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LETTER X.: The new Method of Spelling. - David Hume, Letters of David Hume to William Strahan [1756]

Edition used:

Letters of David Hume to William Strahan, ed. G. Birkbeck Hill (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888).

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The new Method of Spelling.

  • [June or July,

1758.]

Dear Sir

I am glad to find that Mr. Millar and I have agreed about reprinting the first Volume of my History1. . I shall soon send you up a corrected Copy of it; and in the mean time you may proceed in printing the second Volume. The Title of it will be History of Great Britain under the House of Stuart, in two Volumes2. . As the Title of the other Volume will be History of England under the House of Tudor. By this Means they will be different Works; and some few Repetitions which will be unavoidable in this Method of composing them, will be the more excusable.

I had once an Intention of changing the Orthography in some particulars: But on Reflection I find, that this new Method of Spelling (which is certainly the best and most conformable to Analogy) has been followd in the Quarto Volume of my philosophical Writings lately publishd; and therefore I think it will be better for you to continue the Spelling as it is3. .

I woud not give you the Trouble of sending me the Sheets. I shall see you in London before the Publication; and shall then be able to correct any Errata that may have escapd you.

I am Dr Sr Your most humble Servant

David Hume.

LETTER XI.

[1.]Note 1. Millar, as was seen in the last letter, was hesitating about reprinting the first volume of the History of the Stuarts, of which more copies had been printed than of the second volume.

[2.]Note 2. The original title of the first published portion of his work had been The History of Great Britain, Volume I. Containing the reigns of James I and Charles I.

[3.]Note 3. Hume writing to Millar on June 20, 1758 about a volume of Sketches and Essays that Dr. Armstrong published anonymously, says:—’I find the ingenious author, whoever he be, ridicules the new method of spelling, as he calls it; but that method of spelling honor, instead of honour, was Lord Bolingbroke's, Dr. Middleton's, and Mr. Pope's; besides many other eminent writers. However, to tell truth, I hate to be any way particular in a trifle; and therefore if Mr. Strahan has not printed off above ten or twelve sheets, I should not be displeased if you told him to follow the usual, that is, his own way of spelling throughout.’ Burton's Hume, ii. 43. Boling-broke and Pope certainly did not always follow the new spelling. In the Patriot King, ed. 1750, I find indeed splendor, but also honour and favour. In the second edition of The Dunciad, Pope follows the old spelling, as also in the first edition of Seventeen Hundred and Thirty Eight. He spells however again, agen. In turning over a page or two of the first volume of the first edition of Hume's History I came on such spelling as tho’, thro’-out, knowlege, spred, ardor, splendor, favor, rigor, labored. Boswell in the Preface to his Tour to Corsica, published in 1767, writes:—’Of late it has become the fashion to render our language more neat and trim by leaving out k after c, and u in the last syllable of words which used to end in our.’