to match their Dutch orthography. Examples include the silent h in ghost (to match Dutch , which later became ), aghast, ghastly and gherkin. The silent h in other words—such as , and —was later removed. There have been two periods when spelling reform of the English language has attracted particular interest. 16th and 17th centuries The first of these periods was from the middle of the 16th to the middle of the 17th centuries AD, when a number of publications outlining proposals for reform were published. Some of these proposals were: (On the Rectified and Amended Written English Language) in 1568 by Sir Thomas Smith, Secretary of State to Edward VI and Elizabeth I. in 1569 by John Hart, Chester Herald. in 1580 by William Bullokar. in 1621 by Dr. Alexander Gill, headmaster of St Paul's School in London. in 1634 by Charles Butler, vicar of Wootton St Lawrence. These proposals generally did not attract serious consideration because they were too radical or were based on an insufficient understanding of the phonology of English. However, more conservative proposals were more successful. James Howell in his Grammar of 1662 recommended minor changes to spelling, such as changing to logic, to war, to sin, to town and to true. Many of these spellings are now in general use. From the 16th century AD onward, English writers who were scholars of Greek and Latin literature tried to link English words to their Graeco-Latin counterparts. They did this by adding silent letters to make the real or imagined links more obvious. Thus became debt (to link it to Latin ), became doubt (to link it to Latin ), became scissors and became scythe (as they were wrongly thought to come from Latin ), became island (as it was wrongly thought to come from Latin ), and so forth. William Shakespeare satirized the disparity between English spelling and pronunciation. In his play Love's Labour's Lost, the character Holofernes is "a pedant" who insists that pronunciation should change to match spelling, rather than simply changing spelling to match pronunciation. For example, Holofernes insists that everyone should pronounce the unhistorical B in words like doubt and debt. 19th century The second period started in the 19th century and appears to coincide with the development of phonetics as a science. In 1806, Noah Webster published his first dictionary, A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language. It included