&c.  “This omission of k is, however, too general to be counteracted, even by the authority of Johnson; but it is to be hoped it will be confined to words from the learned languages.”—­ Walker’s Principles of Pronunciation, No. 400.  The tenth edition of Burn’s Grammar, dated 1810, says, “It has become customary to omit k after c at the end of dissyllables and trisyllables, &c. as music, arithmetic, logic; but the k is retained in monosyllables; as, back, deck, rick, &c.”—­P. 25.  James Buchanan, of whose English Syntax there had been five American editions in 1792, added no k to such words as didactic, critic, classic, of which he made frequent use; and though he wrote honour, labour, and the like, with u, as they are perhaps most generally written now, he inserted no u in error, author, or any of those words in which that letter would now be inconsistent with good taste.

OBS. 9.—­Bicknell’s Grammar, of 1790, treating of the letter k, says, “And for the same reason we have dropt it at the end of words after c, which is there always hard; as in publick, logick, &c. which are more elegantly written public, logic.”—­Part ii, p. 13.  Again:  “It has heretofore joined with c at the end of words; as publick, logick; but, as before observed, being there quite superfluous, it is now left out”—­Ib., p. 16.  Horne Tooke’s orthography was also agreeable to the rule which I have given on this subject.  So is the usage of David Booth:  “Formerly a k was added, as, rustick, politick, Arithmetick, &c. but this is now in disuse.”—­Booth’s Introd. to Dict., Lond., 1814, p. 80.

OBS. 10.—­As the authors of many recent spelling-books—­Cobb, Emerson, Burhans, Bolles, Sears, Marshall, Mott, and others—­are now contending for this “superfluous letter,” in spite of all the authority against it, it seems proper briefly to notice their argument, lest the student be misled by it.  It is summed up by one of them in the following words:  “In regard to k after c at the end of words, it may be sufficient to say, that its omission has never been attempted, except in a small portion of the cases where it occurs; and that it tends to an erroneous pronunciation of derivatives, as in mimick, mimicking, where, if the k were omitted, it would read mimicing; and as c before i is always sounded like s, it must be pronounced mimising.  Now, since it is never omitted in monosyllables, where it most frequently occurs, as in block, clock, &c., and can be in a part only of polysyllables, it is thought better to preserve it in all cases, by which we have one general rule, in place of several irregularities and exceptions that must follow its partial omission.”—­Bolles’s Spelling-Book, p. 2.  I need not tell the reader