[116] Handiwork, handicraft, and handicraftsman, appear to have been corruptly written for handwork, handcraft, and handcraftsman.  They were formerly in good use, and consequently obtained a place in our vocabulary, from which no lexicographer, so far as I know, has yet thought fit to discard them; but, being irregular, they are manifestly becoming obsolete, or at least showing a tendency to throw off these questionable forms. Handcraft and handcraftsman are now exhibited in some dictionaries, and handiwork seems likely to be resolved into handy and work, from which Johnson supposes it to have been formed.  See Psalm xix, 1.  The text is varied thus:  “And the firmament sheweth his handiwork.”—­Johnson’s Dict..  “And the firmament sheweth his handy-work.”—­Scott’s Bible; Bruce’s Bible; Harrison’s Gram., p. 83.  “And the firmament showeth his handy work.”—­Alger’s Bible; Friends’ Bible; Harrison’s Gram., p. 103.

[117] Here a word, formed from its root by means of the termination ize, afterwards assumes a prefix, to make a secondary derivative:  thus, organ, organize, disorganize.  In such a case, the latter derivative must of course be like the former; and I assume that the essential or primary formation of both from the word organ is by the termination ize; but it is easy to see that disguise, demise, surmise, and the like, are essentially or primarily formed by means of the prefixes, dis, de, and sur.  As to advertise, exercise, detonize, and recognize, which I have noted among the exceptions, it is not easy to discover by which method we ought to suppose them to have been formed; but with respect to nearly all others, the distinction is very plain; and though there may be no natural reason for founding upon it such a rule as the foregoing, the voice of general custom is as clear in this as in most other points or principles of orthography, and, surely, some rule in this case is greatly needed.

[118] Criticise, with s, is the orthography of Johnson, Walker, Webster, Jones, Scott, Bolles, Chalmers, Cobb, and others; and so did Worcester spell it in his Comprehensive Dictionary of 1831, but, in his Universal and Critical Dictionary of 1846, he wrote it with z, as did Bailey in his folio, about a hundred years ago.  Here the z conforms to the foregoing rule, and the s does not.

[119] Like this, the compound brim-full ought to be written with a hyphen and accented on the last syllable; but all our lexicographers have corrupted it into brim’ful, and, contrary to the authorities they quote, accented it on the first.  Their noun brim’fulness, with a like accent, is also a corruption; and the text of Shakspeare, which they quote for it, is nonsense, unless brim, be there made a separate adjective:—­