Did he, (dreadful thought!) in
that imperfect rhyme of _leap_ and _swept_, (_Merry Wives_,) call the
former _lape_ and the latter (_Yankice_) _swep'_? This would jump with
Mr. White's often-recurring suggestion of the Elizabethanism of our
provincial dialect.
[Footnote L: Everybody remembers how Scaliger illustrated it in the case
of the Gascons,--_Felices, quibus vivere est bibere_.]
Mr. White speaks of the vowels as having had their "pure sound" in the
Elizabethan age. We are not sure if we understand him rightly; but have
they lost it? We English have the same vowel-sounds with other nations,
but indicate them by different signs. Slight changes in orthoepy we
cannot account for, except by pleading the general issue of custom. Why
should _foot_ and _boot_ be sounded differently? Why _food_ and _good_?
Why should the Yankee mark the distinction between the two former words,
and blur it in the case of the latter, thereby incurring the awful
displeasure of the "Autocrat," who trusses him, falcon-like, before his
million readers and adorers? Why should the Frenchman call his wooden
shoe a _sabot_ and his old shoe a _savate_, both from the same root?
Alas, we must too often in philology take Rabelais's reason for Friar
John's nose! With regard to the pronunciation of the vowels in Queen
Bess's days, so much is probable,--that the _a_ in words from the French
had more of the _ah_ sound than now, if rhymes may be trusted. We find
_placed_ rhyming with _past_; we find the participle _saft_ formed
from _save_.
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