OBS. 1.—­The letter R turns the tip of the tongue up against or towards the roof of the mouth, where the sound may be lengthened, roughened, trilled, or quavered.  Consequently, this element may, at the will of the speaker, have more or less—­little or nothing, or even very much—­of that peculiar roughness, jar, or whur, which is commonly said to constitute the sound.  The extremes should here be avoided.  Some readers very improperly omit the sound of r from many words to which it pertains; pronouncing or as awe, nor as knaw, for as faugh, and war as the first syllable of water.  On the other hand, “The excessive trilling of the r, as practised by some speakers, is a great fault.”—­D.  P. Page.

OBS. 2.—­Dr. Johnson, in his “Grammar of the English Tongue,” says, “R has the same rough snarling sound as in other tongues.”—­P. 3.  Again, in his Quarto Dictionary, under this letter, he says, “R is called the canine letter, because it is uttered with some resemblance to the growl or snarl of a cur:  it has one constant sound in English, such as it has in other languages; as, red, rose, more, muriatick.”  Walker, however, who has a greater reputation as an orthoepist [sic—­KTH], teaches that, “There is a distinction in the sound of this letter, which is,” says he, “in my opinion, of no small importance; and that is, the [distinction of] the rough and [the] smooth r.  Ben Jonson,” continues he, “in his Grammar, says, ’It is sounded firm in the beginning of words, and more liquid in the middle and ends, as in rarer, riper; and so in the Latin.’  The rough r is formed by jarring the tip of the tongue against the roof of the mouth near the fore teeth:  the smooth r is a vibration of the lower part of the tongue, near the root, against the inward region of the palate, near the entrance of the throat.”—­Walker’s Principles, No. 419; Octavo Dict., p. 48.

OBS. 3.—­Wells, with his characteristic indecision, forbears all recognition of this difference, and all intimation of the quality of the sound, whether smooth or rough; saying, in his own text, only this:  “R has the sound heard in rare.”—­School Grammar, p. 40.  Then, referring the student to sundry authorities, he adds in a footnote certain “quotations,” that are said to “present a general view of the different opinions which exist among orthoepists respecting this letter.”  And so admirably are these authorities or opinions balanced and offset, one class against an other, that it is hard to tell which has the odds.  First, though it is not at all probable that Wells’s utterance of “rare” exhibits twice over the rough snarl of Johnson’s r, the “general view” seems intended to confirm the indefinite teaching above, thus:  “’R has one constant sound in English.’—­Johnson.  The same view is adopted by Webster, Perry, Kendrick, Sheridan, Jones, Jameson, Knowles, and others.”—­School Grammar, p. 40.  In counterpoise of these, Wells next cites about as many more—­namely, Frazee, Page, Russell, Walker, Rush, Barber, Comstock, and Smart,—­as maintaining or admitting that r has sometimes a rough sound, and sometimes a smoother one.