In respect to the final ck and our, he also intentionally departs from THE STANDARD which he thus commends; preferring, in that, the authority of Walker’s Rhyming Dictionary, from which he borrowed his rules for spelling.  For, against the use of k at the end of words from the learned languages, and against the u in many words in which Johnson used it, we have the authority, not only of general usage now, but of many grammarians who were contemporary with Johnson, and of more than a dozen lexicographers, ancient or modern, among whom is Walker himself.  In this, therefore, Murray’s practice is right, and his commended standard dictionary, wrong.

OBS. 4.—­Of words ending in or or our, we have about three hundred and twenty; of which not more than forty can now with any propriety be written with the latter termination.  Aiming to write according to the best usage of the present day, I insert the u in so many of these words as now seem most familiar to the eye when so written; but I have no partiality for any letters that can well be spared; and if this book should ever, by any good fortune, happen to be reprinted, after honour, labour, favour, behaviour, and endeavour, shall have become as unfashionable as authour, errour, terrour, and emperour, are now, let the proof-reader strike out the useless letter not only from these words, but from all others which shall bear an equally antiquated appearance.

OBS. 5.—­I have suggested the above-mentioned imperfections in Dr. Johnson’s orthography, merely to justify the liberty which I take of spelling otherwise; and not with any view to give a preference to that of Dr. Webster, who is now contending for the honour of having furnished a more correct standard.  For the latter author, though right in some things in which the former was wrong, is, on the whole, still more erroneous and inconsistent.  In his various attempts at reformation in our orthography, he has spelled many hundreds of words in such a variety of ways, that he knows not at last which of them is right, and which are wrong.  But in respect to definitions, he has done good service to our literature; nor have his critics been sufficiently just respecting what they call his “innovations.”  See Cobb’s Critical Review of the Orthography of Webster.  To omit the k from such words as publick, or the u from such as superiour, is certainly no innovation; it is but ignorance that censures the general practice, under that name.  The advocates for Johnson and opponents of Webster, who are now so zealously stickling for the k and the u in these cases, ought to know that they are contending for what was obsolete, or obsolescent, when Dr. Johnson was a boy.