different sounds of the letter e.

lace, solace, menace , pinnace, populace, might,without any great departure from their commonsound, be written pallus, sollus, & c. while fur-nace almost changes the a into /, and might bewritten furniss.

92. When the a is preceded by the gutturalshard g or c, it is, in polite pronunciation, soften-ed by the intervention of a sound like e, so thatcard, cart, guard, regard, are pronounced likeke-ard, ke-art, ghe-ard, rc-ghe-ard. When the ais pronounced short, as in the first syllables ofcandle, gander, &c. the interposition of the c isvery perceptible, and indeed unavoidable : forthough we can pronounce guard and cart with-out interposing the e, it is impossible to pronouncegarrison and carriage in the same manner. Thissound of the a is taken notice of in Steele'sGrammar, page 49, which proves it is not the off-spring of the present day, 160 ; and I have thesatisfaction to find Mr. Smith, a very accurateinquirer into the subject, entirely of my opinion.But the sound of the a, which I have found themost difficult to appreciate, is that where it endsthe syllable either immediately before or afterthe accent We cannot give it any of its threeopen sounds without hurting the car: thus, inpronouncing the words abound and diadem, ay-bound, ab-bound, and aw-bonnd; dl-ay-dem, dl-ah-dem, and di-ati'-dem , are all improper; but givingthe a the second or Italian sound, as ah-boundand di-ah-dem, seems the least so. For whichreason l have, like Air. Sheridan, adopted theshort sound of this letter to mark this unaccenteda : but if the unaccented a be final, which is notthe cose in any word purely English , it thenseems to approach still nearer to the Italian a inthe last syllable of papa, and to the a in father ;as may he heard iu the deliberate pronunciationof the words idea, Africa, Delta, &c. 88. Seethe letter A at the beginning of the Dictionary .

£.

93. The first sound of e is that which it haswhen lengthened by the mute e final, as in glebe ,thane, &e. or when it ends a syllable with theaccent npou it, as se-cre-tion, ad-he-sion, &c. 3G.

94. The exceptions to this rule are the wordswhere and there ; in which the first c is pronoun-ced like a, as if written whare, thare ; and theauxiliary verb w-cre, where the c has its shortsound, as if written werr, rhyming with the lastsyllable of pre fer and ere (before), which soundslike air. When there is in composition in theword therefore, the e is generally shortened, as inwere, but in my opinion improperly.

95. The short sound of e is that heard in bed,fed, red, wed, &c.; this sound before r is apt to

slide into short w ; and we sometimes hear mercysounded as if written murcy: but this, thoughvery near, is not the exact sound.

Irregular and unaccented Sounds.

90. The e at the end of the monosyllables be,he, me, we, is pronounced ce, as if written bee,hee, &c. It is silent at the end of words purelyEnglish , but is pronounced distinctly at the endof some words from the learned languages, as epi-tome, simile, catastrophe, apostrophe, &c.

97. The first c in the poetic contractions, e'er

and ne'er, is pronounced like a, as it written airand nair. , .

98. The e in her is pronounced nearly like shortv; and as we hear it in the unaccented termina-tions of writer, reader, &c. pronounced as ifwritten writur, readur, where we may observethat the r being only n jar, and not a definite anddistinct articulation like the other consonants,instead of stopping the vocal efflux of voice, letsit imperfectly pass, and so corrupts and altersthe true sound of the vowel. The same may beobserved of the final e after V in words ending inere, gre, tre, where the e is sounded as if itwere placed before the r, ns in lucre, inaugre,theatre, Sec. pronounced lukur, niaugur, theatur,Sec. See No. 418. It may be remarked, thatthough wc ought cautiously to avoid pronouncingthe e like it when under the accent, it would betihnis Attici, and border too much on affectationof accuracy, to preserve this sound of e in unac-cented syllables before r; and though terrible,where e lias the accent, should never be pro-nounced as if written turriblc, it is impossible

without pedantry to make any difference in thesound of the last syllable of splendour and tender ,sulphur and suffer, or martyr and garter. Butthere is a small deviation from rule when thisletter begins a word, and is followed by a doubleconsonant with the accent on the second syl-lable: in this case we find the vowel lengthen asif the consonant were single.—See F.jjuce, De-spatch, Embalm.

99. This vowel, in a final unaccented syllabi^,is apt to slide into the short i.* thus faces, ranges,praises, are pronounced as if written faciz, rangis,praiziz ; poet, covet, linen, duel, ice. as if writtenpoit, covit, linin, dull, ice. ; where we may ob-serve that, though ihe e goes into the short soundof i, it is exactly that sound which correspondsto the King sound of e.— See Port-ltoyal Gram-mar, Latin , page 142.

100. There is a remarkable exception to thecommon sound of this letter in the words clerk-sergeant, and a few others, where we find the epronounced like the a in dark and margin. Butthis exception, I imagine, was, till within theselew years, the general rule of bounding this let-ter belore r, followed by another consonant.See Merchant. Thirty’ years aeo every one pro-nounced the first syllable of merchant like themonosyllable march, and as it was anciently writ-ten marchant. Service and servant are still heardamong the lower order of speakers as if writtensarvlce and sarvant ; and even among the bettersort we .sometimes hear the salutation, Sir, yoursarvant! though this pronunciation of the wordsingly' would be looked upon as a mark of thelowest vulgarity. The proper names, Derby andBerkeley, still retain the old sound, as if writtenDarby and Itarkeley; but even these, in politeusage, arc getting into common sound, nearly asif written Durby and Bnrktley. As this modernpronunciation of the e has a tendency to simplifythe language by lessening the number of excep-tions, it ought certainly to he indulged.

101. This letter falls into an irregular .sound,but still a sound which is its nontext relation, inthe words England, yes, and pretty, where the eis heard like short i. Vulgar speakers are guiltyof the same irregularity in engine, as if writtenin gin e ; hut this cannot be too carefully avoided,

102. The vowel e before l and n in the final un-accented syllable, by its being sometimes sup-pressed and sometimes not, forms one of the mostpuzzling difficulties in pronunciation. When anyof the liquids precede these letters, the e isheaiddistinctly, as woollen,/tunnel, women, st/ren ; butwhen any of the other consonants em’m* be foiethese letters, the e is sometimes heard, as in na-vel, sudden; and sometimes not, ns’in swivi'lraven, &c. As no other rule can he given ftqthis variety of pronunciation, perhaps the bestway will be to draw the line between those wordswhere e is pronounced, and ihose where it is not ■and this, by the help of the Rhyming Dictionary’I am luckily enabled to do. In the fir-4 placethen, it may be observed, the e before l, in afinal unaccented syllable, must always be pro-nounced distinctly, except in the followingwords : Shekel, weasel, ousel, non set (better writ-ten nuzzle), navel, ravel, snivel, rivel, drivel,shrivel, shovel, grovel, hazel, drazel, noz* l. Thesewords are pronounced as if the e were omittedby an apostrophe, as shck’l, weas’l, ons'l, &c. orrather as if written sheckle, wcazle, ouzle, &c. ;but ns these are the only words of this termina-tion that are so pronounced, great care must betaken that we do not pronounce travel , grantreb‘1 (the substantive), parcel, chapel, and vessrf'in the same manner; a fault to which many arevery prone.

103. E before n in a final unaccented syllableami not preceded by a liquid, must always besuppressed in the verbal terminations in en\ as toloosen, to hearken, and in other words, exceptthe following : Sudden, mynchen, kitchen, hyphenchicken, ticken (better written ticking), jerken\aspen, platen, paten, marten, la/ten, patten, leavenor levcn, sloven, mittens. In these words the eis heard distinctly, contrary to the general rulewhich suppresses’the e in these syllables, whenpreceded by a mute, as harden, heathen, heaven,ns if written hurd’n, heuth'n, heuv’n, &c.; nay,even when preceded by a liquid in the wordsfallen and stolen, where the c is suppressed, as if