CHAPTER CCXXIII.

TRUE PRONUNCIATION OF THE NAME OF DOVE.—DIFFICULTIES OF PRONUNCIATION AND PROSODY.—A TRUE AND PERFECT RHYME HIT UPON.

_Tal nombre, que a los siglos extendido, Se olvide de olvidarsele al Olvido._

LOPE DE VEGA.

Considering the many mysteries which our Doctor discovered in the name of Dove, and not knowing but that many more may be concealed in it which will in due time be brought to light, I am particularly desirous,—I am solicitous,—I am anxious,—I wish (which is as much as if a Quaker were to say “I am moved,” or “it is upon my mind”) to fix for posterity, if possible, the true pronunciation of that name. _If possible_, I say, because whatever those readers may think, who have never before had the subject presented to their thoughts, it is exceedingly difficult. My solicitude upon this point will not appear groundless, if it be recollected to what strange changes pronunciation is liable, not from lapse of time alone, but from caprice and fashion. Who in the present generation knows not how John Kemble was persecuted about his _a-ches_, a point wherein right as he was, he was proved to be wrong by a new _norma loquendi_. Our allies are no longer iambic as they were wont to be, but pure trochees now like Alley Croker and Mr. Alley the counsellor. _Beta_ is at this day called _Veta_ in Greece to the confusion of Sir John Cheke, to the triumph of Bishop Gardiner, and in contempt of the whole ovine race. Nay, to bring these observations home to the immediate purport of this chapter, the modern Greeks when they read this book will call the person on whose history it relates, Thaniel Thove! and the Thoctor! their Delta having undergone as great a change as the Delta in Egypt. Have I not reason then for my solicitude?

Whoever examines that very rare and curious book, _Lesclarcissement de la langue françoyse_, printed by Johan Haukyns, 1530, (which is the oldest French grammar in our language, and older than any that the French possess in their own) will find indubitable proof that the pronunciation of both nations is greatly altered in the course of the last three hundred years.

Neither the Spaniards nor Portuguese retain in their speech that strong Rhotacism which they denoted by the double _rr_, and which Camden and Fuller notice as peculiar to the people of Carlton in Leicestershire. Lily has not enumerated it among those _isms_ from which boys are by all means to be deterred, a most heinous _ism_ however it is. A strange uncouth wharling, Fuller called it, and Camden describes it as a harsh and ungrateful manner of speech with a guttural and difficult pronunciation. They were perhaps a colony from Durham or Northumberland in whom the _burr_ had become hereditary.

Is the poetry of the Greeks and Romans ever read as they themselves read it? Have we not altered the very metre of the pentameter by our manner of reading it? Is it not at this day doubtful whether Cæsar was called Kæsar, Chæsar, or as we pronounce his name? And whether Cicero ought not to be called Chichero[1] or Kikero? Have I not therefore cause to apprehend that there may come a time when the true pronunciation of Dove may be lost or doubtful? Major Jardine has justly observed that in the great and complicated art of alphabetical writing, which is rendered so easy and familiar by habit, we are not always aware of the limits of its powers.

[Footnote 1: The well known verses of Catullus would be against C_h_ic_h_ero, at least.

_Chommoda dicebat, si quando commoda vellet Dicere, et_ h_insidias Arrius insidias: Et tum mirificè sperabat se esse locutum, Cum quantum poterat, dixerat_ h_insidias, &c._

CARM. lxxxiv.

The _h_ appears to have been an old Shibboleth, and not restricted either to Shropshire or Warwickshire. Mr. Evans' verses will occur to many readers of “The Doctor, &c.”]

“Alphabetical writing,” says that always speculative writer, “was doubtless a wonderful and important discovery. Its greatest merit, I think, was that of distinguishing sounds from articulations, a degree of perfection to which the eastern languages have not yet arrived; and that defect may be, with those nations, one of the chief causes of their limited progress in many other things. You know they have no vowels, except some that have the _a_, but always joined to some articulation: their attempt to supply that defect by points give them but very imperfect and indistinct ideas of vocal and articulate sounds, and of their important distinction. But even languages most alphabetical, if the expression may be allowed, could not probably transmit by writing a compleat idea of their own sounds and pronunciation from any one age or people to another. Sounds are to us infinite and variable, and we cannot transmit by one sense the ideas and objects of another. We shall be convinced of this when we recollect the innumerable qualities of tone in human voices, so as to enable us to distinguish all our acquaintances, though the number should amount to many hundreds, or perhaps thousands. With attention we might discover a different quality of tone in every instrument; for all these there never can be a sufficient number of adequate terms in any written language; and when that variety comes to be compounded with a like variety of articulations, it becomes infinite to us. The varieties only upon the seven notes in music, varied only as to pitch and modulation throughout the audible scale, combined with those of time, are not yet probably half exhausted by the constant labour of so many ages. So that the idea of Mr. Steel and others, of representing to the eye the tune and time only of the sounds in any language, will probably ever prove inadequate to the end proposed, even without attempting the kinds and qualities of tones and articulations, which would render it infinite and quite impossible.”

Lowth asserts that “the true pronunciation of Hebrew is lost,—lost to a degree far beyond what can ever be the case of any European language preserved only in writing; for the Hebrew language, like most of the other Oriental languages, expressing only the consonants, and being destitute of its vowels, has lain now for two thousand years in a manner mute and incapable of utterance, the number of syllables is in a great many words uncertain, the quantity and accent wholly unknown.”

In the Pronouncing Dictionary of John Walker, (that great benefactor to all ladies employed in the task of education) the word is written _Duv_, with a figure of 2 over the vowel, designating that what he calls the short simple _u_ is intended, as in the English, _tub_, _cup_, _sup_, and the French _veuf_, _neuf_. How Sheridan gives it, or how it would have been as Mr. Southey would say, _uglyographized_ by Elphinstone and the other whimsical persons who have laboured so disinterestedly in the vain attempt of regulating our spelling by our pronunciation, I know not, for none of their books are at hand. My Public will forgive me that I have not taken the trouble to procure them. It has not been neglected from idleness, nor for the sake of sparing myself any pains which ought to have been taken. Would I spare any pains in the service of my Public!

I have not sought for those books because their authority would have added nothing to Walker's: nor if they had differed from him, would any additional assistance have been obtained. They are in fact all equally inefficient for the object here required, which is so to describe and fix the true pronunciation of a particular word, that there shall be no danger of it ever being mistaken, and that when this book shall be as old as the Iliad, there may be no dispute concerning the name of its principal personage, though more places should vie with each other for the honour of having given birth to Urgand the Unknown, than contended for the birth of Homer. Now that cannot be done by literal notation. If you think it may, “I beseech you, Sir, paint me a voice! Make a sound visible if you can! Teach mine ears to see, and mine eyes to hear!”

The prosody of the ancients enables us to ascertain whether a syllable be long or short. Our language is so much more flexible in verse that our poetry will not enable the people of the third and fourth millenniums even to do this, without a very laborious collation, which would after all in many instances leave the point doubtful. Nor will rhyme decide the question; for to a foreigner who understands English only by book (and the people of the third and fourth millenniums may be in this state) Dove and Glove, Rove and Grove, Move and Prove, must all appear legitimate and interchangeable rhymes.

I must therefore have given up the matter in despair had it not been for a most fortunate and felicitous circumstance. There is one word in the English language which, happen what may, will never be out of use, and of which the true pronunciation like the true meaning is sure to pass down uninterruptedly and unaltered from generation to generation. That word, that one and only word which must remain immutable wherever English is spoken, whatever other mutations the speech may undergo, till the language itself be lost in the wreck of all things,—that word (Youths and Maidens ye anticipate it now!) that one and only word—

_Τόδε μὲν οὐκέτι στόματος ὲν πύλαις Καθέξω·_[2]

that dear delicious monosyllable LOVE, that word is a true and perfect rhyme to the name of our Doctor.

Speak but one rhyme and I am satisfied; ... pronounce but Love and Dove.[3]

[Footnote 2: EURIPIDES.]

[Footnote 3: ROMEO AND JULIET.]