SIMPLIFIED SPELLING

Evening Post, Volume LXXXV, Issue 27, 1 February 1913, Page 13

SIMPLIFIED SPELLING

The Observer of a recent date contained the following :—: — The Simplified Spelling Society, which does not let the grass grow under its feet, is out betimes with its New Year's card :-— Ring out, wield belz, in the wield scie, The fling cloud, the frosti liet ; The yeer is diing in the niet; Ring out, wield belz, end let him die. That puts quite a new complexion rm it. But is it quite fair of the society to perplex our season of festivity with obstinate questionings as to whj? the two diverse vowel sounds in "firing" and "diing" should be represented by the same letter?" It does certainly give Tennyson's famous lines, a new complexion, but it also opens up an interesting problem in reference to the mental images created by the appearance of poetry (says a writer in T.P.s weekly). 'Tennyson's lines 'are not the same to me in the above form ; they, have all the strangeness of a new language or, at least, a strange patois. It is as though they were written in the dialects of Somerset or Lancashire. I wonder how really great poetry — Keats' Odes, for instance — would withstand the shock of the new spelling ? Anyhow, I am not going to try — I am quite satisfied with the old.