This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1869 edition. Excerpt: ...could write, in " The Practice of Elocution" (. 28) that the u in the 4 words " lute, lewd, lucid, luminous, is sounded fimost like 00," is unaccountable; as I never heard Smart giving such Miss Nancy sounds to these words in his own Readings. 333. The u certainly becomes 00 after r, in many words, owing to the difliculty of producing the full semiconsonant-diphthongal sound in such words as ' Bruce, cruel, obtrusion, protrude, Vitruvius; much more easily uttered as 00 than yew; yet, there are persons in the Provinces of England, who manage to utter all the day long, without any apparent bodily fatigue, such twist-jaw sentences as Very prewdent trewly, Mr. Brewse; it's a very good rewl to be screwpulous about eating frewt. See List XXIII. 334 That such uncouth utterances were once common among the hivher classes in England, maybe gathered from the Spellings of our rude orefathers. Chaucer, for instance, writesBut I to You be also good and trew, As euer was wife sithen the world was new. Thus put I out my venom under hew Of holinesse, to seemen holy and trew. But, in Chaucer's day, our tongue was crowded with harsh and uncouth sounds; even gutturals then abounded, of which not One remains in the language--though Grammar-makers fancy we have gutturals in 1869. The American Prodigy, however, insists not only on the propriety, but also on the necessity of our uttering such barbarous sounds; and for no better reason, than their having once been in use--5OU years ago; gravely assuring us, There is great dignity, as well as propriety, in respecting the universal and long established usages of a Nat'ion--I have, therefore, endeavored to present to my fellow citizens the English language in its genuine purity, ...