The Grammar of English Grammars, page 458 by Gould Brown
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synod of grammarians upon principles of science. But who can hope to prevail on nations to change their practice, and make all their old books useless? or what advantage would a new orthography procure equivalent to the confusion and perplexity of such an alteration?"--_Johnson's Grammar before Quarto Dict._, p. 4.
OBS. 28.--Among these reformers of our alphabet and orthography, of whose schemes he gives examples, the Doctor mentions, first, "Sir Thomas Smith, secretary of state to Queen Elizabeth, a man of real learning, and much practised in grammatical disquisitions;" who died in 1597;--next, "_Dr. Gill_, the celebrated master of St. Paul's School in London;" who died in 1635;--then, "Charles Butler, a man who did not want an understanding which might have qualified him for better employment;" who died in 1647;--and, lastly, "Bishop Wilkins, of Chester, a learned and ingenious critic, who is said to have proposed his scheme, without expecting to be followed;" he died in 1672.
OBS. 29.--From this time, there was, so far as I know, no noticeable renewal of such efforts, till about the year 1790, when, as it is shown above on page 134 of my Introduction, _Dr. Webster_, (who was then only "_Noah Webster, Jun._, attorney at law,") attempted to spell all words as they are spoken, without revising the alphabet--a scheme which his subsequent experience before many years led him to abandon. Such a reformation was again attempted, about forty years after, by an other young lawyer, the late lamented _Thomas S. Grimke_, of South Carolina, but with no more success. More recently, phonography, or phonetic writing, has been revived, and to some extent spread, by the publications of Isaac Pitman, of Bath, England, and of _Dr. Andrew Comstock_, of Philadelphia. The system of the former has been made known in America chiefly by the lectures and other efforts of Andrews and Boyle, of _Dr. Stone_, a citizen of Boston, and of _E. Webster_, a publisher in Philadelphia.