[88] By the colloquial phrase, “to a Tee” we mean, “to a nicety, to a tittle, a jot, an iota.  Had the British poet Cawthorn, himself a noted schoolmaster, known how to write the name of “T,” he would probably have preferred it in the following couplet: 

   “And swore by Varro’s shade that he
    Conceived the medal to a T.”—­British Poets, Vol.  VII, p. 65.

Here the name would certainly be much fitter than the letter, because the text does not in reality speak of the letter.  With the names of the Greek letters, the author was better acquainted; the same poem exhibits two of them, where the characters themselves are spoken of: 

   “My eye can trace divinely true,
    In this dark curve a little Mu;
    And here, you see, there seems to lie
    The ruins of a Doric Xi.”—­Ibidem.

The critical reader will see that “seems” should be seem, to agree with its nominative “ruins.”

[89] Lily, reckoning without the H, J, or V, speaks of the Latin letters as “twenty-two;” but says nothing concerning their names.  Ruddiman, Adam, Grant, Gould, and others, who include the H, J, and V, rightly state the number to be “twenty-five;” but, concerning their names, are likewise entirely silent.  Andrews and Stoddard, not admitting the K, teach thus:  “The letters of the Latin language are twenty-four.  They have the same names as the corresponding characters in English.”—­Andrews and Stoddard’s Latin Gram., p. 1.  A later author speaks thus:  “The Latin Alphabet consists of twenty-five letters, the same in name and form as the English, but without the w.”—­Bullions’s Latin Gram., p. 1.  It would probably be nearer to the truth, to say, “The Latin Alphabet, like the French, has no W; it consists of twenty-five letters, which are the same in name and form as the French.”  Will it be pretended that the French names and the English do not differ?

[90] The Scotch Iz and the Craven Izzet, if still in use anywhere, are names strictly local, not properly English, nor likely to spread.  “IZZET, the letter Z. This is probably the corruption of izzard, the old and common name for the letter, though I know not, says Nares, on what authority.”—­Glossary of Craven, w.  Izzet. “Z z, zed, more commonly called izzard or uzzard, that is, s hard.”—­Dr. Johnson’s Gram., p. 1.

   “And how she sooth’d me when with study sad
    I labour’d on to reach the final Zad.”—­Crabbe’s Borough, p. 228.

[91] William Bolles, in his new Dictionary, says of the letter Z:  “Its sound is uniformly that of a hard S.”  The name, however, he pronounces as I do; though he writes it not Zee but ze; giving not the orthography of the name, as he should have done, but a mere index of its pronunciation.  Walker proves by citations from Professor Ward and Dr. Wallis, that these authors considered the sharp or hissing sound of s the “hard” sound; and the flat sound, like that of z, its “soft” sound.  See his Dictionary, 8vo, p. 53.