Moreover, Bishop Hall rhymes _shew_ with _mew_ and _sue_; so that it
will not do to be positive.
We come now to the theory on which Mr. White lays the greatest stress,
and for being the first to broach which he even claims credit. That
credit we frankly concede him, and we shall discuss the point more fully
because there is definite and positive evidence about it, and because
we think we shall be able to convince even Mr. White himself that he is
wrong. This theory is, that the _th_ was sounded like _t_ in the
word _nothing_, and in various other words, at the beginning of the
seventeenth century. This certainly seems an unaccountable anomaly at
very first sight; for we know that two sounds of _th_ existed before
that period, and exist now. What singular frost was it that froze the
sound in a few words for a few years and left it fluent in all others?
Schoolmaster Gill, in his "Logonomia," already referred to, gives an
interesting and curious reason for the loss from our alphabet of the
Anglo-Saxon signs for the grave and acute _th_. He attributes it to the
fact, that, when Henry VII. invited Wynken de Word over from Germany
to print for the first time in English, the foreign fount of types was
necessarily wanting in signs to express those Saxon sounds. Accordingly,
the form _th_ was required to stand for both. For the Germans, he says,
call _thing, Ding_, and _father, Vater_.[M] In his alphabet he gives
_though_ and _thistle_ as expressing the two sounds, which is precisely
consonant with present usage.
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