He makes three forms of u:  the tenuis, as in use,—­the crassa brevis, as in us,—­and the longa, as in ooze.  The Saxons had, doubtless, two sounds of oo, a long and a short; and the Normans brought them a third in the French liquid u, if they had it not before.  We say if, because their organs have boggled so at the sound in certain combinations, ending in such wine-thick success as piktcher, portraitcher.

  “On earth’s green cinkcher fell a heavy Jew!”

That the u had formerly, in many cases, the sound attributed to it by Mr. White, we have no question; that it had that sound when Shakspeare wrote “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and in such words as luck, is not so clear to us.  We suspect that form of it was already retreating into the provincial dialects, where it still survives.

Another of Mr. White’s theories is that moon was pronounced mown.  Perhaps it was; but, if so, it is singular that this pronunciation is not found in any dialect of our language where almost every other archaism is caught skulking.  And why was it spelt moon?  When did soon and spoon take their present form and sound?  That oo was not sounded like o long is certain from Webbe’s saying, that, to make poore and doore rhyme with more, they must be written pore and dore.  Mr. White says also that shrew was pronounced shrow, and cites as parallel cases sew and shew.  If New England authority be worth anything, we have the old sound here in the pronunciation soo, once universal, and according both with Saxon and Latin analogy.  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?