Note 235 — V

Quintilian has expressed himself with the true dignity of a scholar on this matter (Inst. 1, 6, 45): Consuetudinem sermonis vocabo consensum eruditorum; sicut vivendi consensum bonorum.—How different from innovations like this the changes in the spelling of German which J. Grimm, so far as his own example may reach, has introduced; and the still bolder and more extensive ones which in the Preface to his Deutsches Wörterbuch, pp. liv.-lxii., he avows his desire to see introduced;—as the employment of f, not merely where it is at present used, but also wherever v is now employed; the substituting of the v, which would be thus disengaged, for w, and the entire dismissal of w. They may be advisable, or they may not; it is not for strangers to offer an opinion; but at any rate they are not a seizing of the fluctuating, superficial accidents of the present, and a seeking to give permanent authority to these, but they all rest on a deep historic study of the language, and of the true genius of the language.