Note 181 — Chapter V

In one respect, at any rate, we have legitimate ground of triumph over our ancestors—we spell better than they did. Charles Lamb once lent a volume of the old dramatists to a friend, and asked him his opinion of it. The reply was that it contained a considerable amount of bad spelling! The name Urquhart, as thus written, occurs here in Sir Thomas's "Pedigree," and is, doubtless, the correct form of the name. In the Latinised shape of Urquhardus it occurs on the register of the University of Aberdeen, at which our author studied. Yet Urchard seems to have been

The unbridled licence in the matter of spelling prevalent at that period is still further illustrated by the historian Gordon, who wrote the History of Scots Affairs, and who gives us the name in the form of Wrqhward! This, one would think, was as far as it was possible to get in the way of bad spelling, without altogether taking leave of the sounds to be expressed by alphabetical signs. After it the spelling Wrwhart, as we find it in an Act of Parliament of 1663, seems rather poor.