F. poems), _should_ followed the example,
and then an _l_ was foisted into _could_, where it does not belong, to
satisfy the logic of the eye, which has affected the pronunciation and
even the spelling of English more than is commonly supposed. I meet with
_eyster_ for _oyster_ as early as the fourteenth century. I find _viage_
in Bishop Hall and Middleton the dramatist, _bile_ for _boil_ in Donne
and Chrononhotonthologos, _line_ for _loin_ in Hall, _ryall_ and _chyse_
(for choice) _dystrye_ for _destroy_, in the Coventry Plays. In
Chapman's 'All Fools' is the misprint of _employ_ for _imply_, fairly
inferring an identity of sound in the last syllable. Indeed, this
pronunciation was habitual till after Pope, and Rogers tells us that the
elegant Gray said _naise_ for _noise_ just as our rustics still do. Our
_cornish_ (which I find also in Herrick) remembers the French better
than _cornice_ does. While clinging more closely to the Anglo-Saxon in
dropping the _g_ from the end of the present participle, the Yankee now
and then pleases himself with an experiment in French nasality in words
ending in _n_.
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