I shall illustrate this subject by the history of the names of two of our most illustrious countrymen, Shakspeare and Rawleigh.

We all remember the day when a violent literary controversy was opened, nor is it yet closed, respecting the spelling of our poet’s name.  One great editor persisted in his triumphant discovery, by printing Shakspere, while another would only partially yield, Shakspeare; but all parties seemed willing to drop the usual and natural derivation of his name, in which we are surely warranted from a passage in a contemporary writer, who alludes by the name to a conceit of his own, of the martial spirit of the poet.[118] The truth seems to be, then, that personal names were written by the ear, since the persons themselves did not attend to the accurate writing of their own names, which they changed sometimes capriciously, and sometimes with anxious nicety.  Our great poet’s name appears Shakspere in the register of Stratford church; it is Shakspeare in the body of his will, but that very instrument is indorsed Mr. Shackspere’s will.  He himself has written his name in two different ways, Shakspeare and Shakspere.  Mr. Colman says, the poet’s name in his own county is pronounced with the first a short, which accounts for this mode of writing the name, and proves that the orthoepy rather than the orthography of a person’s name was most attended to; a very questionable and uncertain standard.[119]

Another remarkable instance of this sort is the name of Sir Walter Rawley, which I am myself uncertain how to write; although I have discovered a fact which proves how it should be pronounced.

Rawley’s name was spelt by himself and by his contemporaries in all sorts of ways.  We find it Ralegh, Raleigh, Rawleigh, Raweley, and Rawly; the last of which at least preserves its pronunciation.  This great man, when young, subscribed his name “Walter Raweley of the Middle Temple” to a copy of verses, prefixed to a satire called the Steel-Glass, in George Gascoigne’s Works, 1576.  Sir Walter was then a young student, and these verses, both by their spirit and signature, cannot fail to be his; however, this matter is doubtful, for the critics have not met elsewhere with his name thus written.  The orthoepy of the name of this great man I can establish by the following fact.  When Sir Walter was first introduced to James the First, on the King’s arrival in England, with whom, being united with an opposition party, he was no favourite, the Scottish monarch gave him this broad reception:  “Rawly!  Rawly! true enough, for I think of thee very Rawly, mon!” There is also an enigma contained in a distich written by a lady of the times, which preserves the real pronunciation of the name of this extraordinary man.

    What’s bad for the stomach, and the word of dishonour,
    Is the name of the man, whom the king will not honour.