John HarVs Works on English Orthography and Pronunciation [1551 - 1569 - 1570]. Part I : Biographical and Bibliographical Introductions, Texts and Index Verborum by Bror Danielsson (= Stockholm Studies in English, V). Stockholm, Almqvist & Wiksell, 1955, 1 Vol., 338 pp., 25 figs. Price : 38 Sw. Kr.

In this first volume of his work on John Hart, Mr. Danielsson offers us mainly the material to be examined more closely in the second, but even so it contains much of immediate interest. A very full genealogical and biographical account of the author (pp. 13-86) is followed by a bibliographical introduction describing MS British Museum Royal 17.G.VII (" The Opening of the / unreasonable writing of our inglish / toung : wherin is shewid what necessa/rili is to be left, and what folowed / for the perfect wri-/ting therof. / 1551 ") and the known copies of Hart's two printed works (pp. 87- 108). " The Opening, etc. " is printed here for the first time (pp. 109-164) ; " An / conteyning the due / order and reason, howe to / write or paint thimage of mannes / voice, most like to the life or / nature. Composed by / I. H. Chester / Heralt." (1569) and " A Méthode or / beginning for all vnlearned, / whereby they may bee taught to / read English, in a very short time, / with : So profitable as / straunge, put in light, by / I. H. Chester / Heralt." (1570), of which no recent editions exist, are as well (pp. 165-228 and 229-250). " The index includes, as far as possible, all the words found in phonetic transcription in John Hart's Works " (pp. 251-337) ; besides English, there are remarks on the pronunciation of words and sounds in Scottish, Welsh, Dutch, Flemish, Low French, Greek, Hebrew, High German,

Italian, Latin and Spanish to be gleaned from Hart's works.

Although these texts on orthography and pronunciation will appeal in the first place to the student of English philology, they are not without interest to scholars concerned with handwriting and printing at large. Hart became conscious of the growing distance between the sounds of English and the way they were rendered in writing and printing. The reform of English spelling which he advocated meant at the same time a reform of writing and printing — this being probably the reason why he was not For several sounds [J, d3, tj, 6, â] he proposed new characters. From his contemporary Sir Thomas Smith he borrowed for [d3] "the English Saxon 3... a little diuersifying the shape to differ more from g," but did not follow him in the use of " the English Saxon letters called the thorne d, thus, (J, ... and the ... Saxon p " ; for these he preferred to follow " the ready nesse of the hande " (p. 194 f.). The illustrations include specimen pages of Hart's and of his phonetic system.

This work is carefully presented and seems to contain few misprints (p. 93 : is there no mistake in the page measurements of G 7 ? p. 327 i. v. kooper read H. 1551 :148). We hope that Mr. Danielsson will soon be able to bring out his second volume, which no doubt will contain much valuable on Hart's remarkable works.

Ghent

R. Derolez