The Afternoon Post

The village Post Office, with its clock and letter-box, its postmistress lost in tales of love-lorn Dukes and coroneted woe, and the sallow-faced grocer watching from his window opposite, is the scene of a daily crisis in my life, when every afternoon I walk there through the country lanes and ask that well-read young lady for my letters. I always expect good news and cheques; and then, of course, there is the magical Fortune which is coming, and word of it may reach me any day. What it is, this strange Felicity, or whence it shall come, I have no notion; but I hurry down in the morning to find the news on the breakfast table, open telegrams in delighted panic, and say to myself "Here it is!" when at night I hear wheels approaching along the road. So, happy in the hope of Happiness, and not greatly concerned with any other interest or ambition, I live on in my quiet, ordered house; and so I shall live perhaps until the end. Is it, indeed, merely the last great summons and revelation for which I am waiting? I do not know.

III. ae and oe.

The use of ae and oe in English words of classical origin was a pedantic innovation of the sixteenth century: in most words of common use ae and oe have been replaced by the simple e, and we no longer write prævious, æternal, æra, æmulate, cœlestial, œconomy, &c. Since, however, those forms have a learned appearance, they are being now restored in many words which had been freed from them; medieval is commonly written mediæval; primæval and co-æval are beginning to make their appearance; peony is commonly written pæony, and the forms sæcular, chimæra, hyæna[1] and præternatural have recently been noted. As this is more than a mere change in orthography, being in fact a part of the process of de-assimilation, members of our Society would do well to avoid the use of the archaic forms in all words which have become thoroughly English, and which are used without thought of their etymology. The matter is not so simple with regard to words of Latin or Greek derivation which are only understood by most people through their etymology; and for these it may be well to keep their etymologically transparent spelling, as ætiology, œstrus, &c. Whether learned words of this kind, and classical names such as Cæsar, Æschylus, &c., should be spelt with vowels ligatured or divided (Caesar, Aeschylus), is a point about which present usage varies; and that usage does not always represent the taste of the writers who employ it. Mr. Horace Hart, in his Rules for Compositors and Readers at the University Press, Oxford, ruled that the combinations ae and oe should each be printed as two letters in Latin and Greek words and in English words of classical derivation, but this last injunction is plainly deduced from the practice of editors of Latin texts, and is an arbitrary rule in the interest of uniformity: it has the sanction and influence of the Clarendon Press, but is not universally accepted. Thus Dr. Henry Bradley writes, ‘This question does not seem to me to be settled by the mere fact that all recent classical editors reject the ligatures, just as most of them reject other aids to pronunciation which the ancients had not, such as j, v, for consonantal i, u. Many printers have conformed the spelling of English words in this respect to the practice of editors of Latin texts. I confess my own preference is for adhering to the English tradition of the ligature, not only in English words, but even in Latin or Greek names quoted in an English context. If we write ae, oe in Philae, Adelphoe, we need the diæresis in Aglaë, Pholoë, and a name like Aeaea looks very funny in an English context. The editors of Latin texts are perfectly right in discarding the ligatures; but so they are also in writing Iuuenalis; Latin is one thing and English is another.’