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.  On page 152, speaking of the difficulties of English pronunciation to a foreigner, he says, “Etenim si has quinque voculas, What think the chosen judges? quid censent electi judices? recte protuleris, omnem loquendi difficultatem superasti.”  Ben Jonson in his Grammar gives similar examples, and speaks also of the loss of the Saxon signs as having made a confusion.  It is certain, then, at least, that Shakspeare did not pronounce thing, ting,—­or, if he did, that others did not, as we shall presently show.

[Footnote M:  Praefatio, p. 6.  We abridge his statement.]

Most of Mr. White’s arguments in support of his opinion are theoretic; the examples by which he endeavors to sustain it tell, with one exception, against him.  That exception is his quoting from one of Shakspeare’s sonnets the rhyme doting and nothing.  But this proves nothing (noting?); for we have already shown that Shakspeare, like all his contemporaries, was often content with assonance, where identity could not be had, in rhyming.  Generally, indeed, the argument from rhymes is like that of the Irishman who insisted that full must be pronounced like dull, because he found it rhyming with b[)u]ll.  Mr. White also brings forward the fact, that moth is spelt mote, and argues therefrom that the name of the Page Moth has hitherto been misconceived.  But how many th sounds does he mean to rob us of?  And how was moth really pronounced?  Ben Jonson rhymes it with sloth and cloth; Herrick, with cloth.  Alexander Gill tells us (p. 16) that it was a Northern provincialism to pronounce cloth long (like both), and accordingly we are safe in believing that moth was pronounced precisely as it is now.  Mr. White again endeavors to find support in the fact that Armado and renegado are spelt Armatho and renegatho in the Folio.  Of course they were, (just as the Italian Petruccio and Boraccio are spelt Petruchio and Borachio,) because, being Spanish words, they were so pronounced.  His argument from the frequent substitution of had for hath is equally inconclusive, because we may either suppose it a misprint, or, as is possible, a mistake of the