employed too anxiously on verbal singularities, not to disturb,
upon narrow views, or for minute propriety, the orthography of
their fathers. It has been asserted, that for the law to be KNOWN,
is of more importance than to be RIGHT. Change, says Hooker, is
not made without inconvenience, even from worse to better. There is
in constancy and stability a general and lasting advantage, which
will always overbalance the slow improvements of gradual correction.
Much less ought our written language to comply with the corruptions
of oral utterance, or copy that which every variation of time or
place makes different from itself, and imitate those changes, which
will again be changed, while imitation is employed in observing
them.

This recommendation of steadiness and uniformity does not proceed
from an opinion, that particular combinations of letters have much
influence on human happiness; or that truth may not be successfully
taught by modes of spelling fanciful And erroneous: I am not yet so
lost in lexicography, as to I forget that WORDS ARE THE DAUGHTERS
OF EARTH, AND THAT THINGS ARE THE SONS OF HEAVEN. Language is only
the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I
wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and
that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote.

In settling the orthography, I have not wholly neglected the
pronunciation, which I have directed, by printing an accent upon
the acute or elevated syllable. It will sometimes be found, that
the accent is placed by the authour quoted, on a different syllable
from that marked in the alphabetical series; it is then to be
understood, that custom has varied, or that the authour has, in
my opinion, pronounced wrong. Short directions are sometimes given