Gurton’ and ‘Mirror for Magistrates’ is sence for since; Marlborough’s Duchess so writes it, and Donne rhymes since with Amiens and patience, Bishop Hall and Otway with pretence, Chapman with citizens, Dryden with providence.  Indeed, why should not sithence take that form?  Dryden’s wife (an earl’s daughter) has tell for till, Margaret, mother of Henry VII., writes seche for such, and our ef finds authority in the old form yeffe.

E sometimes takes the place of u, as jedge, tredge, bresh.  I find tredge in the interlude of ‘Jack Jugler,’ bresh in a citation by Collier from ‘London Cries’ of the middle of the seventeenth century, and resche for rush (fifteenth century) in the very valuable ’Volume of Vocabularies’ edited by Mr. Wright. Resce is one of the Anglo-Saxon forms of the word in Bosworth’s A.-S.  Dictionary.  Golding has shet.  The Yankee always shortens the u in the ending ture, making ventur, natur, pictur, and so on.  This was common, also, among the educated of the last generation.  I am inclined to think it may have been once universal, and I certainly think it more elegant than the vile vencher, naycher, pickcher, that have taken its place, sounding like the invention of a lexicographer to mitigate a sneeze.  Nash in his ’Pierce Penniless’ has ventur, and so spells it, and I meet it also in Spenser, Drayton, Ben Jonson, Herrick, and Prior.  Spenser has tort’rest, which can be contracted only from tortur and not from torcher.  Quarles rhymes nature with creator, and Dryden with satire, which he doubtless pronounced according to its older form of satyr.  Quarles has also torture and mortar.  Mary Boleyn writes kreatur.  I find pikter in Izaak Walton’s autograph will.

I shall now give some examples which cannot so easily be ranked under any special head.  Gill charges the Eastern counties with kiver for cover, and ta, for to.  The Yankee pronounces both too and to like ta (like the tou in touch) where they are not emphatic.  When they are, both become tu.  In old spelling, to is the common (and indeed correct) form of too, which is only to with the sense of in addition.  I suspect that the sound of our too has caught something from the French tout, and it is possible that the old too too is not a reduplication, but a reminiscence of the feminine form of the same word (toute) as anciently pronounced, with the e not yet silenced.  Gill gives a Northern origin to geaun for gown and waund for wound (vulnus).  Lovelace has waund, but