1 APRIL 1893, Page 16

THE CHANGE IN PRONUNCIATION.

[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTAT0101 Sin,--4 think that a great deal of time is wasted in trying ta prove that words were pronounced similarly because they were made to rhyme. Some twenty-first-century critic might apply this canon to the following lines of Tennyson, thus. Having proved triumphantly and correctly from- " Hapless doom of woman happy in betrothing, Beauty passes like a breath and love in lost in loathing," that " betrothing " and " loathing " were pronounced similarly, he would be led in his triumphant, but hardly correct, course to a further decision by the third rhyming line of the triplet :— "LOW my lute ; speak low my lute, but say the world is—nothing."

—I am Sir, 8tc.,

Henley Villas, From,e, March lith. C. R. R. STA.CK.