In examining the orthography of any doubtful word, the mode of spelling by which it is inserted in the series of the Dictionary, is to be considered as that to which I give, perhaps, not often rashly, the preference.  I have left, in the examples, to every author his own practice unmolested, that the reader may balance suffrages, and judge between us:  but this question is not always to be determined by reputed or by real learning:  some men, intent upon greater things, have thought little on sounds and derivations; some, knowing in the ancient tongues, have neglected those in which our words are commonly to be sought.  Thus Hammond writes fecibleness for feasibleness, because, I suppose, he imagined it derived immediately from the Latin; and some words, such as dependant, dependent, dependance, dependence, vary their final syllable, as one or another language is present to the writer.

In this part of the work, where caprice has long wantoned without control, and vanity sought praise by petty reformation, I have endeavoured to proceed with a scholar’s reverence for antiquity, and a grammarian’s regard to the genius of our tongue.  I have attempted few alterations, and among those few, perhaps, the greater part is from the modern to the ancient practice; and, I hope, I may be allowed to recommend to those, whose thoughts have been, perhaps, employed too anxiously on verbal singularities, not to disturb, upon narrow views, or for minute propriety, the orthography of their fathers.  It has been asserted, that for the law to be known, is of more importance than to be right.  “Change,” says Hooker, “is not made without inconvenience, even from worse to better.”  There is in constancy and stability a general and lasting advantage, which will always overbalance the slow improvements of gradual correction.  Much less ought our written language to comply with the corruptions of oral utterance, or copy that which every variation of time or place makes different from itself, and imitate those changes which will again be changed, while imitation is employed in observing them.

This recommendation of steadiness and uniformity does not proceed from an opinion, that particular combinations of letters have much influence on human happiness; or that truth may not be successfully taught by modes of spelling fanciful and erroneous:  I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven.  Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas:  I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote.

In settling the orthography, I have not wholly neglected the pronunciation, which I have directed, by printing an accent upon the acute or elevated syllable.  It will sometimes be found, that the accent is placed, by the author quoted, on a different syllable from that marked in the alphabetical series; it is then to be understood, that custom has varied, or that the author has, in my opinion, pronounced wrong.  Short directions are sometimes given, where the sound of letters is irregular; and if they are sometimes omitted, defect in such minute observations will be more easily excused, than superfluity.