essays hav been published before, in the common orthography, and it would hav been a laborious task to copy the whole, for the sake of changing the spelling.  In the essays, ritten within the last yeer, a considerable change of spelling iz introduced by way of experiment.  This liberty waz taken by the writers before the age of queen Elizabeth, and to this we are indeted for the preference of modern spelling over that of Gower and Chaucer.  The man who admits that the change of hoasbonde, mynde, ygone, moneth into husband, mind, gone, month, iz an improovment, must acknowlege also the riting of helth, breth, rong, tung, munth, to be an improovment.  There iz no alternativ.  Every possible reezon that could ever be offered for altering the spelling of wurds, stil exists in full force; and if a gradual reform should not be made in our language, it wil proov that we are less under the influence of reezon than our ancestors.”—­Noah Webster’s Essays, Preface, p. xi.

16.  But let us return, with our author, to the question of the parts of speech.  I have shown that if we do not mean to adopt some less convenient scheme, we must count them ten, and preserve their ancient order as well as their ancient names.[74] And, after all his vacillation in consequence of reading Horne Tooke, it would not be strange if Dr. Webster should come at last to the same conclusion.  He was not very far from it in 1828, as may be shown by his own testimony, which he then took occasion to record.  I will give his own words on the point:  “There is great difficulty in devising a correct classification of the several sorts of words; and probably no classification that shall be simple and at the same time philosophically correct, can be invented.  There are some words that do not strictly fall under any description of any class yet devised.  Many attempts have been made and are still making to remedy this evil; but such schemes as I have seen, do not, in my apprehension, correct the defects of the old schemes, nor simplify the subject.  On the other hand, all that I have seen, serve only to obscure and embarrass the subject, by substituting new arrangements and new terms which are as incorrect as the old ones, and less intelligible.  I have attentively viewed these subjects, in all the lights which my opportunities have afforded, and am convinced that the distribution of words, most generally received, is the best that can be formed, with some slight alterations adapted to the particular construction of the English language.”

17.  This passage is taken from the advertisement, or preface, to the Grammar which accompanies the author’s edition of his great quarto Dictionary.  Now the several schemes which bear his own name, were doubtless all of them among those which he had that he had “seen;” so that he here condemns them all collectively, as he had previously condemned some of them at each reformation.  Nor is the last exempted.  For although he here