The slender sound given to th in our polished dialect is, in the West, most commonly converted into the thick or obtuse sound of the same letters as heard in the words this, these, &c.; and this, too, very often whether the letters be inceptive or final.

Notwithstanding our lexicographers have usually given the powers of th to the AngloSaxon letters and , I am very much disposed to believe that these letters were sometimes, nay perhaps often, used indiscriminately by our Anglo-Saxon ancestors for D only, and sounded as such, as we find at the present time they are so frequently thus sounded in the West.

Another remarkable fact is, the disposition to invert the order of some of the consonants in certain words; as the r in thrush, brush, rush, &c., these words being pronounced dirsh, birsh, hirsh, &c.; and the s in such words as clasp, hasp, asp, &c., they being sounded claps, haps, aps, &c. Some of these words will be found in the Glossary; but I have not thought it necessary to notice them all; these general observations will, I hope, enable the student to detect the words when subjected to such inversion. On this subject, however, it may be ob

served, that it is by no means improbable that the order in which such sounds are now repeated in the west, is the original order in which they existed in our language; and that our present polished mode of expressing them is a new, and, in fact, perhaps, as in many other instances in our polished dialect, a corrupt enunciation. This observation may appear singular to many persons; but I am not the first writer who has made it. There will, I think, be no great difficulty in accounting for such variations. As the language of the country has been and is too often accompanied with a coarseness of manners, our citizens, and other arbitri elegantiarum, have, no doubt, felt desirous of removing as far as possible from such coarseness; and in doing this the enunciation even of country persons has been studiously avoided. And hence numerous anomalies and novelty in sounds, as well as in orthography, have, I doubt not, arisen; and hence also the great difficulty, from the inversion or misplacing of letters, of discovering the genuine etymology of many words.

Another peculiarity is that of attaching to many of the common verbs in the infinitive mode, as well as to some other parts of different con

jugations, the letter y. Thus it is very common to say I can't sewy, I can't nursy, he can't reapy, he can't sawy; as well as to sewy, to nursy, to reapy, to sawy, &c. but never, I think, without an auxiliary verb, or the sign of the infinitive to. I am very much disposed to believe, that this arises from an inclination to give the infinitives of verbs an uniform termination, as in the French and many other languages. I am not aware that this observation on our English dialect has been ever made before.

Another peculiarity is that of making two syllables of words which are monosyllables in our polished dialect. And thus the words air, both, fair, fire, stairs, sure, &c. become ayer, booäth, fayer, viër, stayers, shower, &c. And thus, I have no doubt, they were formerly very generally pronounced, as Chaucer gives many of them as dissyllables.

The verb to be retains much of its primitive form in this dialect. Instead of I am, &c. I be, thou beest or bist, thee beest, we be, you be, they or thâ be, are constantly heard; but rarely or never, he be but he is. In the past tense war, for was and were, is always used: as I war, thee or thou wart, he war, we war, you war, they ar

tha war.

Besides these peculiarities in this verb, we often hear we'm for we are, you'm for you are, and they'm for they are.

There is also as strong a tendency to pleonasm in some instances, as to contraction and elision in others. Thus we have alost for lost, agone for gone, abought for bought, abrought for brought, &c. Exemplifications of these prefixes will be found in abundance in Chaucer; but he very often uses the y instead of a, as ylost.

Notwithstanding there is an impression very generally entertained, I believe, that this dialect of the west is a very rough and inharmonious one; except in the frequent and unpleasant use of Z for S and V for F, I do not think it will be found so deficient in agreeable sounds as it has been commonly supposed. Certain it is, that it would not be difficult to select many words which may, for their modulation, compete with others of gallic extraction; and, perhaps, in many respects, would be found superior to numbers which we have thought proper to borrow from other languages, much less analagous to the polished dialect of our own.

In pursuance of these ideas, I have added some poetical and prose pieces in the dialect

of Somersetshire. I cannot say that I have, by any means, satisfied myself as to the poetry; but I think the reader may rest assured that the idiom is tolerably well preserved; and that, as much as possible, the pronunciation is conveyed in letters the nearest to the sound of the words there are, in truth, many sounds for which we have neither letters nor combinations of letters to express them; in such cases I have been under the necessity of adopting those letters whose sounds approach the nearest to those which I intended to express to have gone into a comparison between the sounds of all the letters of the alphabet as pronounced in Somersetshire, and as they are pronounced in our polished dialect, would have been a degree of criticism to which, perhaps, the subject is not entitled; and is, at all events, one into which I am not now disposed to enter.

The reader will bear in mind that these poems are composed in the dialect of the county of Somerset, north-east of the river Parret Other dialects, as I have before observed, are to be found; but this is, by far, the most general: and, it is, besides, that with which I am best acquainted, and in