Considering the many mysteries which our Doctor discovered in the name of Dove, and not knowing but that many more may be concealed in it which will in due time be brought to light, I am particularly desirous,—I am solicitous,—I am anxious,—I wish (which is as much as if a Quaker were to say “I am moved,” or “it is upon my mind”) to fix for posterity, if possible, the true pronunciation of that name. _If possible_, I say, because whatever those readers may think, who have never before had the subject presented to their thoughts, it is exceedingly difficult. My solicitude upon this point will not appear groundless, if it be recollected to what strange changes pronunciation is liable, not from lapse of time alone, but from caprice and fashion. Who in the present generation knows not how John Kemble was persecuted about his _a-ches_, a point wherein right as he was, he was proved to be wrong by a new _norma loquendi_. Our allies are no longer iambic as they were wont to be, but pure trochees now like Alley Croker and Mr. Alley the counsellor. _Beta_ is at this day called _Veta_ in Greece to the confusion of Sir John Cheke, to the triumph of Bishop Gardiner, and in contempt of the whole ovine race. Nay, to bring these observations home to the immediate purport of this chapter, the modern Greeks when they read this book will call the person on whose history it relates, Thaniel Thove! and the Thoctor! their Delta having undergone as great a change as the Delta in Egypt. Have I not reason then for my solicitude? Whoever examines that very rare and curious book, _Lesclarcissement de la langue françoyse_, printed by Johan Haukyns, 1530, (which is the oldest French grammar in our language, and older than any that the French possess in their own) will find indubitable proof that the pronunciation of both nations is greatly altered in the course of the last three hundred years. Neither the Spaniards nor Portuguese retain in their speech that strong Rhotacism which they denoted by the double _rr_, and which Camden and Fuller notice as peculiar to the people of Carlton in Leicestershire. Lily has not enumerated it among those _isms_ from which boys are by all means to be deterred, a most heinous _ism_ however it is. A strange uncouth wharling, Fuller called it, and Camden describes it as a harsh and ungrateful manner of speech with a guttural and difficult pronunciation. They were perhaps a colony from Durham or Northumberland in whom the _burr_ had become hereditary.