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Excuse this digression, reader. What I wished to explain was that, if a man in a humble situation seeks to refine his pronunciation of English, and finds himself in consequence taxed with pride that will not brook the necessities of his rank, at all events, he is but integrating his manifestations of pride. Already in his Sunday’s costume he has begun this manifestation, and, as I contend, rightfully. If a carpenter or a stonemason goes abroad on a railway excursion, there is no moral obligation upon him–great or small–to carry about any memento whatsoever of his calling. I contend that his right to pass himself off for a gentleman is co-extensive with his power to do so: the right is limited by the power, and by that only. The man may say justly: “What I am seeking is a holiday. This is what I pay for; and I pay for it with money earned painfully enough. I have a right therefore to expect that the article shall be genuine and complete. Now, a holiday means freedom from the pains of labour–not from some of those pains, but from all. Even from the memory of these pains, if that could be bought, and from the anticipation of their recurrence. Amongst the pains of labour, a leading one next after the necessity of unintermitting muscular effort, is the oppression of people’s superciliousness or of their affected condescension in conversing with one whom they know to be a working mechanic. From this oppression it is, from this oppression whether open or poorly disguised, that I seek to be delivered. It taints my pleasure: it spoils my holiday. And if by being dressed handsomely, by courtesy in manners, and by accuracy in speaking English, I can succeed in obtaining this deliverance for myself, I have a right to it.” Undoubtedly he has. His real object is not to disconnect himself from an honest calling, but from that burthen of contempt or of slight consideration which the world has affixed to his calling. He takes measures for gratifying his pride–not with a direct or primary view to that pride, but indirectly as the only means open to him for evading and defeating the unjust conventional scorn that would settle upon himself through his trade, if that should happen to become known or suspected. This is what I should be glad to assist him in; and amongst other points connected with his object, towards which my experience might furnish him with some hints, I shall here offer him the very shortest of lessons for his guidance in the matter of English pronunciation.

What can be attempted on so wide a field in a paper limited so severely in dimensions as all papers published by this journal must be limited in obedience to the transcendent law of variety? To make it possible that subjects enough should be treated, the Proprietor wisely insists on a treatment vigorously succinct for each in particular. I myself, it suddenly strikes me, must have been the chief offender against this reasonable law: but my offences were committed in pure ignorance and inattention, faults which henceforth I shall guard against with a penitential earnestness. Reformation meanwhile must begin, I fear, simultaneously with this confession of guilt. It would not be possible (would it?) that, beginning the penitence this month of November, I should postpone the amendment till the next? No, that would look too brazen. I must confine myself to the two and a half pages prescribed as the maximum extent–and of that allowance already perhaps have used up one half at the least. Shocking! is it not? So much the sterner is the demand through the remaining ground for exquisite brevity.

Rushing therefore at once in medias res, I observe to the reader that, although it is thoroughly impossible to give him a guide upon so vast a wilderness as the total area of our English language, for, if I must teach him how to pronounce, and upon what learned grounds to pronounce, 40,000 words, and if polemically I must teach him how to dispose of 40,000 objections that have been raised (or that may be raised) against these pronunciations, then I should require at the least 40,000 lives (which is quite out of the question, for a cat has but nine)–seeing and allowing for all this, I may yet offer him some guidance as to his guide. One sole rule, if he will attend to it, governs in a paramount sense the total possibilities and compass of pronunciation. A very famous line of Horace states it. What line? What is the supreme law in every language for correct pronunciation no less than for idiomatic propriety?

‘Usus, quem penes arbitrium est et jus et norma loquendi:’

usage, the established practice, subject to which is all law and normal standard of correct speaking. Now, in what way does such a rule interfere with the ordinary prejudice on this subject? The popular error is that, in pronunciation, as in other things, there is an abstract right and a wrong. The difficulty, it is supposed, lies in ascertaining this right and wrong. But by collation of arguments, by learned investigation, and interchange of pros and cons, it is fancied that ultimately the exact truth of each separate case might be extracted. Now, in that preconception lies the capital blunder incident to the question. There is no right, there is no wrong, except what the prevailing usage creates. The usage, the existing custom, that is the law: and from that law there is no appeal whatever, nor demur that is sustainable for a moment.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Amongst the Spaniards there is.