case 
 of "fa." Thus then, the H in well-spoken 
 English does not represent a distinct and inde 
 pendent sound ; but prescribes a breathing that 
 modifies the vowel it accompanies. It is A 
 SIGNAL TO ASPIRATE THE SUCCEEDING VOWEL. 
 This oneness of the vowel and its H is pro- 
 ductive of a change in the natures of both. 
 The a in "h^^ll" is as different from that in 
 "^11," as is the Aspirate of "//all" from that of 
 " //eel." It follows, therefore, that these Aspir- 
 ates are equal in number to the vowel-sounds 
 (said to be about seventeen), and that the letter 
 H represents them all. For convenience sake, 
 
MODERN ASPIRATES. 37 
 
 one speaks of "the sound of an H," "to pro- 
 nounce, or aspirate an H," and "to drop an 
 H ; " meaning respectively, the sound of an 
 aspirated vowel, to aspirate, and to omit to 
 aspirate a vowel with an H before it. 
 
 As already submitted, most H's may, now-a- 
 days, be said to be soundless, although not *' Silent 
 H's ; " the latter might with more propriety be 
 termed functionless letters. To soundless H's 
 one exception distinctly occurs in English ; to 
 wit, the H that precedes the long ?7, as in hue, 
 huge, humor, &c. This H — a phonetic link 
 between the ancient English H's and the modern 
 Aspirate — has a sound of its own, and may be 
 heard. Elevating the base of the tongue so as 
 to leave a narrow aperture between its centre 
 and the palate, we emit, with vocalized breath, 
 the sound y heard in yew ; with breath that is 
 not vocalized we produce the subdued, palatal 
 grating sound constituting the H oihue. Hence, 
 Hu represents a vowel preceded by an audible H, 
 and not a vowel-sound that is aspirated. The 
 Arabic ^ corresponds to the H of HU. 
 
 Other kinds and degrees of H are enumerated 
 by Mr Ellis, who gives a list of six. They vary 
 in power from that of the scarcely audible 
 aspiration that the Cockney introduces into 
 
38 THE LETTER H. 
 
 " park " (paahk), to that of the jerked breath 
 that h' represents in bah\ The breathings of the 
 different H's vary also in degree of intensity- 
 according to the nature and strength of their 
 vowels ; being most pronounced in the case of 
 long and open vowels, — compare "^ard'* and 
 "/nt." 
 
 Some writers have described aspirated vowels 
 as being whispered vowels. The error of this 
 description is obvious to the most superficial 
 observer ; it would mean that aspirated vowels 
 are unvocalized. A man, moreover, need not 
 drop his H's though he holloa through a speak- 
 ing trumpet. 
 
 Vocalized breath is that which carries with it a sound 
 produced by vibrations of the vocal chords. These 
 are situate in the larynx, and may be felt vibrating, by 
 placing the hand on the throat while they are in action. 
 " Krantzenstein and Kempelen have pointed out that the 
 conditions necessary for changing one and the same sound 
 into different vowels, are difference in the size of two parts 
 — the oral canal and the oral opening," {vide Kirkes' Physi- 
 ology). Some consonants are produced by this kind of 
 breath, but with the concurrence also of certain move- 
 ments of the lips, tongue, &c., and they are called soncmts 
 or voiced consonants : Ex. — /, w, r, &c. 
 
 Unvocalized breath is that employed in whispering. 
 With the assistance of certain movements of the speech- 
 organs, unvocalized breath produces in ordinary speech a 
 class of consonants that are called surds or h'cathed con- 
 sonants : Ex.— ^ s, f, &c. 
 
MODERN ASPIRATES. 39 
 
 Note. — T is of the class Q,2iiS{^dimome7itary or explosive 
 consonants. They need the help of a vowel, or of a 
 voiced consonant, in order to express themselves fully. 
 This circumstance, together with the fact of vocalised 
 breath entering into the formation of many consonants, 
 will probably account for the common notion that no con- 
 sonant can be uttered without a vowel accompaniment. 
 The independence of the sibilant s^ offers alone a sufficient 
 refutation of the assumption. It is in Polynesia that 
 savages are found who cannot put two consonants 
 together without a vowel between them. 
 
 -^sthetically considered, the modern English 
 H is an important embellishment, and adds im- 
 mensely to the strength and pleasing effect of 
 speech. The Aspirate can render certain dis- 
 cordant sounds of our language half euphonious, 
 breathing gently on a hard vowel, deepening its 
 tone and swelling its volume. As an instance, 
 take the pronoun /and the adjective high ; and 
 notice that the vowel-sound in the latter is by 
 far the more pleasing, approaching almost that 
 of the soft ai of the Italian. In oratory, a pre- 
 ponderance of aitch'd words in a passage allows 
 of great energy of utterance without risk of it 
 degenerating into an affected or bombastic tirade 
 of "big-sounding" words. 
 
 H is an earnest letter. It is a noteworthy 
 coincidence that a large portion of those words 
 associated with strong and violent actions and 
 
40 THE LETTER H. 
 
 emotions have the Aspirate : hcw^ heave, hate, 
 abhor, &c., together with the ejaculations, Ho ! 
 Ha! Hollo! Hurrah! Hang it! (an exclamation 
 used by Geo. Wither, born A.D. 1588), &c., are 
 examples. In Elocution, the Aspirate lends 
 itself to the expressing of propinquity, bringing 
 the scene and the sound of the action within a 
 more proximate compass. The union of H 
 with most consonants results in the production 
 of smooth sounds. The euphonic ^^sweetnesses*' 
 of Mr Swinburne's richly mellifluent verse, will 
 be found, on analysis, to depend greatly on the 
 two powers of TH and those of other digraphs 
 of H. Writers on the subject of Natural 
 Significance, or Specific Import of Articulate 
 Sounds, who have mostly been adherents to the 
 Epicurean or Pooh-Pooh theory, have in some 
 instances limited the primary emotional signifi- 
 cance of an Aspirate H to the denoting of a 
 desire or craving. It may reasonably be asked, 
 whether they have not identified a part with 
 the whole, and whether every awakening of 
 intense feeling does not find its natural expres- 
 sion in an aspirated vowel. 
 
 The manner in which the H is used by our 
 best writers, shows they appreciated its vigour 
 and stress-giving properties. In Shakespear, 
 
MODERN ASPIRATES. 4 1 
 
 the H is most frequent in salient passages and 
 epigrams. It plays a conspicuous part in the 
 grand, deep anthem-eloquence of Dryden's full- 
 toned lines ; and in the verses of Byron and 
 other strong writers its powers are judiciously 
 applied. A recognition of the honest vigour of 
 aspirated words is conspicuous in an aphasresis 
 perpetrated for histrionic purposes by Mr Henry 
 Irving, who has informed the writer that he 
 sometimes drops the H in " humbleness — " 
 
 " as in Shylock's speech to Antonio : * 
 
 ' Shall I bend low, and in a bondsman's key, 
 With 'bated breath and whisp'ring (h)umbleness, 
 Say this . . . / 
 
 where the idea is much better expressed by the omission 
 of the Aspirate." 
 
 There are persons to whom the simple act of 
 aspirating, will never have suggested the idea 
 of difficulty ; but there are many others (who 
 in their ordinary speech, put H before half the 
 vowels that do not require it) who are totally 
 at a loss when asked to aspirate a given vowel. 
 They either aspirate unconsciously or not at 
 all. If the reader has never attempted to 
 reform a persistent H-dropper, by teaching him 
 
 * Merchant of Venice, x\ct i., Scene 3. 
 
42 THE LETTER H. 
 
 the value and nature of the Aspirate, he can 
 form no adequate idea of the extreme difficulty 
 of the task. Some people can learn everything 
 but H's. " Speak as though you were breathing 
 on glasSy' is a practical precept often laid down 
 for the benefit of young children ; and is one 
 deserving of the consideration of many of their 
 elders ; for, as a matter of fact, in pronouncing 
 the words hay^ he, high, hoe, before a mirror, one 
 will observe that four successive breath-marks 
 are thrown on the cold surface of the glass ; 
 whereas none will be seen if one drop the H's. 
 In pronouncing the H of HU, the markings are 
 scarcely discernable or altogether absent ; the 
 breath-stream having become diverted and 
 attenuated by friction against the palate. In 
 Aspirating ha I the breath-marks are very dis- 
 tinct ; but still more so in the case of the jerked 
 terminal h' of a quick, contemptuous bah' ! 
 
 The above experiment is valuable as affording 
 an insight into the phonation of the modern 
 English Aspirate, and as a means by which the 
 new convert from the H-dropping heresy may 
 learn to avoid the opposite error of excessive 
 zeal in the production of his H's. It is notice- 
 able that the early aspirative labours of a con- 
 verted H -dropper give birth to monstrosities. 
 
MODERN ASPIRATES. 43 
 
 He pronounces Jiandy heart, &c., as though the 
 vowels were preceded by the ch of \och. This is 
 a reversion to a former type of H's, but not the 
 developed modern Aspirate. The physiological 
 difference in the formation of aspirated and non- 
 aspirated vowel-sounds appears to be, that, in 
 aspirating, the oral passage is rendered more 
 cavernous, and a greater volume of breath is 
 emitted. This may be partly verified by utter- 
 ing the Italian a before the mirror. When the 
 same vowel is aspirated {Jid)^ the soft palate is 
 seen to be slightly raised, while the tongue is 
 depressed and slightly retracted, thereby causing 
 an enlargement of the cavity through which the 
 sound passes. 
 
 The H, in some positions, is not easily 
 managed. In colloquial speech it is frequently 
 left out of little words that are of minor import- 
 ance to the sense. In a homely rendering of, 
 " You saw how high (h)e held (h)is head," the 
 occluded h's would be nearly lost. Such a pro- 
 nunciation, though not one to be highly com- 
 mended, finds its excuse in convenience, and can 
 claim some degree of extenuation in a very 
 antique origin, and of justification in extensive 
 usage. 
 
 In the case of short, unaccented syllables of 
 
44 'i^HE LETTER H. 
 
 a metrical composition, as in the following 
 instance, 
 
 " But Marmion said that ever near, 
 A lady's voice was in h\s ear, 
 And that the priest ^e could not /zear." . . . 
 
 and in this couplet — 
 
 He /^eeds it not ; 'mid eddied /weaving foam 
 Hq Aears the echoes of his island //ome, 
 
 difficulties are presented in the way of a regard 
 for H's and for metre. Under all circumstances, 
 to stop and stutter is inelegant, to repeat a word 
 for the sake of giving it its dropped H, has a 
 ludicrous effect ; and to attempt by a powerful 
 effort to aspirate some particular vowel, will 
 often result in a promiscuous scattering of H's. 
 The only advice to the novice is : select 
 difficult passages,* and practice them repeatedly 
 — speak slowly and carefully. One must 
 endeavour to aspirate with ease, letting the 
 result be light, not forced, though distinct to the 
 ear. Each person should use discretion, and 
 suit the degree of aspiration to the power of his 
 
 * Persons who consider themselves experts in the art of 
 aspirating might do well to procure " Harry Hawkins* H 
 Book; shoiumg how he learned to aspirate his ITs,^'' and put 
 their aspirative faculties to a crucial test, by reading aloud the 
 story of **The Hairy Ape." The little book cannot be too 
 warmly recommended as a practical and amusing method of 
 learning to aspirate. 
 
MODERN ASPIRATES. 45 
 
 voice. The degree suitable to some persons 
 would require an effort on the part of others 
 to imitate. The great thing necessary is once 
 thoroughly to understand the nature of the pro- 
 cess, and then to remember where to apply it. 
 The performance will gradually become a result 
 of reflex action and be gone through correctly 
 but unconsciously. 
 
 H-dropping must be overcome, and the 
 misuse of H avoided ; the world is intolerant 
 of dissent from customs established ; and 
 orthoepy, or correct pronunciation, is a car- 
 dinal virtue, although, in common with most 
 other of the "orthos," it is endowed with 
 chameleon-like faculties of change. 
 
THE SILENT H. 
 
 It has been seen that the letter H is a signal to 
 aspirate. The term mitte, otiose or SILENT H, 
 implies that the signal means nothing, is use- 
 less, and is intended to be disregarded ; that it 
 is a false beacon, an orthographical encum- 
 brance, and a trap for the unwary. Lumber of 
 this sort is to be found in certain words, but in 
 which ones, has always been a profound mystery 
 from the fact of it having been so often ex- 
 plained ; and information was unobtainable, by 
 reason of a multiplicity of informants. Where 
 the H is silent, has been difficult to determine ; 
 why the H is silent, cannot be determined at 
 all. This much has long been divulged ; it is 
 silent in hoicr, honour^ honesty Jieir^ and most 
 of their formatives ; the rest is darkness — in 
 the dictionaries. On no point of English pro- 
 nunciation have authorities more notoriously 
 disagreed than on that of words beginning with 
 H ; and if any one wishes to see the fathers 
 of English Orthoepy at loggerheads, or the 
 
THE SILENT II. 47 
 
 Doctors of Modern English Pronunciation in a 
 muddle, let him glance at the H section of 
 their several dictionaries. 
 
 Be it, however, remembered that the work of 
 the writer of pronouncing dictionaries is one of 
 extreme difficulty, and that his short-comings 
 are often of the most excusable kind to be met 
 with in the whole field of literature. The ety- 
 mologist has scientific fact to deal with ; the 
 lexicographer is by tacit consent, and in virtue 
 of that fiction of fictions " etymological con- 
 servation," allowed, to some extent, to jurisdict 
 or appeal to precedent in matters of ortho- 
 graphy ; but the professional orthoepist is ex- 
 pected to catch and register the passing sound 
 of a nation's speech. There is no discretionary 
 power attached to his office ; his duty is to dis- 
 cover who are representative speakers among 
 his contemporaries, and — by a sort of arith- 
 metical process — to determine what pronuncia- 
 tion is prevalent among them. Hence his 
 entire task is one of appalling magnitude. But 
 he has discovered a meretricious means of 
 lightening his labours, which consists in refer- 
 ring to his predecessors in cases of extra uncer- 
 tainty ; the result frequently being that he gives 
 as modern an obsolete pronunciation. It is evi- 
 
48 THE LETTER 11. 
 
 dent that several words in which the silent H is 
 concerned have undergone this treatment. 
 
 In the very good old times, ere spelling- 
 books had created " bad spellers," every writer 
 was, in a small way, a phonographer ; that 
 is, he wrote words as he heard them pro- 
 nounced. The system did not favour unifor- 
 mity of spelling, but resulted in most words 
 being written in two or three different ways, 
 some in fifteen, or even twenty. Instead of 
 animadverting on the subject of these discre- 
 pancies, or attributing them to the undeter- 
 mined value and inadequate supply of alpha- 
 betical symbols,^we may better serve our present 
 purpose by simply noticing that it was custo- 
 mary for early scribes to insert the letter H in 
 some words wherein it is now generally supposed 
 to have been silent. We see at once that the 
 facts of the case militate against this modern 
 belief in ancient silent H's. For, if the majo- 
 rity of these early penmen, whose minds were 
 neither in an appreciable degree biassed by 
 precedent, nor haunted by the forms of ortho- 
 graphical bogies, habitually inserted an H, it is 
 evident that the letter was intended to have a 
 phonetic significance, and had very probably a 
 strong phonetic value. The same conclusions 
 
THE SILENT H. 49 
 
 have been arrived at by Mr Ellis, who sees no 
 reason for believing that H was not audible in 
 hoJior^ lionest^ and hour in the time of Chaucer 
 — say 1400. Collateral evidence in support of 
 Mr Ellis's views is to be found in the fact of 
 the doubtful words occurring in alliterative 
 verses of an early date ; and of their occurring 
 in such a manner as to allow of the supposition 
 of their H's being implicated in the allitera- 
 tions as, what are termed by Professor Skeat, 
 " rime-letters." 
 
 In the age of Chaucer (and, in diminishing 
 degrees, down to our own day), it was customary 
 to drop the H's of short, unaccented syllables in 
 poetry, provided that these were not placed in a 
 position immediately succeeding a metrical 
 pause. But, as far as the writer is aware, the 
 sixteenth century is the earliest that has 
 furnished a record of any words having been 
 habitually written with H's and pronounced 
 without them. Palsgrave, in 1530, gave honest, 
 honour, habimdance, and habitation as having 
 each an otiose H. Salesbury (1547), in his 
 Welsh Dictionary, says that H is held silent in 
 " French and Englysh, in such wordes as be 
 derived out of Latyne, as these : honest, habita- 
 tion^ humble, habit, Iwneste, Jionoiwe, exhibition, 
 D 
 
50 THE LETTER H. 
 
 and prohibition ; " whereas he aspirates it in 
 humour. Gill (1621) adds hour and hyssop as 
 having a mute H ; and aspirates in ^erb, /^eir, 
 and humbleness. Jones (1701) makes it mute 
 in swine-herdy Heber, Hebrew, hecatomb , hedge, 
 HelleUy herby hermit, and some others. Smart 
 (1836) reduced the whole list of words with a 
 silent H to heir, honest, honour, hostler, hour, 
 humble, and humour; and modern usage con- 
 sents to a still greater reduction. 
 
 The suppression of H's has been observed to 
 have been chiefly exercised in words coming to 
 us from the Latin, through the French language. 
 It seems that Salesbury, quoted above, regarded 
 this, or something like it, as having been a rule. 
 But we find records of some words of neither 
 French nor Latin origin having also had silent 
 H's assigned to them ; and we have the still 
 more important fact that the Franco-latin 
 words in which the H is aspirated are greatly 
 in excess of those in which it ever was silent 
 — the latter really constituting a very insigni- 
 ficant minority. In the third line of The Vision 
 of Willimn, 
 
 In //abite as an //ermit * un//oly of workcs, 
 we have convincing proof that Langland (1332- 
 1400?) had no regard for the etymology of his 
 
THE SILENT H. 5 I 
 
 Aspirates. Certainly, French words of Latin 
 origin have constantly taken the aspirate when 
 their etymology was in the least obscure. 
 Thus, hearse (which most people do not know 
 is French, and still less do they think it repre- 
 sents the Latin [ace], hirpicem'^) has always 
 retained its Aspirate. Moreover, it were one 
 thing to be able to prove that a certain pro- 
 nunciation would be etymologically correct, 
 and another to show that the pronunciation of 
 a language is corrected by etymology. We are, 
 in fact, at liberty to regard the English silent 
 H, as being practically devoid of active etymo- 
 logical sponsers. 
 
 Taken collectively, these different data very 
 strongly suggest the idea of silent H's having 
 been, if not born of, at least very assiduously 
 fostered, and promoted with almost paternal 
 solicitude, by the judgment or fancy of theo- 
 retically-inclined orthoepists. If, on the other 
 hand, the early orthoepists were really honest 
 in their pretensions to chronicle the actual pro- 
 nunciation of their day, the result of their 
 endeavours still remains open to the objection of 
 inaccuracy, by reason of the special difficulty 
 they will have experienced in recognizing a 
 
 * See Skeat's Etymological Dictionary of the English 
 Language. Oxford University Press, 1880. 
 
52 THE LETTER H. 
 
 standard to go by. Nothing can, now-a-days, 
 screen them from a suspicion of having exer- 
 cised their powers of imagination equally 
 with those of observation ; nor can their 
 partial disagreements exonerate them from the 
 charge of a traditionary collusion in cases of 
 extra perplexity. If asked, with what weight 
 this same charge might be brought to bear on 
 our more recent compilers of " modern pro- 
 nouncing dictionaries,'* the writer of the present 
 treatise would, under the plea oi coram nonjudice^ 
 take refuge from the onus of pronouncing an 
 invidious decision. But if asked why the com- 
 paratively modern dictionaries quoted on the 
 opposite sheet, are, in some instances, so fla- 
 grantly at variance with the best modern usage 
 with regard to pronunciation, he would unhesi- 
 » tatingly reply that they are so chiefly out of 
 deference to the opinions of the gentleman who 
 wrote the first complete pronouncing dictionary 
 and lived over a hundred years ago. 
 
 If it be granted that of yore, orthoepists based 
 their decisions with regard to the silent H on 
 no other authority than that of their own asser- 
 tions, or on dogmatic, or even spurious etymo- 
 logy, it flows as a corollary that these ancient 
 law- givers can claim no allegiance from modern 
 speakers. And again, if modern compilers of 
 
THE SILENT II. 
 
 53 
 
 DICTIONARY CONCORDANCES. 
 
 " H" prescribes the Aspirate ; " v ' indicates that the vowel is not to be aspirated. 
 The pronunciation recommended in this work is shown in the first column. 
 
 
 
 Wk. 
 
 J- 
 
 0. 
 
 N. 
 
 Wor. 
 
 S. 
 
 R. 
 
 C. 
 
 D. 
 
 B. 
 
 HEIR . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 HOUR . . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 HONEST. 
 HONOR . 
 
 V 
 
 V 
 
 V 
 
 V 
 
 V 
 
 V 
 
 V 
 
 V 
 
 V 
 
 v 
 
 v 
 
 and all their 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 formatives 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 except 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 honorarium a«d? 
 
 V 
 
 
 
 V 
 
 
 
 H 
 
 
 H 
 
 V 
 
 
 honorary. 
 
 V 
 
 V 
 
 
 V 
 
 
 V 
 
 V 
 
 V 
 
 Horv 
 
 V 
 
 
 HERB. . . 
 
 H 
 
 V 
 
 V 
 
 V 
 
 V 
 
 V 
 
 H 
 
 V 
 
 H 
 
 Horv 
 
 H 
 
 herbaceous . 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 V 
 
 V 
 
 H 
 
 V 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 
 herbage . . 
 
 H 
 
 V 
 
 
 V 
 
 Horv 
 
 Horv 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 Horv 
 
 
 herbal . . . 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 
 V 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 
 herbalist . . 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 
 V 
 
 
 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 
 herbivorous . 
 
 H 
 
 
 
 V 
 
 
 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 
 herborisation . 
 
 H, 
 
 
 
 V 
 
 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 
 HOSPITAL . 
 
 H 
 
 V 
 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 Horv 
 
 H 
 
 hospitalier 
 
 H 
 
 
 
 H 
 
 
 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 
 hospitable . . 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 
 H 
 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 
 HOSPICE . . 
 
 H 
 
 
 
 H 
 
 
 
 H 
 
 
 Horv 
 
 H 
 
 
 HOTEL . . 
 
 H 
 
 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
54 THE LETTER H. 
 
 DICTIONARY CONCORDANCE "^^Continued. 
 
 
 
 Wk. 
 
 i 
 
 J. 
 
 O. 
 
 N. 
 
 Wor. 
 
 S. 
 
 R. 
 
 C. 
 
 D. 
 
 B. 
 
 HOSTEL . . 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 
 ' H 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 
 hostelry . . 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 
 Hostler . . 
 
 
 V 
 
 V 
 
 V 
 
 V 
 
 V 
 
 v 
 
 H 
 
 Horv 
 
 Horv 
 
 V 
 
 {ostler) . . . 
 
 V 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ; hosteler . . 
 
 1 
 
 H 
 
 
 
 
 
 H 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 ' HUMOR . . 
 
 "f 
 
 smart 
 &c. 
 
 proposed 
 , should be 
 
 that t 
 aspira 
 
 his wc 
 ted. 
 
 rd, 1 
 
 ■nean 
 
 ing mc 
 
 )isture, 
 
 1 
 fluids,' 
 
 humoral . . 
 
 H 
 
 V 
 
 H 
 
 V 
 
 Horv 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 V 
 
 V 
 
 
 HUMOUR . 
 
 Horv 
 
 V 
 
 V 
 
 H 
 
 
 Horv 
 
 V 
 
 H 
 
 Horv 
 
 V 
 
 V 
 
 humourism . 
 
 Horv 
 
 
 
 H 
 
 V 
 
 Horv 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Humourist . 
 
 Horv 
 
 V 
 
 
 H 
 
 
 V 
 
 V 
 
 H 
 
 Horv 
 
 V 
 
 
 humourous . 
 
 Horv 
 
 V 
 
 
 H 
 
 
 V 
 
 V 
 
 H 
 
 
 V 
 
 
 humoursome . 
 
 Horv 
 
 V 
 
 
 1 H 
 
 
 V 
 
 V 
 
 H 
 
 
 
 
 HUMBLE . 
 
 H 
 
 V 
 
 V 
 
 V 
 
 Horv 
 
 Horv 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 or V 
 
 Horv 
 
 Horv 
 
 HUMILITY 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 
 V 
 
 
 
 
 H 
 
 
 H 
 
 
 A blank generally indicates that no distinct opinion is expressed in the work 
 consulted. 
 
 KEY TO REFERENCES. 
 
 Wk. 
 
 J. 
 O. 
 
 N. 
 
 Wor. 
 
 S. 
 
 R. 
 
 C. 
 
 D.- 
 B.- 
 
 fCritical Pronouncing Dictionary. By John Walker. Glasgow: Blackie & 
 
 ^ Son. 1847. 
 
 iDictionary of the English Language. By Samuel Johnson. 4th Edition. 
 
 "^ ^786. 
 
 J Comprehensive English Dictionary, By John Ogilvie, LL.D. London: 
 
 1 Blackie & Son. 1874. 
 
 (Pronouncing Dictionary of the English Language. By P. Austin Nuttall, 
 
 J LL.D. London : Geo. Routledge & Sons. 1873. 
 
 jCritical Pronouncing Dictionary. By Joseph E. Worcester. London: Geo. 
 
 ( Routledge & Sons. 1875. 
 
 (Etymological and Pronouncing Dictionary. By Rev. Jas. Stormonth. Lon- 
 
 ( don: Wm. Blackwood & Sons. 1879. 
 
 (Webster's Improved Pronouncing Dictionary. By Chas. Robson. London': 
 
 ( Ward, Lock & Tyler. No date— r^ccrxt. 
 
 JDictionary of the English Language. By Arnold J. Cooley. London and 
 
 1 Edbro': W. & R. Chambers. No date— recent edition. 
 
 -Chambers Etymological Dictionary. By Jas. Donald, F.R.G.S. 1878. 
 
 -Bell's Standard Elocutionist. London : Wm. Mullan & Son. 1879, 
 
THE SILENT H. 55 
 
 "pronouncing dictionaries," being the direct 
 descendants of the ancient orthoepists, assume 
 the right of hereditary legislation, and persist in 
 their attempts to govern our modern pronuncia- 
 tion by the worthless traditions of their pre- 
 decessors, the yoke of their archaical jurisdiction 
 must be thrown off altogether. We may there- 
 fore approach the question of " What words now 
 have silent H's ? " entirely free from the bias of 
 traditionary lore, and from the pressure of anti- 
 quarian and etymological considerations. 
 
 When preparing to obtain a firm basis upon 
 which to found and sustain a plea for the recog- 
 nition of a standard pronunciation founded on 
 contemporary usage, the writer solicited the 
 advice of Professor Bain, whose friendly assist- 
 ance was partly conveyed in the following : — 
 
 *^ Where usage conflicts, we must first decide 
 who are to be received as authorities. It seems 
 to me that the stage is better than any other, 
 and the habits of great actors might be referred 
 to. The cultivated society of the metropolis 
 ought to furnish a guide, but we can hardly fix 
 upon a person representing them." 
 
 Acting according to the spirit of this advice, 
 the writer has consulted the USAGE OF CULTI- 
 VATED SOCIETY as represented by a number of 
 gentlemen whose various qualifications emi- 
 
56 THE LETTER H. 
 
 nently fit them to fulfil the conditions laid down 
 by Dr Bain * The result of the inquiry, and of 
 personal and attentive observation, furnishes 
 the following rules : — 
 
 Rule I. H is silent in Heir, Honest, Honor, Hour, 
 and in their formatives, inclusive of honorarium (15) 
 and honorary (18). 
 
 The figures represent the number of persons (among 
 those consulted) who adhere to the particulars of these 
 rules. 
 
 Rule II. In Humour and its formatives (be they 
 verbs, substantives, or adjectives) the H may be 
 either silent (10), or not (9). 
 
 In Humor (meaning fluid, moisture, Sec.) and its 
 formatives, the H is sounded. 
 
 Rule III. H is Aspirated in all other words in 
 which it occurs. These include the following 
 and all their formatives — Herb (17) ; Hotel 
 
 * The following gentlemen kindly furnished the writer with 
 an account of their habitual pronunciation of words in which 
 the silent H is implicated : — Mr Matthew Arnold ; Mr Samuel 
 Brandram ; Mr Robert Browning ; Rev. Derwent Coleridge ; 
 The Very Rev. the Dean of Chichester ; Right Hon. W. E. 
 Forster ; His Grace the Duke of Richmond and Gordon ; Pro- 
 fessor Huxley ; Mr Henry Irving ; Sir Wilfrid Lawson ; His 
 Eminence Cardinal Manning ; Sir James Paget ; Mr F. E. 
 Sandys (Public Orator of Cambridge) ; Right Hon. Lord Sel- 
 borne ; Right Hon. Lord Sherbrooke ; Rev. C. H. Spurgeon ; 
 Very Rev. Dean Stanley ; Mr Edmond Yates ; and a distin- 
 guished meml)er of the present Ministry (1880). 
 
THE SILENT H. 57 
 
 (i6); Hospital (17); Humble (18); Humility 
 (19), &c., &c. 
 
 Notes. It is difficult to find a reason why an excep- 
 tion should be made in favour of ho?iorariu7n and honor- 
 ary; and, unless the H of these words can offer a better 
 plea for entering into the pronunciation than can the H's 
 of the other formatives of Honor, we may — after the 
 style of Lucian in his trial of the letter T — move for its 
 expulsion. The rejection of an anomaly is a valuable 
 improvement of which judgment approves, and which a 
 love of regularity will vindicate and maintain. Unifor- 
 mity presents so many advantages, that small concessions 
 of opinion will be willingly made in order to secure it. 
 
 With regard to Hostler, there is a balance of opinion 
 — (8) being in favour of the Aspirate, and (11) against 
 it. The pronunciation of the word should be m^de de- 
 pend on the speUing. 
 
 In 1775, Perry waged war with Kendrick concerning 
 the H of Humour, and threw down the gauntlet in favour 
 of a y-sound. Subsequently, Enfield entered the lists on 
 the side of Kendrick ; while Walker, Sheridan, and a 
 host of others, ranged themselves on the side of Perry ; 
 and Smart at length proposed that the respective claims 
 of H and Y should become matters for the optional de- 
 cision of a perplexed public. Hence the phonetic render- 
 ing of the word in most modern dictionaries is indiffer- 
 ently *' yu'mur" or " hu'mur." Webster's verdict was curt 
 and concise : "The pronunciation "yumur" is odiously 
 vulgar !" His words lose their edge in our day, for the 
 " odious '^ practice prevails with a great number of good 
 speakers. The present writer, if permitted to advance 
 an opinion, would say that to his mind to drop the H 
 " is a custom more honoured in the breach than the ob- 
 servance ; " and that they secede in very good company 
 who aspirate. 
 
 The H oi Humble \i2iS of recent years been reinstated 
 
58 THE LETTER H. 
 
 in public favour by the late Mr Charles Dickens, whose 
 "Uriah Heep" remains a warning to evil-doers and 
 h-droppers. It would be a boon to all speakers of 
 English if a series of "Uriahs" could contrive to ehmi- 
 nate every otiose H from the language. 
 
 H's that occur in the body of words, as in 
 fore/^ead, exhibit, &c., are weaker than initial 
 H's ; but a regard for them marks a refined 
 speaker. The h of " exhibition " may be con- 
 sidered lost, so also the h in the " ham " of 
 names — e.g.^ Bucking(h)am, Bal(h)am, &c. Long 
 words, especially of a classic origin, often pay 
 dearly for suddenly acquired popularity; and 
 when any extraordinary event with which they 
 are nominally connected puts them accidentally 
 into the mouths of the people, they generally, 
 in becoming household words, are clipped of 
 much of their early dignity. 
 
 In parenthesis, a word about the indefinite 
 article. One very excellent grammar says : — 
 
 Many of the best writers, as Macaulay, use an before 
 H (not silent) when the accent is on the second syllable : 
 '^ an historical parallel." 
 
 Some words beginning with a vowel are pronounced 
 as if they began with a consonantal y : ewe, eunuch, 
 eulogy, European, useful, &c. Before such words some 
 writers use an."*" 
 
 A journalistic acquaintance lately informed 
 
 * A Higher English Grammar. By Alex. Bain, LL.D. 
 Professor of Logic in the University of Aberdeen. 
 
THE SILENT H. 59 
 
 the writer that the use of an before u (when =jv) 
 is a feature of EngHsh journaHsm, the Scotch 
 being more addicted to a. The former method 
 is more correct to the eye ; the latter to the 
 ear : uniformity favours the former. The em- 
 ployment of an before H-out-of-accent {e.g.^ 
 hypothesis, harmonium, hiatus, horizon) is a 
 nicety, and arises from a fastidious application 
 of the law of Euphonic Adaptation. 
 
 Reverting for the last time to the history of 
 the silent H, it is almost necessary to mention 
 that an ingenious American writer (to whom 
 we have already referred) was recently engaged 
 disseminating opinions at variance with those 
 adduced in this work. In a cleverly-written 
 article, he says : — 
 
 I venture the conjecture, which, however, is somewhat 
 more than a conjecture, that the suppression of H was 
 once very widely diffused throughout England among all 
 speakers, including the best, during which time — a very 
 long one — the function of H was to throw a stress on the 
 syllable which it ushered in, as it is in the Spanish word 
 hijos. 
 
 He further suggests that vulgar h-dropping 
 of to-day may be a survival of a former accepted 
 method of pronunciation. Se non h vero, k ben 
 trovato, and this recognition of the emphasizing 
 power of H is highly commendable. But it 
 cannot be conceded that the old English H was 
 
6o THE LETTER H. 
 
 normally passive, and only roused into phonic 
 activity on occasions of emphatic emergency ; 
 nor can it be allowed that the Spanish com- 
 parison is a felicitous one, it being rather that 
 which an opponent might have adduced could 
 he have deemed it to have had any bearing 
 whatever on the point in question. This writer 
 ought to have borne in mind that the h of hijos 
 happens to be mute, whereas they is an Aspirate. 
 There is nevertheless much valuable matter in 
 his article. It is moreover of service as an 
 example of error ; its author having fallen into 
 a conclusion that lies open to those who allow 
 their attention and judgment to become ab- 
 sorbed in the frolics of H's in some of the old 
 MSS. He points out, for instance, that in the 
 "Lay of Havelok the Dane" (1280), the words 
 eye, earl, ever, &c., have H's ; and he assumes 
 the spelling to have represented an allowable 
 pronunciation, neglecting, however, to take into 
 consideration that this Lay is among the worst 
 of examples, from the fact of its being essentially 
 a provincial production (Sir F. Madden believes 
 it to have hailed from Lincolnshire), and one in 
 which meaningless H's are uncommonly pre- 
 valent and letters arejcuriously placed. Although 
 ancient writers habitually endeavoured to write 
 a word as they spoke it, they did not resist the 
 
THE SILENT H. 6 I 
 
 temptation of occasionally adding an idle letter, 
 or of employing one as an orthographical ex- 
 pedient. In modern German, H is made serve 
 in the latter capacity; its duty being to lengthen 
 the vowel that precedes it; e.g., in the word BohUy 
 "give it an understanding but no tongue." The 
 H prefixed to **eye" in Havelok, if not simply 
 a scrivener's blunder, may be a result of meta- 
 thesis or of commutation, or of the two acting 
 simultaneously— Ormin {circa 12 lo) wrote the 
 word " eshe." But, to refrain from speculative 
 meanderings, one may refer to Mr Ellis, who 
 mentions that in Havelok H is unnecessarily pre- 
 fixed in holde (line 30), hete (146), het (653), hof 
 (1976), &c., &c., and with no sort of uniformity ; 
 and, in giving the intended pronunciation, he 
 affirms these H's to be meaningless as signs of 
 aspiration. 
 
 The most that, with a due regard for fact and 
 authority, can be conceded to the writer of the 
 magazine article above referred to, is that H, 
 being formerly a harsh sound, was not .un- 
 frequently omitted for the sake of fluency in 
 the same manner as whole syllables are occa- 
 sionally lopped off by careless speakers. This 
 concession, by-the-bye, is not specified in his 
 treatise. 
 
DIGRAPHS. 
 
 When two vowels are blended, the result is 
 a diphthong ; when two other letters unite, the 
 result is usually called a DIGRAPH. 
 
 H may give trouble to some persons when 
 speaking their mother tongue ; as to the Briton, 
 who should, and to the Frenchman, who must 
 not aspirate; but the digraphs of H are uni- 
 versally admitted to be among the most serious 
 difficulties that beset a man who is trying to 
 acquire the pronunciation of a language not his 
 own. The German ich is liable to dwindle into 
 " ik " in the mouth of an Englishman, and into 
 " ish " in that of a Frenchman ; with Italians 
 and some others it is unutterable. The modern 
 Greek delta, and more especially y^&, often 
 undergo cacophonic metamorphoses when en- 
 trusted to the care of well-meaning philhellenists; 
 a digraph of H enters into the phonetic com- 
 position of most of the shibboleths of Eastern 
 tongues ; and, in the estimation of many 
 foreigners, the bugbear of our English pro- 
 
DIGRAPHS. 63 
 
 nunciation is spelt TH. In Britain, the ch of 
 
 \och and Au^/^termu<:^ty remains the Caledonian 
 
 pass-word. 
 
 The following are the more common digraphs 
 
 of Ri- 
 ch, GH, PH, SH, TH, 
 
 BH, DH, KH, LH, NH, RH, ZH, 
 
 WH. 
 
 The first five are perfect digraphs, a phonic 
 union of parts is effected, and a new sound pro- 
 duced ; thus, neither " hat," with the sound of 
 c before it, nor "cat," with its vowel aspirated, 
 will give the sound heard in "^//at," /. C+H is 
 not =CH. 
 
 CH has three sounds: — ky (<://aos); sh^ (ben^//) ; 
 and a third, compound, tsh {church), 
 
 GH is a digraph to perpetuate the memory of 
 English orthographical anomalies.* It is used 
 in writing seventy-five words, and in sixty-three 
 of them its presence is ignored entirely ; in nine 
 it is equivalent to^ and in three it represents a 
 
 * Note [by Professo?' Skeat). — There is a ridiculous notion 
 that Uy forsooth, must precede GH. Hence thogh, rightly pro- 
 nounced with Oy is actually spelt though. Laghter, rightly pro- 
 nounced with a (as in Italian ^), is spelt laughter. Through 
 is quite correct : ou as in soup. Spellings like caught, slaughter, 
 are not only mistakes for caght, slaghter, but the misspel- 
 ling has affected the pronunciation. Gh is a comic question 
 altogether. 
 
64 THE LETTER H. 
 
 g. It Signifies nothing in " hi^//," " Hu^/2," &c. ; 
 and in " flight," " night," &c., it retains the same 
 signification. In Old Saxon, and in Anglo- 
 Saxon, " high " was written kea^ heag, hig, heaJi, 
 hehy hihy &c. A spirit of impartial justice in- 
 stigated later writers to take in both the g and 
 the h. Professor Meiklejohn (St. Andrews) 
 mentions the opinion held by some, that the 
 Normans would not pronounce gutturals, and 
 disregarded the Saxon terminal /2's, wherefore 
 the scribes attempted coercion by strengthening 
 their Aspirates with a g. The result must have 
 been a failure, since both the k's and their 
 g-prefixes became lost to the pronunciation of 
 most words. The English words in which GH is 
 an initial digraph 2X^ ghastly, ghosty diXid gherkin; 
 in the two former the H is altogether adven- 
 titious. There exists a proneness to transpose 
 the h and the / of height, (Saxon, heath, hihth, 
 &c,), in consequence of which, and with a super- 
 fluous d, it becomes "heidth." This mispro- 
 nunciation is recorded by Jones as early as 
 1 70 1. The practice will arise from a natural 
 tendency of the mind to bring into conformity 
 the sounds of words that are associated in 
 their meanings — \tngth, depth, bread///, width 
 ergo: "heidth"! 
 
DIGRAPHS. 65 
 
 PH has the sound of / (s///ere). In Ste/Zaien 
 and ne///ew it stands for v. 
 
 SH is the French j (/oli), unvocalised. The 
 Anglo-Saxons had not this digraph, but it 
 appeared some centuries after the conquest, 
 which suggests the possibility of its having been 
 introduced by Norman influences. Some curious 
 philologist may perhaps undertake to sub- 
 stantiate or demolish the theory that the Anglo- 
 Saxons learnt to pronounce SH by attempting 
 to utter the French J. Certain it is that the 
 words jfe me jette a genoux would become 
 changed into " Sheh me shett ah sheenoo " by 
 the average German of to-day. The substitu- 
 tion of SH for ss in the word assume produces 
 an odd-sounding archaism, yet one that is occa- 
 sionally met with in otherwise good speakers. 
 According to Jones, " ai-/mme " was correct 
 speech in the seventeenth century. 
 
 TH of thin and TH of then are elementary 
 sounds represented now-a-days by two letters 
 each. The former is produced by passing un- 
 vocalized breath through a narrow aperture left 
 between the fore-part of the tongue and the 
 edge of the upper teeth (the central incisors) ; 
 the second by the same position of the speech- 
 E 
 
66 THE LETTER H. 
 
 organs, but with breath that is vocalized.* 
 Common errors are, to confound the TH of 
 bath, path, wreath, &c., with that of bathe, paths, 
 wreathe, &c.. The former are unvocalized, as 
 in thin. 
 
 Of the digraphs of the second row Httle need 
 be said. With one exception they are rarely- 
 used. BH, DH, KH, and ZH are English ren- 
 derings of the aspirated consonants of Asiatic 
 languages. LH is a legacy from the Anglo- 
 Saxon. NH is Portuguese. In RH the H is 
 excessively useless ; it is disregarded, and the R 
 remains unchanged. That man deserved to have 
 his name recorded who first invented the h of 
 "rhyme.'* He will have traced a technical con- 
 nection between rime and " rhythm ; " and will 
 have followed the latter to its Greek source 
 (pbd/iog). His next act, the insertion of rime's 
 apparently lost //, will have seemed to him one 
 only of mere reparative justice. His excellent 
 motives and his perspicacity might have met the 
 admiration of posterity, had not his etymology 
 
 * According to Carpenter's Physiology^ to pronounce TH, 
 " the point of the tongue is applied to the back of the incisors, 
 or to the front of the palate.'''* Such injunctions as these are 
 doubtless strictly followed out by foreigners learning English, 
 the unavoidable result naturally being that thin and then be- 
 come approximately *'sin" and *'szen." 
 
DIGRAPHS. 67 
 
 been so egregiously faulty, and the word rime^ 
 a direct descendant of the Saxon rim, and as 
 independent of a Greek as of a Cherokee origin. 
 But the h he inserted is there still, and cannot 
 be cast off by any daring iconoclast without an 
 outcry being raised in its behalf by alarmed 
 traditionists : for our orthographical creed is 
 derived from our forefathers, impressed with 
 the accumulated evidences of their quaint blun- 
 ders, their venerable ignorance, and admirable 
 errors of judgment, all to be assiduously copied 
 by each of us their descendants, as an alterna- 
 tive to being scouted for bad spellers. Thus it 
 is that things originating in a weakness or per- 
 verse use of the reasoning faculties of an ances- 
 tor, may grow to be regarded as a virtue in a 
 descendant. 
 
 WH, 
 
 Our attention may now advert to the perfect 
 diagraph WH. 
 
 Alexander Gill, a contemporary of Shake- 
 speare, and Head Master of St Pauls Schools, 
 wrote, " W, aspiratiim, 'consona est, qtcam scri- 
 bunt per wh, et tamen aspiratio prcecedit!' (W, 
 aspirated, is a consonant which is written why 
 and yet the Aspirate precedes it.) Dr Lowth 
 (17 10-1787), Bishop of London, is quoted by 
 
68 THE LETTER II. 
 
 Mr Walker as having directed that WH should 
 be pronounced " HW," this having been the 
 relative positions of the letters during the 
 Anglo-Saxon period. The erudite theory of 
 the great Hebrew and Saxon scholar had a 
 fascination for the theoretical orthoepist of 
 whom Mr Cull, F.S.A., the learned editor of 
 Ogilvie's Dictionary, writes : — 
 
 Mr Walker did not profess to record the current pro- 
 nunciation of his day, but he sought to establish prin- 
 ciples and even rules to govern the pronunciation ; and 
 would change the pronunciation of words to bring them 
 within his rules. 
 
 It is probable that Dr Lowth, who, practically, 
 is the responsible author of this theory of in- 
 version, was led to his conclusions as much by 
 his belief that W was a vowel as by the histori- 
 cal considerations alluded to above. As regards 
 W being always a vowel, Dr Lowth's argument 
 was successfully refuted by Walker himself, 
 whose statements in this respect, Posterity has 
 endorsed. W is a vowel only when forming 
 the latter half of a diphthong. And, moreover, 
 even if the W were a vowel, Dr Lowth could 
 have shewn no good reason for inverting the 
 order of letters in pronouncing the digraph 
 WH. The retrospective influence of a post- 
 aspirate has no power to produce a breathing 
 
DIGRAPHS. 69 
 
 on a vowel, or 07i a consonant ; but generally to 
 cause a vowel to terminate in a jerked breath 
 (//j') or a consonant to become unvocalised. 
 And again ; that Anglo-Saxon writers had been 
 wont to twist H round to the fore, was an 
 irrelevant fact, and one that ought to have had 
 no weight with the worthy bishop or with Mr 
 John Walker when engaged in dictating laws of 
 pronunciation to the English lieges of King 
 George III. When Walker wrote the follow- 
 ing sentence concerning Dr Johnson, he was in 
 truth constructing a formula for his own 
 epitaph : — 
 
 His Dictionary has been deemed lawful plunder for 
 every subsequent lexicographer ; and so servilely has he 
 been copied, that his mistakes re-appear in several other 
 dictionaries. 
 
 And so it is that Mr Walker's second-hand 
 rule with regard to WH has retained the im- 
 plicit allegiance of all his successors who have 
 had pronouncing dictionaries to compile. In 
 the presence of such massive authority, to speak 
 is to be silenced, and to differ is to be crushed. 
 But still, as is seen in many things, the most 
 imposing and august array of venerable doctrine 
 cannot always stifle the "still small voice" of a 
 contrary conviction. Who shall say that Dr 
 
70 THE LETTER H. 
 
 Primrose had not been looking over a collection 
 of pronouncing dictionaries, when he remarked 
 that, as ten millions of circles can never make a 
 square, so the united voice of myriads cannot 
 lend the smallest foundation to the untrue. 
 
 A purpose of this treatise is to respectfully 
 solicit of modern authorities a reconsideration 
 of the doctrine of transposition or dictum relative 
 to the WH ; and at the same time to lay certain 
 data before the general reader. 
 
 Clear notions concerning the ordinary W are 
 necessary to a proper appreciation of that variety 
 occurring in WH. 
 
 The vowel-W is simply oo j thus, in pew^ *'^w" is a 
 diphthong and equal in sound to eoo. 
 
 The consonant-W is a buzzed oo plus a rapid transition 
 into the sound that succeeds it. Let ^^^ represent the 
 buzzed 00, and ( the rapid transition : 
 
 W = (~^( ). 
 
 If, while pronouncing oo, we narrow the labial aper- 
 ture by approximating the edges of the upper and lower 
 
 lips, the sound is produced. If, while producing the 
 
 sound ^^ , we enlarge the labial aperture with sudden 
 rapidity ( (), a perfect consonant-W results. Thus : 
 
 "we" = -— (e; and, "woo" = (OO. 
 
 Let WH be represented by ^. The differ- 
 ence between W and ^w is that W is produced 
 by vocalised breath and certain lip-movements 
 
DIGRAPHS. 7 1 
 
 as described above ; whereas ^ is produced by 
 the same lip-movements^ but with tmvocalised 
 breath. Hence, in Heu of the buzzing sound, we 
 find in tW a whispered or " whistled breath." It 
 is this breath-sound of ^ which has been so 
 persistently mistaken for the Aspirate H. The 
 sole office of the H in this digraph is to prescribe 
 the unvocalization of the W. The nature of the 
 subject renders it difficult to parade proofs of 
 these facts on the pages of a book, in order to 
 convince persons who, having a veneration for 
 Mr Walker's hoo hoo theory, might wish to up- 
 hold in theory that which they probably depart 
 from in practice. By careful attention to most 
 thoroughly good speakers it will be noticed that 
 an unvocalised W (^) is the phonic rendering 
 of the digraph WH ; although the " whistled 
 breath " may be mistaken for an Aspirate by a 
 careless observer, or by one resolute in error. 
 
 It is not easy to understand why these facts 
 are not more widely recognised and insisted 
 upon by modern orthoepists and writers on 
 phonological science ; and it is very difficult 
 to attribute a cause to the longevity of the 
 erroneous notions that Mr Walker was an early 
 means of disseminating. When we see in our 
 pronouncing dictionaries that whip is to be pro- 
 
72 THE LETTER H. 
 
 nounced " hwip/* the only belief open to us is 
 that their writers intend two vowel-sounds to 
 be heard in a word containing only one vowel ; 
 for they can scarcely mean that the h shall 
 aspirate a consonantal w, nor that a jerked Ji' 
 shall precede the word (thus K 4- wip), nor can 
 they desire that the h shall aspirate a whistle 
 — H^ip. To say the least, the rendering of any 
 of these would require a vocal gymnast to make 
 it effective. But if two vowels are to be em- 
 ployed, the first must needs be aspirated and the 
 second not ; so that a phonetic spelling of whip 
 and why would be " hoo ip " and " hoo i " ! And, 
 according to Mr Walker and his disciples, this 
 is the correct pronunciation. But the fact 
 remains that even those gentlemen, who in their 
 dictionaries have scrupulously reproduced Mr 
 Walker's rule, have seldom been known to violate 
 the principles of a correct pronunciation by 
 adhering to it when speaking. The sore straits 
 to which the rule occasionally reduces them 
 might elicit pity. " Hw " is found to be un- 
 manageable before ^ ; and therefore we find that 
 since the days of Mr Walker, a perfect unanimity 
 has prevailed among orthoepists with regard to 
 the extrusion of W from the pronunciation of 
 every word in which the digraph WH precedes 
 
 1 
 
DIGRAPHS. 73 
 
 an o ; whence it comes that in all dictionaries in 
 common use, whole, whom, who, &c., are phonetic- 
 ally expressed " hole," *' hoom," " hoo," &c. ; for, 
 according to their method, to retain the W were 
 to give these words the sound of hoo ole, hoo 
 oom, and hoo oo ! If, on the other hand, one 
 remember that WH is an unvocalized W, no 
 more hesitation will be experienced in giving 
 it its due before an o than before any other vowal. 
 ^ole, y^oom, and AV^o, are quite as easy to 
 pronounce as /^ist, J\l\ipy or ^ale. Who is, 
 however, very frequently made an exception by 
 the best speakers of English, and pronounced 
 ''hoo.'' The word lost its ^w in the seventeenth 
 century, and does not seem in a fair way to re- 
 cover it. 
 
 Mr Ellis, so far as the writer is aware, is 
 the only authority who has entered a protest 
 against the modern conception of WH ; and he 
 gives it as his opinion that, from the earliest 
 times, WH — whether mistaken for Hw or Hoo 
 — has always been and still is, if rightly pro- 
 nounced, WH. 
 
 This digraph is peculiar to the English lan- 
 guage. English-speaking people differ in their 
 manner of using it. In the south of England, 
 it is seldom more than W; and which and 
 
74 THE LETTER H. 
 
 what are pronounced " wich " and " wot." The 
 educated classes must, by courtesy, be supposed 
 without the pale of this accusation. In the 
 northern parts of England WH is decidedly 
 more correctly used ; in Scotland the pronun- 
 ciation of it is perfect. In few cases would it 
 be other than absurd to seek, out of England, 
 for a criterion of English pronunciation ; but 
 this is one of the exceptions wherein the norm 
 is best found north of the Tweed. Scotch 
 H's are harsh and grating, or like the H of HU 
 (see page 37), or akin to the results of those 
 guttural spasms that attend the primiparous 
 aspirate-labours of a reformed H-dropper ; and 
 the Scotch are known to wrongfully accuse 
 Englishmen of dropping H's, that in reality 
 have been properly aspirated ; but the Scotch 
 neither exaggerate nor neglect the proper ren- 
 dering of WH, and even their farm-labourers 
 are worthy to be taken as models.* Whale, 
 whelp, when, ivhere, whole, are, in Scotland, dis- 
 
 * This only applies to occasions on which they indulge in 
 English speech. The Anglo-Saxon WH (written Hw) had 
 formerly a more palatal sound, and while passing into ^V had a 
 tendency to become yC In the Aberdeenshire dialect it has re- 
 mained /*; e.g., fan, far — when, where. Many such eccentric 
 permutations are amusingly anaglyptographed in that monu- 
 ment of the ** Aberdeenshire Doric," Johnny Gibb o' Gushet- 
 NEUK. (Ed'bro' : D. Douglas.) 
 
DIGRAPHS. 75 
 
 tinctly and properly, A\^l^> M^^P^ M^^> M^^^> 
 and ^ole. Notwithstanding this indisputable 
 fact, the four varieties of Ogilvie's excellent 
 dictionary (the northern Scotchman's lexical 
 fetishj give "hwale," " hwen," &c., as being the 
 received pronunciation. In so doing they agree 
 with all contemporary productions of their 
 kind. The rationale of the inversion is a mys- 
 tery ; but a clue to the cause of this and other 
 errors-upon-precedent, would very probably be 
 found to have Mr John Walker at one end of it 
 and the conservative spirit of subsequent orthoe- 
 pists at the other. 
 
PERMUTATION. 
 
 The principles of reciprocal interchange of 
 sounds, which are actively at work whenever 
 new languages are coming into being, or old 
 ones are splitting, or falling into decay, can only 
 be adequately apprehended by obtaining a 
 general but clear view of the entire scheme of 
 philology. The annals of H would, however, 
 be glarmgly in default if no mention were made 
 of its relations to foreign letters. 
 
 Philology is a modern science. Leibnitz 
 rescued it from the domain of pure fancy ; Sir 
 William Jones supplied it with ground to work 
 upon ; Bopp (a great authority on ancient 
 Aspirates), Pott, and a host of others, began 
 to build. The Greeks had been impressed with 
 the idea that their language came from their 
 gods ; this made the study of alien tongues 
 appear unimportant ; hence, Greek philological 
 research ended where it began. Analogous con- 
 victions shut the gates of progress on the most 
 civilized of the Shemitic races. The Romans, 
 again, when seeking to discover the origin of 
 tongues, looked eastward for inspiration ; but 
 
PERMUTATION. 77 
 
 they did not look far enough. Long genera- 
 tions of their successors burrowed, like moles, in 
 the Plains of Shinar. Grimm came, and there 
 was light. The name of this great German 
 philosopher has become so inseparably asso- 
 ciated with the sudden strides made by modern 
 linguistic science, as to have raised him from 
 the ranks of philological pioneers, and placed 
 him — in popular estimation — at the head and 
 front of the whole enterprise. Whatever be the 
 exact degree of his merit as a discoverer or 
 thinker, as a successful propagator of rational 
 views he stands a colossus and a marvel. Labled 
 fragile by the sceptic, and dangerous by the 
 orthodox, his theories out-lived both grimaces 
 and frowns, and within a few years of their birth 
 aroused Europe to the fact that a " Babel " had 
 been, and still was, both within and around 
 her ; and, seemingly by miracle, they even suc- 
 ceeded in carrying conviction and recognition 
 of a truth that confuted tradition, to the very 
 centres of some of the ecclesiastical circles of 
 the day. Grimm's discoveries, while pointing 
 out the slow but constant changes that lan- 
 guages undergo, showed also that all the lan- 
 guages of Europe and half those of Asia had 
 sprung from a common origin- and that, not 
 
78 
 
 THE LETTER H. 
 
 the Hebrew one dogmatically assigned to them 
 by the Early Fathers. Fortunately for Grimm, 
 he published in the beginning of the nineteenth 
 century ; had he been a contemporary of poor 
 Galileo he might have been subjected to some 
 inconvenience and censure. 
 
 Grimm — who, by-the-bye, was a bigoted 
 patriot — devoted himself chiefly to an investiga- 
 tion of the Teutonic tongues, and to a study of 
 the German language ; but the result of his 
 labours has shown the changes that sounds under- 
 go when a word is being distributed among 
 different peoples. The Law bearing his name 
 is tabulated below : — 
 
 Old Indo-European 
 and Classic. 
 
 Introduced into 
 
 Low German 
 
 tongues (English, 
 
 &c.) 
 
 In High 
 German. 
 
 Aspirate sounds 
 Soft „ 
 
 Hard ,, 
 
 become soft 
 „ hard 
 „ Aspirate 
 
 hard 
 
 Aspirate 
 soft 
 
 These rules are not without exceptions, but, 
 especially in the case of sounds that begin words, 
 the exceptions are not numerous enough to 
 nullify the rule. 
 
 The following are some examples of permuta- 
 tion aff*ecting the H : — 
 
PERMUTATION. 79 
 
 Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin hard sounds become 
 Aspirate sounds in English ; example : — 
 
 Sanskrit, hrid {^^krid)'\ ^ ..^j^ 
 Greek, kardia >■ = ^^^^^ 
 
 Latin, cor-dis ) 
 
 The true English Aspirate corresponds to the Sanskrit 
 K, and has nothing to do with the old Aryan H, The 
 Latin H in habere has no Aryan root, and remains un- 
 explained. English have is related to the Latin capere, 
 not habere. 
 
 Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin Aspirates, represented 
 byg:— 
 
 ^ , . TT C Eno^lish, goose. 
 
 Sanskrit. Hansa V ^ 
 
 ^ , ' , ) German, gans. 
 
 Greek, chen ^ = r> 
 
 J ..' /u\ ) Russta7i, gus. 
 
 Latin, (h)anser i r> ^ 
 
 ^ ^ ^ V Breton, gwaz. 
 
 Some of the other changes that H undergoes in Indo- 
 European languages may be briefly summarized : — 
 Yi—ch, example : Lat. hnmus, Gr. chama. 
 H = chth „ „ hes, heri, „ chthes. 
 
 H=j' „ „ septum, „ hepta. 
 
 H = w „ „ many Greek words dis- 
 
 carded the digamma for 
 the Aspirate. 
 That H =f, has been shown in a Sabine and a Spanish 
 example (page 24), and the same may be seen in a few 
 French words — ^.^., Lat. {oris, Fr. \iorss and Lat. iabu- 
 lari, Fr. habler. But the descendants of the Gauls are 
 not chargeable with having reduced this last word to its 
 present stunted condition; the mutilation oifabularivj^s 
 another act of vandalism perpetrated at an early date in 
 Spain, the word having (according to Brachet"^) crossed 
 the Pyrenees, disguised as ^^ hablar," in the sixteenth 
 century. 
 
 * Granimaire Historique (1867). Pai' Auguste Brachet. 
 
8o THE LETTER H. 
 
 Disguises still more extraordinary happen in the 
 Gothic languages. H is exchangeable with c. This 
 substitution, together with the subsequent disappearance 
 of the H, are causes of confusion, and often effectually 
 conceal the relationship of cognate words. At first sight 
 the English word raw seems to be considerably less than 
 kin to the Italian crudoj but on collating the several syno- 
 nymous words — English, raw; (Dutch, raauw) ; Saxon, 
 hreaw ; Latin, cruor and crudus ; (French, cm), and 
 Italian criidoj their family likeness and community of 
 origin become a httle more discernible. 
 
 The things of the Present are born of the Past, 
 and are moulding the things of the Future ; the 
 deeds of to-day show events of to-morrow re- 
 flected in shadowy outline. Conjectures con- 
 cerning the future of H may be built on data 
 afforded by its history. The Aspirate has grown 
 enfeebled in Low-German tongues, and in Latin 
 ones is almost discarded. It would bode evil to 
 the continued existence of H, if either of these 
 classes were to furnish the " universal language." 
 But, probably one of them will. The strong 
 breathing seems to be a remnant of that stage 
 of transition which, at one time, may have formed 
 a link between gesticulatory speech and the 
 language of articulate sound. Then it was that 
 every available accessory to the expression of 
 the emotions will have been brought into use. 
 And, per contra, in a highly developed state of 
 
PERMUTATION. 8 1 
 
 civilization, with its accompanying highly de- 
 veloped speech-code, the tones and modes of 
 expression that constituted nature's primitive 
 eloquence must fall gradually into disuse. The 
 strong breathing and the guttural breathing, 
 having been the most expressive emotional in- 
 terpreters of the early savage, are repugnant to 
 the artificial sedateness and studied reserve of 
 the modern speaker. In the speech of the well- 
 bred Englishman, the hale old English H has 
 melted into a soft Aspirate, and even this is 
 likely to be soon altogether lost. The French 
 say, " We regard aspirated H's with horror ! " — 
 Littre* declares they hurt his chest. Whatever 
 be the language spoken by Macaulay's New 
 Zealander, it is highly probable that he will drop 
 his H's. 
 
 • Another omen unfavourable to H is this. 
 Any letter doomed to die out of a word or a 
 language, generally attempts to depart grace- 
 fully by first acquiring the nature of an aspirate- 
 consonant, and then turns into a perfect H ; 
 under this form it relies upon h-dropping mortals 
 to give it quiet burial, and unobtrusively con- 
 fide it to Oblivion. 
 
 * " Je n 'aime pas les H aspirdes : cela fait mal k la 
 poitrine ; je suis pour Teuphonie." — Voltaire. 
 F 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 [To the kindness of Professor Skeat of Cambridge 
 I am indebted for the following compend, wherein 
 the scientific grounds upon which a theoretical rule 
 for the silent H might be constructed, are perspicu- 
 ously exposed, while a practical view of the case is also 
 taken. A list of words with doubtful H's was submitted 
 to Professor Skeat, and the comments of this foremost 
 of British etymologists are a reply to the question : 
 What reasons can be found for the silencing of 
 the H's?] 
 
 Of course the etymology has much to do 
 with It, so has accent, so has rapidity of speech, 
 so have individual notions. 
 
 (i.) Etymology. 
 
 There are four principal H's — English, 
 French, Latin, and Greek. 
 
 As a rule, pronounce all but the French ; and, 
 of these, all but some words of Latin origin. 
 
 Examples. English — HILL, HOG, (though 
 this is properly Welsh), HUNT. The h should 
 never be omitted, being an original aspirate 
 of great strength. 
 
 French — herb, hospital, hostler, &c. By rule. 
 
APPENDIX. 83 
 
 the h should be silent ; but the word herb, in 
 particular, has become so completely Anglicised 
 that to hear an h in it is common. So also 
 habity haughty, hearse , human ; habit and human 
 being counted as Latin. 
 
 The H was sometimes omitted in the four- 
 teenth century. 
 
 '' As wrtis [wortis] of erbis soone thei shul falle doun." 
 Wycliffite version of Psalm xxxvii. 2, (earlier version). 
 
 " Thei schulen falle doun soone as the wortis of eerbisP 
 Wycliffite version of Psalm xxxvii. 2, (later version). 
 
 But French words from Prankish, not Latin 
 sources, take h, as hamlet, halbert, harass, hatchet; 
 together with proper names, as Henry, Hubert. 
 So also harness, a French word, but not of Latin 
 origin. 
 
 Latin — The h is commonly sounded, as horrid. 
 But honorary and honorarium follow the French 
 word honour, and commonly omit k, 
 
 Greek — The h is important, as in history^ 
 hexagon, and should be sounded. 
 
 (2.) Accent. 
 
 Accent often drowns the h. Thus history 
 takes h, but historical is usually istoricaL To 
 find this out, do not go by what people say they 
 say (which is one thing), but by what you hear 
 them say, which is a very different matter. Com- 
 
84 THE LETTER H. 
 
 pare hebdomadal^ hallucination^ hereditary^ hiatus^ 
 histrionicaly hippopotamus^ hexameter^ hieroglyphic^ 
 histology J horizon^ Jiidalgo^ homoeopathy ^ Iwrticul- 
 turist ; in all these, the h is very weak. 
 
 (3) Rapidity. 
 
 Very common English words, as liave, here^ has^ 
 him^ her^ his, are pronounced 'ave, 'ere, in rapid 
 speech. This will be denied stoutly by many 
 who do so every day of their lives, especially in 
 particular combinations. Much depends on the 
 position of the word or the accent. 
 
 Ex, Did you see 'im go } 
 
 Answer, I saw him, but not her. 
 
 It IS always dropped, at the present day, in 
 the old word hem (Chaucer), meaning tliem, 
 Ex. I saw 'em go. 
 
 (4.) Individual Notions. 
 
 Particular people have particular opinions 
 (frequently wrong ones) as to how words should 
 be pronounced. 
 
 I think if you exercise your ear carefully, 
 you will find it abetter guide than written state- 
 ments. 
 
 I 
 
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