himself: “It is rather sad to think that the noble Lord and I 
     should have been educated in the same place, and at the 
     same time, and that 40 years later we should come here 
     to differ upon this question.”

     It is presumably impossible to make a grammatical error 
in a nonliterate society, for nobody ever heard one. The 
difference between oral and visual order sets up the confusions 
of the ungrammatical. In the same way the passion for spelling 
reform in the sixteenth century arose from the new effort to 
adjust sight and sound. Sir Thomas Smith had argued that “a 
letter had an inherent nature which made it appropriate to one 
sound only.” This is the one-thing-at-a-time of the natural 
victim of print. And there were many who extended this logic to 
the meanings of words as well. But many rugged characters like 
Richard Mulcaster rallied against this visual logic, just as Dr.