, whereas the Scots, who retain the antient language, understand
them without the help of a glossary. »For instance, (said he) how have your
commentators been puzzled by the following expression in the Tempest - He's
gentle, and not fearful; as if it was a paralogism to say, that being gentle, he
must of course be courageous: but the truth is, one of the original meanings, if
not the sole meaning, of that word was, noble, high-minded; and to this day, a
Scotch woman, in the situation of the young lady in the Tempest, would express
herself nearly in the same terms - Don't provoke him; for being gentle, that is,
high-spirited, he won't tamely bear an insult. Spenser, in the very first stanza
of his Fairy Queen, says,
 
                   A gentle knight was pricking on the plain;
 
which knight, far from being tame and fearful, was so stout that
 
                   Nothing did he dread, but ever was ydrad.«
 
To prove that we had impaired the energy of our language by false refinement, he
mentioned the following words, which, though widely different in signification,
are pronounced exactly in the same manner - wright, write, right, rite; but
among the Scots, these words are as different in pronunciation, as they are in
meaning and orthography; and this is the case with many others which he
mentioned by way of illustration. - He, moreover, took notice, that we had (for
what reason he could never learn) altered the sound of our vowels from that
which is retained by all the nations in Europe; an alteration which rendered the
language extremely difficult to foreigners, and made it almost impracticable to
lay down general rules for orthography and pronunciation. Besides, the vowels
were no longer simple sounds in the mouth of an Englishman, who pronounced both
i and u as diphthongs. Finally, he affirmed, that we mumbled our speech with our
lips and teeth, and ran the words together without pause or distinction, in such
a manner, that a foreigner, though he understood English tolerably well, was
often obliged to have recourse to a Scotchman to explain what a native of
England had said in his own language.
    The truth of this remark was confirmed by Mr. Bramble from his own
experience; but he accounted for it on another principle. - He said, the same
observation would hold in all languages; that a Swiss talking French was more
easily understood than a Parisian, by a foreigner who had not made himself
master of the
