FIRSTLY OR FIRST? LASTLY OR LAST?

 

Of late, I have been noticing a tendency to employ "firstly", "secondly" instead of "first, second", as in "Firstly I wish to thank..." instead of "First I wish to thank..." It is not wrong, of course, and the adverb has been in use this way for centuries; even Fowler, however, tended to prefer first, second, etc., rather than firstly, secondly, and expressions such as “last but not least” would sound odd if turned into “lastly but not least. I simply wanted to point this out in case someone like me was wondering.