in ‘Hamlet.’  I find, illy in Warner.  The objection to illy is not an etymological one, but simply that it is contrary to good usage,—­a very sufficient reason. Ill as an adverb was at first a vulgarism, precisely like the rustic’s when he says, ‘I was treated bad.’  May not the reason of this exceptional form be looked for in that tendency to dodge what is hard to pronounce, to which I have already alluded?  If the letters were distinctly uttered, as they should be, it would take too much time to say ill-ly, well-ly, and it is to be observed that we have avoided smally[26] and tally in the same way, though we add ish to them without hesitation in smallish and tallish.  We have, to be sure, dully and fully, but for the one we prefer stupidly, and the other (though this may have come from eliding the y before as) is giving way to full.  The uneducated, whose utterance is slower, still make adverbs when they will by adding like to all manner of adjectives.  We have had big charged upon us, because we use it where an Englishman would now use great.  I fully admit that it were better to distinguish between them, allowing to big a certain contemptuous quality; but as for authority, I want none better than that of Jeremy Taylor, who, in his noble sermon ‘On the Return of Prayer,’ speaks of ’Jesus, whose spirit was meek and gentle up to the greatness of the biggest example.’  As for our double negative, I shall waste no time in quoting instances of it, because it was once as universal in English as it still is in the neo-Latin languages, where it does not strike us as vulgar.  I am not sure that the loss of it is not to be regretted.  But surely I shall admit the vulgarity of slurring or altogether eliding certain terminal consonants?  I admit that a clear and sharp-cut enunciation is one of the crowning charms and elegances of speech.  Words so uttered are like coins fresh from the mint, compared with the worn and dingy drudges of long service,—­I do not mean American coins, for those look less badly the more they lose of their original ugliness.  No one is more painfully conscious than I of the contrast between the rifle-crack of an Englishman’s yes and no, and the wet-fuse drawl of the same monosyllables in the mouths of my countrymen.  But I do not find the dropping of final consonants disagreeable in Allan Ramsay or Burns, nor do I believe that our literary ancestors were sensible of that inelegance in the fusing them together of which we are conscious.  How many educated men pronounce the t in chestnut? how many say pentise for penthouse, as they should.  When a Yankee skipper says that he is “boun’ for Gloster” (not Gloucester, with the leave of the Universal Schoolmaster),[27] he but speaks like Chaucer or an old ballad-singer, though they would have pronounced it boon.