so that by taking from later authors the names of those letters which were not used in old times, we can still furnish an entire list, concerning the accuracy of which there is not much room to dispute.  It is probable that in the ancient pronunciation of Latin, a was commonly sounded as in father; e like the English a; i mostly like e long; y like i short; c generally and g always hard, as in come and go.  But, as the original, native, or just pronunciation of a language is not necessary to an understanding of it when written, the existing nations have severally, in a great measure, accommodated themselves, in their manner of reading this and other ancient tongues.

OBS. 11.—­As the Latin language is now printed, its letters are twenty-five.  Like the French, it has all that belong to the English alphabet, except the Double-u.  But, till the first Punic war, the Romans wrote C for G, and doubtless gave it the power as well as the place of the Gamma or Gimel.  It then seems to have slid into K; but they used it also for S, as we do now.  The ancient Saxons, generally pronounced C as K, but sometimes as Ch.  Their G was either guttural, or like our Y. In some of the early English grammars the name of the latter is written Ghee.  The letter F, when first invented, was called, from its shape, Digamma, and afterwards Ef.  J, when it was first distinguished from I, was called by the Hebrew name Jod, and afterwards Je.  V, when first distinguished from U, was called Vau, then Va, then Ve.  Y, when the Romans first borrowed it from the Greeks, was called Ypsilon; and Z, from the same source, was called Zeta; and, as these two letters were used only in words of Greek origin, I know not whether they ever received from the Romans any shorter names.  In Schneider’s Latin Grammar, the letters are named in the following manner; except Je and Ve, which are omitted by this author:  “A, Be, Ce, De, E, Ef, Ge, Ha, I, [Je,] Ka, El, Em, En, O, Pe, Cu, Er, Es, Te, U, [Ve,] Ix, Ypsilon, Zeta.”  And this I suppose to be the most proper way of writing their names in Latin, unless we have sufficient authority for shortening Ypsilon into Y, sounded as short i, and for changing Zeta into Ez.

OBS. 12.—­In many, if not in all languages, the five vowels, A, E, I, O, U, name themselves; but they name themselves differently to the ear, according to the different ways of uttering them in different languages.  And as the name of a consonant necessarily requires one or more vowels, that also may be affected in the same manner.  But in every language there should be a known way both of writing and of speaking every name in the series; and that, if there is nothing to hinder, should be made conformable to the genius of the language.  I do not say that the names above can be regularly declined in Latin; but in English it is as easy to speak of two Dees as of two trees,