P^kMvV'.. 
 
CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
 ENGLISH COLLECTION 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 JAMES MORGAN HART 
 
 PROFESSOR OF ENGUSH 
 
 K^-ifinH-^^ 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PE 1075.M36 1871 
 
 3 1924 026 570 733 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924026570733 
 
THK 
 
 ORIGIN AND HISTORY 
 
 ENGLISH LANGUAGE, 
 
 THE EARLY LITERATURE IT EMBODIES^ 
 
 BY v^ 
 
 GEORGE P.'-l^RSH, 
 
 AUTHOR OP "LECTDEES ON THE ENGLISH LAHGDAGE,'' ETC., ETC. 
 
 THIED EDITION. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCEIBNER & 00. 
 
 1871. 
 & 
 
A,?^tHM?L3 
 
 1 . 1 M, Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862, by 
 
 * ■ CHARLES SCEIBNJER, 
 
 Is the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of 
 
 New York, 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 The lectures ^vliich compose the present volume 
 were delivered at the Lowell Institute, in Boston, 
 Massachusetts, in the autumn and winter of 1860 
 -1861, and they are now published, for the benefit of 
 the author, by the liberal permission of the Trustees 
 of that noble foundation. They were prepared in the 
 summer . preceding, with such aids only as my private 
 library afforded ; and my departure from the United 
 States in the spring of 1861, together with the want 
 of access to collections of English books abroad, has 
 prevented me from giving them such a revision as I 
 hoped to be able to bestow upon them. They are 
 printed, therefore, very nearly as they were originally 
 written ; and I have not tliought myself bound to 
 suppress ojjinions advanced, or illustrations employed, 
 in the delivery of the lectures, birely because they 
 are published under circumstances different from those 
 in which they were read. 
 
 It is proper to add that the frequent references in 
 
ADVEETISEMEKT. 
 
 the foot-notes and elsewliere to the "First Series," 
 apply to the fourth edition of a course of lectures on. 
 the English Language, delivered by me at New York, 
 and published in 1861 by Scribner in that city, and 
 by Sampson Low, Son and Co., in London. 
 
 Geoege p. Maesh. 
 
 London, September 30, 1862. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 IJECTHRE I. 
 Inteoductoet ••..,,,,1 
 
 LDCTUEE n. 
 
 OiUGnf ASD Composition of the Anglo-Saxon People aub theis Lan- 
 guage ......... 41 
 
 LECTUEE III. 
 Anglo-Saxon Vocabclaet, Liteeatuee, and Geamhae . • » 88 
 
 LECTUEE IV". 
 Semi-Saxon Liteeaturb ...•••• ISS 
 
 LECTUEE V. 
 
 English Langitage ani> Liteeatueb of the Eiest Peeiod: feom the 
 Middle of the Thieteenih to the Middle of the Foubteenth 
 CENruET .....•>•• 1S8 
 
 LECTUEE TL 
 
 CoMJIENCEMLXT OF SeCOND PeEIOD : FEOM 1350 TO THE TLME OF THE 
 
 AcTHOE OF Piles PLOUcuiiAN ...... 259. 
 
yi CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGI 
 
 LECTUEE \n. 
 The Authoe of Pieks Ploughman and his Imitatoes . • • 295 
 
 LECTUEE VIIL 
 Wtcleffe and his School . ..•••• 339 
 
 LECTtTKE IX. 
 Chaitceb and Gowib ...•••• 379 
 
 LECTURE X. 
 The English Language and Litekatukb fbom the Beginning of the 
 
 ElFTEENTH CeNTUBT TO THE TIME OP CaxTON .... 454 
 
 IiECTURE XL 
 
 The English Language and Liteeatubb feom Caxton to the Accession 
 OF Elizabeth ........ 482 
 
 LECTURE Xn. 
 The English Language and Lixbsatdbe dubino the seiom or Euzk- 
 
 BBIH ..... a. . 53S 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL LIST OF "WORKS CITED IN THESE 
 
 LECTURES. 
 
 Alexanders Saga, ndgiren af TTnger, 1848, 1 B. 8to. 
 
 Alfred (King) Anglo-Saxon Version of BoetMus de Consolatione PhilosophisB, 
 edited by Cardale, London, 1829, 1 vol. 8to. 
 
 — Anglo-Saxon Version of tie History of Paulns Orosins, -witli a translation by 
 
 Thorpe, in Pauli's Life of Alfred the Great. See Pauli. 
 
 AJfric or Aclfrlc, Homilies published by the Aelfrie Society, London, 2 vols. 8vo. 
 
 Alisaunder Kyng, in Weber's Metrical Romances, Vol. 1. 
 
 Ancren Eiwle, The Ancren Eiwle, a Treatise on the Rules and Duties of Monastic 
 
 Life, edited and translated for the Camden Society, by James Morton, London, 
 
 1853, 1 vol. 4to. 
 Anecdota Literaria, a Collection of Short Poems in English, Latin and French, 
 
 Ulusf rative of the Literature and History of England in the Thirteenth Century, 
 
 edited by T. Wright, London, 1845, 1 vol. 8vo. 
 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, The Saxon Chronicle, with an English translation by 
 
 J. Ingram, London, 1823, 1 vol. 4to. 
 
 — The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, edited, -with a translation, by B. Thorpe, London, 
 
 1861, 2 vols. Svo. in the series Eenim Britannicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores, 
 
 or Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Lreland during the 
 
 Middle Ages. 
 
 Anglo-Saxon Gospels, The Anglo-Saxon Version of the Holy Gospels, edited by 
 
 B. Thorpe, reprinted by L. F. Klipstein, New York, 1846, 1 voL 12mo. See, 
 
 also. Gospels. 
 
 Arnold, The Customs of London, otherwise called Arnold's Chronicle, reprioted, 
 
 London, 1811, 1 vol. 4to. 
 Ascham, Eager, The Schole Master, &c, London, 1570, 1 voL small 4to. 
 Ausonius, D. Magui Ausonii Burdegalensis Opera, Amstetedami, 1750, 1 vol. 18mo. 
 
 Bacon (Lord) Essayes or Counsels, civil and morall, newly enlarged, London, 1626, 
 
 1 voL small 4to. 
 Ballads, English and Scotch Ballads, cJit.d by Francis James Child, Boston and 
 
 London, 1861, 8 vols. 12mo. 
 
Viii BIELIOGEAPIITCAL IJST OF 
 
 Ballot y Toms, Gramatica y Apologia de la Llengua Cathalana, Barcelona, I toL 
 
 12ino. s.A. 
 Beowulf, Text in Grein's BiUiotliek, B. I. 
 Burners (Lord). See Froissart. 
 Bible, English, The Holy Bible, conteyniiig the Old Testament and the New, 
 
 London; 1611, 1 vol. folio. 
 
 — Platt-Deutseh. See Bugcnhagen. 
 
 — Hoeh-Deutseh, or Luther's. See Luther. 
 
 — Polyglott. See Stier und Thicle-. 
 
 Siondelli, B., Poesie Lombarde Inedite del Secolo XIII., Milano, 1856, 1 Tol. 8to. 
 
 — Saggio sui Dialetti Gallo-Italici, Milano, 1853, 1 vol. 8vo. 
 
 Body and Soul, Dialogue between, in Appendix to the Latin Poems attributed to 
 "Walter Mapes, edited by Wright for the Camden Society, London, 1841, 1 vol. 4to. 
 
 Boithius. See Alfred. 
 
 Bonne-mere, Histoire des Paysans depuis la fin du Moyen Age jusqu'a nos Jours, 
 par Eugene Bonnemere, Paris, 1856, 2 T. 8vo. 
 
 Boswortli, A Dictionary of the Anglo-Saxon Language, by Eev. J. Bosworth, 
 London, 1835, 1 vol. 8vo. 
 
 — The Origin of the Germanic and Scandinavian Languages and Nations, London, 
 
 1846, 1 vol. 8vo. 
 Bugenhagen, Platt-Deutsch translation of the Bible, Dat ys, De gantze Hillige 
 
 Schrift vordiidtsdiet dorch D. Marti. Luth. Magdeborch, 1545, 1 B. folio. 
 Burguy, Gramniaire de la Langue d'Oil, Berlin, 1853, 3 B. 8vo. 
 
 Cadmon, Genesis, Exodus, Daniel, Text in Grein's Bibliothek, B. I. 
 Caxton, The Game of the Chesse, reproduced in fac-simile by V. Figgins, London, 
 1860, 1 vol. folio. 
 
 — Preface to the Morte d' Arthur, q.v. 
 
 Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales of Geoffrey Chaucer, a new text, edited by T. 
 Wright for the Percy Society, London, 1847-1861, 3 vols. 12mo. 
 
 — Eeprint of same text. s. A. 1 vol. 8vo. 
 
 . — The Poetical Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, with Tyrwhitt's Introductory Dis- 
 course, Notes and Glossary, London, 1859, 1 vol. 8vo. 
 CheJce, Sir John, The Hurt of Sedition, in HoUnshid, Vol. 3. q.v. 
 
 — Gospel of Matthew and part of St. Mark's, London, 1843, 1 vol. Svo. 
 Churchyard, Thomas, Chips concerning Scotland, reprint, London, 1817, 1 vol. Svo. 
 Coleridge, A Glossarial Index to the Printed English Literature of the Thirteenth 
 
 Century, by Herbert Coleridge, London, 1869, 1 vol. Svo. 
 Consiancio, Novo Diccionarlo critico e etymologico da Lingua Portugueza, por 
 F. S. Constanoio, Septima Edi^ao, Paris, 1869, 1 T. 4to. 
 
•WOEKS CITED IN THKSE LECTTJEES VS. 
 
 Contzen, Die Wandeningen der Kelten, historisch-kritiseli dargelegt, yon Leopold 
 
 Contzen, Leipsig, 1861, 1 T. Svo. 
 Courier, P. L., Oeuvres completes de Paul-Louis Courier, BruxeUes, 1833, 1 T. 8to. 
 Craik, G. L., History of tlie English Literature and Language, Loudon, 1862, 
 
 2 vols. Svo. 
 
 — Outlines of the History of the English Language, 1 vol. 12mo. 
 
 Curtasye, Boke of. The Boke of Curtasye, an English Poem of the Fourteenth 
 Century, edited by Halliwell for tlie Percy Society, London, 1841, 1 vol. 12mo. 
 
 Cury, Forme of, The Forme of Cnry, a KoU of Ancient Cookery, London, 1780, 
 1 voL Svo. 
 
 Cynewulfs Crist, Text in Grcin's Biblicthek, B. L 
 
 Dante, H Convito di Dante Alighieri e le Epistole, con iUustrazioni e note di 
 
 Pietro Fraticelli, Firenze, 1857, 1 vol. 12mo. 
 Denkmaler Altniederlandischer Sprache mid Litteratur, herausgegeben von Kausler, 
 
 Tiibingen, 1841, 1844, 2 B. Svo. 
 IHez, Grammatik der Eomanischen Sprachen, von Friedrich Diez, 2" Ausgabe, 
 
 Bonn, 1836, 1860, 3 B. Svo. 
 Dubartas. See Sylvester. 
 Ducangc, Glossarimn Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis, cum Sup, int. Caipenterii et 
 
 aUorum, digessit Henschel, Parisiis, 1840, 1850, 7 T. 4to. 
 
 Edda, elder or poetical, Edda Ssemundar bins FroSa, Edda Ehythmica seu 
 antiqnior, Havnije, 1787-1827, 3 T. 4to. 
 
 — younger or prose, Edda Snorra Sturlusonar, Ha-v-niae, 1848, 1852, T. 1 et 2, 8vo. 
 Edward HI., Poem on death o^ in Political Poems and Songs of England, Vol. 1. 
 
 Egilsson, Lexicon Poeticum Antiquae Linguae Septentrionalis (Icelandic and Latin), 
 
 conscripsit Sveinbjom Egilsson, Hafniae, 1860, 1 T. Svo. 
 Fardle of Facions, London, 1555, 1 voL ISmo., reprinted in Supplement to 
 
 Haklnyt, 1812. 
 Fauriel, Dante et la Litterature Italienne, Paris, 1854, 2 T. Svo. 
 Fergnut, Volksroman nit de XIV''* Eeuw, uitgegeven door Visscher, Utrecht, 1830, 
 
 1 B. 8to. 
 Ferreras, monosyllabic poem, in Ballot y Torres, Gramatica de la Llengua Cathalana. 
 Fiedler unci Sachs, Wissenchaftliche Grammatik der Englischen Sprache, von 
 
 E. Fiedler nnd Carl Sachs, Leipsig, 1861, 2 B. Svo. 
 Firmenich, Germanieus Volkerstimmen, Berlin, various years to 1862, 3 B. Svo. 
 Fisher, Sermon on the death of the Countess of Derby, reprint, London, 1708, 
 
 1 vol. 12mo. 
 Fonseca e Carolina, Novo Guia da Conversa9ao em Portuguez i Inglez, Paiia, 
 
 1855, 1 T. 12mo. 
 
X BniLIOSRAPHICAL LIST OF 
 
 Forhy, The Vocabulary of |]ast AngUa, by Eobert Forby, London, 1830, 2 vols. Sva 
 Froissart, Sir John, Chronicles of England, France, Spain, Scotland, &c., trans- 
 lated by John Bourchier, Lord Bemers, London, 1523, 1525, 2 vols, folio ; reprint, 
 London, 1812, 2 vols. 4to. 
 Fuller, The Church History of Britain, from the Birth of Jesus Christ unt^ 
 year 1648, London, 1665, 1 vol. folio. 
 
 ■Gil, Alexander, Logonomia Anglica, 2nd edition, London, 1621, small 4to. 
 Golding, The XV Books of P. Ouidius Naso, entitiiled Metamorphosis, a -work 
 
 verie pleasant and delectable, translated out of Latin into English meeter by 
 
 Arthvr G-olding, Gentleman, London, 1595, 1 vol. small 4to. 
 Gospel, The Gospel according to Matthew in Anglo-Saxon and Northumbrian 
 
 Versions, Cambridge, 1858, 1 vol. 4to. 
 Gower, The Confessio Amantis of John Goyer, edited by Dr. Eeinhold Pauli, 
 
 Loudon, 1857, 3 vols. 8vo. 
 Graff, E. (?., Diutiska, Denkmaler Deutscher Sprachennd Litteratur, Stuttgart imd 
 
 Tiibiugen, 1826, 1829, 3 B. 8vo. 
 
 Grein, Bibliothek der Angelsachsisohen Poesie, Gottingen, 1857-1862, 8vo., textt 
 
 2 B. ; Deutsche Uebersetzung, B. I. II. ; Glossar. H. 1, 2. 
 Grimm, Jacob und Wilhelm, De.utsehes 'Worterbuc^, Leipzig, 1852i-62, B. I. II, 
 
 ru. 4to. 
 
 — Jacob, Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache, 2" Auflage, Leipzig, 1852, 2 B. 
 8vo. 
 
 MaJcluyt, Eichard, The principal Navigations, Voyages, and Discoveries made by 
 ihe English Nation, London, 1598, 1599, 1600, 3 vols, folio. 
 
 — Supplement to Hakluyt, &e., London, 1812, 1 vol. 4to. 
 
 Hardynge, John, Chronicle in Metre, with continuation in Prose, edited by Grafton, 
 
 reprint, London, 1812, 1 vol. 4to. 
 Maupt, Zeitschrift fiir Deutsches Alter-thum, Leipzig, 1841-62, 12 B. 8vo. 
 Sawes, Stephen, The Pastime of Pleasure, reprint, edited by Wright for Percy 
 
 Society, London, 1845, 1 vol. 12mo. 
 Heimslcringla, Historia Eegum Norvegioorum, auctore Snorrio Sturlaeo, Hafniae^ 
 
 1777-1826, 6 T. folio. 
 Heliand, Poema Saxonicnm Seouli Noni, edidit G. A. Schmeller, Monaoi, 1830» 
 
 1 T. 4to. 
 Hereford, Translation of part of Old Testament, in Wycliffite Versions, q.v. 
 Heywood, John, The Four Ps, a very merry Enterlude of a, Palmes u Pardoner, fk 
 
 Potecary, and a Pedlar, reprint in Dodsley's Collection of Old Plays : also many 
 
 single plays ; no collected edition exists. 
 Hoffmann von Falkrsleben,, Horse Belgiose (various years down to 1857), 2'* 
 
 Ausgabe, 11 B. Svo, 
 
TfOEKS CITED IN THEfE LECTURES xi 
 
 ffoNnskcd, RaJpk Chroniclos of England, Scotland, and Ireland, reprint, London, 
 
 1807-1808, 6 vols. Ito. 
 Holland. See Pliny, 
 Hookir, Richard, Of the Lawes of EcdesiasticaU Politic, hy Richard Hooker, 
 
 Bookesl. to IV., London, without date (159 i), 1 vol. folio; The i'ift Uooke, 
 
 London, 1597, 1 vol. folio. 
 Horn (Kyng) The Geste of Kjnig Horn, in Horn et Eimenhild, edited for the 
 
 Eannatyne Club by Francisque Michel, Paris, 1845, 1 T. 4to. 
 Buydccoper, Breeder Aantekeningen op Melis Stolce, in his edition of that author, 
 
 Leyden, 1772, 3 B. 8vo. 
 
 JaiTies (Kin^) /., Poetical Remains of James the First, Perth, 1787, 1 voL 12mo. 
 Jonsort, Ben, Works, London, 1616-1631, 2 vols, folio. 
 
 Kausler. See Denkmaler Altuiederl. Sp. nnd Lit-. 
 
 Klipstein, Louis i^., A Grammar of the Anglo-Saxon Language, New York, 1849, 
 
 1 voL 12mo. 
 Knox, John, First Blast of the Trumpet against the monstrous Regiment of 
 
 Women, in Appendix to Knox's Historie of the Reformation of Religioim 
 
 within the Realme of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1732, 1 vol. folio. 
 Knytlinga Saga in Fornmanna Sogur, B. XL, Kaupmannahofn, 1828, 8vo. 
 Kocncn, De Nederlandsche Boerenstand Historisch Beschreven, Haarlem, 1858, 
 
 1 B. 8vo. 
 
 Langlande. See Piers Ploughman. 
 
 Langtoft. See Bobert of Brunne. 
 
 Latimer, The Fyrste Sermon of Mayster Hughe Latemer, whych he preached 
 
 before the kynges maiestie, &c., y' viii. day of Marche, mcccccxmx. (with six 
 
 other sermons), London, John Daye, n. d. 
 Layamon, Lajamon's Brut, or Clironicle of Britain, edited by Sir Frederic 
 
 Madden, for the Society of Antiquaries, London, 1847, 3 vols. 8vo. 
 Libel of English Policy, in Political Poems and Songs, relating to English 
 
 History, &c Vol. 2. 
 lAllie or Lilly, Euphues, the Anatomie of Wit, Euphues and His England, by 
 
 John Lylie, London, 1636, 1 voL small 4to. 
 Lindisfarne Gospels. See Gospel. 
 Lorris, Gmllaume de. See Roman de la Rose. 
 Luther's German (Hoeh-Deutsch) Bible. See Stier und Thiele, 
 Jjydgaie, J., Various extracts in Warton and other critical writers, 
 
 llalorye. Sir Thomas. See Morte d' Arthur. 
 
 Mandeville, The Voiage and Travaile of Sir John Maundeville, Kt. London, 
 
Xll BIBLIOGKAPIIICAL LIST OF 
 
 1725 ; reprint, -vi'ith Introduction, Notes, and Glossary by Halliwell, Londoi^ 
 
 1839, 1 vol. 8to. 
 Manning, Eobert. See Bobert of Brunne. 
 Martyr, Peter, Decades, in Supplement to Hdlchiyt, 
 Mcung, J. de. See Eoman de la Eose. 
 Minot, Poems of Laurence Minot in Political Poems and Songs of England, 
 
 Vol. 1. 
 Miracle Plays, Sermon against, in Eeliquise Antiquae, Vol. 2. 
 Mirror for Magistrates, reprint, London, 1815, 3 toIs. 4to. 
 McEso-Gothic Scriptures. See Ulfila. 
 
 Molbcch, C, Dansk Ordbog, anden Udgave, Kjobenbavn, 1859, 2 B. 8to. 
 More, Sir Thomas, The Apologye of syr Thomas More, knyght, London, u. d. 
 
 (1533) 1 Tol. 18mo. 
 
 — The Workes of Sir Thomas More, Knyght, &o., wrytten by him in the Englysh 
 
 tonge, London, 1557, 1 vol. folio. 
 Morte d' Arthur, The Byrth, Lyf, and Actes of Kyng Arthur, &e., and in the end 
 
 Le Morte Darthur, London, 1485; reprint, edited by Southey, London, 1817, 
 
 2 Tols. 4to. 
 Mulcaster, Richard, First Part of the Elementarie, London, 1581, 1 vol. sm. 4to. 
 
 Njala, Sagan af Niali Jjorgeirssyni ok Sonum bans, KavpmannahaTfn, 1772, 
 1 Tol. 4to. 
 
 — Nials Saga, Historia Niali et Filiorum, Latine reddita, cum Glossario, HaTnise, 
 
 1809, 1 ToL 4to. 
 Nibelungen, Der Nibelunge Lied, Abdruck der Haudschrift des Freiherrn von 
 Lassberg, Leipzig, 1840, 1 vol. 4to. 
 
 Occleve or Hbcchve, Poems never before printed, &c., London, 1796, 1 vol. 4to. ; 
 
 also excerpts in "Warton and other critical writers. 
 Ohther's narrative in Alfred's Orosius, g.v. 
 Orm or Ormin, The Ormulum, from the original manuscript, edited by E. M. 
 
 White, Oxford, 1852, 2 vols. 8vo. 
 Otfrid, Krist, herausgegeben von Graff, Konicsberg, 1831, 1 T. 4to. 
 Owl and Nightingale, The Owl and the Nightingale, an early English Poem, 
 
 edited by T. Wright for the Percy Society, London, 1843, 1 vol. 12mo. 
 
 Faiili, Br. if., The Life of Alfred the Great, to which is appended Alfred's Anglo- 
 Saxon version of Orcsius, London, 1857, 1 vol. 12rao. 
 
 Palsgrave, L'Eclau'cissement de la Langue Fran^aise, par Jean Palsgrave ; reprint^ 
 edited by F. Genin, Paris, 1862, 1 vol. folio. 
 
 PlCoc&, Tlie Eepressor of over much blaming of the Clergy, by Eeginald Pecock, 
 Loudon, 1S60, 2 vols. Svo. 
 
WORKS CITED IN THESE LECIUEES xiii 
 
 Pedcrsm, Christen, Det Ny Testamente, 1631, reprinted in Pedersen's Dansko 
 
 Skrifter, Kjotenhavn, 1853, B. III. 
 Phacr, Translation of Virgil's Aeneid, completed by TVjne, London, 1584. 
 Piers Ploughman, The Vision and the Creed of Piers Ploughman, edited by 
 
 Wright, London, 1842, 2 vols. 12mo. 
 Platt-Deutseh Bible. See Bugcnhagen. 
 Flint/, the elder, Xatural History, translated by Philemon Holland, Iiondon, 1601, 
 
 2 vols, folio. 
 Political Songs, The PoUtieal Songs of England from the Eeign of John to that 
 
 of Edward IL, edited by Wright for the Camden Society, London, 1839, 
 
 1 vol. 4to. 
 
 — Political Poems and Songs relating to English History, from the accession of 
 
 Edward in. to that of Eichard III., edited by Wright in Eev. Brit. Med. 
 
 Aevi Script Vol. 1, 1859, Vol. 2, 1861. 
 
 Fortcr Com. David, Constantinople and its Environs, New York, 1835, 2 vols. 8vo. 
 
 Promptorium Parvulorum, sive Clericorum, edited by Way for Camden Society, 
 
 London, T. 1, 1843, T. 2, 1853, 4to. 
 Purchas, Pilgrimes and Pilgrimages, or Voiages and Land Traveb to all parts of 
 
 the World, London, 1625-6, 6 vols, folio. 
 Purvey, Eecension of the Wycliffite Bible. See Wycliffe. 
 Puttenliam, The Arte of English Poesie, London, 1589 ; reprint, edited by Hasle- 
 
 wood, London, 1811, 1 vol. 4to. 
 
 ScisJc, Erasmus, A Grammar of the Anglo-Saxon Tongue, translated by Thorpe, 
 
 Copenhagen, 1830, 1 voL 8vo. 
 "Raynouard, Lexique Eoman, ou Dictionnaiie de la Langue des Troubadours, Paris, 
 
 1844, 6 T. 8vo. 
 Beliqmse Antiquae, Scraps from ancient Manuscripts, by T. Wright and J. 0. 
 
 Halliwell, London, 1841, 2 vols. 8vo. 
 Bemm Britanniearum Medii Aevi Scriptores, or Chronicles and Memorials of 
 
 Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages, now publishing in 8vo. 
 
 volumes, by the British Government, under the direction of the Master of the 
 
 Eolls. See Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Capgrave, Pecock, Political Poems and 
 
 Songs, Eoyal and Historical Letters. 
 Eichard, Coeur de Lion, Poem on, in Weber's Metrical Eomances, Vol. 2, q.v. 
 Bobert of Brunne, or Eobert Manning, Peter Langtofts Chronicle (as illus- 
 trated and improVd by Bobi^rt of Brunne), edited by Thomas Hearne, Oxiord, 
 
 1725, 2 vols. 8vo. 
 Bobert of Gloucester, Chronicle Transcrib'd and now first publish'd from a MS. 
 
 in the Harleyan Library, by Thomas Hearne, Oxford, 1724, 2 vols. Svo; 
 
 reprint, London, 1810, 2 vols. Svo. 
 
 — Lives and Legends of the Saints : St. Brandan, Percy Society, London 
 
XIV BIBLIOGEAPHICAL LIST OF 
 
 1844, 1 vol. 12mo; Life and MartynJom of Thomas a Beckct, do. London, 
 
 1845, 1 vol. 12mo; Fragment on Popular Science, in Wright's Popular 
 Treatises on Science, q^.v. 
 
 Eoman de la Eose, le, par Guillaume de Lorris et Jehan de Mewng, edited bj 
 M^on, Paris, 1844, 4 T. 8vo. 
 
 Eoqiufort, G. B. B., Glossaire de la Langue Komane, Paris, 1808, 2 T. 8vo. ; 
 
 Supplement, ibid. 1820, 1 T. Svo. 
 Eoyal and Historical Letters during the Eeign of Henry IV., London, 1860, 
 
 Vol. 1, 8vo. in Rer. Brit. Med. Aev. Sfeript. 
 Eushworth Gospels. See Gospels. 
 
 Saclcville, T., Liduction, &c., in Mirronr for Magistrates. 
 
 — Poetical Works, London, 1820, Svo. 1 vol. 
 
 — Gorbodue, or Ferrex and Porrex in Bodsley's Old Plays. 
 Sandras, E. G., ittnde sur Chaucer, Paris, 1859, 1 vol. Svo. 
 Sch,iiid, Gesetze der Angel-Sachsen, 2'" Ausgabe, 1858, 1 B. Svo. 
 Shakespeare, AVorks of, Knight's Pictorial Edition, London, 1839, 8 vols. 8vo. 
 Sidney, Sir Philip, Countess of Peinbroke's Ai'cadia, Defence of Poesy, and other 
 
 ■works, London, 1665, 1 vol. folio. 
 Skelton, J., Poetical Works, edited by Dyee, London, 1843, 2 vols. Svo. 
 Snorri Sturluson. See Edda the younger, and Heimski-ingla. 
 Specimens of Lyric Poetry composed in England in the Eeign of Edward I., 
 
 edited by Wright for the Percy Societyj London, 1S42, 1 vol. 12mo. 
 Spenser, Edmuvd, Poetical Works, edited by Hillard, Boston, 1842, 5 vols. Svo. 
 Stalder, P. J., Die Landessprachen der Schweiz, oder Schweizerische Dialektologie, 
 
 Aarau, 1819, 1 vol. Svo. 
 Stanihursi, Richard, Description, &c., of Ireland in Holinshed, Vol. 6. 
 
 — Translations, &c., extracts in Warton. 
 
 Stier wnd Thiele, Polyglotleu-Bibel zum HandgebJanch, Bielefeld, 1854, 4 B. 
 
 in 5, Svo. 
 iSurrey and Wijatt, Songs and Sonnets, reprint, London, 1717, 1 vol. Svo. 
 Surtees Psalter, Anglo-Saxon and Early English Psalter, published by the Surtees 
 
 Society, London, 1843, 1847, 2 vols. Svo. 
 Si/lvesiir, Du Bartas, his Divine Weekes and Workes, translated by Sylvester, 
 London, 1611, 1 vol. 4to. 
 
 Tegnh, Esaias, Samlade Skrifter, Stockholm, 1847-1851, 7 B. Svo. 
 
 J'urner, Sharon, The History of the Anglo-Saxons, Philadelphia, 1841, 2 
 
 vols. Svo. 
 TyndaXe, William, The Newe Testament, 1526 ; reprint, after Bagster, by G. P. 
 
 Dabney, Andover, 1837, 1 VoL Svo. 
 
WOEKS CITED IN THKSE LECTUEES XT 
 
 IJmrfo?-', TTiniam^ The Supper of the LorJe, London, jtcccccxxsm. t. daye of 
 
 Apryll, 1 vol. ISmo, 
 Tyru'hiU. See Chaucer. 
 
 tyUa, Oder die uns erhaltenen Denkmaler der Gothischen Spraehe, Text. 
 Grammatik und Worterbuch, bearbeitet und herausgegeben Ton F. L. Stamm, 
 Paderborn, 1S58, 1 B. Svo. I have used also the reiy valuable edition of the 
 Fragments of the Moeso-Gothie Scriptures by Gabelentz and Loebe, 1843, 
 2B.4to. 
 
 Tan MacrJant, Jacob, Spiegel Historiael, uitgegeTen door de Maatschappij der 
 Kederlandsche Letterfcunde, te Leiden, 1859 — 1862, 3 B. 4to. 
 
 VcTtoyiianmis, Travels in the East, in Supplement M Hakluyt. 
 
 ViUcmarqtie, Lrs Romans de la Table Eonde, et les Contes des anciens Bretons, 
 Paris, 1861, 1 vol. Svo. 
 
 Warton, Thomas, Tlie Iliitoiy of English Poetry &om the Close of the Eleventh 
 to the Commencement of the Eighteenth Century, edited by Price, London, 1840, 
 3 vols. Svo, 
 
 Weber, Metrical Eomanees of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Cen- 
 turies, Edinburgh, ISIO, 3 vols. 12mo. 
 
 Wedgwood, Hensl tnh, A Dictionary of English Etymology, \rith Notes by George 
 P. Marsh, VoL 1. New York, 1861, Svo. 
 
 Wilson, or WyJson, The Three Orations of Demosthenes in Favour of the 
 Olynthians, and the Four Philippics, London, 1570, 1 voL 4to. 
 
 Wright, T., Popular Treatises on Science, written during the Middle Ages, 
 London, 1841, 1 vol. Svo. See also Piers Ploughman, Anecdota Literaria, 
 Eeliquise Antiquae, &c. &c. 
 
 Wyclife, Apology for the Lollards, Camden Society, London, 1842, 1 vol. 4to. 
 
 The Holy Bible in the earliest English Versions, made from the Latin 
 
 Vulgate by John Wyclifie and his Followers (Hertford and Purvey), edited 
 by Eev. J. Forshall and Sir F. Madden, Oxford, University Press, 1850, 
 4 vols. 4to. 
 
LEOTUKES 
 
 ON THE 
 
 ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 LECTUEE I. 
 
 INTEODTJCTOET. 
 
 The subject of the course upon which I am about to enter \\ill 
 be, as nearly as I am able to express it in a comprehensive title, 
 the Origin and History of the English Language, and of the 
 Early Literature it embodies. I shall not notice the works of 
 those natives of England who have written, on domestic as 
 ■well as on more general topics, in foreign tongues, Latin and 
 French, because those works, though composing a part of the 
 national literature, do not belong to the literature of the En- 
 glish language, which alone is embraced in the plan of the pre- 
 sent readings. I confine myself to the history of early English 
 literature for two reasons. The first is the impossibility of survey- 
 ing, in so short a series of discourses, the whole field of English 
 intellectual action ; the second, that the harmonious execution 
 of my purpose — ^ which is to discuss the two branches of the 
 feubject, language and literature, with constant reference to 
 their reciprocal influence on each other — excludes those periods 
 when their history had ceased to be concurrent. 
 
 The English language had already gone through its piincipal 
 phases when the earliest of the works, which are now colleo 
 
 B 
 
2 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE Lect. I. 
 
 tively known to most grammarians, lexicographers, and common 
 readers as the body of English literature, made its appearance. 
 A single epoch witnessed the completion of that organic action 
 by which the English speech was developed from its elements, 
 and the beginning of that one era of English authorship, the 
 products of which still subsist as a eonsciously-felt and recog- 
 nised agency in the world of letters. The language had passed 
 the stages of infancy and youth, attained to the ripe perfection 
 of manhood, and thus completed its physiological history, before 
 the existing period of its literature began. In treating the two, 
 then, the speech and its literature, conjointly, I am necessarily 
 limited to the centuries when both were undergoing the suc- 
 cessive processes of evolution and growth, and when the pro- 
 gress of each was dependent on that of the other, and conditioned 
 by it. 
 
 This period extends from a little before the commencement 
 of the reign of Henry III. to the latter years of Queen Eliza- 
 beth, and thus embraces not far from four hundred years. 
 During this space, the intellect of England, stirred at once by 
 inborn impulses, and by external influences, had become luxu- 
 riantly productive, and was constantly struggUng to find articu- 
 late symbols and syntactical combinations, wherein to embody 
 and communicate the vivid images, deep thoughts, and earnest 
 aspirations which it had either spontaneously originated, or 
 appropriated from the literatures of ancient or foreign nations, 
 while the language, stimulated to a continually renewed evolu- 
 tion of organic action by the necessities of a regenerated literary, 
 political^ social, and commercial life, was gradually expanding 
 into a largeness of capacity, and moulding itself into a fitness of 
 form, to stijve as a vehicle for the vast, and varied, and strange 
 conceptions ft was now called upon to express. 
 
 This process, or rather this double series of processes, was 
 completed, as I have said, about the end of the sixteenth cen- 
 tury, and our view of the language and its monumejits will 
 embrace little which belongs to latef d&tes, except so far as I 
 
Lkct. I. ENGLISH MTEKATUKE AND LAKGUAGE 3 
 
 may incidentally refer to subsequent verbal forms or intellectual 
 products, as results of tendencies already manifested in the 
 English mind and its speech, in the era which we are more 
 pai'ticularly considering. 
 
 The tongue of England and her intellectual culture had now 
 respectively attained to a stage of advancement where neither 
 imperiously demanded new capabilities in the other. The lan- 
 guage no longer showed the want of that affluence, and polish, 
 and clearness, and force, which human speech can acquire only 
 by long use as the medium of written composition in the various 
 forms of naiTative, imaginative and discursive literature, and, 
 in modern times at least, by the further aid of exposure to the 
 stimulating and modifying influences of the history, and poetry, 
 and philosophy, and grammar, and vocabulary of foreign 
 tongues. The English mind and heart, meanwhile, had been 
 gathering knowledge, and experience, and strength, and catho- 
 licity of sympathy, and they were now able to expand to 
 the full dimensions of their growth, gird themselves to their 
 mightiest moral and intellectual efforts, and burst into song, or 
 sermon, or story, or parliamentary or forensic harangue, without 
 fear that the mother-tongue of England would want words to 
 give adequate and melodious expression to their truest feelings, 
 their most solemn convictions, and their loftiest aspirations.* 
 
 The history of this philological and intellectual progress is 
 the too vast theme of the present course; and if I shall succeed 
 in conveying a general notion of the gradual living processes 
 by which the English tongue and its literature grew up, from 
 the impotent utterance and feeble conceptions of the thirteenth 
 century, to the divine power of expression displayed in Tyndale's 
 version of the New Testament, in the sixteenth, and the revela- 
 tion of man's moral nature in the dramas of Shakespeare, at the 
 commencement of the seventeenth, I shall have accomplished 
 the task I have undertaken. 
 
 , • See Illustration I. at the end ot' this lecture. 
 
 B S 
 
4 OLD ENGLISH LITEEATUKB Lect. I. 
 
 The linguistic facts and literary illustrations required for the 
 ci/mprehension of such a sketch will be drawn chiefly from 
 sources familiar indeed to many of the audience, but which 
 do not come within the habitual observation and knowledge of 
 what is called the reading public ; but I shall endeavour not to 
 advance theories, employ technical terms, or introduce citations, 
 which will not easily be understood by any person possessed of 
 sufBcient literary culture to feel an intelligent interest in the 
 subject. 
 
 In all inquiries into the history of past ages, whether as 
 respects the material concerns or the intellectual action of men, 
 the question constantly presents itself: what was the inherent 
 worth, or what is the surviving practical importance, of the 
 objects, or the acts, the monuments of which we are investi- 
 gating? — and hence we must ask: what was the actual signifi- 
 cance of that bygone literature, into which, both for its own 
 sake as an interesting chapter in the annals of the human mind, 
 and for the sake of the language, of whose changes it constitutes 
 the only record, we propose to look ? The few examples which 
 can be cited will not, of themselves, sufBce to convey an ade- 
 quate conception of the special character, still less of the wealth, 
 of old English literature ; but I shall endeavour to illustrate 
 them by such biographical or historical notices as may serve to 
 show their connection with the social and intellectual life of the 
 periods and the people to which they belong, and thus help my 
 hearers to arrive at conclusions for themselves which I may not 
 think it necessary in all cases formally to express. I shall strive 
 thus to invest my subject with a higher philosophical interest 
 than belongs to mere historical grammar, and the considerations 
 which suggest themselves in our survey will, I hope, give some 
 additional incitement to the impulse now beginning to be felt 
 by so many scholars towards the study of the neglected and 
 forgotten authors of ages which want, indeed, the polish acd 
 refinement of subsequent centuries, but are, nevertheless, ani- 
 mated and informed with a spontaneous life, a freshness, and 
 
liECT. I. INDEPENDENCY OF ENGLAND 5 
 
 vigour, raxe in the productions of eras more advanced in artificial 
 culture. 
 
 A literature which extends through four centuries, and which 
 ■was successively exposed to the stimulating influences of such 
 radical revolutions in Church and in State, of such important 
 advances in every branch of knowledge, such achievements 
 in fine and industrial art, and such triumphs of human power 
 over physical nature, cannot be described by any one series of 
 epithets, nor, indeed, were its traits always so marked that all its 
 prodiicts are recognizable as unmistakably of English growth. 
 But it may be said, in general, that, more than most other 
 equally imaginative literatures, it was practically and visibly 
 connected with the actual social being of man, with his enjoy- 
 ments and sufferings in this world, and his hopes and fears in 
 reference to another. It was a reflection of the waking life of 
 an earnest, active nation, not, like so much of the contempo- 
 raneous expression of Continental genius, a magic mirror showing 
 forth the unsubstantial dreams of an idle, luxurious, and fantastic 
 people. 
 
 The eminently practical character of old English literature is 
 due, in a considerable degree, to the political condition of the 
 English government The insular position of England made 
 that kingdom, from the beginning, more than any other Euro- 
 pean state, independent of the international combinations which, 
 in a great degree, controlled the destiny and moulded the 
 institutions and characters of the Continental peoples, and this 
 isolation of the government was felt and shared by the nation. 
 It entered into the English heart, and has, in all the best 
 periods of English literature, constituted a marked and peculiar 
 chai-acteristic of its genius. WTiile the writers of most other 
 European countries have had their periods and their schools, 
 when now classic, now romantic, now Grallic, and now Gothic 
 influences predominated, and stamped with a special character, 
 not merely the works of individual authors, but the entire lite- 
 rary effort of the time, the literature of England has never 
 
6 ENGLAND INDEPENDENT OF EOME Lect.X 
 
 submitted itself to any such trammels, but has always maintained 
 a self-guided, if not a wholly self-inspired, existence ; and this 
 is perhaps the best reason that can be given why Continental 
 critics, trained, as until recently they have been, in the tradi- 
 tions and observances of their schools, have so generally proved 
 unable to comprehend the drift and true significance of English 
 letters. 
 
 The political and literary independence of England grew with 
 the diminution of its continental territory. So long as the 
 British throne held any important portion of its dominions by a 
 feudal tenure which obliged it to acknowledge the suzerainty of 
 the crown of France, it was a party to the Continental political 
 compact, and, as such, involved in all the feuds, and warfares, 
 and conflicts of social and industrial interests which distracted 
 that organization. And, what was even a greater evil, it was 
 subject to the overshadowing domination of Eome, which claimed 
 and received the homage theoretically due to the eternal city as 
 the earthly metropolis of the universal Church, but practically 
 accorded to her as the natural representative of the temporal 
 supremacy exercised by the ancient mistress and capital of the 
 world. But though England shared with the Continent in the 
 baneful influence of this spiritual and semi-political despotism, 
 yet it was only at comparatively rare intervals that it was felt 
 and submitted to, in its full extent, by the English government 
 and people. There was always something of a disposition to 
 inquire iato the foundation of the authority claimed by the 
 Eoman pontiff, to doubt the infallibility of his decisions, and 
 to tread on forbidden ground, by debating questions which, 
 according to the doctrine of papal supremacy, had been for 
 ever settled by a tribunal incapable of error and ai-med with 
 the thunderbolts of Heaven for the enforcement of its decrees. 
 
 The Eomish see itself, well knowing that the geographical 
 position of England secured it from physical coercion, was slow 
 to proceed to extremities against a crown and a people who 
 might, at. any time, despise its mandates with impunity. Hence 
 
Lect. L ENGLAND INDErENDENT OF ROME ^ 
 
 the relations between the papacy and England were generally 
 like those between a sovereign who shuts his eyes to insurrec- 
 tionary movements in a rebellious province too strong or too 
 distant to be reduced by force of arms, and a people that 
 submits under protest, and is biding its time to throw off a 
 foreign and obnoxious yoke. The English nation and its writers, 
 then, were not habitually sunk in that humiliating submission 
 to the papacy which long paralyzed the intellectual energy of 
 other Christian races, and restrained them from the discussion 
 of high and noble themes, nor was the occupant of the Eoman 
 see regarded with that abject reverence which so often in Con- 
 tinental history bestowed upon him the name and attributes of 
 the Most High. While Charles V. of France, in the great 
 schism of the fourteenth century, a little before the close of his 
 reign, was making, as Froissart says, ' a specyall commandement 
 throughoute his realme, that every manne shulde take and 
 repute Clement for pope, and that every manne shulde obey 
 him as God on erthe,'* Wycliffe, cheered and sustained by 
 many of the nobility as well as commonalty of England f, was 
 
 * Froissart, Lord Berners's Translation, I. c 345. See Illustration II. at the 
 end of this lecture. 
 
 t 'Hodid men were eleped thanne the Lolardis, that 'vrold never avale here hood 
 in presens of the Sacrament, of whech at that tyme these were the principales : 
 — William Keryle, [Sir] Lodewic Clifibrth, Jon Clambowh, Richard Sturry, 
 Thomas LatjTner, and werst of aUe, Jon Mountagu [Earl of Salisbury] * * And 
 of J. Mountagu thei sei he was a gret distroyer of ymages.' — Capgrave's Chronicle, 
 p. 245, an. 1387. 
 
 These noblemen and gentlemen seem to have been rather obstinate heretics, 
 for seren years later, as we learn from Capgrare, p. 260, an. 1394, 'The Lolardis 
 set up scrowis at "Westminster and at Ponies, with abhominable accusaciones of 
 hem that long to the Cherch, whech sounded in destruccioune of the Sacramentis, 
 and of statutes of the Cherch. The meynteyneris of the puple that were so infect 
 
 were these : Eichard Storry, Lodewik Clifforth, Thomas Latymer, Jon Moun- 
 
 tanw. Thei were principal iustructouris of heretikes. The kyng, whan he had 
 conceyred the malice of these men, he eleped hem to his presens and snybbed 
 hem ; forbad hem eke thei schuld no more meynteu no swech opiniones.' 
 
 The Earl of Salisbury, at least, died in the faith he had espoused, for, when in 
 1400 at ' Cicetir,' an insurrection was put down and ' the town drow hem [the 
 rebels] oute of the Abbey, and smet of many of her hedis,' it appears that 'the 
 erl of Salesbuiy was ded there; and worthi, for he was a gret favorere of tb« 
 
8 ENGLAND INDEPINDENT OF ROME LbcT. I. 
 
 impressing upon Urban, then recognised by the English nation 
 as the lawful incumbent of the papal throne, the lesson that 
 Victor Emanuel and Garibaldi are, with stronger means of 
 'moral suasion,' inculcating upon a stifl-necked successor of 
 Urban to-day. ' I take as bileve,' wrote Wycliffe to the pope, 
 • that none schulde sue the Pope, ne no saint that now is in 
 hevene, bot in alsmyche as he sued Christ : for James and John 
 errid, and Peter and Powl sinned. And this I take as holesome 
 counseile, that the Pope leeve his worldly lordschip to worldly 
 lords, as Christ gaf him, and move speedily all his clerks to do 
 so ; for thus did Christ, and taught thus his disciples, till the 
 fende had blynded this world. * * * And I suppose of our 
 Pope that he will not be Antichrist and reverse Christ in this 
 wirking to the contrary of Christ's wille. For if he summons 
 agens resoun by him or any of his, and pursue this unskilful 
 summoning, he is an open Antichrist.' * 
 
 Lollaxdis, a despiser of sacramentis, for lie wold not be confessed wien lie sclrnld 
 deie.' — Capgrave, p. 276. 
 
 * The orthography of this passage is evidently somewhat modernised, and there 
 are apparently some trifling verbal errors in the text, biit I print it as I And it in 
 Vaughan's Life of Wycliffe, ii. 466. The deliberate judgment of Thomas a Becket, 
 stoutly as the interests of his order led him to uphold the monstrous abuse which 
 exempted the clergy from the jurisdiction of lay criminal tribunals, was far from 
 favourable to the papal court. In writing to Cardinal Albert, he said : ' I know 
 not how it always happens that, at the court of Rome, Barabbas is delivered and 
 Christ condemned and crucified.' I cite from Bonnemfere, Histoire des Paysans, 
 i. 163, which I am happy to have an opportunity to recommend as a work of 
 great research and merit. 
 
 Capgrave, anno 1385, says : ' In the IX jere of this king, John Wiclef, the 
 ergon of the devel, the enemy of the Choroh, the confusion of men, the ydol 
 of heresie, the meroure of ypocrisie, the norischer of scisme, be the ritliful dome 
 of God, was smet with a horibil paralsie thorw cute his body,' &c. &e. But not- 
 withstanding this bitterness against WyclifFe, he expresses no disapprobation of 
 the application of Lynch law to those who, in 1358, 'broute the bulles' for the 
 excommunication of certain living transgressors against the Church, and the ex- 
 humation of the bodies of their deceased accomplices. He cites, with apparent 
 assent, a.d. 1390, the common opinion that Urban was ' a very tiraunt,' and had 
 deposed the English cardinal Adam 'for non other cause' than that 'he lettid 
 him meoh of his wrong desire ;' and he evidently believes that Pope Innocent IV., 
 who had interfered with the right of royal and seignorial ecclesiastical patronage 
 in England, died by the visitation of Grod in 1261, after having been summoned to 
 judgment by Bobert Grostede, late Bishop of Lincolii, who appeared to liim in a 
 
IkcT. t ENGLAND INDEPENDENT OF HOME 9 
 
 ■ The occasional coatests between the Continental sovereifrna 
 and the popes chiefly concerned the temporalities of the 
 Church, or grew out ot questions affecting them, and there was, 
 usually, less disposition to meddle with doctrinal points or mat- 
 ters of ecclesiastical discipline than in England.* There a 
 bolder spirit of inquiry prevailed, and though the sovereigns 
 professed due spiritual obedience to the papacy, we may apply 
 to many of them what Fuller says of Henry VII. : ' To the 
 Pope he was submissive, not servile, his devotion being seldom 
 without design, so using his Holiness, that he seldom stooped 
 down to him in any low reverence, but, with the same gesture, 
 he took up something in order to his own ends.' f 
 
 The independence of the English people gave their literature 
 a freer chai'acter, brought it to bear on all their interests, spi- 
 ritual and temporal, and thus invested it with a reality and 
 straightforward naturalness of thought and expression not often 
 met with in the contemporaneous writings of Germanic or 
 Eomance authors. 
 
 The reality of old English literature, and its truth to nature, 
 do by no means imply that it is not as highly original and inven- 
 tive as those of other countries, which are less faithful expres- 
 sions of the every-day thoughts, and feelings, and passions of 
 humanity. No man supposes that Callot's fantastic figures are 
 more imaginative than Raphael's life-like creations ; or that Da 
 
 •vision, ' and smet him on the side -with the pike of his crosse staff, and seid thus : 
 Kise, wrech, and come to the dom.* 
 
 Hor does the chronicler manifest any indignation at the ungracious reception of 
 an unjust bull issued ia 1402 : ' In this tyme cam oute a bulle fro the Court 
 [Curia Eomana], -whech revokid alle the graces that had be graunted many seres 
 before ; of whech ros mech slaundir and obliqui ageyn the Gherch ; for thei seide 
 •pleynly that it was no more trost to the Pope writing than to a dogge tail ; for as 
 cfte as he wold gader mony, so oftyn wold he anullen eld graces and graunt newe. 
 ■^■Capgravc, p. 281. 
 
 • The Guelf and GhibeUine feud in Italy, though originating in the rivalry of 
 two German princely houses, was in general, howsver disguised, at bottom, little 
 else than a contest between the imperial throne and the papal see for the temporal 
 supremacy, which both aspired to wield as the representatiye and successor ot' the 
 Boman Ciesars. 
 
 t Church History, iv. 155. 
 
10 ENGLISH LITEEATUEE IMAGINATIVE Lect. I. 
 
 Vinci wrought under a higher inspiration when he drew his 
 caricatures than when he designed the Last Supper. The 
 early literature of England, which originated comparatively few 
 of what are technically called romantic works, was abundantly 
 fertile in the exercise of that best function of the imagination, 
 the creation of forms of humanity whose constitution and action 
 are, throughout, in accordance with the law of man's nature ; 
 and we find in it, before we arrive at the close of the fourteenth 
 century, the germs of every species of inventive composition 
 which English bards and dramatists have since made illustrious. 
 Indeed, so truly did imaginative and creative power characterise 
 the early vernacular literature of England, that, in spite of the 
 life-like, homely truth of iti personages and its scenery, actual 
 historical narrative had but a very subordinate place in it. The 
 northern and southern extremes of Christendom, Grothic Iceland 
 and Romance Spain, as well as polished France, had produced 
 historical works which almost dispute the palm with Herodotus*, 
 but their literatures, though teeming with extravagant fictions 
 and elaborate and cunningly wrought versified compositions, 
 could not yet boast a single great poet. Anglo-Norman Eng- 
 land, on the other hand, had given birth to no annalist who de- 
 serves the name of a historian ; but had, in Chaucer, bestowed 
 upon the world a poet who, both in sympathy with external 
 nature, and in the principal element of dramatic composition — 
 the conception of character, the individualising of his personages 
 — had far outstripped whatever else the imaginative literature 
 of Christendom had produced. 
 
 In these studies, the progress of our investigations is often 
 arrested by the want of sufficient materials to enable us satis- 
 factorily to determine the true character of particular branches 
 of literary effort, or even to decide questions of pure gram- 
 matical form. The publication of such of the remaining me- 
 morials of early English and Anglo-Saxon literature as still 
 survive only in manuscript will do something to supply our 
 • See Illustration III. at the end of this lecture. 
 
tECT. I- LOSS OF EAELY ■WEITEES 11 
 
 defect of knowledge in ttiese particulai-s ; but much of what we 
 know to have once existed in those dialects has irrecoverably- 
 perished, and the extant records of the intellectual action of 
 England in the fourteenth and previous centuries have come 
 down to us in such an imperfect, and often evidently corrupted 
 form, that we shall never be as well acquainted with the gram- 
 mar and the literature of the Anglo-Saxon and the transition 
 periods as with those of the corresponding eras in the history of 
 Continental philology. 
 
 The destruction of the products of Anglo-Saxon, of Anglo- 
 Norman, and of early English genius, occasioned by the Danish 
 invasions, the civil wars of different periods, and the suppression 
 of the monasteries in the sixteenth century, is in many aspects 
 much to be deplored, but for such apparent calamities there are, 
 in the scheme of Providence, always sufficient compensations. 
 Not only must the old crop be removed from the earth to make 
 way for the new, but it must also be in a good measure con- 
 sumed, before adequate stimulus can be felt for the industry 
 which is required to produce another harvest. We have abun- 
 dant reason to rejoice that Homer, and Thucydides, and Plato, 
 and many master-pieces of the Greek dramatists, that Terence, 
 and Cicero, and Horace, and Virgil, and much of Tacitus, have 
 escaped the casualties which have destroyed the works of other 
 scarcely less renowned ancient authors ; but whether the exist- 
 ence of the whole body of Greek and Eoman literature, down to 
 the present day, would have been an advantage to modern 
 genius, is quite another question. I have heard one of the 
 most accomplished of American scholars, the most eloquent of 
 American forensic orators, say — though, indeed, in that playful 
 tone which so often left you in doubt whether his words were 
 to be taken in earnest or in jest — that he thought the burning 
 of the Alexandrian library a most fortunate event for the 
 interests of letters. Modem originality, he contended, would 
 otherwise have been smothered, modern independence of thought 
 overawed, and modern elasticity of intellect crushed down, by 
 
12 EFFECTS OF THE EEFOEMATION I.ECT. I. 
 
 the luxuriant abundance, and authority, and weight of ancient 
 literature. 
 
 Genius cannot thrive under too dense a shade. It requires 
 room for its expansion, and air and sunlight for its nourish- 
 ment. It is the solitary .pasture-oak, not the sapling from the 
 sheltered and crowded forest, that has made that tree a symbol 
 of healthful vigour, and permanence, and strength. When the 
 language and the literature of Athens had become so familiar at 
 Eome that every Latin author wrote under the influence of 
 Grecian models, and every work of the imagination was tried 
 by the canons of Greek criticism, when the republic and the 
 empire had plundered Hellas, and Sicily, and Asia Minor of their 
 artistic wealth, and the capital counted as many statues as 
 citizens, then native literature declined, and formative art — 
 which, indeed, at Eome had never fairly risen above the imitative 
 stage — became debased, and neither revived until, in the storms 
 of the Middle Ages, so many of those precious achievements of 
 Grecian intellect and fancy had perished, that only enough were 
 left to serve as incitements by their excellence, not enough to 
 discourage further effort by a variety which had anticipated 
 every conception of the creative imagination. The life and 
 literature of a people may be inspirited, stimulated, modified, 
 but not habitually sustained and nourished, by exotic food or 
 the dried fruits of remote ages. Fresh nutriment must enter 
 largely into the daily supply, and the intellect and heart of 
 every nation must be stirred by living sympathies with the 
 special good and evil of its own land and time, as well as with 
 the permanent interests of universal humanity. 
 
 Hence the destruction of so many of the works of Ano-lo- 
 Saxon, Anglo-Norman, and early English writers is a loss, not 
 to literature, but only to what is of less importance, the history 
 of literature ; and we may find, in the direct benefits resultincr 
 from the events which occasioned much of that destruction 
 sufficient consolation for the partial evils they caused. To that 
 fierce Eeformation which levelled the monasteries with the 
 
-EOT, I. POPTJLiU UTERATUaE 13 
 
 :jround aud scattered or annihilated their literary accumulations, 
 lut sowed living seed wherever it plucked up dry stubble, we 
 3we Spenser, and Hooker, and Bacon, and Shakespeare, and 
 Milton, not one of whom had been possible but for the fresh 
 aortb-wind, which, by sweeping away the swarm of old opinions, 
 aid facts, old thoughts, that hung like a darkening cloud over 
 Europe, opened once more the blue sky, and the sun and stars 
 of heaven to the vision of men. 
 
 But though no inconsiderable share of the fruits of Saxon and 
 of early English genius has perished, we have reason to think 
 that most of their products which possessed intrinsic worth, or 
 were of practical value to their own time, have come down to us 
 in a more or less complete state ; for we do not iind mention of 
 many lost authors in terms which give reason to suppose that 
 tbey were of special interest or importance. There is, however, 
 evidence tbat certain branches of popular literature, in their 
 rudimentary stages (if indeed that can be called literature which 
 was perhaps never reduced to writing), are imperfectly repre- 
 sented by their existing remains. I refer especially to the un- 
 historical, traditional, or legendary narratives, which, whether 
 song or saga, verse or prose, appear to have constituted, from 
 the earliest times, a favourite amusement, and, indeed, almost 
 the only refined enjoyment, of the secular orders among onr 
 remote progenitors. These were probably, in general, only 
 orally transmitted from age to age, and we do not know enough 
 of their character to be able to determine in what degree of 
 relationship they stand to the national folk-lore of later ages. 
 Several of the yet extant minor poems of the Anglo-Saxons 
 possess much excellence; and the lays which Alfred conde- 
 scended to learn and sing could not have been absolutely without 
 merit. I do not know that any Anglo-Saxon songs have been 
 preserved which bear much resemblance to the English ballad, 
 nor could this branch of poetical composition have originated 
 in long poems like Beowulf, or the story of Brut, or the later 
 romance of Alexander ; for the ballad properly turns on biogra- 
 
14 FOPULAR POElaT Lbct. I, 
 
 phical incidents, not mythical or historical events, and is there- 
 fore radically different from these works, both in conception and 
 in form. There are popular poems belonging to the youth,i 
 not the infancy, of English literature, which stand out so pro- 
 minently from the lighter poetry of their time, and seem so; 
 completely to have anticipated the tone of later centuries, that, 
 we know not how to account for their appearance. The an- 
 tiquity of these is certain ; and we cannot but suspect that they 
 are fragmentary remains of a body of certainly not Saxon, but 
 early English poetry, of which most of the known ballad, and 
 other popular literature of England, would give us no idea. 
 Perhaps the most remarkable of them are the well-known ana- 
 creontic, called by Warton ' a drinking-ballad,' though not tech- 
 nically a ballad, first printed in Gammer Grurton's Needle, in 
 1575 — but of which there are manuscript copies much older in 
 date — and the poetical dialogue, The Nut-brown Maid, which 
 first appeared in that strange medley, Arnold's Chronicle, 
 printed in 1521. "Were these compositions now to be judged 
 upon internal evidence, and by comparison with other English 
 poetry of their time and class, they would be unhesitatingly 
 pronounced clever literary impostures, of a much later date; 
 but their genuineness is not open to question. 
 
 Although much of Saxon as well as of old English prose and 
 verse has perished, there still remains enough of the latter, if 
 not to enable us to form a complete estimate of the intellectual 
 products, popular and scholastic, of the transition period, yet at 
 least to disclose the primitive form of nearly every branch of 
 English literature which has flourished in later ages. 
 
 In discussing the subject before us, I shall endeavour to draw 
 the attention of my hearers rather to the literary adaptations 
 and capacities of the English language than to the peculiarities 
 of its grammar. I adopt this method partly because the mi- 
 nutioe of inflectional and syntactical structure cannot, without 
 much difficulty, be made clearly intelligible to the ear ; partly 
 because, in the want of accessible material for study and com - 
 
Lect. L the eomance lasgttages 15 
 
 parison, there are many important questions of grammatical 
 history upon which it is not yet possible to arrive at definite 
 conclusions; and the mere suggestion of conjectural theories, 
 unsupported by probable evidence, would tend only to mislead 
 and embarrass. 
 
 The Eomance languages are much more homogeneous in con- 
 struction than the English ; they are all derived, by more or 
 less direct processes, from one and the same ancient tongue, or, 
 rather, group of nearly related dialects, and they so far conform, 
 in their grammatical structure, to the Latin, the common repre- 
 sentative of them all, and to each other, that the means of 
 illustrating their forms by comparison and analogy are very 
 abundant. If there be a hiatus in the table of descent in one 
 of these languages, it may generally be supplied from the gene- 
 alogy of another, and hence there are comparatively few points 
 in their etymology, or ia their early history, which are either 
 wholly unexplaiued, or which stand as anomalous, unrelated 
 philological facts.* Another circumstance has contributed to 
 save their grammar from much of the confusion and obscurity 
 in which, as we shall see, the inflectional and syntactical system 
 of early English is involved. The Latin was the only Italic 
 dialect known to the Middle Ages which possessed an alphabetic 
 system ; and the new popular speeches, when first reduced to 
 writing, naturally conformed in their leading features to the 
 orthography of that language, which still remained a living 
 tongue among the clergy of the one only organised branch of 
 the visible Church in Western Europe — one might almost add, 
 among the common people of Italy— and furnished at once a 
 model and a standard of comparison for the expression of vocal 
 sounds by written characters in all the Eomance family. -f Hence, 
 
 » See Illustration IV. at the end of tliis lecture. 
 
 t The student will find in Fauriel, 'Dante, et les origines de la Langue et de la 
 Litterature ItaUennes,' much interesting information on the extensive use of the 
 Latin language in Italy in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. Not 
 only was popular preaching in Latin common in that country in the last-mentioned 
 eentuiy, but Dante was expounded to the people in that language. 
 
;16 THE EOMANCE LANGITAGEa Lect. 1. 
 
 although manuscripts of the Middle Ages in those dialects are 
 sufficiently discrepant in their orthography to create occasional 
 embarrassment, yet, in the notation of the inflectional syllables: 
 in any one of them, there is not the same wide range of varia- 
 tion as in early English, where, from the want of a general 
 authoritative standard, orthography fluctuated, following now 
 Grothic and now Eomance precedent, with an uncertainty which 
 conspired with great irregularity in the use of the inflections 
 themselves, to produce an irreconcilable diversity. For these- 
 reasons it has been found practicable to construct, for the 
 successive periods in the philological history of the different 
 Eomance dialects, accidences and rules of concord and regimen, 
 which probably approach almost as nearly to accuracy as the 
 dialects themselves approached to uniformity in use. But with 
 all these advantages, the precise knowledge of the primitive- 
 grammar of the Eomance languages has advanced slowly, and it 
 is scarcely a generation since Eaynouard discovered even so 
 simple a thing as the difference between the plural and singular 
 form of the noun in the dialect of Northern France. 
 
 For a variety of reasons, both the facilities and the induce- 
 ments for the study of early English grammar have been fewer 
 and less effectual than for corresponding researches in France 
 and other Continental countries ; and when we take into account 
 also the greater inherent difficulties of the subject, it -is not sur- 
 prising that thus far there is not a general agreement of scholars 
 on many cardinal points of early English inflection, and indeed 
 that no thorough, systematic and comprehensive attempt at the 
 investigation of these questions has yet been made.* The 
 serious study of English has but just begun, and it is not a 
 
 * I oxiglit here to draw the attention of the reader to the remarkable ' Wissen- 
 Bchaftliche Grammatik der Englischen Sprache ' of Fiedler and the Taluable con- 
 tinuation of it by Saehs, neither of which became kno^vn to me until after this 
 volume was ready for the press. They are, however, unsatisfactory, not so much 
 from want of philological acumen, as because they are founded on a too limited 
 range of early authorities, and because they do not trace, with sufficient distinct- 
 ness, the historical dcTclopmeut of the language. 
 
Lect. I. GOOD EDITIONS WANTED 17 
 
 generation since sound linguistic philosophy was first brought 
 to bear actively and effectively upon it. The method of this 
 study Anglican scholars have learned from German teachers, 
 and, from the natural inclination of the pupil to tread in the 
 steps of his master, there is a strong tendency now, while the 
 facts of English philological history are yet but imperfectly 
 known, to place the theory of English grammar on the same 
 advanced footing as that of the German, the early stages of which 
 have been far more thoroughly investigated. 
 
 The great mass of scholars otherwise competent to enter on 
 such speculations have at present the means of using but a part 
 of the material which, is absolutely indispensable to the esta- 
 blishment of general conclusions. Manuscripts are accessible to 
 comparatively few, and accurately printed editions of old authors 
 are not yet numerous enough to furnish the necessary data. 
 We have admirable editions of Layamon and the Ormulum, as 
 well as of some less conspicuous literary monuments not widely 
 distant in date from those works. We possess the Wycliffite 
 versions, also, in an extremely satisfactory form, but very few 
 other English authors of the fourteenth century exist in editions 
 which at all meet the demands of critical scholarship. Chaucer 
 is, both for literary and for grammatical purposes, the most im- 
 portant source of information respecting the vigorous youth of 
 the English tongue, but — with the possible exception of 
 Wrio-ht's Canterbury Tales, founded almost entirely on a 
 single manuscript — we have, so far as I am aware, no edition 
 of any of the works of that great author which is worthy of 
 confidence as an exhibition of the grammatical system, I will 
 not say of Chaucer himself, but even of any one of the scribes 
 who have copied his writings. No competent scholar has yet 
 subjected the manuscripts of Chaucer to a critical examination 
 and comparison ; and hence we cannot pretend to pronounce 
 with certainty upon what is a very important, and would seem 
 beforehand a very obvious matter, the precise extent, namely, to 
 
 c 
 
18 IKKEGFLAKITT OF EAKLT ENfiLISH Lect. I. 
 
 which, in that author's works, the syntactical relations of words 
 are determined by inflection.* 
 
 Only a single English work of the thirteenth century has been 
 brought within our reach in such a form as to authorise us to 
 speak positively upon the syntactical system which the author 
 followed. This is the Ormulum, of which, fortunately, but a 
 single manuscript, apparently the original itself, is known. But 
 the value of this otherwise most important philological monu- 
 ment is much diminished by the uncertainty of its date and of 
 the locality of its dialect, and by the fact that there does not 
 . exist, at least in print, enough literary material of its own pro- 
 bable period to serve as a test by which its conformity to the 
 general contemporary usage of the language can be tried, or to 
 which it can itself be applied as a standard of comparison. 
 
 But in all inquiries, into the grammatical history of early 
 English, it must be borne in mind that such was the dialectic 
 confusion, and such the irregularity of orthography, that we are 
 not warranted in affirming of scarcely any one form, or any one 
 spelling, that it was normal for its time. It is as true of ortho- 
 graphy and grammar as of literary form, that there is no unity 
 imtil great authors arise and tecome generally recognised as 
 authoritative standards. The founders of a national literature, 
 therefore, conform not to previously settled and acknowledged 
 canons of national speech, for none such exist, but to some par- 
 ticular dialect, or they perhaps frame a more or less eclectic 
 diction, and by their authority establish a grammar, first for 
 
 * I think no man who has made Chaucer a study can doubt that he had an 
 orthographical, a griimmatical, and a prosodical system, though we have not yet 
 succeeded in finding the key to them. Besides the very strong internal evidence 
 of his works, we have, in his address to Adam, scrivener, and in Troilus and 
 Creseide, Book V. v. 1804 — 7, direct testimony to a solicitude for the careful 
 copying of his manuscripts, which proves that he by no means wrote at random. 
 
 What is wanted is not a made-up text of Chaucer, conjectural or eclectic, but a 
 literal reproduction of one or more of the best manuscripts, with various readings 
 from all the others which have any pretensions to authority, — in short, an edition 
 condacted on the same principles as the noble Wycliffite verbions by Forshall and 
 Hadden. 
 
I-ECI" *• GEIUIAN DIALECTS 
 
 19 
 
 their literary followers, and, after some time, for the nation. 
 No full and comprehensive general work on English dialecto- 
 logy, ancient or modern, has yet appeared. Very confident 
 opinions, indeed, are pronounced with respect to early English 
 dialects and their relation to modern local patois, but certainly 
 very many of these find no sufficient support in the printed evi- 
 dence on the subject ; and if we are yet authorised to draw any 
 conclusion, it is that the diversities were too numerous to admit 
 of being grouped or classified at all, with any precision of chro- 
 nological or geographical limitation. 
 
 German must be considered to have been a written language, 
 and to have possessed a literature much earlier than our com- 
 posite English. The Nibelungen-Lied in its recorded form 
 is placed at about the year 1200, and there were numerous 
 ■wiitten compositions between that period and the year 1300, in 
 different German dialects, and of a character likely to be, and 
 which we know actually to have been, widely circulated. Now 
 the tendency of a popular written literature is to harmonise the 
 discordances of language, and we have sufficient evidence that, 
 for many centuries, the dialects have been dying out, and that 
 German has been both spoken and written with constantly in- 
 creasing uniformity ; and yet, in spite of all this, we find in 
 Firmenich's collection examples of some hundreds of Germanic 
 dialects alleged to be actually spoken at the present day, and 
 Stalder has given us the parable of the Prodigal Son in forty- 
 two German and twenty-seven Eomance patois employed in 
 Switzerland alone. In all this, no doubt, there is an enormous 
 exaggeration, which has been produced by giving a phonographic 
 spelling of the colloquial pronunciation of words really the same 
 almost everywhere, and differenced in form only as any two 
 speakers would vary in uttering, and any two listeners in pho- 
 nographically recording them. There are shades of difference 
 in the articulation of almost any two members of the same 
 family, brother and sister, husband and wife, for example, and 
 two persons often differently hear, and would differently express 
 
 c 2 
 
20 lOCAL DIALECTS Lect. I. 
 
 in alphabetical characters, the pronunciation of the same indi- 
 vidual. If a half-hour's conversation in one of the most culti- 
 vated circles in England or America -were to be written down by 
 two observers, from the ear, and without regard to the conven- 
 tional orthography of the words employed, we should have, not 
 simply a dialect which to the eye would vary widely from that 
 of books, but the two reporters would give us two dialects vary- 
 ing almost as much from each other as either from the standard 
 orthography ; besides which, each of the speakers would appear 
 to have his own subordinate patois. Hence, most of this alleged 
 diversity of dialect is imaginary, subjective in the listener, or 
 accidental in the speaker, and the well-trained ear of a single 
 person w^ould find no such extent of constant difference as the 
 printed collections would lead us to suppose. 
 
 Until, however, the smaller states and communities of mediae- 
 val Europe were absorbed into the larger political organizations, 
 and until national literatures had been created, and a greater 
 fixity and universality given to linguistic forms by the invention 
 of printing, the real local differences of speech were constantly 
 augmenting, but in more recent periods, the written and printed 
 page, the frequent reference to acknowledged standards of gram- 
 mar and orthography, have served as a constant corrective, 
 which, in England as well as on the Continent, is always bring- 
 ing all deviations baclt to the normal form.* In the thirteenth, 
 and until near the close of the fourteenth centuries, the people 
 of England had no such standards, and the actual diversities of 
 dialect, though perhaps less numerous and important than the 
 orthographical differences between the manuscripts would seem 
 to indicate, were nevertheless probably greater than they are 
 in any European nation, of equal numbers, at the present day. 
 
 From all this it will be evident that whatever may be the 
 value of a precise historical knowledge of primitive English 
 grammar and literature in all their manifestations, such know- 
 
 * See First Series, Lecture XXI., p. 453 and following pages. 
 
Lect. I. ENGLISH GRAMMAR PECULIAR 21 
 
 ledge is not attainable at this time, and with such means as are 
 accessible to American, and, generally, English scholars ; and 
 an attempt to present to you anything more than an approxi- 
 mate estimate of their peculiarities would be but a piece of 
 charlatanism, alike discreditable to the speaker and unprofitable 
 to the audience. 
 
 But there is a fm-ther difficulty. The Anglo-Saxon and the 
 N'orman-French, from the union of which the English is chiefly 
 derived, were inilected languages, and had the syntactical 
 peculiarities common to most grammars with inflections ; but 
 in the friction between the two, the variable and more loosely 
 attached growths of both were rubbed off, and the speech of 
 England, in becoming stamped as distinctively English, dropped 
 so many native, and supplied their place with so few borrowed, 
 verbal and nominal endings, that it ceased to belong to the 
 inflected class of tongues, and adopted a grammar, founded in a 
 considerable degree upon principles which characterise that of 
 neither of the parent stocks from which it is derived. It is 
 altogether a new philological individual, distinct in linguistic 
 character from all other European speeches, and not theore- 
 tically to be assimilated to them. 
 
 But the difference between English and the Continental 
 languages does not consist in the gTeater or less amount of 
 inflection alone. The Danish, with the remarkable exceptions 
 of the passive verb and the coalescent definite form of the 
 noun, is almost as simple as English in this respect, but it is 
 descended from an inflected tongue, with little mixture except 
 from the Grerman, which belongs also to the Gothic stock, and 
 has most of the same syntactical peculiarities as the Old- 
 Northern, a local dialect of which is the more immediate parent 
 of the Danish. Danish, then, is the product of two cognate 
 languages, minus a certain number of inflections, not, indeed, 
 strictly common to both, but represented in both. But English 
 stands in no such relation to its Gothic and Eomance sources. 
 The Danish is an intimate mixttire of substances much alike ia 
 
22 CONTINENTAL GKAMMAB Lect. I. 
 
 their elementary character, and it is often impossible to say from 
 which of its two constituents particular linguistic features have 
 been derived. English is a patchwork of two, or rather, three 
 tissues, dissimilar in material as well as in form, and to a distant 
 observer has a prevailing hue very different from that of either 
 of them, though, upon a nearer approach, the special colour and 
 texture of each web is discernible.* 
 
 The general and obvious distinction between the grammar of 
 the English and that of the Continental tongues is, that whereas 
 in the latter the relations of words are determined by their 
 form, or by a traditional structure of period handed down from 
 a more strictly inflectional phase of those languages, in English, 
 on the other hand, those relations do not indicate, but are 
 deduced from, the logical categories of the words which compose 
 the period, and hence they must be demonstrated by a very 
 different process from that which is appropriate for syntaxes 
 depending on other principles.f A truly philosophical system 
 of English syntax cannot, then, be built up by means of the 
 Latin scaffolding, which has served for the construction of all 
 the Continental theories of grammar, and with which alone the 
 literary public is familiar, but must be conceived and executed 
 on a wholly new and original plan. 
 
 The Continental method of grammatical demonstration is un- 
 suited to the philosophy of the English speech, because it subor- 
 dinates syntax to inflection, the logical to the formal. We may 
 regard syntax, the analysis of the period or the synthesis of its ele- 
 ments, in two different aspects : as an assemblage of rules for 
 determining the agreement and government of words by corre- 
 spondence of form, or as a theory of the structure of sentences 
 founded upon the logical relations of words, without special con- 
 sideration of their forms. The first, or more material and mechani- 
 cal view belongs especially to highly inflected languages, as to the 
 Latin, for example, and in a less degree to the Grerman; the latter, 
 
 * See, on Freacli and Latin constructions in English, Lecture 11. 
 t See Fii'st Series, Lecture XVL, p. 347. 
 
I**"^' I' FKENCH GRAMMAB 23 
 
 or more intellectual, to those whose words are in-variable, or nearly 
 so, as the English. English grammar is not to be taught by 
 tables of paradigms and rules of concord and regimen, and we 
 must either, as we do with young children, treat syntax as a 
 collection of arbitrary models for the arrangement of words in 
 , periods, which are to be learned by rote, and followed afterwards 
 as unreflectingly as the processes of a handicraft, or we must 
 consider the construction of the sentence a logical problem, to 
 be solved by an almost purely intellectual calculus, and with 
 very few of the mechanical facilities which simplify, if they do 
 not lighten, grammatical study in most other tongues. 
 
 The French presents the curious phenomenon of a language 
 inflected in its written forms, but for the most part uninflected 
 in actual speech, and hence its syntax is mixed ; but still the 
 word has been mightier than the letter, in so far that it has 
 imposed upon even the written dialect a structure of period in 
 some degree approximating to that of languages whose words 
 are unchangeable in form.* But grammarians think in the 
 language of books, and all oral departures from that dialect are, 
 with them, anomalies or corruptions not entitled to a place in a 
 philosophical view of speech. 
 
 Hence there exists no grammar of spoken French, and the 
 theorists of that nation persist in regarding what are really 
 
 * This distinction between oral and written French is important t« be kept in 
 mind in all inquiries into the influence of Norman-French on English syntax. 
 There is indeed much uncertainty as to the pronunciation of Norman-Freuch at 
 and for some centuries after the Conquest, but various circumstances render it 
 probable that there was, at that period, almost as great a discrepancy between the 
 language of books and that of the market, in all the dialects of JJorthern France, 
 lis there is at the present day. Written French had its special influence on 
 English ; but the spoken tongue of the Korman immigrants was undoubtedly a 
 much more important agent in modifying the language of England. See First 
 Series, Lecture XXI., and the works of Palsgrare and Genin thefe referred to. 
 It must be remembered that Anglo-Saxon also had not only its local dialects, but 
 its general coUoqmal forms, which, in all probability, dilTercd rery widely from the 
 written tongue. Anglo-Saxon English is derived not wholly from the Anglo- 
 Saxon of books, which alone is known to us, but in a great measure, no doubt, 
 from a spoken tongue that has now utterly perished, except so far as it has lived 
 cn, first in the mouths and then in the literature, of the modern English people. 
 
24 STUDY OF LANGUAeE Lect, L 
 
 syntactical differences between their two dialects as mere ques- 
 tions of pronunciation. The French of the grammarians is an 
 inflected, and properly a dead language *, the Grerman inflected 
 but living, and the signification of the period is controlled by 
 the inflections in both. It is natural, therefore, that the philolo- 
 gists of those nations should, in their grammatical inquiries, be 
 specially attracted by the variable portion, the inflectional 
 characteristics of words, and should less regard the logical 
 relations which may, and in English do exist almost indepen- 
 dently of form. However learned Continental scholars may be 
 in the literature, the concrete philology of tongues foreign to 
 their own, they have, in their grammatical speculations on those 
 tongues, until recently, rather neglected syntax, except so far as 
 it necessarily connects itself with correspondence of endings.t 
 
 The ultimate objects of the present course are philological, not 
 linguistic. I shall therefore make the presentation of gram- 
 matical facts and theories always subordinate to the elucidation 
 of the literary products and capacities of the English speech, and, 
 so far as the grammar is concerned, I shall attempt little beyond 
 a general view of the processes — loss and gain of inflections, 
 and changes in the arrangement of words — by which the Anglo- 
 Saxon syntactical period has been converted into an English 
 one. 
 
 I have already urged what seem to me sufficient reasons for 
 adopting this method, but were these grounds wanting, I should 
 
 * The theoretical supremacy of the alphabetical, written, over the oral tongue of 
 France is remarkably exemplified in the laws of Terse, for coupled endings in 
 French poetry must, in general, rhyme to the eye as well as the ear. Thus, for 
 example, the feminine possessive pronoun, or its homonym the first and third 
 person singular present subjunctive, tienne, cannot be rhymed with the plural 
 verb viennent, nor is mien a good rhyme to liens, though the consonance in 
 both cases is unimpeachable. 
 
 t Burguy's grammar of the Langue d'OU, though exceedingly full upon the 
 forms of individual words, is altogether sUcnt upon syntax, except in the mero 
 matter of concord. East's numerous grammars pursue much the same method, 
 but Diez, Grammatik der Eoraanischen Sprachen, and other late German philo- 
 logists, are much more complete on this point 
 
Rect. 1. UNamsTic STUDIES 25 
 
 find others not less satisfactory in tte opinion I entertain ttat 
 the study of language is, in this country at least, taking too 
 generally a wrong direction. 
 
 What is properly called philology, that is, the study of lan- 
 guages in connection with, and as a means to the knowledge of 
 the literature, the history, the whole moral and intellectual action 
 of different peoples, is much neglected by American scholars, and 
 a professedly profound, but really most superficial research into 
 liaguistic analogies and ethnological relations is substituted 
 instead. The modern science of linguistics, or comparative 
 grammar and etymology, requires for its successful pursuit a 
 command of facilities, and above all a previous discipline, which, 
 in the United States, is within the reach of but a small propor- 
 tion of men disposed to literary occupations, and hence for the 
 present it must be the vocation of a few, not a part of the general 
 education of the many. American scholars seldom possess the 
 elementary grammatical training which is the first requisite to 
 success iu the study I am speaking of, and it is a very gross 
 and a very prevalent error to suppose that this training can be 
 acquired by the perusal of theoretical treatises, or, in other 
 words, that it is possible to become a linguist without first being 
 a philologist. The best, indeed the only means we at present 
 possess of imbuing ourselves with the necessary preparatory 
 attainment is, a thorough mastery both of the forms and of the 
 practical synthesis of the words which compose the languages of 
 Greece and Eome, and are organically combined in their lite- 
 ratures. This attainment at once involves a discipline fitting us 
 for linguistic investigation, and provides vis with a standard of 
 comparison by which to measure and test the peculiarities of other 
 tongues. Now, though forms may be taught by tables of stems 
 and endings, yet combinations cannot, and the mastery we speak 
 of is not to be attained by conning grammars and consulting 
 dictionaries. It must be the product of two factors, a rote- 
 knowledge of paradigms and definitions, and a long and familiar 
 converse with the intellect of classic antiquity as it still lives and 
 
26 LINGUISTIC STUDIES Lect. L 
 
 moves in the extant literary remains of Greece and Home. We 
 must know words not as abstract grammatical and logical quan- 
 tities, but as animated and social beings. Eoots, inflections, 
 word-book definitions, are products of the decomposition of 
 speech, not speech itself. They are dead remains, stripped of 
 their native attachments and functions, and hence it is that a 
 living Danish scholar, himself a man of rare philological attain-, 
 ment and of keen linguistic perceptions, calls scholastic grammar 
 'the grave of language.'* Had the founder of comparative 
 anatomy contented himself with the examination of the osseous 
 remains of dead animals alone, his science would have died, and 
 deserved to die, with him; but it was his knowledge of par- 
 ticular skeletons as the framework of living organisms that 
 enabled him to divine and reconstruct the muscles, and 
 veins, and fleshy tissues, and integuments that once made the 
 bones of Montmartre breathing and moving beings. Indi- 
 vidually, words have no inherent force, inflected forms no sig- 
 nificance, and they become organic and expressive only when 
 they are united in certain combinations, according to their special 
 affinities, and inspired with life by the breath of man. The 
 study of forms and of the primary or abstract meaning of words 
 must go hand in hand with wide observation of those forms and 
 of the plastic modification and development of the signification 
 of words, as exemplified in the living movement of actual speech 
 or literature, and no amount of grammatical and lexical know- 
 ledge is a substitute for the fruits of such observation. A scholar 
 might know by rote every paradigm and every syntactical rule 
 in the completest Greek grammars, every definition in the most 
 voluminous Greek lexicons, and yet fairly be said to have no 
 knowledge of the Greek language at all. In short, a student of 
 Greek, possessed of these elements only, is just in the position 
 of an arithmetical pupil who has learned the forms, names, and 
 abstract values of the Arabic numerals and the theory of the 
 decimal notation ; that is, he is barely prepared to begin the real 
 *'}S, F. S. GrundtTig, Verdcns Histotie, I. iv. 
 
Ieot. L causative speculation 
 
 27 
 
 study of his subject. Inherently, his attainments are worth 
 nothing, and it is only by practical familiarity with numerical 
 combinations that they acquire real significance.* 
 
 The want of a thorough kuowledge of language as a vehicle 
 of literature and of actual speech is painfully manifested in much 
 of the philological, and especially etymological, discussion of our 
 time and country. "We have bold ethnological theories founded 
 on alleged linguistic aflSnities, comprehensive speculations on 
 the inherent significance of radical combinations, and confident 
 phonological systems, propounded by writers who are unable to 
 construe a page, or properly articulate the shortest phrase in any 
 language but their own. f Nor is this theoretical dreaming by 
 any means confined to the scholarship of the United States. A 
 rage for causative speculation is characteristic of the philosophy 
 of the day. Vast as is the accumulation of facts in every branch 
 of human knowledge, the multiplication of theories has been 
 still more rapid, and even in Germany, where the unflagging 
 industry of Teutonic research is heaping up such immense 
 stores of real knowledge, the imaginative and the constructive 
 faculties are yet more active than the acquisitive. A Grerman 
 inquirer, indeed, does not pause until he has amassed all the 
 known facts belonging to or bearing upon his subject, but the 
 want of sufficient data, where the necessary elements are not all 
 attainable, rarely deters him from advancing a theory. However 
 inadequate his observations may prove to warrant final conclusions, 
 he seldom fails to give the rationale of the recorded phenomena, 
 and if he can obtain but one linguistic fact, he turns that one 
 
 * See Illustration V. at the end of this lecture. 
 
 t It would indeed be absurd to insist that a linguist can never be competent to 
 compare the structure of languages whose literature he has not mastered, but he 
 can become so only by an intimate knowledge of not the grammar alone, but the 
 Uying philology of several tongues possessing fully developed inflectional systems. 
 It is only by means of an acquaintance with multifarious literatures in combina- 
 tion with the anatomy of their vehicles, that scholars are able to rise to those 
 philosophical and comprehensive views of the essential character of language and 
 the relations of languages which distinguish the writings of Max Muller and 
 ■ome other linguists of the Continental schools. 
 
28 IINGTJISTIC THEOEIES LecT. L 
 
 into a law, or, in other words, generalises it, with scarcely less 
 confidence than he sums up the results of a million. 
 
 Comparative philology is in its infancy, — a strong and vigorous 
 infancy indeed, but still, in its tendencies and habits, too preco- 
 cious. It is the youngest of the sciences. Modern inquirers 
 have collected a very great number of apparently isolated 
 philological facts, they have detected multitudes of seeming, , 
 as well as numerous wel^-established linguistic analogies, and 
 they have found harmony and resemblance where, until lately, 
 nothing had been discovered but confusion and diversity. But 
 still here, as everywhere else, speculation is much in advance of 
 knowledge, and many of the hypotheses which are sprouting 
 like mushrooms to-day, are destined, like mushrooms, to pass 
 away to-morrow. 
 
 The too exclusive contemplation of isolated forms has led to 
 the adoption of many linguistic theories which, I am persuaded, 
 will not stand the test of investigation, conducted with wider 
 knowledge and with more comprehensive lights, drawn, not 
 from comparison of paradigms alone, but from the whole field 
 of social and literary history. It is maintained, for instance, by 
 a class of linguists who insist on explaining changes in language, 
 not by facts within the reach of actual observation, but by as- 
 sumed inherent laws of speech, that the stage of development 
 when languages form inflections belongs wholly to the ante-his- 
 torical, I might almost say, the fossil ages ; and it is confidently 
 asserted that no new inflections now are, or, within the period 
 through which we can trace the history of language by its monu- 
 ments, ever have been, constructed in any human tongue. Yet 
 every Romance, and some of the Gothic dialects, present not one 
 only, but several demonstrable, recent instances of the formation 
 of new coalescent inflections, precisely analogous in force to 
 those of ancient languages.* 
 
 * See First Series, Lectures XV. and XVL The historical evidences of a ten- 
 dency to the formation of new coalescent inflections in the European languages in 
 the Middle Ages are, I helieve, more numerous in the Dutch literature of the thip 
 
Lect. I. HASTY ETTMOLOQIES 29 
 
 In like manner, tlie general reception of the well-establislied 
 theory of a relationship between most European languages, and 
 their common, or rather parallel, descent from an Oriental 
 source or sources, has given birth to very hasty conclusions 
 with regard to the actual biography of individual vocables. 
 Etymologists incline to neglect the historical method of deduc- 
 tion in their inquiries, and to refer Gothic and Romance words 
 directly to any Sanscrit, Celtic, or Sclavonic root which happens 
 to resemble them, instead of tracing, in literature and in speech, 
 the true route by which, and the source from which, they have 
 migrated into our mother-tongue.* The former is the least 
 laborious and the most ambitious method. It is easier, by the 
 
 teenth and fourteenth centuries than in any other. The student Trill find lists of 
 such coalescences, some of which are very curious and instructiye, in the notes to 
 Floris ende Blancefloer, in Hoffmann Ton Fallerslehen's Horas Belgicas, Part III. ; 
 to Caerl ende Elegast, same collection, Part IV. ; to Ferrgunt, published by Viss- 
 cher, and to the Leven Tan Sinte Christina, edited by Bormans, &c. The in- 
 clination of children to conform the conjugation of the English Terb, in all cases, 
 to what is called the -weak (better, the regular) method of inflection is famih'ar to 
 eTcry observing person. There was a similar tendency in the early stages of some 
 of the modem Italian dialects. Biondelli, ' Poesie Lombarde Inedite,' p. 108, note, 
 observes: ' Volio per voile, ci k nuova prova dello sforzo col quale ai tempi del 
 Bescapfe si evitaTano tutte le irregolarita nella formazione dei tempi passati e del 
 partecipj. Possiamo asserire, che le regole grammatieali a cid destinate erano 
 senza eccezione.' These departures from precedent are not, indeed, strictly new 
 inflections, but they are instances of the operation of a principle which might lead 
 to new inflections. It is to the same cause that we are to ascribe the completion 
 of the conjugation of the defective Latin verbs in modem Italian. The associate 
 verb. Esse, sum, fui, I beUeve, never became regular; but an dare, now asso- 
 ciate was originsJly regularly conjugated in Italian, as its compounds riandare, 
 &c. are stDL Andare is indeed not classical Latin, but it belongs to an early 
 period of Komanee etymology. 
 
 » To scholars of any pretensions to sound linguistic learning, this train of 
 remark is certainly superfluous ; but when we find, lq a dictionary which popular 
 favour has carried through seven editions, such astonishing absurdities as the 
 Portuguese etymologies of Constancio, and in the most widely circulated of En- 
 glish dictionaries such speculations as those of Webster on the words alleged to 
 be cognate with the Hebrew barak, it is evident that there is a large class of 
 took-buyers and book-makers who need to be enlightened in regard to the true 
 principles of etymological research. See "Webster's Dictionary, Introduction, p. 
 jtxxvi., and etymology of preach, s. v., which, as weU as the cognate words of the 
 same meaning in other European languages, is simply the Latin praedico, but ia 
 referred by Webster to the Hebrew barak. 
 
30 rNSOtJND ETYMOLOGIES Lect. I. 
 
 help of the alphabetic arrangement of vocabularies, to turn over 
 a dozen dictionaries, and gather around a given English word a 
 group of foreign roots which contain more or fewer of the same 
 vocal elements, and exhibit a greater or less analogy of mean- 
 ing, than to seek .the actual history of the word by painful 
 research into the records of travel, and commerce, and political 
 combination, and religious propagandism, and immigration, and 
 conquest, which are the ordinary means of the dissemination of 
 words ; but the result obtained by this tedious and unostenta- 
 tious method are of far greater value, and far deeper philosophi- 
 cal interest, than theories which, by reversing the process, found 
 ethnological descent, and build the whole fabric of a national 
 history, extending through ten centuries, on the Eoman ortho- 
 graphy of a single proper name belonging to a tongue wholly 
 unknown to the Romans themselves. 
 
 In fact, undeniable as are many of the unexpected results of 
 modern linguistic research, the mass of speculative inquirers are, 
 under different circumstances, going beyond the extravagance 
 of the etymologists of the seventeenth century. Of dead or 
 remote languages these latter knew only Grreek, Latin, Hebrew, 
 and Arabic, and they made no scruple to derive any modern 
 word directly from any root, in any of these tongues, which in 
 the least resembles it in form and signification, without at all 
 troubling themselves about the historical probabilities of the 
 case. Modern philologists have added to the attainments of 
 their predecessors a knowledge of the vocabularies of the San- 
 scrit, and Celtic, and Sclavonic, not to speak of numerous other 
 dialects ; and not only are the root-cellars of all these considered 
 as lawful plunder, whenever a radical is wanted, but, in the 
 lack of historical evidence to show a connection between nations 
 widely separated by space or time, the coincidence of a few 
 words or syllables is held to be sufficient proof of blood-relation- 
 ship. Hence etymology has become not an aid in historical 
 investigation, but a substitute for it. A shelf of dictionaries is 
 certainly a more cheaply wrought, and is thought a richer mine 
 
tKCT. I. CONJECTITRAL LINGUISTS 31 
 
 of ethnological truth, tLaa a library of chronicles or a maga- 
 zine of archives ; and the most positive testimony of ancient 
 annalists is overruled upon evidence derived from the comparison 
 of a few words, the very existence of which, in the forms ascribed 
 to them, is often a matter of much uncertainty.* 
 
 The conjectural speculations of the present day on the gene- 
 ral tendencies and fundamental laws of language are even more 
 doubtful than the historical deductions from supposed philologi- 
 cal facts. We cannot, indeed, assume to place arbitrary limits 
 to the advance of any branch of human knowledge, and there is 
 no one philological truth which we are authorised to say must 
 for ever remain an ultimate fact, incapable of further resolution 
 or explanation, but there are many phenomena in speech 
 which, in the present state of linguistic science, must be treated 
 as ultimate. With respect to these, it is wise to forbear attempts 
 to guess out their hidden meaning and analogies until we shall 
 discover related facts, by comparison with which we may at 
 length be able safely to generalise. 
 
 But in all the uncertainty and imperfection of our knowledge 
 on the subject of English philology, there still remains enough 
 of positive fact to lead us to safe conclusions on the most promi- 
 nent phenomena of our great grammatical and lexical revolu- 
 tions ; and in a course which, it may be hoped, will serve to 
 some as an introduction to the earnest study, if not of the in- 
 flectional forms, yet of the spirit of early English literature, 
 such a general view must suffice. 
 
 * Contzen's Wanderungen der Kelten historisch-kritisch dargelegt, 1861, is a 
 remarkable instance of pure historical investigation. With a courage and in- 
 jndnstry rare even in Germany, the author, to use his own words, has endeavoured 
 ' an der Hand der Schriftsteller des Alterthums Schritt vor Schritt voranzugehen, 
 und den das Auge einladenden Weg der Etymologien moglichst zu vermeiden, und 
 hat iiherhaupt den aus der Sprache geschopften Belegen nie die erste Stelle einge- 
 raumt, ohwohl er die hohe Bedeutung derselben, zumal da vro die Alten schweigen, 
 nirgends verkannt hat.' In reseaxches so conducted, etymology may safely be 
 caUed in as a critical help in estimating the weight of testimony and in deter- 
 mining questions upon which the historical proofs are conflicting or suspicious ; 
 but it is a hysteron-proteron to subordinate the positive evidence of credible 
 witnesses to linguistic deduction. 
 
32 ENGLISH PHILOLOat Lect. I. 
 
 Among the many ends which we may propose to ourselves in the 
 study of language, there is but one which is common and neces- 
 sary to every man. I mean such a facility iu comprehending, 
 and such a skill in using, his mother-tongue, that he can play 
 well his part in the never-ceasing dialogue which, whether be- 
 tween the living and the living or the living and the dead, 
 whether breathed from the lips or figured with the pen, takes 
 up so large a part of the life of every one of us. For this pur- 
 pose, the information I shall strive to communicate will be, cer- 
 tainly not in quantity, but in kind, sufScient ; and though genius 
 gifted with nice linguistic sense, and rare demonstrative powers, 
 may dispense with such studies as I am advocating and illus- 
 trating, I believe they will be found in general the most efiScient 
 helps to a complete mastery of the English tongue. 
 
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 I. (p. 3.) 
 
 CHANGES IN ENGLISH. 
 
 I AM fex fi-om maintaining that the language of England has at any 
 time become a fixed and inflexible thing. In the adult man, physio- 
 logical processes, not propejly constitutional changes, go on for years 
 before decay can fairly be said to have commenced. His organs, 
 indeed, when he passes from youth to manhood, are already fully de- 
 veloped, but, under favourable ciicumstances, and with proper training, 
 they continue for some time longer to acquire additional strength, 
 powet of action and of resistance, flexibility, and, one might almost say, 
 dexterity, in the performance of their appropriate functions. New 
 organic material is absorbed and assimilated, and eflfete and superfluous 
 particles are thrown oif; but in all this there are no revolutions analo- 
 gous to those by which the nursling becomes a child, the child a man. 
 So in languages employed as the medium of varied literary eifort, there 
 is, as subjects of intellectual discourse, practical applications of scien- 
 tific principle, and new conditions of social and material life multiply, 
 an increasing pliancy and adaptability of speech, a constant appropria- 
 tion and formation of new vocables, rejection of old and worn-out 
 phrases, and revivification of asphyxiated words, a rhetorical, in short, 
 not a gi-ammaticai change, which, to the superficial observer, may give 
 to the language a new aspect, while it yet remains substantially the 
 
 same. 
 
 The chief accessions to the English vocabulary since the time of 
 Shakespeare have been in the departments of industrial art and of 
 mathematical, physical, and linguistic science. They merely compose 
 nomenclatures, as in the case of chemistry, whose new terminology — 
 though it enables us to speak and write of things, the existence and 
 properties of which analysis has but lately revealed to us — has not 
 appreciably afiected the stmcture of the English tongue or the laws of 
 
34 NOTES AND ILLUSTEATIONS LeCT. I. 
 
 -•^ 
 its movement. In the dialect of imaginative composition, in all piire 
 literature, in fact, our vocabulary remains in the main unchanged, 
 except, indeed, as it has been enriched by the revival of expressive 
 words or forms which had unfortunately been suffered to become 
 obsolete. 
 
 n.(p.7.) 
 
 THE PAPACr. 
 
 This ascription of divine authority and honours to the Pope is of 
 frequent occurrence both in the Chronicle of Froissart, who was an 
 ecclesiastic, and in the ■iviitings of secular Continental authors in the 
 Middle Ages. Indeed, it was so well understood to be a homage 
 acceptable to the Bishops of Eome, that even Moslem monarchs appear 
 to have used it in the complimentary addresses of their letters to the 
 pontiff when they had a favour to ask. During the pontificate of Inno- 
 cent VIII., a son of Mohammed the Conqueror, the accomphshed Prince 
 Djem, or Zizim, as he was often called in Europe, who had fled firom 
 Turkey after his father's death to escape the certain doom which im- 
 pended over the head of the brothers of the reigning Sultan, was 
 inveigled into the power of the Grand Master of the Knights of Ehodes 
 by a safe- conduct, and thrown into prison. The mother and sisters of 
 Djem retired to Cairo, and asked the intercession of Abd-ul-Aziz, 
 ' Soldan of Babilon,' for the release of the captive. Abd-ul-Aziz in- 
 voked the intervention of Pope Innocent VIII. in a curious epistle, a 
 translation of which is found in Arnold's Chronicle, reprint of 1811, 
 pp. 159, 160. The letter is addressed: 'Unto the most holyest and 
 fauorablist Price in erthe, Vicary and Lieftenant of Cryst, evermore 
 during Lord Innocence the viii., . . . extirpator of synners . . . the 
 stede of God vsing in erthe;' and elsewhere in the letter the pope is 
 styled ' as in a maner a God i erthe, and the sacred brethe of Cryst.' 
 
 The subsequent details of this affair are worth adding, as an illustra- 
 tion of the somewhat unfamiliar history of the times. Djem was sur- 
 rendered by the Grand Master to Innocent VIII., and kept under 
 surveillance during the life of that pontiff. Innocent was succeeded by 
 a more celebrated ' extirpator of sinners,' Alexander VI., who treated 
 the unfortunate prince with greater rigour, and soon received — perhaps 
 invited — proposals from Sultan Bayezid II. for his assassination, and 
 from Charles VIII. of France (who wished to use him as an instrimient 
 in a war with Bayezid) for his purchase. After some higgling about 
 terms, his Holiness accepted the proposals and the money of both 
 
I-^CT- I' KOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 35 
 
 monarchs, and honourably redeemed his pledges by first administering 
 a dose of poison to Djoin, and then delivering him over, while yet 
 alive, to the King of Franco. 
 
 Innocent VIII. was so little ashamed of his conduct in the matter, 
 that he caused to be struck, or rather cast, a medal in commemoration 
 of the bargain by which he engaged to act as the jailor of Djem — or 
 perhaps he, to use a phrase of our day, merely accepted as a fait 
 accompli the coining of the medal by some devout contemporary. 
 Among the other treasures by which he was bribed to this dishonour^ 
 able stipulation, Bayezid had sent him a real or fictitious emerald, with 
 the portraits of our Saviour and of St. Paul engraved upon it. This 
 rare medal, which is about three and one-third inches in diameter, and 
 in the specimen before me of gold, very thickly cast on a copper blank, 
 has, upon the obverse, the head of Christ, with the legend ' IHS . xpc . 
 SALVATOR . MVUDi,' or of St. Paul, and upon the reverse is this inscrip- 
 tion, in a Latin worthy of the subject : — 
 
 PEESENTES . FIGVRE . AD . SIMILIT\'DINEM . DOMINI . IHESV . SALVATORIS . 
 KOSTRI . ET . APOSTOLI . PAVLI . IN . AMIRALDO . lUPRESSE . PER . MAGNI . THEVCRI . 
 PKEDECESSORES . ANTIA . SINGVLARITER . OBSERVATE . MISSE . S^TfT . AB . IPSO . 
 MAGNO . THEVCRO . S.D.N. PAPE . INNOCENCIO . OCTAVO . PRO . SINGVLARI . 
 CLENODIO . AD . HVNC . FINEM . VT . SWM . FRATRESI . CAPTIVVM . EETINERET. 
 
 It is remarkable that this ascription of divinity to the head of the 
 Eomish Church, after having fallen much into disuse, should have been 
 revived in the days of the present pope. The Ultramontanist journals 
 freely employ it ; and Bedini, Archbishop of Viterbo and Toscanella, 
 now Cai-dinal, in a recent pastoral (1861) addressed to his diocesans, 
 not only calls Pius IX. Christ's ' vicar on earth,' but asks the faithfiil to 
 deposit their tribute of Peter's pence ' at the feet of the persecuted 
 Man-God ' — ' ai piedi del perseguitato Uom-Dio,' — thus applying to the 
 pope the name by which the fathers of the Church expressed the incarr 
 nation of the Divinity in man. Christ was to them the &E'a.vdpu>Kot or 
 Qi-ayhpoQ ; to Cardinal Bedini, Pius IX. is the Man-God. 
 
 in. (p. 10.) 
 
 HISTOEICAL UTEEATtJKE OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 In Icelandic, the authors of Njala, Laxdffila-Saga, and the Heims- 
 kringla; in French, ViUe-Hardouln, JoinviUe, Froiss^rt, and many 
 other less important chroniclers ; in Catalan, Eamon Muntaner and 
 Bei-nat d'Esclot, ai-e all entitled to a place in the front rank of historical 
 
 D 2 
 
^6 NOTES AND ILLUSTKATIONS Iect. 1. 
 
 • 
 
 ■writers, but no poet of those ages and countries still survives as an 
 actually living influence in literature. Even the Roman de la Rose is 
 but little read, and that rather for linguistic than for literary purposes. 
 The neglect into -which this and other poems of this class have fallen, 
 in spite of their abundant beauty of imagery, of thought, and even of 
 expression, is the natural consequence of their deficiency in power of 
 delineating character, and their vfant of unity of conception in plan and 
 execution. The rhymed chronicles of the Middle Ages are generally 
 ■wholly destitute of poetical merit, and they are rarely of much value 
 considered simply as annals. They disregard historical truth, but fail 
 to secure the graces of fable by the sacrifice. 
 
 These observations, so far as poetry is concerned, do not apply to the 
 literature of Germahy. The admirable Teutonic epic, the Nibelungen- 
 Lied, is almost as wonderful a phenomenon as the Iliad itself. The 
 oldest manuscripts of this poem belong to the earlier part of the thir- 
 teenth century, and though it is founded on ancient and -wide-spread 
 Gothic traditions, it is neither proved nor probable that the rhapsodies 
 of -which it is composed existed in a collected, harmonised, and 
 recorded form, at a period long previous to the date of these manuscripts. 
 Considered, then, as a literary monument, the Nibelungen-Lied is 
 contemporaneous with the chronicle of Ville-Hardouin. But Germany 
 has no vernacular historian of that epoch to boast, and in fact it may be 
 said to be generally true of the infant age of every modern literature, 
 ■with the exception of that of Italy, that it has not produced at the same 
 time great poets and great historians. In point of literary merit, the 
 Icelandic historical school ranks far above any other of the Middle 
 Ages, and it is -worth noticing that, — while the ablest chroniclers of 
 the Romance nations confine themselves chiefly to the narration of 
 events occurring under their own observation, or very near their o-\vn 
 time, and in -which they had often personally participated, or at least, 
 known the principal agents, — very many of the most celebrated 
 Icelandic sagas were composed at dates considerably later than the 
 periods whose history they record. Hence, in early Romance historical 
 literature, the personality of the annalist often makes itself conspicuous, 
 and his narrative has a more subjective character than those of the 
 sagas, the authors of ■which are for the most part unknown, and not 
 themselves dramatis personce. However spirited and brilliant may be 
 the Romance chronicles in the description of events, they are vastly 
 inferior to the sagas in the portraiture of all that goes to make up the 
 personality of the individual. Few historical narrators have produced 
 more completely full and rounded models of flesh and blood humanity 
 
Lect. t. notes and illustrations 37 
 
 tLan Njai, and Gunnarr, and Hallgerdr, in Njaa, and Hoskuldr, and 
 Olaf the Peacock, and Kjai-tan, in Laxd»la. 
 
 IV. (p. 15.) 
 
 ORIGIN OP THE EOMANCE LAHOrAaES. 
 
 Until recently, philologists have habitually spoken loosely of the 
 Eomance languages as derived from the Latin, and are understood by 
 common readers as meaning thereby the classical speech which served 
 as the vehicle of the literature of ancient Eome. That the structure, 
 and more especially the vocabulary, of the modern Eomance tongues 
 have been very greatly affected by the influence of Latin, as the lan- 
 guage of Eoman literature and of the Eomish Church, is indisputably 
 true ; but there is abundant evidence to show that, contemporaneously 
 with the written language of ancient Eome, there existed a popular 
 speech, comparatively simple in inflectional, and, of course, syntactical 
 structure, and bearing a considerable resemblance to the modern written 
 and spoken dialects of the Eomance nations. This humble tongue is 
 mentioned by many ancient ■\vTiters imder the name of lingua rustica, and 
 it and its provincial dialects are considered by most philologists as the true 
 parents of the languages now employed throughout Southern Europe. 
 Although it is usually referred to by a collective name, there can be no 
 question that it was divided into a great number of local dialects, more 
 or less differing from each other and from written Latin, and that the 
 differences between these dialects have been, to some extent at least, 
 perpetuated in the modern languages which have succeeded to and now 
 represent them. It is further possible, perhaps we may even say 
 probable, that there existed between the oral and the recorded dialects 
 of the capital itself, some such relation as that between the written and 
 the spoken French of the present day, and hence, that the language of 
 conversation at Eome differed very considerably from that of hteratuie. 
 
 Besides the tendency to division and ramification which all languages 
 show whenever the nations that speak them are themselves divided into 
 fragments separated by physical or political barriers, there was, in 
 ancient Italy, a special cause of confusion of speech, which of itself 
 would account for a great departure of the oral from the wi-itten tongue, 
 as well as for the breaking up of the spoken langiiage, had it ever been 
 uniform, into a multitude of dialects. I refer to the exhaustion of the 
 rural population, and the substitution of foreign-bom predial slaves and 
 disbanded soldiers, from every part of the ancient known world, for the 
 native and aboriginal inhabitants of the soil. This exhaustion was 
 
38 NOTES AND ILLUSTEATIONa Lect. L 
 
 produced hy the military conscription, by the tendency of population 
 towards great commercial and industrial centres, whicli has again become 
 so marked a feature of the associate life of Europe, and by the absorp- 
 tion of the lesser estates into the domains of the great proprietors. 
 The place of the conscript, or emigrant native peasant, was taken by 
 servile and discharged military strangers to such an extent, that the 
 Latin and other Italic races were said to have become almost extinct in 
 the rural districts even before the days of the empire. These foreigners 
 were of many different stocks and different tongues, and though the 
 enslaved captives were distributed without much regard to community 
 of oiigin or of speech, yet the disbanded veterans would naturally be 
 colonised with some reference to their nationality, and hence each con- 
 siderable allotment of military boimty lands would be a centre whicli 
 would exercise a peculiar influence \ipon the language of its own vicinity, 
 and thus tend to create a local patois, if none existed there before. 
 
 Eaynouard, Lexique Eoman, I. xiii., observes : ' II est reconnu 
 aujourd'hui que la romane rustique se forma de la corruption de la 
 langue latine, que Pignorance de ceux qui parlaient encore cette 
 langue, a I'^poque de I'invasion des hordes du Nord, et leur melange 
 avec ces hordes, modififerent d'une manifere sp^ciale, par suite de laquelle 
 le nouvel idiome acquit un caractfere distinct d'individualit^.' 
 
 This theory supposes that the classical Latin was once the general 
 popular speech, not only of Italy, but of Spain, Portugal, and France. 
 This is an assumption, not only without proof, but at variance with 
 probability, and there is no reason to believe that any one vulgar dialect 
 ever had a great territorial range in the Italian peninsula, stiU less in 
 the distant subjected provinces. We know historically that Italy was 
 originally, or at least, at a very early period, peopled by many different 
 races, which were at last united under the government, and forced into 
 a conformity with the institutions of Eome. But we have no proof 
 that their vemacvilars ever melted and harmonised into one uniform 
 lingua rustica, and, indeed, the period through which the sway of Eome 
 extended was altogether too short for such an amalgamation to have 
 taken place under such circumstances. The rustic dialects are to be 
 regarded not as corruptions of the Latin, or of any other single speech, 
 but each as in a certain sense the representative of an older and more 
 primitive tongue. Their natural resemblances are results of a tendency 
 to coalesce, imposed upon them by the social and political influence of 
 Eome, not evidence of greater likeness and closer relationship at an 
 earlier stage. The Latin itself is but a compromise and an amalgama- 
 tion of the linguistic peculiarities of older speeches, and it was probably 
 
LecT- !• NOTES AND ILLTJSTKATIONS 39 
 
 never etnploTcd as the vulgar tongue of Roman Italy to a greater extent 
 than Tuscan is spoken at this day in the modern Italian States. So 
 £u- fix)m being the mother of the rustic patois, the Latin itself may 
 with greater truth be regarded as derivative, and as a coalescence of 
 more ancient forms of them. This, indeed, is apparently less true of 
 the grammar than of the vocabulary. The stock of words in Latin is 
 evidently of a very mixed chai-acter, but the regularity and complete- 
 ness of the inflections show that the grammar of some one ancient 
 dialect very greatly predominates in the composite literary tongue of 
 Eome. 
 
 On the other hand, it must be admitted, that the general coincidence 
 of vocabulary in the Eomance languages, and especially the occurrence 
 of numei-ous words, substantially the same in all of them, but which can 
 hardly be traced to a classical Latin source — such, for example, as It. 
 acciajo, Sp. acero, Fr. acier; It aguglia, Sp. aguja, Fr, 
 aiguille; It. arrivare, Sp. arribar, Fr. arriver ; It. bianco, Sp. 
 bianco, Fr. blanc; It. bocca, Sp. boca, Fr. bouche; It. cac- 
 ciare, Sp. cazar, Fr. chasser — seems to point to a community of 
 origin which their grammatical discrepancies tend to disprove. Lite- 
 rary and ecclesiastical influences have been very important agencies in 
 bringing about a uniformity in the stock of words, and as to those voca- 
 bles common to all the Eomance dialects, but unknown to classical 
 Latin, it is not improbable that they belonged to popular nomenclatures 
 connected with the military or civil administration of the Eoman 
 government, and which were employed as widely as that government 
 extended, though not forming a part of the literary tongue. — See On the 
 Divergence of Dialects, Lecture II. 
 
 V. p. (27.) 
 
 GKAMMAB AND PHILOLOGY. 
 
 A syntax which looks no higher than to rules of concord and regi- 
 men, the determination of logical relations by the tallying of endings, is 
 not a whit more intellectual than the game of dominoes. The study of 
 linguistics is valuable, less as an independent pursuit, than as a means 
 of access to a wider range of philologies, understood in that broad sense 
 in which the word is now used in German criticism. Happily for the 
 interests of learning, most distinguished Continental linguists are phi- 
 lologists also. On the other hand, American, and, I must add, English 
 professed linguists, are in general but nibbling the shell while they 
 imagine themselves to be enjoying the kernel of the fiuit. I desire not 
 
40 NOTES AND ILLTISTEATIONS Lect. L 
 
 to be understood as undervaluing the linguistic works of such men as 
 Bopp and the brothers Grimm, whose labours have furnished the key to 
 such vast stores of literary wealth, but at the same time I maintain that 
 the student of language who ends with the linguistics of Bopp and 
 Grimm had better never have begun ; for grammar has but a value, 
 not a worth ; it is a means, not an end ; it teaches but half-truths, and, 
 except as an introduction to literature and that which literature embo- 
 dies, it is a melancholy heap of leached ashes, marrowless bones, and 
 empty oyster-shells. You may feed the human intellect upon roots, 
 stems, and endings, as you may keep a horse upon saw-dust ; but you 
 must add a little literature in the one case, a little meal in the other, 
 and the more the better in both. Many years ago. Brown, an Ameri- 
 can grammariang,invented what he called a parsing-machine, for teach- 
 ing grammar. It was a mahogany box, some two feet square, provided 
 with a crank, filled with cog and crown-wheels, pulleys, bands, shafts, 
 gudgeons, couplings, springs, cams, and eccentrics; and with several 
 trap -sticks projecting through slots in the top of it. When played 
 upon by an expert operator, it functioned, as the French say, very well, 
 and ran through the syntactical categories as glibly as the footman in 
 Scriblerus did through the predicates. But it had one capital defect, 
 namely, that the pupil miist have learned grammar by some simpler 
 method, before he could understand the working of the contrivance, 
 and its lessons, therefore, came rather late. There are many sad ' com- 
 pounds of printer's ink and brain-dribble,' styled ' English Grammars,' 
 which, as means of instruction, are, upon the whole, inferior to Brown'a 
 gimcrack. 
 
LECTUEE n. 
 
 OIUGIN AND COMPOSITION OF THE ANGLO-SAXON PEOPLE AND 
 THEIE LANGUAGE. 
 
 Befoee proceeding to tlie immediate subject of the present 
 lecture, I will offer an explanatory remark upon the nomencla- 
 ture which, in common with many writers on European philo- 
 logy, I employ. I shall make frequent use of the ethnological 
 epithets, Gothic, Teutonic, Germanic, Scandinavian, and Eo- 
 mance. Under the term Grothic I include not only the extinct 
 Mceso-Grothic nation and language, and the contemporaneous 
 kindred tribes and tongues, but all the later peoples, speeches, 
 and dialects commonly known as Anglo-Saxon, Grerman, Dutch, 
 Flemish, Norse, Swedish, Danish, and Icelandic, together with 
 our composite modern English. AU these are marked by a 
 strong family likeness, and hence are assumed, though by no 
 means historically proved, to be descended from a common 
 original. With the exception of a few words, chiefly proper 
 names, which occur in the writings of the Greek and Latin 
 historians and geographers, the oldest specimen we possess of 
 any of the Grothic languages is the remnant of a translation of 
 the Scriptures executed by Ulfilas, a bishop of the Mceso-Groths, 
 but himself, according to Philostorgius, of Cappadocian descent, 
 who Hved on the shores of the Lower Danube, in the fourth 
 centiuy after Christ.* The Grothic languages divide themselves 
 into — 
 
 L The Teutonic or Grermanic branch, which consists of — 1, 
 the Moeso-Gothic ; 2, the Anglo-Saxon; 3, the Low-German, 
 or Saxon; 4, the Dutch, or Netherlandish, including the 
 * See Elustrations 11. and V. at the end of this lecture. 
 
42 GOTHIC LANGUAGES Lect. 1L 
 
 Flemish; 5, the Frisic; and 6, the High-Grerman, to which 
 may be added the Cimbric of the Sette and the Tredici Comuni 
 in Italy*, and many Swiss and even Piedmontese patois. 
 
 II. The Scandinavian branch, which embraces — 1, the Old- 
 Northern, or Icelandic, improperly called Eunic by many earlier 
 English philologists; 2, the Swedish,- 3, the Danish, including 
 the Norse, or Norwegian. ' 
 
 III. The English, which, though less than half the words 
 composing its total vocabulary are of Grothic descent, is classed 
 with that family, because in its somewhat mixed grammatical 
 structure the Gothic syntax very gi'eatly predominates, and a 
 majority of the words employed in the ordinary oral intercourse 
 of life, and even in almost any given literary composition, are 
 of Gothic etymology. Perhaps, also, the Scottish should be 
 regarded as a distinct speech, rather than as a mere dialect of 
 English. 
 
 All these, excepting the Moeso-Gothic, and presumably that 
 also, have or had a great number of spoken, and many of them 
 even written, more or less divergent dialects. I am aware 
 that the propriety of this application of the terms Gothic, 
 Teutonic, and Germanic is disputed ; but it has long been 
 received, and will be better understood than any new phraseology. 
 
 Eomance formerly meant — and is still defined in most dic- 
 tionaries — the dialects of the Spanish and Italian borders of 
 France ; but, in recent criticism, it is a generic term embracing 
 all the modern languages usually regarded as cognate with the 
 Latin, — in a word, the Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, or 
 Lemosinf, Provencal, French, the Eoumansch of several Swiss 
 
 * See First Series, Lecture VI., p. 140. 
 
 + The Catalan or Lemosin is often spoken of as a dialect of Spanish. If hy 
 Spanish be meant the assemblage of speeches employed in Spain, the expression 
 luay be correct ; but if the Castilian, the written language of most parts of Spain, 
 be intended, it is no more true that Catalan is a dialect of Spanish than it is tliat 
 Spanish is a dialect of Catalan. Neither is a derivatiTe or an oiFshoot of the 
 other. The development and history of each is independent of that of the other, 
 and the Catalan is, in the important point of the construction of periods, quito 
 as near to the French as to the Castilian. 
 
Lect. II. ORIGIN OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS 43 
 
 communities in its various forms, and tlie Wallachian. These, 
 also, are subdivided into many local dialects, or patois, several 
 of -which, especially in Italy, have been reduced to writing, and 
 may not improperly be said to have their special literatures. 
 We cannot aflBx a chronological date to the epoch of change 
 from the rustic or provincial Roman to the modern Romance 
 in any language of this family ; but, with the exception of single 
 phrases in ancient liturgies, laws, and chronicles, the oldest 
 extant monuments in a Romance dialect are generally con- 
 sidered to be the oaths of Louis le Germanique and of certain 
 French lords, subjects of Charles the Bald, sworn at Strasburg 
 in 842.* 
 
 Many recent inquirers believe that the Continental invaders, 
 of Gothic origin, who reduced Celtic England to subjection a 
 few centuries after Christ, emigrated from a small district in 
 Sleswick now called Angeln, and were all of one race — the 
 Angles, — that the designation Saxon was not the proper appel- 
 lation of any of them, but a name ignorantly bestowed upon 
 them by the native Celts, and at last, to some small extent, 
 adopted by themselves. It is hence argued that the proper 
 name of their language is not Saxon, or even Anglo-Saxon, but 
 Angle, or, in the modern form, English. It is farther insisted 
 that the present speech of England is nearly identical with the 
 dialect introduced into the island by the immigrants in question, 
 and consequently, that there is no ground for distinguishing the 
 old and the new by different names, it being sufficient to cha- 
 racterise the successive periods and phases of the Anglican 
 speech by epithets indicative of mere chronological relation, 
 saying, for instance, for Anglo-Saxon, old, or primitive English, 
 — for our present tongue, new, or modern English. 
 
 I differ from these theorists as to both premises and conclu- 
 fdomf By those who maintain such doctrines, it appears to be 
 assumed that if the evidence upon which it has been hitherto 
 
 * See Illustration I. at the end of this lecture. 
 t See First Series, Lecture I., pp. 41—45. 
 
44 OEIGIN OF THE ANOLO-SAXONS Leox. II. 
 
 believed that the immigration was composed of three different 
 tribes, — Jutes, or Jutlandefs, Angles, and Saxons, — could be 
 overthrown, it would follow that it consisted of Angles alone. 
 This is altogether a non sequitur ; and it must not be forgotten 
 that the only historical proof which establishes the participation 
 of a tribe called Angles in the invasions of the fifth and sixth 
 centuries at all is precisely the evidence which is adduced to 
 show that Saxons accompanied or followed them. It must be 
 admitted, indeed, that the extant direct testimony upon the 
 whole subject is open to great objections, and that scarcely any 
 of the narrative accounts of the Grermanic conquest of England 
 will stand the test of historical criticism. That the new-comers 
 themselves styled portions of the territory they occupied Essex, 
 Sussex, Wessex, and Middlesex, — that is, the districts of the 
 East Saxons, South Saxons, West Saxons, and Middle Saxons, — 
 is undisputed ; and it is a violently improbable supposition, that 
 they bestowed on these localities a name mistakenly applied to 
 themselves by the natives, instead of calling them by their own 
 proper and familiar national, or at least tribal, appellation. 
 They also often spoke of themselves, or of portions of them- 
 selves, as Saxons, of their language as the Saxon speech, and 
 Alfred's usual royal signature was 'Eex Saxonum,'though, indeed, 
 they more generally called the whole people and the language 
 Angle, or English. 
 
 Apart from the testimony of the chroniclers — which modern 
 inquirers seem generally and with good reason much inclined 
 to suspect — the only proof which identifies the Angles of>. 
 England with any Continental people is the perhaps accidental 
 coincidence between their name and that of a Grermanic, or, as 
 some writers maintain, a Scandinavian tribe, occupying a 
 corner of Sleswick so narrow in extent as hardly to be noticed 
 at all in Continental history. It is eqiially true that there is 
 no external testimony to show that any nation, known to itself 
 as Saxon while yet resident on Teutonic soil, furnished any 
 contingent to the bodies of invaders. Grermanic and Scandi- 
 
Lect. II. UKGtriSTIC CHASSES 45 
 
 navian history are silent on the whole subject*, except in some 
 few passages probably borrowed from Anglo-Saxon authorities ; 
 and in the want of trustworthy information from native annalists, 
 we must have recourse to the internal evidence supplied by the 
 language, and to the probabilities deduced from such indirect 
 and fragmentary facts as have come down to us, through other 
 channels, from the dark and remote period of emigration. 
 
 What then does the character of the language commonly, and, 
 as I think, appropriately, called Anglo-Saxon, when examined 
 iu the earliest forms known to us, indicate with respect to the 
 origin of those who spoke it ? 
 
 According to the present views of the ablest linguists, gram- 
 matical structure is a much more essential and permanent 
 characteristic of languages than the vocabulary, and is therefore 
 alone to be considered in tracing their history and determining 
 their ethnological affinities. This theory, I think, is carried too 
 far, when it is insisted that no amalgamation of the grammatical 
 characteristics of different speeches is possible ; for though 
 languages often receive and assimilate a great amount of foreign 
 material without much change of structure, yet, on the other 
 hand, there are cases of the adoption of more or less of foreign 
 syntax while the vocabulary remains in a good degree the same, 
 and even while the people who employ it continue almost wholly 
 unmixed in blood with other nations. The Armenians, for 
 example, can boast of a purer and more ancient descent than 
 any other Christian people, and they have kept themselves, 
 during the whole period since their conversion to Christianity 
 in the fourth century, almost as distinct in blood and as marked 
 in nationality as the Hebrews. Their language is lineally 
 descended from the old Armenian tongue, its radicals remaining 
 substantially the same, but its grammar is everywhere modified 
 by that of the prevailing idiom of the different countries where, 
 in the wide dispersion of the Armenian people, it is spoken. 
 
 * It deserves to be specially noticed that the names of neither Angle nor Saxon 
 occur in Beowulf. 
 
46 MIXTUBE OF GBAMMABS Lect. IL 
 
 According to our learned countryman, Mr. Eiggs, the syntax 
 of the Armenian spoken in Turkey has conformed itself to the 
 structure of the Turkish, and while the ancient Armenian 
 Scriptures correspond with the Hebrew text in the logical 
 construction of periods and the arrangement of the words that 
 compose them, the modern Armenian exactly inverts the order 
 of position, and, in accordance with Turkish syntax, places first 
 all instrumental, local, and circumstantial qualifications, and 
 announces the principal proposition at the end of the sentence. 
 Thus, to use the illustration of Mr. Riggs, a Turco-Armenian, 
 in saying, ' that a G-reek shot an Egyptian yesterday with a 
 pistol, in a drunken quarrel, in one of the streets of the city,' 
 instead of arranging the words in the ancient Armenian order, 
 which nearly corresponds with the English, would announce 
 the proposition in this form: — 'Yesterday — of this city — of 
 the streets — one — in — of wine — the use — in originating 
 — of a quarrel — in consequence — with a pistol — a Greek — 
 an Egyptian killed.' * 
 
 A linguistic inquirer, who adopts the theory I am discussing, 
 might conclude from the study of modern Armenian grammar 
 that the people and the language belonged to the Tartar stock ; 
 whereas nothing is more certain than that the Armenians and 
 their speech are ethnologically unrelated to the Ottoman race and 
 the Turkish tongue. If therefore it were true that the gram- 
 matical coincidence between Anglo-Saxon and any given Con- 
 tinental dialect were closer than it is, the identity of the two 
 would not thereby alone be conclusively proved. In point of 
 fact, Anglo-Saxon grammar does not precisely correspond to 
 that of any other Gothic speech, but, on the contrary, embraces 
 some characteristics of several Germanic and even Scandinavian 
 dialects. 
 
 The Anglo-Saxon, and especially the English language, have 
 been affected in both vocabulary and structure by the influence 
 of all the Gothic and Eomance tongues with which they have 
 
 * Transactions of tlie American Oriental Society for 1860. 
 
Ikct. il mixture of grammars 
 
 47 
 
 been brought into long and close contact. Doubtless this 
 influence is most readily perceived and appreciated in the stock 
 of words, but although more obscure and much smaller in actual 
 amount of results, it is, I think, not less unequivocal in its effects 
 upon the syntax. 
 
 A comparison of the Anglo-Saxon gospels with older monu- 
 ments of the language, Beowulf and the poems of Caedmon, for 
 instance, on the one hand, and with the Latin text on the other, 
 appears to me to show very clearly that the syntax of the transla- 
 tion, and, through the influence of that translation, of the general 
 Anglo-Saxon speech, was sensibly afi'ected by the incorporation 
 of Latin constructions previously unknown to it. I cannot 
 here go into this question at length, but I may refer to a single 
 exemplification of this influence in the employment of the 
 active or present participle, in both absolute and dependent 
 phrases, in close accordance with the Latin usao-e.* 
 
 The Anglo-Saxon compared the adjective by change of ending 
 only, or inflection, and not by the adverbs more and most; 
 the Norman-French, by the help of adverbs. The EngUsb 
 employs both methods, the latter almost uniformly in long 
 words. The possessive relation between nouns was expressed 
 in Anglo-Saxon by a regular possessive or genitive case, and 
 not by a preposition ; in Norman-French, in general, by a prepo- 
 sition only. In English both modes are used. The Anglo-Saxon 
 did not employ a preposition before the infinitive, but had a 
 special verbal form nearly analogous to the Latin gerund, which 
 is by some considered as a dative case of the infinibive ; the Nor- 
 man-French infinitive, in many cases, took a preposition. The 
 English first dropped the characteristic ending of the gerundial, 
 thus reducing it to the infinitive form, and then regularly preceded 
 the infinitive, except when coupled with an auxiliary verb, by 
 a preposition; thus amalgamating, or rather confounding, the 
 oflSces of the two forms.t 
 
 • See Illustration II. at the end of this lecture. 
 t See Illustration III. at the end of this lecture. 
 
48 ASaiO-SAXON LANatTASB Lbct, II. 
 
 Now these and other analogous cases are instances of the sub- 
 stitution of foreign grammatical combinations for native inflec- 
 tions, or, in other words, of a mixture of grammars jpro tanto. 
 They are, indeed, not numerous or important enough to aifect 
 the general character of English syntax, which is in very large 
 measure derived from that of the Anglo-Saxon ; but they are 
 sufficient to prove that the doctrine of the impossibility of any 
 grammatical mixture is a too hasty generalisation ; and hence 
 the extent of syntactical amalgamation is simply a question of 
 proportion. 
 
 The Anglo-Saxon is not grammatically or lexically identi- 
 fiable with the extant remains of any Continental dialect ; but, so 
 far as it is to be considered a homogeneous tongue, it much re- 
 sembles what is called the Old-Saxon of the Heliand (a religious 
 poem of the ninth century), and the Frisic, both of which belong 
 to the Low-Grerman or Saxon branch of the Teutonic ; and hence 
 we are authorised to presume, that the bulk of the invaders 
 emigrated from some territory not remote from the coast of the 
 North Sea, where the population employed a Low-Grerman dia- 
 lect or dialects. The co mpo site and het erogeneou s character of 
 the Anglo-Saxon vocabulary, or, in other words, the internal 
 evidence derived from the language itself, tends to the same con- 
 clusions, in respect to the origin of the tongue and the people, 
 to which we should be led by the little we know of the history 
 of maritime Grermany and the Netherlands during the period 
 succeeding the Roman occupation of a part of that territory. It 
 is evidently a mixed speech ; and we can, in many instances, 
 trace its different ingredients to sources not having much imme- 
 diate relation to each other. 
 
 The martial triumphs and extended despotism of Eome dis- 
 lodged and expelled from their native seats great numbers, if 
 not whole tribes, of a people who, at that period, were just in 
 the state of semi-civilization which Thucydides describes as that 
 of the early Greeks, — a state which offers no obstacle to emi- 
 gration, but facilitates it, because it has no permanent and well- 
 
Lect. II. EFFECTS OF BOJIAN COKqTJEST 49 
 
 secured homes, no strong local attachments, and at the same 
 time is far enough advanced in pastoral and mechanical art, to 
 be provided with the means of locomotion and of the transporta- 
 tion of such objects as man in that condition of life most highly 
 prizes. 
 
 The line of march of the fugitives who retreated before the 
 Koman legions, would be to the north-west ; both because the 
 Rhine, the Elbe, and their tributary streams, on which many of 
 them would embark, flow in that direction, and because the dif- 
 ficult nature of the country lying betweea the outlets of the 
 great northern rivers opposed the most formidable obstacles to 
 the advance of a pursuing force ; and, while it offered ample 
 means of subsistence in the abundance of the sea, yet held out 
 few attractions of a character to tempt the cupidity of the Eoman 
 robber. Hence, independently of other more or less similar, 
 earlier or contemporaneous:, concurrent causes, it is extremely 
 probable that, in consequence of the progress of the Roman 
 arms about the commencement of the Christian era, and during 
 the immediately preceding and succeeding centuries, a multi- 
 tude of tribes, and fragments of tribes, languages, and frag- 
 ments of languages, were distributed along the coasts of the 
 German Ocean, and the navigable waters which discharge them- 
 selves into it. 
 
 The jealousies of family and of class, which are such a con- 
 spicuous feature in the character of all rude races, would long 
 prevent the coalescence of distinct bodies of these people, or the 
 fusion of their unwritten dialects ; and these, indeed, by the iso- 
 lation of those who spoke them, would tend to diverge rather 
 than assimilate, until some one group or confederacy of tribes 
 should become strong enough to conquer or absorb the rest. 
 We have no historical evidence whatever, of any political or lin- 
 guistic unity between the inhabitants of different portions of the 
 coast; and no legitimate deduction from the known habits and 
 tendencies of half-savage life would lead to such conclusion. 
 
 At this period, the low lands, subject to overflow by the Ger- 
 
so COASTS OP flEEMAN OCEAN Lect. 11. 
 
 man Ocean and by the great rivers which empty into it, were 
 not diked ; but, as appears from Pliny*, the few inhabitants of 
 the tide-washed flats lived in huts erected on artificial mounds, 
 as upon the coast-islands they do at this day. The art of diking 
 seems to have been suggested by the causeways and the mili- 
 tary engineering of the Komans. But the labour and expense 
 involved in it were so great, that it made very slow progress ; 
 and no considerable extent of this coast was diked in until long 
 after the Saxon conquest of England. Upon the firm land were 
 vast woods and morasses, which prevented free communication 
 between the population, and it was consequently separated into 
 independent bodies, united by no tie of common interest. 
 
 Wherever man, in the state of life in which the concurrent 
 testimony of all history places the Northern Grermans at the 
 period of which we speak, is accessible to observation, he is 
 found divided into small and hostile clans, distinguished by con- 
 siderable, and constantly widening, differences of dialect, and 
 incapable of harmonious or extended political or social action. 
 The traditional accounts of the Saxon conquest of England 
 speak of numerous successive and totally distinct bodies of in- 
 vaders ; and the probability that any one tribe, or any one con- 
 tinuous territorial district, even if all its clans were united under 
 one head, could have furnished a sufficient force to subdue the 
 island in any one or any ten successive expeditions, is too slen- 
 der to be admitted for a moment. 
 
 The people who inhabit the coasts of the North Sea have now 
 been Christianised for a thousand years, and brought under the 
 sway of two or three governments. During all these ten cen- 
 turies, all religious and all political influences have powerfully 
 tended to the extirpation of local differences of speech, and to 
 the reduction of the multiplied patois, if not to one, to two or 
 three leading dialects. Yet, though all known external causes 
 of discrepancy have loqg since ceased to act, we find that, in 
 spitts pf the harmonising influences to which I have alluded, 
 
 » Nat. Hist. xvi. I. 
 
liSCT. II. MITLTITUDE OF DIALECTS 
 
 61 
 
 every hour of travel, as we advance from the Ehine to the Eider, 
 brings us to a new vernacular. Within the space of three hun- 
 dred miles, we meet with at least a dozen, mostly unwritten, 
 dialects, not only so discrepant as to be mutually unintelligible 
 to those who speak them, but often mai-ked by lexical and gi-am- 
 inatical differences scarcely less wide than those which distin- 
 guish any two Gothic or any two Eomance tongues.* There is 
 not a shadow of proof, there is no semblance of probability, that 
 the inhabitants of these coasts spoke with more uniformity four- 
 teen centuries ago than to-day, but every presumption is to the 
 contrary. 
 
 Jacob Grimm, indeed, observes that all dialects and patois 
 develope themselves progressively, and the further we look back 
 in language, the smaller is their number and the less marked 
 are they.f This is in accordance with all linguistic theory, and 
 if human annals reached far enough back to exhibit to us earlier 
 stages of divergence of speech, the proposition would probably 
 be found historically true ; but if we take the different linguistic 
 families of Europe, and follow them up as far as documentary 
 evidence can be traced, the reverse appears, in very many cases, 
 to be the fact. The dialects diverge as we ascend. If we com- 
 pare any one of the Low-German dialects of the present day 
 
 * See Halbertsma's very remarkable account of the confiision and instability of 
 speech in the Frisian provinces of Holland, in Bosworth's Origin of the Germanic 
 and Scandinavian languages, pp. 36-38. See also First Series, Lectures II., p. 43, 
 and XVIII., p. 378. And yet the multitude of dialects was greater withii the 
 memory of persons now living than it is at present. 
 
 t ' Alle Mundarten und Dialecte entfalten sich vorschreitend, und je weiter man in 
 der Sprache zuriickschaut, desto geringer ist ihre Zahl, desto schwacher ausgepriigt 
 sind sie. Ohne diese Annahme wiirde iiberhaupt der Ursprung der Dialecte, wie 
 der Vielheit der Spracheu unbegreiilich sein.' 
 
 Although the learned author declares that this proposition is ' aus der Geschichte 
 der Sprache gesehopft und in der Natur ihrer Spaltung gegriindet,' it must never- 
 theless be considered rather as a corollary from the doctrine of the descent of the 
 human family from a single stock, than as a statement of historically established 
 feet. The proofs, or rather illustrations, adduced by Grimm amount to very little, 
 and the conclusion is drawn cot from evidence, but from assumptions founded on 
 the supposed impossibiUfy of otherwise explaining the origin of dialects and the 
 moltiplicity of languages. 
 
 £3 
 
52 SCANDINATIAN DIALECTS Lect. II, 
 
 with the contemporaneous High German, we shall find a marked 
 difference indeed, which, if the former now had a living litera- 
 ture and were spoken by a people governed by a distinct politi- 
 cal organisation, would perhaps be held sufficient to entitle 
 them to be considered as different languages. But between the 
 poem Heliand and the Krist of Otfrid — both of the ninth 
 century and therefore nearly contemporaneous — the former 
 being taken as the representative of the Low, the latter as that of 
 the High German, there is a much more palpable difference than 
 exists at the present day, or at any intermediate period, between 
 the dialects which stand in the place of them. If we extend 
 the comparison so as to embrace the Mceso-Gothic, which 
 Grimm* declares to have become wholly extinct and to have 
 left no surviving posterity, we find a greater diversity still. f 
 Over how large a space either of these three Germanic speeches 
 prevailed, we do not know ; nor have we any warrant whatever 
 for affirming, any probable ground for presuming, that there did 
 not exist, by the side of these, numerous other dialects as unlike 
 either of them as they are to each other. 
 
 In the case of the Scandinavian languages, the Swedish, 
 Danish, and modern Icelandic, indeed, the facts are said to be 
 different. It is affirmed that, at a period not very remote, a 
 tongue substantially the same as what is now called Icelandic 
 was spoken in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, and that the pre- 
 sent languages of those three countries are lineally descended 
 from the primitive Old-Northern speech.^ Admitting this to be 
 so, a reason why we are able to trace the Scandinavian dialects 
 historically to a common original might be found in the fact, 
 that the migration of the Scandinavians into their present seats, 
 the multiplication of their numbers, their consequent spread 
 over a wide surface, and their separation and division into dis- 
 
 * 'Die gotische ist gauz, ohne dasz etwas neueres an ihre stelle getretcn wiire^ 
 erloschen.' 
 t See Illustrations IV. and V. at the end of this lecture. 
 } See Illustration VI. at the end of this lecture. 
 
Lkct. II. KOMANCE LANGUAaES 53 
 
 tinct tribes with divergent speeches — all these events are very 
 much more recent than the occupation of Germany by the an- 
 cestors of its present population, and the division of that popu- 
 lation, if indeed ever homogeneous, into separate tribes. 
 
 The comparatively late date of the Grothic colonisation of 
 Scandinavia is proved by a variety of circumstances which can- 
 not now be detailed, but it is well to refer to one of them — 
 the fact, namely, that the older- race whom the Scandinavian 
 Goths expelled from Norway, Sweden, and perhaps Denmark — 
 the Laplanders, or, as the Old-Northern writers call them, the 
 Finns — is not yet extirpated, but still exists as a distinct 
 people, with its original speech ; whereas nearly every trace of a 
 more ancient population of Germany has utterly disappeared. 
 
 We have no similar evidence with respect to the unity, or 
 even close relationship, of the Germanic peoples and their dia- 
 lects within any calculable period. It is not proved that any 
 modern High-German or Low-German speech is derived from 
 the Moeso-Gothic of Ulfilas, or from the dialect of Otfrid, or of 
 the Heliand ; and it is just as probable that all the Germanic 
 patois are descended from parallel old dialects, the memory of 
 which is lost because their written monuments have perished, if 
 any such ever existed. 
 
 If we do not find a similar state of things in the Eomance 
 languages, it is because they are all directly derived, not indeed 
 from the classical Latin, but from cognate unwritten dialects 
 which group themselves around the Latin as their common re- 
 presentative and only mouthpiece. Hence their tendencies to a 
 wider divergence were always checked by the influence of a 
 central, written, authoritative, ever-Uving and immutable speech, 
 no parallel to which, so far as we have any reason to believe, 
 existed in Germany. 
 
 As a general rule, then, applicable to what is called the his- 
 torical period, or that through which written records extend, 
 dialects have usually tended to uniformity and amalgsmation aa 
 they descend the stream of time; and as we trace them back- 
 
54 ANQLO-SAXON LANGTJA©B Lbct. IL' 
 
 wards, they ramify like rivers and their tributaries, until the 
 main current is lost in a dispersion as distracting as the con- 
 fusion of Babel.* 
 
 From all this it follows that we have no reason to suppose 
 that the conquerors of England were a people of one name or of 
 one speech, but on the contrary there is every probability that 
 they were, though ethnologically and linguistically nearly or 
 remotely allied, yet practically, and as they viewed themselves, 
 composed of fragments of peoples more or less alien to each 
 other in blood and in tongue. 
 
 They were Christianized not far from the close of the sixth 
 century, and from this epoch all influences tended to amalga- 
 mation and community of speech. We have monuments of the 
 language which date very soon after this period, but, as they 
 are extant only in copies executed in later centuries, we know 
 not their primitive orthography, nor have we any actual know- 
 ledge of the forms or grammatical character of the language 
 earlier than the eighth or ninth century, because we possess no 
 manuscripts of greater antiquity.f 
 
 Whatever, then, may have been the original discrepancies of 
 the speech, they had been, at our earliest acquaintance with it, 
 in some degree at least, harmonised. Still we cannot say that 
 Anglo- Saxon, even at that period, presents the characteristics of 
 a homogeneous, self-developed tongue. Its inflections, as exhi- 
 
 * See Illustration VII. at the end of this lecture. 
 
 t The determination of the age of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts from internal evi- 
 dence is a matter of much difficulty and uncertainty, because there are few such 
 ■vrritings of known date, by which the antiquity of undated copies can be tested. 
 An expression of Alfred, in the preface to his translation of Boethius, would tend 
 to show that Anglo-Saxon was hardly a commonly written language until he made 
 it so; for in the phrase, 'of beo-ledene on Engliso wende,' bee ledene 
 means not so properly Latin, as simply the book-language, the written tongue — a 
 term not likely to be used if Anglo-Saxon books were then common. This con- 
 sideration may be thought to furnish another argument against the authenticity of 
 Asser, who puts a manuscript of Anglo-Saxon poetry with illuminated capitals 
 into Alfred's hands when he could have been but four years old. It would, how- 
 ever, be going quite too far to deny that the Anglo-Saxon had been written at all 
 until BO late a period as the birth of Alfred. 
 
Lkct. IL ANGLO-SAXON MIXED 65 
 
 bited in the works of different writers, and in different manu- 
 scripts of the same writer, vary to an extent that indicates a 
 great diversity of orthography, if not of actual declension and 
 conjugation. Its syntax is irregular and discrepant ; and though 
 both its grammar and its vocabulary connect it most nearly with 
 the Low, or Platt-Deutseh branch of the German, yet it has 
 grammatical forms, as well as verbal combinations and vocables, 
 which indicate now a relationship to High-G-erman, and now to 
 Scandinavian, not to speak of Celtic roots which it may have 
 borrowed from the Britons, or may have received, at an earlier 
 date, from the ancient fountain of Indo-European speech whence 
 the Celtic and Gothic, as well as the Romance and Hellenic, 
 languages of Europe ai-e theoretically considered to have flowed. 
 In short, the Anglo-Saxon was much such a language as it 
 might be supposed would result from a fusion of the Old-Saxon 
 with smaller proportions of High-German, Scandinavian, and 
 even Celtic and Sclavonic elements; and it bears nearly the 
 same relation to those ingredients as modern English bears to 
 its own constituents, though, indeed, no single influence was 
 exerted upon it so disturbing in character as the Norman-French 
 has proved to our present tongue. 
 
 Vre find, then, neither in historical record, nor in the structure 
 of the Anglo-Saxon speech, any sufficient evidence of the con- 
 trolling predominance of any one tribe, or any one now identi- 
 fiable dialect, in the Saxon colonisation of England ; and we 
 may fairly suppose that both are derived, in proportions no 
 longer ascertainable, from all the races and tongues which were 
 found between the Ehine and the Eider, with contributions from 
 the Scandinavian and Sclavonic tribes of the Atlantic and Baltic 
 shores, and from other even more remote sources which have 
 left no traces sufficiently distinct for recognition. 
 
 Although we are unable to say when the revolution took 
 place, or°by precisely what succession of steps the common 
 speech of England advanced from the simple accents of the 
 Saxon poet Cffidmon to the ornate culture of Chaucer, it is not 
 
56 ANGLO-SAXON NOT ENGLISH I.ECT. II, 
 
 the less certain that a change has occiirred, which has separated 
 the dialect that embodies the modern literature of England, from 
 the Anglo-Saxon tongue, by an interval wider than the space 
 which divides the language of modern Tuscany from that of 
 ancient Rome. 
 
 There is little force in the argument, that we ought to call 
 the language of King Alfred English because his contemporaries 
 usually so styled it. That appellation has been irrevocably 
 transferred to the present speech of England, and has become 
 its exclusive right. To designate by one term thiags logically 
 distinct is to purchase simplicity of nomenclature at the expense 
 of precision of thought ; and there is no linguistic test by which 
 the identity of Anglo-Saxon and modern English can be esta- 
 blished. Words, whether spoken or written, whether addressed 
 to the ear or to the eye, are formed and grouped into periods 
 as a means of communication between man and man. When- 
 ever a given set of words and of syntactical forms becomes 
 constant, and is generally accepted by a people or a tribe, the 
 assemblage of them constitutes a language ; but when the voca- 
 bulary and the inflections of a particular speech have been so 
 changed, either by the decay of native and the substitution of 
 foreign roots, or by grammatical corruptions or improvements, 
 that the old and the new dialects would no longer be mutually 
 intelligible, in either their spoken or their written forms, to 
 those trained to use them, it is then an abuse of words to give 
 to them a common appellation. To call by the same name a 
 language like the Anglo-Saxon — whose vocabulary is mainly 
 derived from the single Grothic stock, and whose syntax is regu- 
 lated by inflection — and a language like the English — more 
 than one half of whose words are borrowed from Romance, or 
 other remotely related sources, and whose syntax depends upon 
 auxiliaries, particles, and position — would lead to a mischievous 
 confusion of ideas, and an entire misconception of our true 
 philological position and relations.* 
 
 -* The eminent German scholar Pauli, in his Life of Alfred, p. 128, speaks of 
 
-IkcT. n. LATIN AND ITALIAN 57 
 
 A modern Italian guide, in conducting the traveller over an 
 ancient field of battle, and pointing out the positions of the 
 hostile forces — old Eomans and their Gallic, Epiroti> or Car- 
 thaginian enemies — will speak of the Eomans as i nostrali, our 
 troops; yet no man insists on giving a common name to the 
 Latin and Italian, or Latin and Spanish, or Latin and Portuonese 
 though either of these living languages is much more closely 
 allied to the speech of ancient Eome, than is modern English to 
 Anglo-Saxon. It is true we .can frame sentences, and even write 
 pages upon many topics without employing words of Eomance 
 or other foreign origin ; but none would think it possible to com- 
 pose an epic, a tragedy, a metaphysical or a critical discussion 
 wholly in Anglo-Saxon. On the other hand, entire volumes 
 may be written in either of the three Southern Eomance lan- 
 guages on almost any subject, except modern mechanical and 
 scientific pursuits and achievements, with as close a conformity 
 to the Latin syntax as English construction exhibits to Anglo- 
 Saxon, and at the same time, without employing any but Latin 
 roots, and that in so natural and easy a style that the omission 
 of borrowed words would never be noticed by the reader. 
 
 We do not yet know enough of the nature of language to be 
 able to afiirm that the vocabulary of a given tongue has absolutely 
 no influence upon or connection with its grammatical structure. 
 There are facts which seem to indicate the contrary ; and when 
 we find, in Early English, inflectional and syntactical features 
 foreign to the genius of the Anglo-Saxon, but which had long 
 before existed in the Latin or in its Eomance descendants most 
 favourably situated to exercise upon the speech of England the 
 strongest influence that one language can exert upon another, 
 it seems quite unphilosophical to say that these new character- 
 istics were spontaneously developed, and not borrowed from those 
 
 the Anglo-Saxon 'vehicle of the laws ' aa 'the German language,' which he may 
 certainly do with as great propriety as others call the Anglo-Saxon, English. If 
 the language of Alfred was at once German and English, we must admit that it id 
 not a misnomer to style the dialect of Shakspeare, Platt-Deutsch. 
 
58 ESaLISH AND NOEMAN-FItENCH Lect. IL 
 
 older or more advanced tongues which were then the sole 
 mediums of literary culture for Englishmen. 
 
 The pride of nationality, if it has not prompted the views I 
 am criticising, has at least promoted their acceptance, and they 
 seem to me destitut-e of any more solid foundation. The French- 
 man might, with little less' show of reason, maintain that French is 
 identical with the ancient Grallic, or with Latin, or with Francic, 
 according as he inclines to Celtic, or Eomance, or Gothic par- 
 tialities, and might argue that the present language of France 
 derives its grammatical character wholly from one of them, 
 without having been at all affected by the inflections or the: 
 syntax of the others. The difference in the extent to which the 
 tongues of England and of France have been affected by extra- 
 neous influences is wholly a question of degree, not of kind. 
 French, indeed, in the opinion of some linguists, is more 
 emphatically composite than English.* Still its material is 
 chiefly Latin, though it may be impossible to say how far it is 
 based upon classical Latin, and how far upon one or more of the 
 unwritten popular dialects usually spoken of collectively as the 
 lingua rustica; but there is no reasonable doubt, that both 
 English and French are, and in all ages have been, as suscep- 
 tible of modification by external influences, as the opinions, the 
 characters, the modes of life of those who have spoken them, or 
 as any other manifestation of the intellectual activity of man. 
 
 It is true that the tendencies of all modern languages known 
 in literature are in one and the same direction, namely, to 
 simplification of structure, by rejection of inflections; but this 
 is precisely the tendency that would be impressed upon them by 
 the common causes, which, in modern times, have operated alike, 
 though in different degrees of intensity, upon every people whose 
 history is known to us.f 
 
 * In the number of syntactical irregularities, of conventional phrases, of ano- 
 malous facts wliicli are not so mucli exceptions to particular rules as departures 
 trom all rule, French exceeds every other European language. Does not this fact 
 fiimish some evidence of the very heterogeneous character of the elements wbieh 
 compose the present speech of France ? 
 
 t See First Series, Lecture XVn., p. 367. 
 
I-ECT. H, ANGLO-SAXON LANGUAGE 69 
 
 . I cannot assume my audience to be familiar with the lexical 
 or grammatical peculiarities of the Anglo-Saxon tongue, and 
 therefore, inasmucli as some acquaintance with the vocabulary 
 and the syntactical structure of that language is necessary to the 
 clear understanding of the early history of English, I hope I 
 shall be pardoned for something, both of general discussion and 
 of dry detail on these subjects. 
 
 The inflectional system of languages is in some respects their 
 least important feature, for it is, in the present condition of 
 most tongues known in literature, their most mechanical and 
 least expressive characteristic. We will, therefore, first inquire 
 into what is of greater interest : the nature and extent of the 
 stock of words which compose the raw material of the Anglo- 
 Saxon vocabulary. 
 
 Independ-ently of the evidence afforded by its gramniatical 
 structure, a comparison of its root-forms with those of Continen- 
 tal and Oriental vocabularies shows, that the Anglo-Saxon be- 
 longs to what has been called the Indo-Germanic, but is now 
 more generally styled the Indo-European family, and of which 
 the Sanscrit is regarded as at once the oldest and most perfect 
 type. In its more immediate relations to the modern languages 
 of Western Europe, the Anglo-Saxon, as I have more than once 
 remarked, is classed with the Low-Grerman branch of the Teu- 
 tonic, and has, therefore, a close lexical affinity, not only with 
 the many dialects known by the common appellation of Platt- 
 Deutsch, but also with those grouped under the denomination of 
 Frisic, and with the Netherlandish, or, as it is commonly called, 
 the Dutch or Flemish. 
 
 Its vocabulary contains also a considerable number of words 
 not met with in Continental High or Low German, but which 
 are found in Celtic dialects. The Celtic contribution to the 
 vocabulary, or, at least, that portion of it introduced by actual 
 contact with British Celts after the Conquest, does not appear to 
 have at all modified the syntax or otherwise affected the struc- 
 ture, or, so far as we have reason to believe, the articulation of 
 the language. Hence it must be considered as having never 
 
60 LATIN WOKDS IN ANGLO-SAXOS Lect. II. 
 
 entered into any organic combination with it, or become one of 
 its elementary constituents ; but as having remained a foreign 
 unassimilated accretion. Indeed, there seems to have alwaj'a 
 existed, during the whole historical period, a reciprocal repul- 
 sion between the Ceits and all other European families, and 
 their respective tongues, which have intermixed in a less degree 
 than is usual between contiguovd dialects. This feeling of an- 
 tagonism was particularly strong with the Anglo-Saxons and their 
 immediate descendants, and it finds very frequent expression ia 
 every age of English history.* Upon the whole, though the 
 speech of continental Germany may, in remote ages, have been 
 affected to an unknown extent by now extinct Celtic dialects, 
 there is no reason to believe that the devel-.ipment and history 
 of insular Anglo-Saxon and English have been sensibly modi- 
 fied by any such influences. 
 
 There is a class of words, small indeed, but not unimportant, 
 which are thought to have been introduced into Britain by the 
 ancient Eomans, and to have been retained by the Celtic inhabi- 
 tants — or possibly by some early colonists, of Grothic blood, 
 already established in Britain at the time of the Roman conquest 
 — and which passed into the Anglo-Saxon dialect, if not before 
 the conversion of that people to Christianity, at least very soon 
 after. One of these is cester, or ceaster, now a common 
 ending of the names of English towns, which is the Latin 
 castrum, a fortified camp or garrison; another is the syllable 
 coin, in the name of the town of Lincoln, which is the Latin 
 colonia, colony. Still another, probably, is cese, or cyse, 
 cheese, from the Latin caseus, for we have reason to believe, 
 that in this case both the thing and the name were made known 
 to the Britons by the Eomans.f Street, also, may be the Latin 
 stratum, a paved way, and still more probably may the Saxon 
 munt, a mountain, have been taken from the Latin mons. It 
 
 * See Illustration YIII. at the end of this lecture. 
 
 t See a note on the word cheese in the American edition of Wedgwood's Ety- 
 mological Dictionary. 
 See also Illustration IX. at the end of this lecture. 
 
Lect. II. QEEEK WORDS IN ANGLO-SAXON 61 
 
 would indeed seem that no human speech could be so poor in 
 words descriptive of natural scenery as to need to borrow a name 
 for mountain, but there are no moimtains on or near the conti- 
 nental shores of the German Ocean, and hence the inhabitants 
 of those coasts may bave had no name for them. 
 
 But the great majority of Latin words adopted by the Saxons 
 were, no doubt, derived from Christian missionaries, who at once 
 established the Latin as the oificial language of the Church, and, 
 to some extent, as the medium of general religious, moral, and 
 intellectual instruction. 
 
 The best Anglo-Saxon writers were purists in Style, and re- 
 luctantly admitted Latin words into their vocabulary. Hence 
 the number of such in the AngI >-Saxon Gospels, the works of 
 Alfric and of Alfred, and, indeed, in all the native literature of 
 England, so long as Anglo-Saxon continued to be a written 
 language, is very small.* This fact seems to authorise the infer- 
 ence which other evidence abundantly confirms, that the large 
 introduction of Latin words into every department of the En- 
 glish speech, soon after it became recognisable as a new dialect, 
 was due more to secular Nonnau-French than to Eomish eccle- 
 siastical influence, though the form of the words of Latin ety- 
 mology often leaves it very doubtful from which of the two lan- 
 guages they were immediately borrowed. 
 
 Besides the roots derived from these various sources, there are 
 in Anglo-Saxon a small number of words, such for example as 
 oirc, circe, ciric, eyrie, or cyricea, church, which are sup- 
 posed by some to have been taken directly from the Greek ; and 
 there are also a few which etymologists have referred to Sclavonic 
 roots ; but these, though interesting in ethnological inquiry, are 
 not suflBciently numerous to have perceptibly affected the cha- 
 racter of the speech, and they are, therefore, philologically un- 
 important. 
 
 There occur in Anglo-Saxon writers, as might naturally be 
 expected from the territorial proximity of the Germanic and 
 » See First Series, Lecture X., p. 199. 
 
62 VOCABTJLAIir OF ANGLO-SAXON Lect. II. 
 
 Scandinavian tribes, many words belonging to the Old-Northern 
 tongue*, and a considerable number whose etymology is totally 
 uncertain, but the vocabulary is in very large proportion 
 Grermanic, while its composite character is further shown by 
 the fact that a greater number of Teutonic patois find their 
 analogous, or representatives, in it than in any other one of the 
 cognate dialects. 
 
 Thus much for the proximate sources of Anglo-Saxon, for 
 the immediate genealogy of its vocabulary; but what is the 
 essential character of the words which compose it? The 
 articulation, the mere sound of the words, is a matter of little 
 importance in the view I am now taking of the subject, but 
 were it of greater moment and interest, it would be altogether 
 impracticable to present a satisfactory view of it. We know 
 Anglo-Saxon only as it is written, and no ancient grammarian 
 or lexicographer has recorded for us the figured pronunciation 
 of its vocabulary. That it varied much in different provinces 
 and centuries we may readily believe, and very probably many 
 of the local peculiarities of utterance are faithfully represented 
 in the present provincial patois of different English shires. 
 The Norman influence, however, must have produced a very 
 
 * See First Series, Lecture XXII., p. 471. I attach much importance to the 
 remarkable coincidence between the pronunciation of the languages of the Scan- 
 dinavian countries and of England, as an evidence that the former had upon the 
 latter an influence powerful enough both to introduce into it some new phonological 
 elements, and to preserve others probably once common to all the Gothic tongues, 
 but which have now disappeared from the articulation of the Teutonic dialects. I 
 ascribe the loss of these sounds in those languages in some measure to the iuflu- 
 ence of classical Latin and the Eomance dialects, just as the later suppression of 
 the til in Swedish and its partial disappearance in Danish may be thought more 
 immediately due to the influence of German. The lost sounds in German are 
 wanting in Latin and generally in its modern representatives, and it is a strong 
 proof of the tenacious hold of Anglo-Saxon upon the English organs of speech, 
 that it held fast its \i and <S and hw in spite both of Romish ecclesiastieism and 
 Norman conquest. The Scandinavian clement in English orthoepy may fairly bo 
 appealed to as a confirmation of the statement of the chroniclers that the Jutes par- 
 ticipated largely in the original Gothic immigi'ations ; for even if the Jutes wera 
 Hit of Old-Northern blood, they had, from close proximity to that race, very pro* 
 bably adopted some of its linguistic peculiarities. 
 
Lect. n. PHONOLOaiCAIi INQUIRIES 63 
 
 great deraagement of the native orthoepy, if not a total revolu- 
 tion in it ; and if we can rely on Mulcaster, and Grill, and other 
 English orthoepists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, 
 there have been important changes in the standard pronuncia- 
 tion of English wdthin the last two or three hundred years.* 
 
 Inquiries into ancient modes of articulation are extremely 
 difficult, and doubtful in result, not only from the uncertainty 
 which must always exist, first as to the extent to which any 
 particular system of orthography was regularly phonographic, 
 and secondly, as to the normal force of single letters, the 
 standard sound of which is only traditionally known ; and 
 besides this, we axe embarrassed by the confusion that attends 
 all phonological discussion in consequence of the different 
 appreciation of familiar sounds by different persons who hear 
 and use them. We wrangle about the identity or diversity of 
 vowels, and even of consonantal sounds in our own vernacular, 
 which we have heard and employed every day of our lives ; and 
 pronunciation itself is so fluctuating that we cannot rely upon the 
 traditional articulation, even of those sounds which seem most 
 constant, as sufficient evidence of the ancient utterance of them.f 
 There is something surprising in the boldness with which 
 philologists pronounce on the orthoepy of dialects which have 
 been dead for a thousand years, or which are known to them 
 
 » See First Series, Lecture XXIL 
 
 + See, on the uncertainty of the pronunciation of English in the sixteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries, First Series, Lecture XXIL In that Lecture, p. 484, I 
 treat oe as representing the long or name sound of o, in Churchyard's system. 
 Doubtless it does, but upon farther examination I am not clear wliat Churchyard 
 considered the elementary character of the Towel to be, and I am doubtful whether 
 his long or name sound was like that of our modem o, or like oo in boot. In his 
 letter to Sir "W. Cecil, (Chips concerning Scotland, reprint, 1817, pp. 66—69,) he 
 writes bodd, moest, kocp, koell (whole), bocth, /cnoe {knaw), moer, in all which words 
 we give the rowel the long o sound ; but he spells also tock, whoes, trocth (truth), 
 which we pronounce mth the oo sound, and oen. (one) and bloed, where modern 
 English employs the short u sound. Several of Churchyard's contemporaries 
 write with oo words which we spell and pronounce with long o. And as B. Jonson 
 ascribes the sound of French oa to o in many words where at present short u is 
 heard, it seems almost impossible to determine what the normal articulation of 
 this vowel waa. 
 
■64 ANGLO-SAXON OnTHOGBAPHT Lect, IL 
 
 only by written notation.* It would be very extravagant to 
 say that the most learned phonologist has any means of ascer- 
 taining the true articulation of Anglo-Saxon, or of any form of 
 old German, that, in any considerable degree, approach to Ihe 
 facilities we at present possess of learning any contemporanec us 
 foreign pronunciation, I'Vench for example, by the help of 
 figured spelling. But what approximation could an Englishmwi, 
 who had never heard French spoken, make to the exact utter- 
 ance of the nasals or of the vowel and diphthong u and 'eu, or 
 how near would a Frenchman come to the two sounds of our 
 th, by the study of written treatises alone ? In these cases, 
 indeed, we may very often convey the true pronunciation of a 
 foreign vowel or consonant by comparison with the same, or a 
 very closely analogous, sound in a language already known to 
 the student ; but in our inquiries into extinct phonologies we 
 have no siich guide, and our conclusions, though sometimes 
 made very plausible, are nevertheless extremely uncertain.! 
 
 The orthography of a very large proportion of indigenous 
 English words has undergone successive revolutions, which it is 
 not easy to explain upon any supposition but that of somewhat 
 corresponding changes in articulation ; although it must be 
 admitted that, if we suppose the individual letters to have had, 
 in general, the same force as in our modern system, the Anglo- 
 Saxon spelling of many words more truly represents the pro- 
 nunciation of to-day than our present orthography. 
 
 Take, for example, that peculiar English sound, or rather 
 combination of simple sounds, which we represent by ew, as in 
 
 * Halbertsma speaks positively as to the essential character of Anglo-Saxon Towel 
 Bounds, and yet admits that the very people who used them were so douhtful as 
 to the true articulation, and so rariable in their pronunciation, of them, that they 
 did not know how to express them in alphabetic characters. ' Unable to satisfy 
 himself, he [the writer] often interchanged kindred rowels in the same words, at 
 one time putting a or eo, and afterwards oe and y.' And in the next paragraph he 
 adds : ' While the writer is groping about him for proper letters, we guess the 
 Bound he wished to express by assuming some middle sound between the letters he 
 employs.' — Halborfsma in Bosmorth, Ger. ^'- Scand. Lang, p. 37. 
 t See Illustration X. at the end of this lecture. 
 
LecT. IL ANGLO-SAXON OETHOGEAPHT G5 
 
 «eit', and, in other cases, by the vowel u, as in hibe. Now an 
 attentive analysis of this sound will show that, without regard 
 to the semi-consonantal y, which is introduced immediately after 
 the consonant preceding the u, it is composed of two articula- 
 tions so rapidly pronounced as almost to coalesce into one. So 
 near as this coalescence of sounds is capable of resolution, the 
 first is the short sound of i in pin, the second is the semi- 
 consonantal tv. This class of syllables the Anglo-Saxon, and 
 to some extent early English writers, spelt with iw instead of 
 ew or tt. Thus hue, complexion, clew or clue, new, h-eiv, in 
 Anglo-Saxon are spelt respectively, hiw, cliwe, niwe, briw. 
 So the word T^le — which it is doubtful whether we are to 
 consider of native or foreign extraction — in the Ancren Kiwle, 
 a code of early English monastic precepts, is written riivle* In 
 these cases the Anglo-Saxon and Old English spelling appears 
 to be more truly phonographic than the modern. 
 
 If we assume that there is a general resemblance between 
 the Anglo-Saxon and the modern English pronunciation of the 
 words which are spelt substantially alike in both, we are driven 
 to the conclusion that the former must have differed very re- 
 markably in articulation from the contemporaneous Germanic 
 dialects ; and this would be a strong argument in favour of the 
 position that it was widely distinct from any of them. If, on 
 the contrary, we suppose that Anglo-Saxon resembled any 
 Continental language of its own era in sound, we must conclude 
 that our English pronunciation of Saxon words has been changed 
 to a degree very difficult to account for.t It has been suggested 
 that many important points of difference between Anglo-Saxon 
 and English pronunciation on the one hand, and German and 
 
 * At present, u preceded ty r, j, or I, in the same syllable is, according to most 
 orthoepists, pronounced oo, so that rule rhymes with ponl. This pronunciation has 
 arisen from the difficulty of articulating the semi-consonantal y between the r, j, 
 or I and the u; but the orthography riwU, and other like evidence, show that this 
 was not the ancient orthoepy, nor is it now by any means uniyeraal among good 
 speakers. 
 
 t See I'irst Series, Lecture XXII., p. 471. 
 
66 PRONUNCIATION OF ENSLISH LscT, 11. 
 
 Scandinavian on the other, are due to the Celtic element in ths 
 former; but it is incredible that a language, which has added 
 little to the vocabulary, and in no appreciable degree modified 
 the syntax of either, should have produced any sensible effect 
 upon the pronunciation ; and besides, it does not appear that 
 there is any such resemblance between the articulation of 
 the Celtic and the neighbouring Saxon and English dialects, 
 that one can be reasonably supposed to have influenced the 
 other. 
 
 There is, indeed, one way in which English, though hardly 
 Saxon, orthoepy has probably been modified by comparatively 
 modern Celtic influences. French philologists maintain that 
 the pronunciation of the Latin, in becoming the speech of the 
 French people, must have accommodated itself to the organs 
 and habitual utterance of a nation which if not strictly Celtic, 
 had certainly a large infusion of Celtic blood. The modifica- 
 tions thus introduced constituted a permanent and normal part of 
 old French articulation, and have consequently, so far as French 
 influence is perceptible at all in English pronunciation, given a 
 special character to that influence. 
 
 There are several points in which national pronunciation may 
 be affected by foreign influence. The essential character of 
 vowels or consonants may be changed, or the temporal quantity 
 of the former lengthened or shortened ; sounds long established 
 may be dropped altogether, or new ones introduced ; the accen- 
 tuation of words or classes of words may be deranged, or finally 
 the predominant periodic accent or emphasis may be shifted. 
 
 This last revolution is usually connected with a change of 
 syntactical arrangement, and a familiar illustration will show 
 how the Anglo-Saxon periodic accent may have taken, and in 
 many cases doubtless did take, a new position in passing into 
 English. In short, direct propositions, if there be no motive 
 for making another word specially prominent, the verb in most 
 languages usually takes- the emphasis : Thus, English, I saw 
 him; Danish, jeg saae ham; but French, je le vis; Italiaa 
 
Lkct. II. CHANGES IN EMPHASIS 67 
 
 io lo vidi, the periodic accent, in each case, resting on the 
 verb, in whatever part of the phrase it is placed. As a result 
 of this and other analogous rules, every language has its 
 peculiar modulation, depending much upon its syntax, and a 
 change of verbal arrangement involves a change in that modu- 
 lation. We see the effects of the habit of emphasizing the 
 period at a particular point, in the pronunciation of persons 
 who are learning foreign languages. A Frenchman just begin- 
 ning to speak English will be sure to say, I saw him, instead of 
 I satu him, because, the verb coming last in French, he has 
 been accustomed to say, je le vis. If we could suppose that 
 by means of a greater influx of French syntactical forms, the 
 places of the verb and the object should be reversed in the Eng- 
 lish period, so that in the phrase I have cited, him should pre- 
 cede saiv, we should learn to say, I him saw, not I him saw, and 
 thus the periodic accent or emphasis would be transferred from 
 the last but one to the last word in the phrase. 
 
 Now, something like the converse of this change actually did 
 take place in the transition of Anglo-Saxon into English ; for, 
 though the position of both the nominative and of the oblique 
 cases in the Anglo-Saxon period was variable, yet the latter, es- 
 pecially at the end of a period or member of a period, more 
 frequently preceded than followed the verb, and therefore ' I 
 him saif,' would oftener be heard than ' I saiw him.' * 
 
 * As the ease, not only of the pronoun, which iu English remains throughout 
 declinable, but of the noun, •which in English has no objective or accusative form, 
 was indicated by the ending in Anglo-Saxon, it was grammatically indifferent 
 whether either the nominative or the oblique case preceded or followed the verb. 
 But when, by the loss of the inflection of the noun, the syntax became positional, 
 the prepositive place was assigned to the nominative, the postpositive to the 
 objective. By this arrangement we have lost an elocutional advantage which the 
 Auglo-Saxon possessed. In reading or speaking, the voice is sustained until the 
 emphatic word of the proposition, or member, is pronounced, after which it sinks 
 and becomos comparatively inaudible. The verb is generally an emphatic, if not 
 the most emphatic word in the sentence; and hence if it be reserved to end the 
 period, the whole proposition will be more intelligibly pronounced, and therefore 
 strike the listener more forcibly, than if the verb occur at an earlier point. The 
 test Anglo-Saxon writers show much dexterity in avaUing themselves of tha 
 liberty of arrangement which the structure of their language allowed. 
 
 W 2 
 
68 I)IFrEE33NCES IN PKOHUNCIATION Leot. IL 
 
 ' In fact, the whole subject of the difference in the articulation 
 of cognate dialects spoken by nations exposed to similar, if not 
 identical influences, has been hitherto not sufficiently investi- 
 gated ; and the principles of phonology, the radical analysis of 
 articulate sounds, must be better understood than they now are 
 before any very satisfactory explanations of the causes, or even 
 any very accurate statement of the facts, can be arrived at. 
 
 We jSnd between the Swedish and Danish, for example, closely 
 allied as they are in vocabulary and structure, not merely dis- 
 crepancies in the pronunciation of particular words, for which 
 an explanation might sometimes be suggested, but radical and 
 wide-reaching differences of articulation, which no known facts 
 connected with the history of either throw much light upon, 
 unless we adopt the theory of a greater ancient diversity between 
 those dialects than exists in their present condition. Thus the 
 Swedes pronounce the consonants in general, as well as the 
 vowels, with a distinctness of resonance which justifies the boast 
 of Tegner, that the ring of Swedish is as clear as that of metal* ; 
 while the Danes confound and half suppress the consonants, and 
 split up the well-discriminated vowels of the Old-Northern into 
 a multitude of almost imperceptible shades of less energetic and 
 expressive breathings. 
 
 In like manner, the Portuguese and Castilian, which have 
 grown up under not widely dissimilar circumstances, are cha- 
 racterised, the former by an abundance of nasals, and by the sk 
 and zh (ch and j), which the Spanish wants altogether, — the 
 latter by gutturals and lisping sounds, which are unknown to 
 the Portuguese. 
 
 The recovery of the true pronunciation of Anglo-Saxon would 
 be important, because it would facilitate etymological research 
 by the comparison of its radicals with those of languages em- 
 ploying other orthographical systems; and it would be conve- 
 nient for the purposes of academical instruction and oral quota- 
 tion: but the present state of phonology, which, like other 
 
 * Ben, Gom malmeus, din kla&g. 
 
Lect. II. PKONUNCIATION OF AKSLO-SAXON 69 
 
 branches of linguistic knowledge, is hurrying to conclusions 
 before the necessary facts are accumulated, does not authorise 
 us to expect that we shall soon attain to a very precise know- 
 ledge of its articulation, or be able to trace the steps by which 
 its accents have been changed iuto those of modern English. 
 
 Inasmuch as the Anglo-Saxons learned the art of writing from 
 Eoman missionaries, the presumption is strong that their alpha- 
 betic notation corresponded nearly with the contemporaneous 
 orthography of Eome, and hence that the departures of English 
 pronunciation from the sounds indicated by the Latin vowels 
 and consonants in Continental usage are comparatively recent 
 innovations in the orthoepy of the Anglican tongue,* 
 
 * Although the runic characters were employed by some of the Germanic as 
 well as SeandinaTian tribes before their conrersion to Christianity, there is no 
 evidence that they were tnown to the Anglo-Saxons until a much later period. 
 The only Anglo-Saxon character which resembles the corresponding runic letter is 
 Jj, and we know not when either this character or the S were introduced into that 
 alphabet. It has been said that the Scandinarians borrowed the S from the 
 Anglo-Saxons. The earlier Christianisatiou of this latter people, and their known 
 missionary efforts, render this probable enough ; but the Old-Northern races dis- 
 tinguished these two letters much more accurately than their insular neighbours, 
 while the Anglo-Saxons employed them with a confusion, which seems to indi- 
 cate more indistinct notions of their value than we should expect if either of 
 them was of their own invention. Old-Northern literature shows no trace of 
 Anglo-Saxon influence, and the instances of the use of grammatical forms resem- 
 bling the Anglo-Saxon in early SeandinaTian writings, or rather inscriptions, are 
 too few and too uncertain to authorise the inference that they were the fruits of 
 BUch influence. 
 
 There is little reason to believe that the Scandinavians themselves ever employed 
 the runes for what can properly be called literary purposes. They wrote incanta- 
 tions, carved calendars and brief inscriptions, in these letters, but it remains to be 
 proved that either the mystic lays or the prose sagas of that people were ever 
 written down at all before Christian missionaries introduced into Scandinavia a 
 new religion and a new alphabet. 
 
 The fact that the Old-Northern bards were well understood at the courts of 
 the Anglo-Saxon kings, and other similar evidence, tend to show that, though 
 the Old-Northern and Saxon were not regarded as the same speech, yet they must 
 have much resembled each other in articulation. The Icelandic vowel-sounds, for 
 the most part, coincide with the Latin — though the accented vowels of the Old- 
 Northern appear to have had a diphthongal pronunciation unknown to any of the 
 alphabets of Southern Europe — and here we have a further argument in support 
 of the general resemblance between the Anglo-Saxon and the Continental vowels. 
 
 Eask supposes the orthographic accents to have lengthened the vowel in Anglo- 
 
70 PEONDNCIATION OF ANGLO-SAXON Lect. 11. 
 
 Saxon, and, in some cases, to have changed its quality, hut not to have made it 
 diphthongal ; and I believe it is generally considered simply as a sign of prosodical 
 length, not of stress of voice. But Craik — whose History of English Literature 
 and of the Enghsh Language did not become known to me until after the text of 
 this volume was prepared for the press — argues in a note on p. 297, vol. i. of that 
 work, that, in some cases at least, the unaccented vowel had the name or long 
 sound, while the accented vowel was pronounced short. Bosworth, Origin of Ger. 
 and Seand. Lang., p. 37, speaks of 'the diphthongal nature of the whole system of 
 Anglo-Saxon vowels.' Indeed, there are very fair arguments to prove that the 
 Anglo-Saxon accents indicated prosodical length and that they did not, that the 
 vowels were diphthongal and that they were not ; and we may as well confess 
 what we cannot conceal, namely, that we know next to nothing at all on the 
 subject. 
 
 There are many cases where the diphthongal character of an English vowel is 
 the result of a coalescence between two vowels which, in Anglo-Saxon and early 
 English, belonged to different syllables. In the word own, the w stands for the 
 Anglo-Saxon j, which in modern English is xisually represented by, and pro- 
 nounced as, either y or g, though in other cases it has been succeeded by w, or by 
 ffh, with its strange variety of articulation. The w, then, is not an element in the 
 diphthongal sound of the o, in this particular word, and o has precisely the same 
 sound in very many syllables where it is not followed by w or by a vowel. The 
 Anglo-Saxon word for own, adj., was a en, sometimes spelled a; an, which was n 
 dissyllable. In the Ormulum it is spelled a ihenn, in old English awen, awun, owen, 
 owun, and was, as prosody proves, pronounced in two syllables. The latter forma 
 very easily pass into own, or on, with the diphthongal o, and the origin of the 
 diphthongal sound in very many English' long vowels may be traced to a similar 
 crasis. 
 
 I may here observe, what should have been stated before, that, in printing Anglo- 
 Saxon, I omit the accents, because they are wanting in very many of the best 
 MSS. and printed editions, because the uncertainty of their value would only 
 embarrass readers whom I suppose not to be masters of the language, and be- 
 cause I should, by employing them, increase the chances of errors of the press in 
 printing a volume the proofs of which I shall not have an opportunity to 
 correct. 
 
NOTES Amy ILLTJSTEATIOSrS. 
 
 I. (p. 43.) 
 
 OATHS OF LOUIS OF GERirA^"T, AND OF CEETAIX FRENCH LORDS SUB« 
 JECTS OF CHARLES THE BOLD, SWORN AT STRASBURG, A.D. 842. 
 
 The text of these oaths, as given by different authoritiea, varies considerably. 
 I print from Bm^y, Grammaire de la Langue d'O'il, 1853, vol. 1 p. 19. 
 
 A. 
 
 OATH OF LOUIS OF GERMANY. 
 
 Pro Deo amur et pro christian poblo et nostro commuii salvament, 
 d'ist di in avant, in quant Deus pavir et podir me dunat, .si salvarai eo 
 cist meon fradre Karlo et in ajudha et in cadmia cosa, si cum cm per 
 dreit son fradra salvar dift, iu o quid il mi altresi fazet, et ab Ludlier 
 nul plaid nunquam prindrai, qui, meon vol, cist meon fradre Karle in 
 damno sit. 
 
 B. 
 
 OATH OF THE FRENCH LORDS. 
 
 Si Lodliuwig3 sagrament, que son fradre Karlo jurat, conservat, et 
 Karlus meos sendra de suo part non lo stanit, si io returnar non Tint 
 pois, ne io ne neuls, cui eo returnar int pois, in nulla ajudha contra 
 liodhuwg nun li iuer. 
 
 Perhaps the most important point to be noticed in these monuments 
 is the use of the futures salvarai and prindrai in the oath of Louis. 
 There is much evidence to prove that the modern Komance future is a 
 coalescent formation (see First Series, Lecture XV., p. 336) ; but we 
 have here veiy nearly the present French futui-e in this oldest specimen 
 of the language. It is, however, certainly a new inflection, whatever 
 may be its origin; for the Latin salvabo could never have become 
 salvarai. The orthographical combination dh in ajudha in both 
 oaths is remarkable, as probably indicating that the d was aspirated or 
 propi^nnced S, in that word and in other similar combinatii 
 
72 NOTES AND ILLUSTEATI0N3 LeCT. IL 
 
 II. (p. 47) 
 
 USE OF PARTICIPLES IN GOTHIC LANGUAGES. 
 
 The pai'ticiple absolute often occurs in the Anglo-Saxon gospels. 
 Thus, in Matthew i. 20 : Him fa soSlice fas fing fencendum, 
 Vulgate, Has c autem eo cogitante. In the Lindiafarne gospels we 
 have the double foim, Sas soSlice Se he Sencende + Sohte, 
 •which shows that the translator hesitated between the Latin construc- 
 tion, Sas so81ice he Sencende, and the more idiomatic Sas soSlice 
 8e he Sohte. The Eushworth text gives, Sendi he fa f fohte, 
 and, fis sodlice he fohte, not venturing iipon the participial con- 
 struction at all. The older Wycliffite text has : Sothely hym thenkynge 
 these thingus ; the later. But while he thougte thes thingis. In this 
 particular case, the more modem translations all employ the verb ; but, 
 nevertheless, the absolute participial construction has become established 
 in English syntax ; and nobody scruples to write : The weather becoming 
 fine, we started on our journey ; The season proving severe, and the 
 roads being impracticable, the troops went into winter-quarters ; though 
 it must be admitted that this form is less freely used in the colloquial 
 dialect. 
 
 The present or active participle in older Anglo-Saxon is very gener- 
 ally, and, so far as I have observed, unifonnly, used either with an 
 auxiliary verb in such constructions as was pursuing, or as an adjective 
 or descriptive epithet, or as a noun. In this latter case, it is often a 
 compound of a noun, and a participle which originally may have 
 governed the noun ; and its employment as a technical participle in a 
 dependent or an independent phrase (which is so very common in Latin 
 and Greek), is at least exceedingly rare, if, indeed, it occurs at all, in 
 Beowulf or in Caedmon. In the Anglo-Saxon gospels, and in later 
 writers, this construction is very frequent, and we in English still say : 
 Seeing my way clear, I went on with my project; Having large means 
 at his disposal, he gave liberally. 
 
 I see no reasonable ground for doubting that these constructions 
 were borrowed from the Latin and incorporated into the Anglo-Saxon 
 as a new syntactical element ; and if so, they are cases of a mixtm-e of 
 grammars. 
 
 I am aware that the active participle is employed by Ulfilas in ac- 
 cordance with the Latin and Greek usage, and that it is often found in 
 interlinear, word-for-word, Anglo-Saxon translations from the Latin. 
 But the very closenKS with which the translation of Ulfilas corre- 
 eponda to the grammatical construction of his original is a suspicious 
 
LeCT. IL KOTES and ILLrSTEATIONS 73 
 
 circiimstanre ; and -wli.atever changes the translator or his copyists may 
 have made in tlie original arrangement of the words, I think no person, 
 ■who has practised the art of translation enough to be a competent judge 
 on the subject, can doubt that Ulfilas rendered the Greek, first, word by 
 word, and not sentence by sentence. These participial constructions 
 ai-e so adverse to the general syntax of all the Gothic tongues, and they 
 Eo completely failed to secure adoption in those which had created a 
 literature before translations of the Scriptures were attempted in them, 
 that I think we are justified in believing that, in the employment of 
 these constructions, Ulfilas was following the idiom of the Greek, and 
 not of his own language. . 
 
 I admit that the Anglo-Saxon compound participial nouns, in which 
 the noun-element may have been originally an accusative governed by 
 the participle, give some countenance to the supposition that, in an 
 earlier stage of the language, the active participle was used as a techni- 
 cal verbal Jbrm ; but tliat construction had certainly become nearly, if 
 not altogether, obsolete before the translation of the gospels, if indeed 
 it ever existed. These compounds are as easily explicable upon the 
 theory that the participial element was used as a noun, as upon that of 
 their having a regimen ; and I think that this is their true etymological- 
 history. I am too well aware of the difliculty of proving a negative to 
 affirm that no case of true participial construction exists in pi-imitive 
 Anglo-Saxon, but I knov/ of none where the active participle is not 
 used as a noun, as an adjective, or as a descriptive adverb. This last 
 employment of this part of speech occurs in older, and sometimes in 
 modem Danish; as, ban kom ridendes, he came riding/^; him 
 kommer kjorendes, slie comes driving///. In German, curiously 
 enough, the passive participle is employed in such cases; as er kam 
 geritten, sie kommt gefahren. It is true that, in the admirable 
 Danish Bible of 1550, as well as in Christian Pedersen's earlier New 
 Testament, the active participle used as an adjective (and it is not em- 
 ployed otherwise than adjectively or adverbially), has the same ending; 
 but at present, when a descriptive, it ends in e, and the genitival s is 
 added only in adverbial constmctions. 
 
 The opinion of even J. Grimm respecting the Frisic language, and 
 the facts on which those opinions are founded, may be cited in proof of 
 the possibility of linguistic amalgamation. That gi-eat grammarian 
 observes, Gesch. der D. S., 680 (472): 'Die friesische sprache halt 
 eine mitte zwischen angelsiichsischer und altnordischer,' and p. 668 
 (464) : ' In denkniiilern aus der iuhd. mid mnl. zeit erscheiut sie noch 
 init formen, die sich den altsiichtiischen und althochdeutschen an die 
 
74 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS Lect. IK 
 
 Beite stellen ; die abgesohiedenheit des volks hat, beinahe wie auf Island, 
 den alten spraclistand gehegt, und man ist zu dem schlusz bereclitigt, 
 dasz von dem mittelalter riickwarts bis zum beginn des neunten jh., 
 wo im lateinischen volltsrecht einzelne friesische worter begegnen, und 
 von da bis zur zeit der Kbmer, in der friesischen spiaclie verlialtnis- 
 maszig weniger veranderungen eingetreten sein werden, als in jeder 
 andern deutschen. auch in den jetzigen friesischen dialecten dauert noch 
 viel alterthiiraliches, wiewol auf den westfriesischen die niederlandische, 
 auf den ostfriesischen die nieder-und hochdeutsche, anf den nordfiie- 
 f ischen die niederdeutsche und danische sprache starken einflusz geilbt 
 haben.' Now this influence of the neighbom-ing languages on the 
 Frisic is not confined to the vocabulary, but extends to grammatical 
 forms and constructions, and, beginning on either the Netherlandish, the 
 Low-German, or the High-German frontier of the Frisians, you may 
 pass, sometimes by almost imperceptible gradations, but, in the case of 
 districts separated by physical barriers, often by more abrupt transitions, 
 from any of the first-mentioned languages to a Frisian dialect containing 
 ' viel alterthiimliches,' and thence, by a like succession of steps, through 
 the Germanised Danish of southern Jutland, to the less mixed Scandi- 
 navian of the Baltic islands. 
 
 III. (p. 47.) 
 
 FOREIGN CONSTRUCTIONS IN ENGLISH. 
 
 Some of these borrowed forms in English have been supposed to be 
 of Scandinavian rather than of Norman- French extraction. I think 
 it more probable that they are derived from the latter source, because 
 they did not make their appearance in England until after the Noniian 
 Conquest. So far as the general question of the possibility of mixed 
 grammar is concerned, it is of little consequence whether we ascribe 
 them to Scandinavian or to Romance influence, so long as the fiict that 
 they are foreign constructions is admitted. 
 
 In Icelandic, and in Swedish and Danish, the comparative of adjec- 
 tives may, imder certain circumstances, be formed by the equivalent of 
 more, but the superlative is always an inflection, and not, as in the 
 Eomance languages, formed by the comparative adverb with the 
 article. 
 
 The Icelandic did not express the possessive or genitive relation by 
 a preposition. The Old-Northern af always took the dative, and is 
 translated in Latin by ab, de, or ex. The modern Scandinavian 
 
J^CT. IL NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 75 
 
 dialects use, in many cases, a preposition as the sign of tlie possessive 
 or genitive, and tliey present some curious coincidences with English 
 in the use of the particle. Neither the Danish nor the English employs 
 the preposition af, of, as a sign of tliu genitive, with all nouns indis- 
 criminately. In English, we may say : 'a man of intelligence, of 
 learning, of capacity,' but not, ' a field of fertility.' In the latter case 
 we can use the particle only with the adjective, as : ' a field of great 
 fertility.' So, asMolbech observes, in Danish, 'enMandafOpdra- 
 gelse, af Laerdom, af Dygtighed,' not, 'en Ager af Frugt- 
 barhed,' though we may say : ' en Ager af stor Frugtbarhed.' 
 In both languages, where the jjreposition is used directly with the 
 noun, a moderate degree of the quality ascribed is very ofi;en expressed, 
 and hence we may suppose that an adjective of limitation is understood. 
 
 The Old-Northern, as well as its modern representatives, use a 
 particle before the infinitive much as in English, and sometimes two, 
 til at with an infinitive being found in Icelandic, as well as til at and 
 for at in Danish. This corresponds with the vulgar English /or to, 
 a,R,for to go. It is said that the infinitive with set occurs in the Nor- 
 thumbrian gospels and rituals. I am not disposed to dispute the fact, 
 though I have not been able to find an example of this construction in 
 the printed texts. But however this may be, this form is not the 
 origin of the English infinitive with to, which can cleaily be traced back 
 to the Anglo-Saxon gerundial. It should be noticed that to wyrce, 
 which occurs in the Cambridge edition of the Lindisfarne text of St. 
 Matthew xii. 2, as an alternative for to doanne, is probably either a 
 misprint, or an eiTor of the scribe, for to wyrcenne, arising fi-om the 
 fact that the next word is insunnadagum (printed in one), the first 
 syllable of which, in, so closely resembles ne in manuscript as to have 
 led to the omission of the latter by the copyist. 
 
 It is a not improbable suggestion, that some of the Romance con- 
 structions, to which I have referred the corresponding English 
 forms, are themselves of Gothic origin, for all Europe was exposed to 
 Gothic influences at the period of the formation of the Eomance 
 languages. 
 
76 NOTES AND ULTJSTEATIONS Lect. H. 
 
 rV. (p. 52) and illustration V. (p. 80.) 
 COMPARISON OF OLD GERMAN DIALECTS. 
 
 -tB^E LOKD's PKATEE IN DIFFEKENT aERMANIC DIALECT8. 
 
 1. 
 LOW GERMAN. 
 
 A. 
 
 Mceso-Gothio of IFlfilaa. Fourth Century. From Stamm'e edition, 1858, p. C. 
 
 Atta unsar, fu in himinam, veihnai namo fein. Qimai fiudinassus 
 feins. Vair])ai vilja feins, sve in Hmina jah ana airfai. Hlaif nnsarana 
 fana sinteinan gif uns himma daga. Jah aflet uns, l^atei skulans 
 sijaima, svasve jah veis afletam faim skulam unsaraim. Jah ni 
 briggais uns in frastubnjai, ak lausei uns af Jianima ubilin ; unte peina 
 ist f iudangardi jah mahts jah vulfus in aivins. Amen. 
 
 Old-Saxon of the Heliand. Kinth century. AUiterative and rhythmical para- 
 phrase. From Schmeller's text, 1830, p. 48. 
 
 Fadar if ufa- firiho barno. the if an them hohon' 
 
 himilarikea. Geuuihid fi thin namo* 
 
 uuordo gehuuilico. cuma thin craftag riki. 
 
 Uuerda thin uuilleo" obar theia uuerold. 
 
 al fo fama an erdo. fo thar uppa ift" an them hohon* 
 
 himilrikea. Gef uf dago gehuuiliket rad' 
 
 drohtin the godo. thina helaga helpa. 
 
 Endi alat uf hebenes uuard- managoro menscnldio. 
 
 al fo uue odrum mannum doan. Ne lat ul farledeaa* 
 
 letha uuihti. So ford an iro uuilleon* 
 
 So uni uuirdige find. Ac help uf unidax allnn* 
 
 nbilon dadiun. 
 
 C. 
 
 Anglo-Saxon alliterative and rhythmical paraphrase. Grein's Text, ii 285, 
 Age of MS. not stated. 
 
 [Halig] fiider, Tpu ]>e on heofonum eardast 
 
 geve[orSad] vuldres dredmS 1 S^ finum veorcum h^gad 
 
 noma nitSSa beamum ! f u eart nergend vera. 
 
tBCT. n. HOTES AND ILLUSTEATIOHS 77 
 
 Cyme f {n rice vtde and |)in raidfast villa 
 
 firsered under i-odores hrofe, eac pon on rfimre foldan 1 
 
 Syle us to diige domfastne bted, 
 
 hiaf flseme, helpend vera, 
 
 f one singalan, soSfast meotod ! 
 
 Ne tet usic costunga cnyssan to svide, 
 
 ac f u us freidom gief, folca valdend, 
 
 from yfla gehvam a to vidan feore ! 
 
 D. 
 
 Anglo-Saxon from tlie New Testament, Matthew vi. 9 — IS. Text of tli« 
 University Edition, Cambridge, 1858. Age of MS. not stated. 
 
 Faeder ure f u fe eart on heofenum, Si pin nama gehalgod . To-becume 
 j)in rice . GewurSe J>in willa on -eorSan, swa swa on heofenum . Urne 
 gedseghwamlican hlaf syle us to dseg . And forgyf us ure gyltas swa 
 swa we forgyfaS lirum gyltendum. And ne gelsed fu us on costnimge, 
 ac alys us of yfele : SoSlice. 
 
 E. 
 
 Platt-Deutsch or Sassesch. Sixteenth century, from Bugenhageu's version of 
 Luther's High-German translation, text of 1541. Magdeburg, 1545. 
 
 Vnse Vader in dem Hemmel. Dyn Name werde gehilliget. Dyu 
 Kike kame. Dyn Wille geschee, vp Erden alse im Hemmel. Vnse 
 dachlike Brod giff vns hiiden. Vnd vorgiff vns vnse Schulde, alse 
 vy vnsen Schiildeners vorgeuen. Vnd vbre vns nicht in Vorsokinge, 
 sunder vorlose vns van dem ouel , wente dyne ys dat Eyke , vn de 
 Krafft , vfi de Herlicheit in Ewicheit , Amen. 
 
 2. 
 
 HIGH GERMAN. 
 
 A. 
 
 From Otfrid's Krist Ninth century. Ehymed paraphrase. Graff's Text, 1831, 
 p. 163. 
 
 Fater unfer giiato . bift driihtin thu gimiiato . 
 in himilon io liolier . uuih i\ namo thiner . 
 Biqueme uns thinaj richi . thaz hoha himilrichi . 
 
 tliaiu uuir zua io gingen . ioh ^mmizigen thingen . 
 Si uuillo thin hiar nidare . fof er'ift ufan himile . 
 
 in &du hilf uns hiare . fo thu engilon duift nu thdre . 
 
78 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS liBOT. IL 
 
 Thia dagalicliun ziihti . gib hiutu uns mit ginuhti . 
 
 ioh folion ouh theift mera . thiiies felbes lera . 
 Sculd bilaz uns Allen . fo uuir ouh duan uuoUen . 
 
 fiinta thia uuir th^nken . ioh ^mmizigen uuirken . 
 Ni firlAze unfih thin uuara . in thes uuidaniuerten fara. 
 
 thaz uuir ni miffigangen . thar ana ni gifallen . 
 Lofi unfih 10 thanana . thaz uuir fin thine thegana. 
 
 B. 
 
 Luther's translation, from Stier and Thiele, 1854, after the edition of 1544, 
 p. 21. 
 
 Unser Vater in dem Himmel, dein Name werde geheiliget, dein 
 Eeich komrae, dein Wille geschehe auf Erden wie im Himmel, unser 
 taglich Brot gib uns heute, uiid vergtb uns misere Schulden wie wir 
 unsern Schuldigern vergeben und fuhre uns nicht in Versuchung, 
 soudern eribse uns von dem Uebel : denn dein ist das Eeich und die 
 Kraft und die Herrlichkeit, in Ewigkeit, Amen ! 
 
 I here insert several Semi-Saxon and old English versions of the 
 Lord's Prayer, not for their bearing on the question of the divergence 
 of dialects, but because it is convenient to have all the translations of 
 the Paternoster together, for the purpose of tracing the changes ia 
 
 English. 
 
 Prom a MS. of the early part of the thirteenth century. Beliq\iiae An- 
 tiquae, I. 235. 
 
 Fader ure Satt art in hevene blisse, 
 
 8in hege name itt wurSe bliscedd, 
 
 Cumen itt mote tSi kingdom, 
 
 din hali wil it be al don, 
 
 In hevene and in etSe aU so, 
 
 So itt sail ben ful wel ic tro ; 
 
 Gif us alle one Sis dai 
 
 Ure bred of iche dai 
 
 And forgive us ure sinne 
 
 Als we don ure wiSerwinnes ; 
 
 Leet us noct in fondinge falle, 
 
 Ooc fro ivel Su sild us alle. Amen. 
 
 From a MS. of the thirteenth century, Reliquiae Antiquje, i. 282. 
 Fader oure pat art in heve, i-halgeed bee fi nome, i-cume J>i 
 kinereiche, y-worthe fi wylle also is in hevene so be on erthe, o»iro 
 
Lect. ii. notes and illtjstrations 79 
 
 ich-dayes-bred gif us to-day, & forgif us our gultes, also we forgifet 
 oiu-e gultare, & ne led ows nowth into fondingge, auth ales ows of 
 Larnie. So be hit. 
 
 From a M& of the thirteenth century, EeliqtuK Antiquae, L 67. 
 Ure fader in lievene riche, 
 J)i name be haliid ever i-liche, 
 fu bringe \is to ])i michil blisce, 
 J»i wille to wirche fu us wisse, 
 Als hit is in hevene i do 
 Ever in eorpe ben it al so, 
 fat holi bred jiat lestej) ay 
 pu send hit ous |)is ilke day, 
 Forgive ous alle fat we havif don, 
 Als we forgivet uch ofir man, 
 Ne lete us falle in no fondinge, 
 Ak scilde us fro f e foule f inge. 
 
 Tzom ■Wydiffe's New Testament Oxford, 1850. Matthew vi. 9—13. 
 
 Oure fadir that art in heuenes, halwid be thi name ; thi kyngdom 
 cumme to ; be thi wille don as in heuen and in erthe ; jif to vs this 
 day ouer breed oure other substaunce ; and forjeue to vs oure dettis 
 as we forjeue to oure dettours ; and leede vs nat in to temptacioun, 
 but delyuere vs fro yuel. Amen. 
 
 From Purvey's recension, same edition. 
 
 Oure fadir that art in heuenes, halewid be thi name ; thi kingdoom 
 come to ; be thi wille don in erthe as in heuene ; jyue to vs this dai 
 oure breed ouer othir substaunce ; and forjyue to vs oure dettis as we 
 forjyuen to oure dettouris; and lede vs not in to temptacioun, but 
 delyuere vs fro yuel. Amen. 
 
 From Tyndale's Testament 1528. Keprint Boston, 1837. 
 
 O oiire lather which art in heven, halowed be thy name. Let thy 
 kingdom come. Thy wyll be fulfilled, as well in erth, as hitys in heven. 
 Gove vs this daye our dayly breade. And forgeve vs oure treaspases 
 euen as we forgeve them which treaspas vs. Leede vs not into tempta- 
 tion, but delyvre vs from yvell. Amen. 
 
 In comparing the versions of the Heliand and of Otfrid with each 
 other and with the other specimens, allowance must be made for 
 
80 NOTES AND ILLU3TIIAT10NS Lect. 11. 
 
 variations due to their poetical forms, for the paraphrastical character 
 of both, and perhaps for difFerences of orthographical sj'stem ; but 
 after all deductions, there still remain parallel words and forms enough 
 to serve as a reasonably satisfactory test of the logical and grammatical 
 resemblance and diversities between the Low-German dialect of the 
 former and the High-German of the latter, as also between the poetical 
 Old-Saxon of the Pleliand, the Anglo-Saxon of the text from Grein, 
 and the prose of the Anglo-Saxon Testament. 
 
 Between the Platt-Deutsch or modern Saxon of Bngenhagen and the 
 High-German of Luther the parallelism is perfect, the one being a 
 translation from the other, and of course the correspondence is almost 
 equally close between the Moeso-Gothic of Ulfilas, the Anglo-Saxon 
 Testament, and the Platt-Deutsch of Bugcnliagen, all of which belong 
 to the Low- German branch of the Teutonic. 
 
 In comparing these monuments of the Teutonic language in different 
 dialects and from different chronological periods, I do not find proof 
 that at remote historical periods the dialects of the German speech 
 were ' less plainly distinguished than in later eras.' On the contrary, it 
 appears to me that the great divisions of the language were much less 
 widely separated in the sixteenth century than in the ninth. So far as 
 the evidence deducible from Ulfilas goes, the distance must have been 
 greater still in the foui'th century, and consequently the dialects appear 
 to approximate as they advance, diverge as they ascend. 
 
 It is true that, in order to arrive at conclusive results, much more 
 extended comparisons must be made, but I think that an examination 
 of Hildibrand and Hadubrand, Muspilli, Notker, the numerous philo- 
 logical monuments in Haupt's Zoitschrift, and Graff's Diutiska, 
 especially the ancient vocabularies and interlinear glosses of the Middle 
 Ages, — ^for example, the glossary in Graff, 1. 128, et. seq., from two 
 MSS. of the eighth century, — cannot fail to strengthen the inference I 
 draw from the different texts of the Lord's Prayer. 
 
 V. (pp. 41, f)2.) 
 
 OLD GEEMAN DIALECTS. 
 
 This, I am aware, is contrary to the opinion of J. Grimm, who 
 says, Gcsch, der D. S. 834 : " Zur zcit, wo deutsche sprache in der 
 geschichte auftritt .... ihre cignen dialecte scheinen unbedeutender 
 und unentschiedener als in der folge." In a certain sense, the German 
 language makes its appearance in history in the classic ages of Greek 
 and Eoman literature, that is, the language is often spoken of, and a 
 
Lect. II. NOTES AND ILLUSTI!AT)ONS 81 
 
 few proper and common nonns lielonging to it are recorded by the 
 writers of those periods. But these few rpmains give us no notion 
 whatever of the inflexional or syntactical system of the language, or of 
 the mutual relations of its dialects, and consequently no means of 
 comparing or estimating the discrepancies of those dialects. On the 
 former point Ulfilasfurnisliesvis our earliest information, and, of course, 
 our first knowledge of any Germanic speech dates from the fourth 
 century. We have no contemporaneous or nearly contemporaneous 
 remains of any cognate dialect, except a few single words from which 
 no safe conclusions can be drawn, and hence we know nothing of the 
 resemblances or diversities between the different branches of the 
 Teutonic speech at that period. The assertion, then, that the German 
 dialects, at our first historical acquaintance with that language, ' appear 
 to have been less broadly distinguished than afterwards,' is a pure 
 conjecture sustained by no known feet. For comparisons of the early 
 and modern Germanic speeches, see illustration IV. at end of this lecture. 
 
 VI. (p. 52.) 
 
 SCANDEJATIAN LANGUAGES. 
 
 There is strong evidence to prove an identity of speech in all the 
 Scandinavian countries at the commencement of their literatm-e, or 
 rather to show that, in spite of local differences of dialect, the language 
 was retarded as one by those who used it. The testimony on this 
 subject will be found in the preface to Egilsson's Lexicon Poeticum 
 Antiquas Linguaa Septentrionalis, where all the passages in Old-Northern 
 literature which bear on the question are collected. But. on the other 
 hand, a comparison of the diction of the manu-scripts establishes rather 
 a div<^rsity than a unity of language at the earliest period to which they 
 reach. We have no manuscripts in any of the Scandinavian dialects 
 older than the twelfth, in all probability none older than the thirteenth 
 century, though very many of the works found in these manuscripts 
 are of much earlier date, and, so far as can be judged by internal 
 evidence, more or less faithfully conformed to a more primitive ortho- 
 craphy and grammar. In original manuscripts, or contemporaneous 
 copies, of works composed in Denmark and Sweden as early as the 
 oldest existing codex of any Icelandic author, there occur numerous 
 words, forms, and consti-uctions which are more closely allied to those of 
 the modem dialects of those countries than to the vocabulary and 
 grammar of the Old-Northern. It has been hence argued, that the 
 
 a 
 
82 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS Lkct. It 
 
 Danish and Swedish are descended, not from the Old-Northern of the 
 Icelandic writers, but from cognate parallel dialects of equal antiquity. 
 The evidence from the runic inscriptions found in the Northern King- 
 doms — many of which are believed, and some almost certainly knov/n 
 to be much more ancient than any extant manuscript in any Scandina- 
 vian dialect — although their orthography is very variable and uncertain, 
 points to the same conclusion. The strictly common origin, then, of 
 tjie Icelandic, Swedish, and Danish, though very generally admitted, is 
 not absolutely proved, and my own language on this subject in my First 
 Series, Lecture XVII., p. 368 and elsewhere, must be taken with some 
 qualification. But the error, if it be an error, was not material to my 
 argument in the passages referred to, for the essential fact still subsists, 
 namely, that while the Icelandic, protected from foreign influences by 
 the almost complete social and literary, as well as physical isolation of 
 the people which uses it, has undergone little change, the Danish and 
 Swedish, on the contrary, have departed from their earlier forms to an 
 extent, and in directions, proportionate to, and determined by, the 
 amount and character of the alien influences to which they have been 
 respectively exposed. The Swedish is still essentially a Scandinavian 
 tongue, in both words and forms, but, though the Danes have preserved 
 the principal characteristics of their ancient grammar, their vocabulary 
 is lamentably denationalized. 
 
 See Molbech's sketch of the history of the Danish language, in the 
 last edition of his Danish Dictionary, 1859. 
 
 Vn. (p. 54.) 
 
 DIVBEGENCE OP DIALECTS. 
 
 I beg not to be misunderstood as covertly arguing, in any of the 
 foregoing remarks, against the received opinion of a common origin of 
 the whole human race. I am not a convert to the opposite theory, nor 
 do I profess to be competent to weigh the purely physical evidence on 
 this question ; but the force of truth is always weakened when it is 
 sustained by unsoimd arguments, and I do not hesitate to say that in 
 my judgment, the evidence derivable from actual, as distinguished from 
 conjectural linguistic history, does not support the doctrine of the imity 
 and common descent of the human species. 
 
 The opinion I have advanced of the divergence of languages as we 
 follow them up to their earliest recorded forms, and their convergence 
 as they descend, is not irreconcilable with the well-established fact of 
 
Lbct. II. KOTKS AND ILLTJSTKATIONS 83 
 
 the tendency of eveiy liuman speech to self-division, and the progres- 
 sive development of dialects under certain circumstances. Whenever 
 a homogeneous people with a common tongue is divided into separate 
 and unconnected tribes, by emigration, by local changes in religious or 
 political institutions, or by any of the numerous causes which break up 
 lai'ge nations into smaller fragments, the speeches of the different mem- 
 bers of the race become distinct, not by virtue of laws of repulsion 
 and divergence inherent in the language itself, but just in proportion to 
 the character and energy of the new circumstances under which the 
 separate divisions of the family are placed, and the degree in which the 
 communication between them is interrupted. 
 
 Now, admitting that all men are descended from a single pair, these 
 divisions of nation and of tongue must ha^e been very common at that 
 primitive period when agriculture and ai-t did not yet admit of density of 
 population, and when fur the children of every- swarming hive, 
 
 ' The world was all before them, where to choose 
 Their place of rest,' 
 
 and hence the primitive language or languages were soon split up into a 
 multitude of patois, more or less unlike to each other and to their com- 
 mon source. These are events of which human annals have presei-ved 
 only scanty and imperfect records ; but the dialectic changes, produced by 
 emigration and colonisation within the historical period, are sufficiently 
 well known to enable us to conceive of the extent of the linguistic revo- 
 lutions which must have occurred in remoter eras. But from the most 
 ancient date to which authentic profane records extend, the general ten- 
 dency of human political society has been towards increased communi- 
 cation, intermixture, confusion, and amalgamation of races and tongues. 
 Hence, during this period — the only period through which we can 
 trace the history of language with any approach to certainty — all influ- 
 ences, with the exception of those of emigration and analogous causes of 
 little comparative importance, have co-operated to produce a constantly 
 increasing convergence of the more widely diffused dialects, and an 
 extirpation of the less important and more narrowly limited patois. 
 While then it is theoretically not improbable that the age of general 
 approximation was preceded by a long period of general divergence of 
 tongues, it must be remembered that this conclusion is mere matter of 
 inference from analogy, and by no means an estabhshed fact ; for all that 
 history teaches us is, that the further we go back the wider was the 
 diversity of .speech among men. ' Tout ce que nous savons des langues 
 aux 6pcques les plus voisines de leur origine,' says Fauriel, 'nous les 
 
 « 2 
 
84 NOTES AND ILLUSTHATIONS Lbct. II. 
 
 montre divisees en dialectes et sous -dialectes peu ^tcndus. H faut, pour 
 Ics amener k l'iiuit(5, pour les y tbndre, d'immenses evenements et un 
 temps trfes-long relativement a la vie, je ne dis pas des individus et des 
 families, mais des peuples,' &c. Fauiuel Dante et la Langue Italienne, 
 1854, ii. 303. 
 
 Tlie proposition, that languages descended from the same stock are 
 incapable of grammatical mixture, seems to me to involve a contradic- 
 tion, and at last to lead inevitably to the conclusion against which I am 
 protesting. It assumes that speeches derived from a common original, 
 and developed from it by organic law, independently of external lin- 
 guistic influences, become, by the action of this common law of their 
 being, so diverse from each other in structure and specific nature, that 
 although they still retain the essential characteristics of their common 
 parent, no alliance or coalescence between them is possible. This is at 
 variance with all that organic physiology has taught us, and if the 
 alleged repugnance and irreconcilability be admitted, we must resort 
 to the hypothesis of an independent creation for every known language. 
 I am not prepared to adopt this hypothesis, but, at the same time, I 
 admit that in the phenomena of language considered by themselves, 
 and without reference to theological doctrines or ethnological theories, 
 I do not find any serious objection to it ; and if I believed in the impos- 
 sibility of grammatical mixture, permanent linguistic hybridism, I 
 should fifid myself compelled to espouse it. 
 
 None but the followers of the .school of which Darwin is now the most 
 conspicuous teacher infer, from similarity of structure, a community of 
 origin between different oi-ganic .species of the same genus in a particu- 
 lar country, or between representative species in different countries. 
 By most botanists, oaks, between which no constant difference can be 
 pointed out except in the shape of the cup of the acorn, are maintained 
 to be specifically distinct, and not descended from a common stock. 
 Why, then, is it not equally probable that the community of nature in 
 man has produced any number of languages closely resembling each 
 other, but not genealogically related ? In comparing very many species 
 of plants and animals, the points of coincidence are vastly more numerous 
 and important than those of difference, bvit while a slight divergence in 
 normal type is held to establish a specific diversity in the tree or the 
 quadruped, an enormous discrepancy in vocabulary and syntax is not 
 considered as disproving community of origin in languages. If language 
 be considered as a gift from an external source — a machine with a 
 certain limited range of movements — it is diflicult to get rid of the 
 theory of hereditary or rather traditional descent ; but if we regard it 
 
I-ECT. II. NOTES AND ILLtTSTEATIONS 85 
 
 as an organic product, a natural result of the constitution and condition 
 of man, and not as an assemblage of arbitrary or conventional symbols, 
 it follows that lexical or grammatical resemblances in languages no 
 more prove their original identity than a certain coincidence in struc- 
 ture and function of organ establishes a consanguinity between all the 
 species of the genus /e//s in quadrupeds, or the descent of all the plants 
 embraced under the generic term finis from a single germ. 
 
 vin. (p. 60.) 
 
 ANTIPATHY BETWEEN SAXONS AND CELTS. 
 
 Not to speak of earlier and less familiar instances, I may refer to the 
 quaintly ludicrous account of the Irish and of the four wild kings caught 
 and tamed by Richard II., in Froissart (who of course was speaking the 
 sentiments of his English friends); to Stanihurst's Ireland, in llolinshed; 
 to Wren's papers, quoted in the notes to "Wilkins's edition of Sir Thomas 
 Browne; and finally to Pinkerton, who argued so stoutly the inferiority of 
 the Celtic race : ' Show me a great O',' said he, ' and I am done.' These 
 opinions of course are not authorities, nor worth citing for any purpose 
 except as expressions of a feeling which, as we have abundant evidence, 
 has been entertained by all the non-Celtic inhabitants of England, from 
 tlie Saxon invasion to the present day ; and this is an important fact, 
 because it tends to explain why English has borrowed so few words from 
 any existing forms of the Celtic. If the Celtic Britons were a Christian 
 people at the time of their subjugation by the Saxons, to the extent 
 which their advocates maintain, and had the culture which has every- 
 where accompanied the diffusion of Christianity, they could not have 
 fiiiled to propagate that religion among their conquerors, unless an in- 
 vincible obstacle was found in the mutual antipathy between the nations. 
 But the Anglo-Saxons were converted by missionaries from Rome, and 
 the same cause which prevented the incorporation of any considerable 
 ■^rtion of the Celtic vocabulary into the Saxon speech — whether the 
 intellectual inferiority of the Celt or the hatred of race — prevented aliK) 
 the adoption of the Christian religion by the invaders. 
 
 IX. (p. 60.) 
 
 CELTIC ETYMOLOGIES. 
 
 Koenen, De Nederlandsche Boerenstand Historisch Beschreven, p. 17, 
 following Boot, ascribes a Latin origin to the Dutch words akker, 
 ager, zaad, satum, hooi-vork, furca, juk, jugum, wan, 
 
00 NOTES AND ILLUSTEATIONa Lect. II. 
 
 vannus, dorschvlegel, flagellum, sikkel, secula, spade, 
 s path a. Every one of these words, and others of the same class, 
 such as cnltor, culter, or coulter, are found in Anglo-Saxon, and the 
 argument is equally strong to show that that language took them from 
 the sam^ source. 
 
 The generally inferior culture of the Celtic to the Latin and Gothic 
 races would afford a presumption that the Celts also had borrowed from 
 the Romans such of these words as occur in their speech. But the 
 curious and almost unnoticed fact of the existence of reaping-machines 
 among the Gauls, stated by the elder Pliny, shows an advanced condition 
 of both agricultural and mechanical art in that people, and, of course, 
 authorises us to suppose that they had a proportionately complete rural 
 vocabulary. The probability is that most of the words in question 
 belong to an earlier period of human speech than that of the existence 
 of any language identifiable as distinctly Celtic, Gothic, or Italic. 
 
 I have elsewhere adverted to the probability that many words alleged 
 to be Celtic were of Latin origin, and that in many cases, roots supposed 
 Celtic are, as probably, Gothic. Mr. Davies says that cart is Welsh 
 from c4r, a dray or sledge, but as I have observed in a note on the 
 word cart, in the American edition of Wedgwood, cart occurs in the 
 Norse Alexandur's Saga, of the thirteenth century, and may, therefore, 
 with equal plausibility, be claimed as Gothic. Gown has been supposed 
 to be of Welsh origin, but as this word is found in mediaeval Greek and 
 Latin, as well as in Old-French and Italian, it is a historical, not an 
 etymological question, to what stock it belongs. See Du Cange guna, 
 2. gunna, gonna, gouna, gunella. The Welsh gwn, to which it is 
 referred, is said to mean toga, but, as a question oi radical etymology, 
 more probable sources for gown may be found elsewhere ; for the name 
 of so complex a garment is not likely to be a primitive. Gamett 
 thinks harrow is Welsh berfa, button, W. botwm, crooh, W. crog, 
 tenter, W. deintur, wain, W. gwain, pan, W. pan, solder, W. 
 sawduriaw, &c., &c. But is not barrow more probably the A. kS, 
 berewe from beran to carry ; button the French bouton, a bud or 
 knob, from bouter, to push or sprout; crook cognate with Icelandic 
 kr6kr, a hook; tenter from the Latin tendere, to stretch ; wain, the 
 Gothic wagen, vagn; pan, the Gothic panna, pande, pfanne; 
 and especially solder, which is found in all the Eomance languages, the 
 Latin solidare, from solidus, used by Pliny in the precise sense, to 
 solder ? These are purely questions of historical etymology, and we 
 can no more determine them by comparison of forms, than we can 
 prove by the linguistic character of the name Alfred, that that prince 
 had, or had not a real existence. 
 
Lkct. il notes and iliustrations 87 
 
 X. (p. 64.) 
 
 DIFFICULTY OF APPEECIATING FOREIGN SOUNDS. 
 
 Persons whose attention has not been specially drawn to the subject 
 are little aware of the difficulty, I will not say, of imitating or of 
 WTiting down, but even of hearing the peculiar sounds of foreign 
 languages. An anecdote may serve to illustrate this. There is a 
 Persian word in very common use throughout the East — bahhsheesh 
 — meaning a gi It or a present. It is the equivalent in meaning of the ' 
 Old-English largess, and is employed by the attendants on great men 
 and strangers, when gifts are made or expected, in just the same 
 way. The Turkish articulation of all words is exceedingly distinct, 
 and this particular word, bakhshcesh, which every traveller in Turkey 
 hears a hundred times a day, is uttered with an unction that makes it 
 very impressive to the ears of a stranger ; hence one would imagine 
 that its true pronunciation would be readily seized by the obtusest ear. 
 Notwithstanding this, a distinguished gentleman who had passed most 
 of his life in foreign lands, and had spent many years at Constantinople 
 in a diplomatic capacity, was unable to come any nearer to the soim.d 
 of bakhsheesh than bactshtasch. He thus writes in one of his published 
 letters : ' There is only one word in all my letters which I am certain, 
 (however they may be written), of not having spelt wrong, and that is 
 the word bactshtasch, which signifies a present. I have heard it so 
 often, and my ear is so accustomed to the sound, and my tongue to the 
 pronunciation, that I am now certain I am not ■swong the hundredth 
 part of a whisper or lisp. There is no other word in the Turkish, so 
 well impressed on my mind, and so well remembered. "V\Taatever else 
 I have written, bactshtasch ! my earliest acquaintance in the Turldsh 
 language, I shall never forget you ! '— Constantinople and its Environs, 
 in a series of letters, by an American long resident. N. Y. 1835. II. 
 p. 151. 
 
 If, then, persons of fair intelligence are liable so strangely to pervert 
 the sounds of foreign words which they have heard and used for years, 
 what can any man's opinions be wortli on the sounds of a languaga 
 which he never heard at all ? 
 
LECTUEE ni. 
 
 ANGLO-SAXON VOCABULAET, LITEKATURK, AND GEAMMAE. 
 
 In order to a just estimate of the capacities of the Anglo- 
 Saxon tongue, we must pass from the forms and sounds of its 
 words, the sensuous impressions they produce on the organ of 
 hearing, to their significance, their power of communicating 
 fact and exciting emotion, which constitutes the essence of 
 human speech. 
 
 We must here admit that our knowledge of Anglo-Saxon is 
 not such as to enable us to pronounce on this point with as 
 much certainty as in the case of manj"^ other languages, dead as 
 well as living. The extant, or at least printed, literature of 
 that tongue is not sufficiently extensive and varied in subject 
 and in treatment to furnish us with the true and only means 
 we can ever possess of learning the actual force of words, 
 namely, observation of their use at different periods, in different 
 combinations, and by different writers, and we therefore do not 
 understand an Anglo-Saxon book as we do a work in a living 
 foreign, or even an ancient classical, language.* True the 
 close alliance between the Anglo-Saxon and English helps us 
 to run through Anglo-Saxon narrative works, and biruple 
 homilies like those of Alfric, with great ease; but wJien we 
 
 * Anglo-Saxon lexicography was in a Tery nnsatisfaetory condition until tho 
 appearance of Bosworth's learned and laborious dictionary, -which was a very timely 
 and important addition to oxir facilities for studying the ancient mother tongue of 
 England. The glossaries to Schmid's Geaetze der Angel-Sauhsen, and to Grein's 
 Bibliothek der Angel-Siichsischea Poesie, are also extremely valuable contributions 
 to the same branch of pliilology. But, after all, word-books cannot go beyond 
 their authorities, and a fragmentary literature can have but imperfect lexicons. 
 
Lect. hi. capacities of ANGLO-SAXON 89 
 
 take an Anglo-Saxon poem in hand, we interpret, not read our 
 author, and no man can make himself as much at home in 
 Eeovnilf and Csedmon as a good Grecian may in Homer.* 
 
 But imperfect as is our knowledge of nice distinctions and eva- 
 nescent shades of meaning in Anglo-Saxon words, we can say, 
 with confidence, that in the highest quality of speech, the power 
 of varied expression upon moral and intellectual topics, this 
 language was certainly not inferior to any other of the Gothic 
 stock. 
 
 In estimating its capacities in this respect, we are not to 
 compare it with the modern Scandinavian and Teutonic tongues, 
 which have received centuries of culture since Anglo-Saxon 
 became extinct, but with those languages at periods when they 
 had enjoyed a much inferior amount of Christian and classic 
 influence. Christianity was introduced among the Anglo-Saxons 
 in the sixth century, into those parts of Germany with which 
 the Anglo-Saxons were most nearly connected, some centuries 
 after the emigration of that people, and into Scandinavia and 
 Iceland not far from the year 1000, though some small progress 
 had been made by Christian missionaries in Denmark, Norway, 
 and Sweden at an earlier period. It would not be fair to run 
 a parallel between the Anglo-Saxon of the age of Csedmon, 
 
 * It may seem a trifling, but I believe it is a just observation, that one of the 
 best practical tests of proficiency in a foreign language is the degree in -which the 
 student is capable of enjoying a blunder in the use of it. When we have so far 
 appropriated a new speech that the mistakes of a stranger, in its grammar or 
 pronunciation, produce upon us the same odd and ludicrous effect as errors in over 
 vernacular, we may be sure that we have pretty fully mastered it ; but we must 
 regard ourselves as tiros until we have become thus far imbued with its spirit. 
 
 Learned Lepsius engraved upon the Great Pyramid, for the delectation of 
 the disembodied sprites that haunt that 'pile stupendous,' and of such future 
 travellers in the East as might happen to Icnow no language more modern than 
 that of Cheops, a hieroglyphic record of liis antiquarian pilgrimage to Egypt; 
 but I doubt whether Mr. Birch could contrive to extract an honest laugh out of 
 the possible solecisms in sequence and juxtaposition of the birds, reptiles, and 
 homed cattle that figure in that inscription; and I fear that the perhaps too 
 j)Oetical licenses of Mr. Conybeai-e's Anglo-Saxon rhythms did not strike Mr. 
 Kemble as comical enough to produce that salutary deopilation of the spleen which 
 loe French bold to be so serviceable to the health of sedentary gentlemen. 
 
90 M(ESO-GOTIIIC Lect. IIL; 
 
 who lived in the seventh century, and the German of Goethe ; 
 the comparison ought to be instituted between corresponding 
 stages of philological development. Such a correspondence 
 cannot be arrived at by a mere computation of time, because 
 we have no sufficient means of knowing the precise syntactical 
 or lexical character of either speech until some time after Chris- 
 tianity had bestowed upon them the Eoman alphabet, and sup- 
 plied both the means and the incentives for an extended literary 
 culture. To this remark the McEso-Gothic is an apparent 
 exception. It is said that Ulfilas, who translated the Scriptures 
 into his native tongue, in the fourth century, himself invented 
 his alphabet, or rather accommodated the Greek and Latin 
 characters to his purposes, and first reduced the Mceso-Gothic 
 language to writing.* We should therefore suppose that he 
 would have employed, in his translation, the current forms and 
 the standard vocabulary of the heathen period ; for the conver- 
 sion of the Moeso-Goths was then too recent to allow any very 
 essential modification of their speech by Christian influences to 
 have taken place. In the want of evidence to the contrary, 
 we should think ourselves authorised to suppose that we have, 
 in the remains of the work of Ulfilas, a specimen of a Gothic 
 dialect in what may be called a normal form, that is, a form 
 spontaneously developed by the operation of its own organic 
 laws and native tendencies, uncontrolled by alien influences, 
 
 * TheopHlua, a Gotliio tishop, or rather a tisliop of the Goths (possihly an 
 episoopus in pariibus), was present at the Council of Nice, a.d. 325, and it is hence 
 inferred that some considerable proportion of the Moeso-Goths were Christianized 
 a couple of generations before the execution of Ulfilas's translation. There is also 
 other evidence of the introduction of Christianity among this people, by Cappa- 
 docian captives, in the third century. It is not probable that a Christian nation 
 •would remain a hundred years without letters, and it is hardly credible that they 
 contented themselves, so long, with so rude an alphabet as the runic. Uliilas 
 must, then, ho taken rather as the improver than as the inventor of the alphabet 
 he used. I see no ground for the opinion that the monkish or black-letter 
 characters of the Middle Ages were borrowed from those of Ulfilas. Those who 
 did not inherit his speech would not have succeeded to his alphabet. There is no 
 very close resemblance between his system and the mediaeval black letter, and the 
 latter does not follow the arrangement of the former, or retain all its characters. 
 
Leot. III. SCANDINAVIAN LANGUAaES 91 
 
 except, indeed, so far as the diction of a translation is always 
 modified by the idiom of its original and the nature of its 
 subject. But I have shown, I think, that the force of the par- 
 ticiple and the syntactical construction of the period were, 
 contrary to the genius of the Gothic family of tongues, pro- 
 bahly conformed by Ulfilas to the usage of the Greek ; and it 
 is possible that other grammatical innovations were introduced 
 by him. With respect to the inflectional forms and the general 
 vocabulary of the Moeso-Gothic, however, we have no evidence 
 of any corruption or change.* 
 
 Of other Teutonic dialects, we have only a few fragments, 
 too inconsiderable in amount and of too doubtful reading, to 
 serve as a basis for any general conclusions, until a sufficient 
 time after the christianisation of Germany for important changes 
 to have taken place. 
 
 The oldest existing Scandinavian manuscripts date only from 
 the thirteenth century, though some of the works of which they 
 are copies were no doubt composed during the heathen era, 
 and many within a few years after. But it was the almost 
 universal habit of scribes to conform orthography and inflection 
 to the standai-d of their own time, and therefore a manuscript 
 copy of a work of an earlier period is, in general, not admissible 
 evidence as to the formal characteristics of the dialect of the 
 original.f 
 
 The Moeso-Gothic, as we have seen, caimot be identified as 
 the direct parent of any later Teutonic dialect ; and as its lite- 
 
 * The TJpsala MS. of Ulfilas, called the Codex Argenteus, either because bound 
 ill silver, or because it is executed almost wholly in silver characters, is thought 
 to have been written not later than a hundred or a hundred and fifty years after 
 the death of the translator, and the few other extant remains of that language 
 are referred to about the same period. It is not impossible that the Mce50-Gothic 
 had undergone some change in the interim, but its literature was apparently so 
 ristricted that there was little room for the written secular dialect to infiuenea 
 the sacred, and it is probable that in accidence and vocabulary the Moeso-Gothio 
 of Ulfilas is purer and more unsophisticated than any other philological monument 
 of European literature. 
 
 t See First Series, Lecture XIX., p. 421. 
 
92 MffiSO-GOTHIC AND ANGLO-SAXON Lect. III. 
 
 rature perished almost as soon as it was born, we are acquainted 
 with it only in a single phase, that, namely, when it sprang 
 into sudden existence as a finished medium of literary effort. 
 All the other Gothic tongues, on the contrary, become first 
 known to us, at periods when they had been subjected for a con- 
 siderable time to influences which cannot have failed to pro- 
 duce very essential modifications in them, and when they were 
 still in an unstable and revolutionary condition. 
 
 Between the Mceso-Gothic and the Anglo-Saxon, then, no 
 fair comparison can be instituted, and as to the other cognate 
 languages, the only just method of testing their respective capa- 
 bilities would be to take each at the highest pitch of culture 
 and of power attained by it, under those fresh impulses of 
 youthful civilisation which, in most respects, were the same for 
 them all. 
 
 The Anglo-Saxon reached this its most classic stage as early 
 as the ninth century, and the works of King Alfred, and of 
 Alfric the grammarian (who, however, died a hundred years 
 later,) may be taken as specimens of the language in its best 
 estate ; the Icelandic was at its acme probably in the twelfth 
 century, the saga of Njall being the best exemplification ; and 
 the High-German, as it appears in the Nibelungen Lied, about 
 theyear 1200. Half a century later, the voluminous works of Van 
 Maerlant, and other contemporaneous writers, first gave form 
 and consistence to the Netherlandish or Dutch, and established 
 its syntax substantially as it has since remained. 
 
 In comparing these languages at these respective periods, 
 we shall observe that the Anglo-Saxon laboured under what 
 was in some respects a disadvantage, that of being a more 
 mixed and composite speech in point of vocabulary and, in 
 some degree, of syntax, and therefore was less harmonious and 
 symmetrical in its growth and development than the different 
 Continental branches of the Gothic. Its derivatives are gene- 
 rally less easily and less certainly traced to more primitive 
 forms and simpler significations. Hence the meaning of a 
 
Lect. III. ANGLO-SAXON COPIOUS 93 
 
 larger proportion of its words is apparently arbitrary, and not 
 deducible from the primary sense of known radicals ; and with 
 respect to that portion of its roots which are not identifiable as 
 Grothic, its power of derivation and composition is less than that 
 possessed by other Grothic dialects over their own indigenous 
 stock. 
 
 It is partly, no doubt, to its mixed character that the Anglo- 
 Saxon is indebted for its copiousness, which is perhaps the 
 feature of its vocabulary that first strikes a student familiar 
 with the Scandinavian and German languages. In mere num- 
 ber of vocables, its poetical nomenclature, indeed, falls far short 
 of that of the Icelandic ; but the copiousness and wealth of a 
 speech is not to be estimated by a numerical computation of 
 words. The true test is : for what variety of distinct sensuous 
 impressions, images, and objects, and of moral sentiment and 
 intellectual conception, for what amount of attributives of 
 quality, for what categories of being and what manifestations of 
 action it has specific names. The mere multiplication of desig- 
 nations for a single thing, though it may increase the power of 
 picturesque expression, and is therefore a convenient poetical 
 and rhetorical resource, does not add to the real copiousness of 
 a speech. Thus, the Icelandic prose Edda, or Art of Poetry, 
 enumerates more than a hundred names for the sword, and a 
 large number for the ship, and for other objects conspicuous in 
 Northern life. Most of these were no doubt originally de- 
 scriptive epithets, and their use suggested, in place of the 
 generalisation of the leading properties or uses of the object 
 which is expressed by its ordinary name, a sensuous image 
 derived from some one of its characteristics, or a traditional 
 recollection connected with the epithet, and thus incidentally 
 increased the stock of imagery at the command of the poet. 
 But when epithets become obsolete in daily speech, their ety- 
 mological significance is soon forgotten, though they may con- 
 tinue to be used in the dialect of verse merely as synonyms for 
 each other — a means of avoiding too frequent repetition — or in 
 
94 TEST OF COPIOUSNESS Lect. III. 
 
 order to employ a diction which is thought poetical, simply 
 hecause it is not familiar. 
 
 The power of substituting a hundred epithets for the proper 
 name of the object to which they are applied is not a proof of 
 the copiousness of a language, even while the etymology of the 
 epithets is remembered, and while they are consequently de- 
 scriptive or suggestive; but when their origin is forgotten 
 and they become synonyms, they are hindrances rather than 
 helps, and even in poetical diction are little better than tinsel. 
 To exemplify : to those who know that falchion is derived from 
 the Latin falx, a sickle or scythe, the word suggests an image 
 which sword does not excite, and therefore increases the pic- 
 turesqueness of the poetical phrase in which it occurs. But to 
 those who are ignorant of its etymology, it is simply what may 
 be called a sensation-synonym for sword. It is recommended 
 only by metrical adaptation, or simply by its unfamiliarity ; it 
 adds absolutely nothing to the expressiveness of the diction 
 which employs it, and in most cases is, both to writer and 
 reader, simply fustian. In words of this class, it must be ad- 
 mitted that the Anglo-Saxon is not particularly rich, and it 
 may therefore be said to be inferior to the Icelandic in the 
 metrical and rhetorical instrumentalities, the mechanical ap- 
 pliances, of the poetic art. 
 
 But when we come to the words which indicate different 
 states, emotions, passions, mental processes, all, in short, that 
 expresses the moral or intellectual man, the Anglo-Saxon vo- 
 cabulary is eminently affluent. Hence Icelandic paints, while 
 
 ' Anglo-Saxon describes and philosophises.- The Icelandic saga 
 is a pantomime, in which you see the actors in all the suc- 
 cessive scenes of the drama, and infer their emotions, their 
 aims, their motives, from their acts. The Anglo-Saxon gives 
 
 ' utterance to the inward status, and discloses men's thoughts 
 rather than depicts their material shape and their external 
 actions. A better proof of the rich moral expressiveness of 
 Anglo-Saxon than any citation of examples is found in the 
 
Lect. III. POWER OF COMPOSITION 95 
 
 fact, that those English dramatists and poets, who have most 
 clearly revealed the workings of the heart and thrown most 
 light into the deep abysses of the soul, have employed a diction 
 composed iu the largest measure of words legitimately de- 
 scended from the ancient mother of the English speech.* It 
 is in this inherited quality of moral revelation, which has been 
 perpetuated and handed down from the tongue of the Gothic 
 conquerors to its English first-born, that lies in good part the 
 secret of Shakspeare's power of bodying forth so much of man's 
 internal being, and clothing so many of his mysterious sym- 
 pathies in living words. 
 
 Although, as I have remarked, Anglo-Saxon words not ap- 
 parently of Gothic origin are not freely used as material for 
 derivation and composition, the indigenous roots, on the other 
 hand, exhibit a remarkable plasticity in the way of derivative 
 formation, and a great aptitude for organic combination. Turner 
 well illustrates this property of Anglo-Saxon by tables of pri- 
 mitives with their secondary forms, and be enumerates more 
 than twenty derivatives from the noun h y g e (or h i g e) which 
 sitmifies both mind and thought, that is, intellect quiescent, and 
 intellect in action. Among these are verbs, secondary nouns, 
 adjectives and adverbs, which, by various modifications, express 
 not only mental states and mental acts, but a variety of moral 
 emotions and affections. From mod, mind, temper, and 
 gethanc, a word of allied original meaning, are given an 
 equal number of derivatives ; so that from these three roots we 
 have, by the aid of significant terminations and a few subordinate 
 compound elements, not less than sixty words expressive of 
 intellectual and moral conceptions.f There are, besides these, 
 a great number of other almost equally fertile radicals be- 
 longing to the same department of the vocabulary, and hence 
 it will be obvious that its power of expression on moral and 
 intellectual subjects must have been very considerable. Indeed 
 
 • See First Series, Lecture VI. 
 
 t See Illustration I., at end of this Lecture. 
 
96 ANGLO-SAXON GOSPELS Lect. IIL 
 
 it would be difficult to find, in any language, a term indi- 
 cative of moral state or emotion, or of intellectual action or 
 perception, excepting, of course, the artificial terms belonging 
 to the technical dialect of metaphysics, which is not at least 
 approximately represented in the Anglo-Saxon vocabulary. 
 
 The Anglo-Saxon translation of the Gospels well illustrates 
 the capacities of the tongue for a varied and comprehensive 
 range of expression. "We know not the history, the atithor, or 
 the precise date of this translation, but it belongs to the best 
 period of the literature, and was made from the Vulgate, or 
 more probably, perhaps, from some nearly similar Latin ver- 
 sion.* Our authorised translation of the same books is remark- 
 able for its freedom from Greek, Latin, and Eomance idioms ; 
 but it falls in this respect far behind the Anglo-Saxon, which 
 admits scarcely any but indigenous words, and substitutes native 
 compounds, or specially framed derivatives, for those foreign 
 words which the English translators have adopted from Hebrew, 
 Greek, Latin, and French, and incorporated into the modern 
 religious dialect. 
 
 Although the Anglo-Saxon admitted of composition and de- 
 rivation to a great extent, the number of its primitives, or at 
 least of words treated as primitives because they were inca- 
 
 * To determine what text the Anglo-Saxon translation of the Evangelists followed, 
 would require a far more critical examination of the various recensions of the Latin 
 Gospels than I have had an opportunity to make. I will, however, notice a departiu-e 
 from the common Vulgate reading in a passage which happens to be at this moment 
 under my eye. The present authorised Vulgate version of theLord's Prayer, in Mat- 
 thew vi., gives the fourth (the first personal) petition thus : — panem nostram super- 
 Bubstantialem da nobis hodie, supersubstantialem being used as the equivalent 
 of the Greek imoiiriov, while the same word in Luke xi. is rendered by quotidianum. 
 In the first rendering, iTrtoiatos is treated as a participial adjective from eneitu = 
 iirl iifit, in the latter, as from eTrciiu = M €i/ii. In the Anglo-Saxon Gospels, 
 gedseghwamlican, or dsegh wamlican, daily,is employed in both Evangelists. 
 Tlie Lindisfame text of Matthew has of er wist lie, which etymologieally should 
 mean dainty, the Rushworth, dceghwiemlicu, and, as an alternative, inston- 
 denlice, which latter word corresponds very closely to itrioiuios (^iiti h/u). The 
 word used in the Lindisfarne text is the only one which can be regarded as a 
 translation of super substantialis. Ulfilas, who made his version from the 
 Greek, employs siuteins, daily. 
 
Lkct. III. ANGLO-SAXON MONOSTLLABIO 97 
 
 pable of resolution into . simpler forms and meanings, was so 
 large that there was less occasion for compounds than in most 
 other languages of the same stock. This fact, together with 
 the mode of inflection employed in the grammar, accounts for 
 the monosyllabic character of the words. Compounds are built 
 up of at least two syllabic elements, and must, except in some 
 few cases of coalescence of syllables, be generally longer than 
 primitives. Hence, other things being equal, the language 
 which employs fewest compounds will have the shortest words. 
 If the same speech varies or inflects its words for tense, person, 
 number, and case, by what is called the strong method — that 
 is, by change of letters of the radical, instead of addition of 
 syllables, as when we make the past tense of the verb lead, not 
 leaded, \>\iLt led — tMs is still another cause of greater brevity 
 of words than is found in languages which inflect by augmen- 
 tation. 
 
 It is surprising how far we may carry literary composition in 
 English, without in&oducing any word which requires more 
 than a single emission of breath for its articulation. The late 
 Professor Addison Alexander, of Princeton, has well illustrated 
 this property of Anglo-Saxon, or rather Saxon-English, by two 
 spirited sonnets in which only words monosyllabic in pronun- 
 ciation are employed. Some few of these, indeed, are Latin or 
 Komance, and some of the verbs are declined by the weak or 
 augmentative inflection, but much the largest proportion of 
 the words are native, and in our articulation those written 
 with two syllables are habitually pronounced in one.* One of 
 these monosyllabic sonnets is as follows : — 
 
 * Something of the same sort may be done in French, and with greater facility 
 in Catalan, because those languages, in naturalizing Latin words, often retain the 
 stem or radical syllable only, and the Catalan very frequently drops even the 
 final consonant of that. Ferreras wrote a Catalan poem of ninety-six seven-syllabled 
 lines, consisting wholly of monosyllables, but in Komance compositions of this sort 
 there is much less variety of thought and imagery, and less flexibility and graca 
 of expression, than in the English examples I have cited. See Illustration IL, 
 at end of this lecture. 
 
 H 
 
88 MONOSYLLABIC COMPOSITION 
 
 Think not that strength lies in the big round word, 
 
 Or that the brief and plain must needs be weak. 
 
 To whom can this be true, who once has heard 
 
 The cry for help, the tongue that all men speak 
 
 When want, or woe, or fear, is in the throat. 
 
 So that each word gasped out is like a sliriek 
 
 Pressed from the sore heart, or a strange wild note 
 
 Sung by some fay or fiend I There is a strength 
 
 Which dies if stretched too far or spun too fine. 
 
 Which has more height than breadth, more depth than length. 
 
 Let but this force of thought and speech be mine, 
 
 And he that will may take the sleek, fat, phrase, 
 
 Which glows but bums not, though it beam and shine— 
 
 Light, but no heat — a flash, but not a blaze ! 
 
 These ingenious productions are interesting, not as possessing 
 high poetical merit in themselves, or as models to be followed 
 in the selection of words, but because they open curious views 
 of the composition and structure of our native tongue and its 
 related dialects, and because they well illustrate what is con- 
 sidered as the genera] modern tendency of all human speech to 
 simplification of form, and to a less mechanical and artificial 
 syntactical system. Truly able writers select their words, not 
 with reference to their historical origin, but solely for the sake 
 of their adaptation to the effect aimed at on the mind of the 
 reader or hearer, and he who deliberately uses an Anglo-Saxon 
 instead of a more expressive Romance word, is as much a 
 pedant, as if his diction were composed, in the largest possible 
 proportion, of words borrowed from the vocabulary of Rome. 
 
 The masters of the English tongue know that each of its 
 great branches has its special adaptations. The subject, in very 
 many instances, as especially in metaphysical, philological, 
 critical or sesthetical discussion, prescribes and compels a diction 
 composed, in a liberal percentage, of Grreek and Latin imme- 
 diate or secondary derivatives ; and this not always because the 
 Anglo-Saxon wanted corresponding words, but often because 
 they have become obsolete. Hence an author, who, in a dis- 
 
Lkct. III. REVIVAL OF OBSOLETE WORDS 99 
 
 course or a poem designed for popular effect, would speak 
 almost pure Anglo-Saxon, might, very likely, in treating the 
 themes to which I have just referred, find it convenient to 
 exceed even the Latinism of Johnson. 
 
 There is at present a very strong tendency to the revival of 
 obsolete English and Anglo-Saxon words, and the effect of an 
 increasing study of our ancient literature is very visible in the 
 style of the best prose, and more especially, poetic compositions 
 of the present day. Our vocabulary is capable of great enrich- 
 ment from the store-house of the ancient Anglican speech, and 
 the revival of a taste for Anglo-Saxon and early English 
 literature will exert a very important influence on the intellec- 
 tual activity of the next generation. The pedantry of individuals 
 may, no doubt, as the same affectation has done in Germany and 
 Holland*, carry puristic partialities to a length as absurd as 
 lipogrammatism in literature, but the general familiarity of 
 literary men with classic and Continental philology will always 
 supply a corrective, and no great danger is to be apprehended in 
 this direction. In any event, the evil will be less than was 
 experienced from the stilted classicism of Johnson, or the Grallic 
 imitations of Gibbon- The recovery of forgotten native words 
 will affect English something in the same way, though not in 
 the same direction, as did the influx of French words in the 
 fourteenth century, and of Latin in the sixteenth ; and the gain 
 will be as real as it was in those instances. But it is not by an 
 accession of words alone, that the study of Anglo-Saxon and 
 ancieut English literature is destined to affect that of the 
 present and coming generations. The recovery of the best 
 portion of the obsolete vocabulary will bring with it, not only 
 new expressiveness of diction, but something of the vigour and 
 freshness of thought and wealth of poetic imagery which usually 
 accompanies the revival of a national spirit in literature. 
 
 Although the Anglo-Saxon is the bubbling well-spring whose 
 
 • See First Series, Lecture IX. 
 
100 ANGLO-SAXON LITEKATUEE LeCT. Ill, 
 
 Sweet waters have given a specific flavour to the hroader and, 
 more impetuous current of our maternal speech — and therefore 
 some knowledge of the more primitive is essential to a com- 
 prehension of the history of the derivative language — yet the 
 literature of ancient Anglia stands in no such relation to that 
 of modern England. Beowulf, and the songs of Csedmon and 
 Cynewulf, and even the relics of the great Alfred, were buried 
 out of sight and forgotten long before any work, now recognised 
 as distinctively English in spirit, had been conceived in the 
 imagination of its author. The earliest truly English writers 
 borrowed neither imagery nor thought nor plan, seMom even 
 form, from older native models, and hence Anglo-Saxon lite- 
 rature, so far from being the mother, was not even the nurse of 
 the infant genius which opened its eyes to the sun of England 
 five centuries ago. The history and criticism of Anglo-Saxon 
 literature are therefore almost foreign to our subject ; but were 
 they more nearly related to it, I should be obliged to exclude 
 them from present consideration, because the illustrations I 
 must adduce would be borrowed from a tongue generally un- 
 known to my audience, and no translation could fairly represent 
 them. 
 
 Although the literary character of Anglo-Saxon writers had 
 no appreciable influence on the spirit, little on the form, of 
 early English authorship, yet certain traits of the specific intel- 
 lectual and social life of the Anglian people survived for a time, 
 and manifested themselves in the nascent literature of the 
 mixed race which had succeeded to the name and place of the 
 Gothic immigrant. Hence, some general remarks on the lead- 
 ing characteristics of the poetry and prose of the Anglo-Saxons, 
 considered as an expression of the mind and heart of that 
 nation, will not be altogether out of place. The poetry of the 
 Anglo-Saxons, so far as we know it by its extant remains, is 
 chiefly sacred, or at least religious in subject, and, though not 
 remarkable for plan or invention, is very elevated in tone, and 
 exhibits much nobleness of sentiment and beauty of detail. 
 
Lect. IIL BEOWITLP 101 
 
 The poems of the early Christian era among the Scandinavians 
 have, with some remarkable exceptions, not much merit except 
 that of skill in overcoming the difficulties imposed by highly 
 axtificiSl forms and canons of metrical composition. In the 
 higher excellences of poetry, the celebrated epic, Beovralf, ranks 
 perhaps first among the monuments of Anglo-Saxon literature, 
 but in subject, plan, and treatment, it differs so -widely from 
 the general character of the versified compositions in the lan- 
 guage, that it cannot be considered as a product of the same 
 genius or the same influences which have given form and spirit 
 to the other literary efforts of that people. It is, I think, un- 
 questionably of Continental and heathen origin, though in 
 passing through the hands of Christian revisers and copyists, it 
 has undergone the modifications necessary to render it less 
 objectionable to the tastes and opinions of a converted nation. 
 We cannot affirm it to be a translation, because we have nO 
 knowledge of any Continental source from which it could have 
 been taken. In its machinery, it has many points of re- 
 semblance to Scandinavian mythic poetry, and though there 
 exists no Old-Northern poem of very similar character, there are 
 prose sagas — generally indeed of much later date — which in 
 tone and treatment are not unUke the story of Beowulf. Its 
 scenery and personages are Danish, and the whole poem be- 
 longs both in form and essence to the Scandinavian, not to the 
 G-ermanic school of art. The substance of Beowulf, either as 
 saga or as poem, came over, I believe, with some of the con- 
 querors ; and its existence in Anglo-Saxon literature I consider 
 as one among the many proofs of an infusion of the Scandi- 
 navian element in the immigration.* 
 
 The poetry of the Anglo-Saxons is to be comprehended only 
 
 * The fact, that not the most remote allusion to the poem of 'Beo'WTilf or to the 
 story it embalms has yet been discorered in any Anglo-Saxon author, proves that 
 it aonnot have been generally known to the scholars of that nation, and it is not 
 improbable that its un-Germanic character rendered it so little acceptable to a 
 people chiefly of Teutonic origin, that it never obtained much circulation among 
 Chem. 
 
102 THE NOETHMEN Lect. IIL 
 
 through a knowledge of their language, and I must refer those 
 who are contented with merely general views of its character to 
 the many translations and critical works on the subject which 
 English and German, scholars have recently produced. I shall, 
 however, in bringing out the prominent traits of early English 
 literature, as they from time to time develop themselves, have 
 occasion to notice points of contrast and of coincidence between 
 the products o± Saxon and of English genius, and to present 
 them more effectively than I could now do by a more extended 
 special criticism. But I will here again refer, somewhat in 
 detail, to an important deficiency in Anglo-Saxon literature, 
 which I have already noticed as characteristic also of early 
 English letters — the want of a vernacular historical school, 
 which that people seems never to have possessed. 
 
 The contrast in this respect between the Anglo-Saxons and 
 the Scandinavian Northmen, who were nearly allied to them in 
 speech, and probably in blood, is very remarkable. The North- 
 men were men of action, enterprising merchants, navigators, 
 hunters, soldiers of fortune, leading the van of every battle 
 from Norway to Byzantium, subduers of savage and of effemi- 
 nate, exhausted races, colonists, legislators, conquerors over the 
 rigours of climate and the forces of inanimate nature. These 
 heroic qualities were perpetuated in the energetic adventurers 
 who made themselves masters of Normandy, were infused by 
 them into their Gallic, Eomance, and Francic subjects, and 
 finally became the leaven, by which the now torpid elements of 
 the Anglo-Saxon character were thrown into a new fermenta- 
 tion, and stirred to that marvellous physical and moral ac- 
 tion which has made the English nation so long foremost among 
 men. 
 
 The admiration felt by such a people for the high qualities, 
 which alone had rendered possible the great exploits of their 
 kings and chieftains, naturally disposed the Northmen to the 
 preservation of the memory of heroic achievements, and to an 
 interest in the personal history of men distinguished for prowess 
 
Lect. III. THE SAXON CHEONICLE 103 
 
 and success. The saga-man, or reciter, waa everywhere a 
 favoured guest, and the skill with which these artists con- 
 structed the plan of their historical, or rather biographical, 
 narrations, and filled in the details, has never been surpassed in 
 the annals of any people. 
 
 The Anglo-Saxons, on the other hand, when by a series of 
 spasmodic efforts they had expelled the Britons from their 
 native homes, and established themselves in the enjoyment of 
 the comparative abundance and comfort which the milder 
 climate and more genial soil of England afforded, seem to have 
 relapsed into a life of inglorious ease. If they were ever roused 
 to deeds of vigorous action and martial daring, it was in strifes 
 among themselves about the division of the spoil they had won, 
 or in the defence of their new homes against invasion and 
 plunder by the successive swarms of hardy and hungry warriors, 
 whom the North was ever sending forth to tear from them the 
 booty which they had wrung from the imbecile Celt. They 
 had ceased to be an active, and had become a contemplative 
 people ; and so insignificant were the contests between the 
 Saxon kinglings, recorded in the meagre native annals, that, 
 as Milton says, they were not ' more worth to chronicle than 
 the wars of kites or crows flocking and fighting in the air.' 
 The life and reign of Alfred form a brilliant exception to 
 the uninteresting character of Anglo-Saxon history ; but in 
 general, vapid, empty, and uncritical as are the Saxon chro- 
 niclers, they are, in the words of the same writer, 'worthy 
 enough for the things they register.' Such being the true cha- 
 racter of the Anglo-Saxon secular historians, it is strange that ' 
 national pride should have led English critics to attach such 
 extravagant value to the series of annals generally known by 
 the name of the Saxon Chronicle. 
 
 The Saxon Chronicle is a dry chronological record, noting in 
 the same lifeless tone important and trifling events, without the 
 slightest tinge of dramatic coloiu-, of criticism in weighing evi- 
 
104 THE SAXON CHRONICLE Lect. III. 
 
 dence, or of judgment in' the selection of the facts narrated. 
 The following extracts are fair specimens : — 
 
 An. cccc.xux. In this year Martian and Valentinian succeeded to 
 the empii-e and reigned seven winters. And in their days Hengest and 
 Horsa, invited by Wyrtgeom, king of the Britons, sought Britain, on 
 the shore wliich is named Ypwines fleot; first in support of the Bri- 
 tons, but afterwards they fought against them. 
 
 An. cccc.LXXiii. In this year Hengest and'jEsc fought against the 
 Welsh and took countless booty ; and the Welsh fled from the Angles 
 as fire. 
 
 An. D.ix. In this year St. Benedict the abbot, father of all monks, 
 went to heaven. 
 
 An. DC.xvi. In this year ^thelberht, king of the Kentish people, 
 died ; he reigned lvi winters ; and Eadbald, his son, succeeded to the 
 kingdom, who contemned his baptism and lived in heathen manner, so 
 that he had his father's relict to wife. Then Laurentius, who was 
 archbishop of Kent, was minded that he would go south over sea and 
 forsake all. But by night the Apostle Peter came to him, and severely 
 scourged him, because he would so forsake God's flock ; and bade him 
 to go to the king and preach to him the true faith; and he did so and 
 the king was converted, and was baptized. In this king's day, Lau- 
 rentius, who was in Kent after Augustine, died on the ivth day of the 
 nones of February, and was buried beside Augustine. After him Mel- 
 litus succeeded to the Archbishopric, who had been bishop of London. 
 And within five years after, Mellitus died. Then after him Justus 
 succeeded to the archbishopric, who had been bishop of Eochester, and 
 hallowed Eomamis bishop thereto. 
 
 An. DC.LXXI. In this year was the great destruction of birds. 
 
 An. DCC.xciil. In this year dire forwarnings came over the land of 
 the Northumbrians, and miserably terrified the people: there were 
 excessive whirlwinds and lightnings, and fiery dragons were seen flying 
 in the air. A great famine soon followed these tokens; and a little 
 after that, in the same year, on the vith of the Ides of January, the 
 havoc of heathen men miserably destroyed God's church at Lindis- 
 farne, through rapine and slaughter. And Sicga died on the vinth of 
 the kal. of March.* 
 
 Sometimes the events of a year, especially in the later parts 
 • I adopt Thorpe's translation in the Rer. Brit. Med. Aev. Scriptores. 
 
Lect. IIL ANGLO-SAXON LIFE 105 
 
 of the chronicle, are extended over a page or two, hut, in these 
 cases, we have generally a mere accumulation of facts as barren 
 and as insignificant as thc^se I have cited, or, perhaps, an ac- 
 count of the foundation or endowment of a monastery, the 
 institution of a bishop or the relations between the English 
 chvirch and the see of Eome. Ot course, in all this, there .3 
 occasionally a fact which gives us a faint glimpse of the actual 
 life of the English man and woman, as for example the nar- 
 rative of the assassination of King Cynewulf in 755 (properly 
 784), and there are, here and there, notices of unusual astro- 
 nomical and meteorological phenomena ; but taking the chro- 
 nicle as a whole, I know not where else to find a series of annals 
 •which is so barren of all human interest, and for all purposes 
 of real history so worthless. And yet Ingram, the editor of the 
 sefcond edition of this work, declares in his preface that 'philo- 
 Bophically considered, this ancient record is the second great 
 phenomenon in the history of mankind,' the first place being 
 generously awarded to ' the sacred annals of the Jews.' After 
 such commendation upon a work so destitute of merit and of 
 value, we must admit that the Danish critic spoke in terms of 
 great moderation when he aSirmed that, as bompared with the 
 Heimskringla of the Icelander Snorri Sturluson, the history of 
 Herodotus was the work of a bungler, and that of John Miiller 
 no better than a first essay. 
 
 From the want of historical talent among the Anglo-Saxons, 
 we know little of their social life, and of the practical working 
 of their institutions ; but their literature, and especially their 
 legislation, are those of a people by no means advanced in social 
 culture, and their art seems to have always remained at a 
 very humble level.* The specific causes of their decay we are 
 
 * Anglo-Saxon writers ascribe to their countrymen much sldll in some of the 
 minor arts, especially those subservient to the material pomp of the Eomish 
 ■worship ; but the surviving specimens of their handywork do not give by any 
 means an exalted impression of their abilities in this respect. It is disputed 
 whether any remains of Anglo-Saxon arbhitecture stiU exist, and the testimony ia 
 strong to show that their churches and other pubKc as well as private buildings 
 
106 LANGUAGES INrLBCTED AND UNINFLECTED Lect. III. 
 
 unable to assign, but it is evident tbat at the time of the Con- 
 quest, the people and their literature were in a state of languish- 
 ing depression, which was enlivened and cheered by no symptom 
 of returning life aud vigour. 
 
 The Norman Conquest did not cause, it only hastened, the 
 downfall of the Saxon commonwealth, and by infusing the ele- 
 ments of a new life into an exhausted race, it restored its organs 
 once more to healthy action and thus rescued it from sinking 
 into the state of utter barbarism to which it was rapidly tending. 
 
 In order more clearly to exhibit the relations between the old 
 and the new features of the speech of England, and to explain the 
 process of transition from that which was to that which is, it 
 will be necessary to devote a few words to a general account of 
 the grammatical structure of Anglo-Saxon. 
 
 Of languages considered as grammatical individuals, there 
 are, theoretically, two great classes ; (a), those in which the 
 syntactical relations of words are determined by coincidence or 
 correspondence of form, the forms being varied according to 
 number, person, case, mood, tense, gender, degree of com- 
 parison and other conditions, as for example, when by adding 
 an s to the indeterminate or stem form of the verb give, we 
 make it an indicative present third person singular, gives; and 
 {b), those where these relations are indicated by position, auxili- 
 aries and particles, the words themselves remaining unvaried, 
 as when we make the same verb, give, a future by placing the 
 auxiliary will before it. Practically, however, there are few, 
 if any, speeches in which either of these syntactical systems is 
 fully carried out, and the two are almost everywhere more or 
 less intermixed. All assignments of languages, therefore, to 
 either class, must be considered only as approximate and com- 
 parative statements of the fact. 
 
 were at best humMe structures. Of all tte works of man's Bands, architectare is 
 tlie best test of the artistic capacity of a people, aud we may be sure that those 
 who have never raised a worthy chiircU or temple have never gone beyond medio* 
 crity in the inferior arte. 
 
liDCT. HI. ANGLO-SAXON GEAMMAE 107 
 
 The Anglo-Saxon, partly, no doubt, in consequence of its 
 composite structure, partakes largely of the characteristics of 
 both classes ; but, as compared with modern English, its syntax 
 may be considered as inflectional, and in a considerable degree 
 independent of position, the sense being often equally une- 
 quivocal, whether the words of a period are arranged in one 
 order or another. The inflections of the verb were more precise 
 in the indication of nimiber, and, though in a less degree, of 
 person than of time or condition ; still they were not sufficiently 
 so to allow of the omission of the nominative pronoun. Aux- 
 iliary verbs were used much as in modern English for the 
 expression of accidents, yet they were employed with greater 
 reserve, and we can consequently, by means of auxiliaries, 
 express in English a greater variety of conditions and qualifica- 
 tions of the act or state indicated by the verb than the Anglo- 
 Saxons were able to do. It is singular that though there 
 existed a simple as well as compound past tenses, there was no 
 mode of expressing the future of verbs by either inflection or 
 auxiliaries, and the Saxon could only say, I give to-day, I give 
 to-morrow, not I shall or will give to-morrow. This was un- 
 doubtedly a defect, and we have improved upon the Anglo- 
 Saxon syntax by developing future auxiliaries out of the inde- 
 pendent verbs shall and will, the former of which originally 
 expressed duty or necessity, the latter intention or desire, with- 
 out reference to time. 
 
 The want of the Saxon verbal inflections for number and 
 person can hardly be considered an imperfection in the English 
 language; for inflection though it may reduce the number of 
 words, gives no greater precision, but on the contrary, less force 
 of expression in these respects than may be obtained by the 
 use of auxiliaries, pronouns, and other determinatives.* In 
 
 ♦ The employment of the nominatiTe pronoun was felt by the Latins thom- 
 eelres to strengthen the force of expression, and therefore, though the distinction 
 of persons is rery marked in the inflections of the Latin verb, they often made it 
 more emphatic by introducing the pronoim, as we do by re-duplicating it, thougu 
 in another form. Thus the Roman would say, not simply vidi, (/) saw, but ego 
 Tidi, or eTon egomet vidi, in cases where we should say, / saw (it) mysc/f. 
 
108 ANGLO-SAXON GEAMMAK Lect. Ill 
 
 syntaxes wtere the pronoun is always expressed, as it is in 
 Anglo-Saxon and English except in the imperative, the distinct 
 tion of number and person is wholly superfluous. Thus, where 
 a foreigner says, in his broken English, he give, instead of he 
 gives, we understand him perfectly. The omission of the s, 
 the sign of the singular number and third person, occasions no 
 embarrassment, and it would be no detriment to English syntaS 
 if we ourselves were to omit it altogether. But in Latin and 
 Italian, where the pronoun is very often omitted, a mistake in 
 the characteristic ending confounds the listener. 
 
 So the limitation of particular past or future inflections, or 
 even auxiliary combinations, to specific portions of time, is a 
 source of constant embarrassment in the use of words, without 
 any corresponding logical or rhetorical benefit. Thus the French 
 rule, strict conformity to which requires us to say: — elle 
 chanta hier au lever du soleil, she sang yesterday at 
 sunrise, but, elle a chante ce matin au lever du soleil, 
 she has sung this morning at sunrise, is a blemish in the 
 syntax, not an advantage. In these and other like phrases, the 
 time is really fixed, not by the form of the verb, but by the 
 words yesterday and this morning, and the distinction between 
 the tenses has, in their present use, no solid foundation ; whereas 
 in English the difference between the preterite and the com- 
 pound, he sang, and he has sung, is a logical one. The conse- 
 quence is that in French practice, the grammatical distinction 
 has been found too subtle to be observed, and the compound is 
 very frequently employed when the preterite should be. 
 
 Another difference between Anglo-Saxon and English is, that 
 the latter has nearly got rid of the perplexing and unprofitable 
 distinction of grammatical gender. In Anglo-Saxon, as in 
 Greek, Latin and Grerman, nouns have three genders, and these 
 do not depend upon sex, even in the case of organised beings 
 capable of being thus distinguished. This confusion is, how- 
 ever, not carried so far in Anglo-Saxon as in German, where 
 Frauenzimmer, woman, is neuter, and Mannsperson, a 
 
Lect. III. GRAMMATICAL GENDER 109 
 
 male person, is feminine, or as in Swedish, where menniskja, 
 man in the abstract, is feminine ; but still the Saxon mseden, 
 our modern viaiden, is, like the G-erman corresponding mad- 
 chen, a neuter, and in the case of inanimate objects, to which 
 genders are conventionally ascribed, they are applied in a very 
 different way from our own. Thus in Anglo-Saxon, as also in 
 Icelandic, the word for moon, mona, is masculine, that for 
 sun, sunne, feminine.* 
 
 It may be remarked, in passing, that the theory of gram- 
 matical gender has not been much attended to by most phi- 
 lologists, and, so far as I am aware, has not been satisfactorily 
 discussed by any. The distinction of gender, however arbi- 
 trarily it may be applied — and there ai-e few languages where 
 it is not much more so than in English — seems to be more 
 tenaciously and constantly adhered to than any other gram- 
 matical peculiarity. In Grerman and French, where the genders 
 appear to be almost wholly conventional, mistakes in gender 
 are rarer than any other error in speech, and in all languages 
 with grammatical gender, the blunders of foreigners in this 
 respect are more ludicrous to a native ear than any others what- 
 ever, even when they occur in pronouns or in the names of 
 manimate objects. We cannot without a smile hear a French- 
 
 * In German, tlie diminutiTes are neuter, without regard to sex. Vater 
 and Mutter, Bruder and Schwester, father, mother, brother and sister, lose 
 their sexuality and become neuter in taking the affectionate or coaxing forms, 
 Vaterchen, Miitterchen, Bruderlein, Sehwesterlein. So far is this 
 carried that the distinctive designations of sex in the lower animals, Manncheu 
 and Weibehen, male and female, are grammatically neuter, and when the heroine 
 of a popular tale has a pet diminutive name, as Mariechen, the neuter pronoun 
 es, it, is used instead of the feminine, in speaking of her. In Italian, the dimi- 
 nutive of feminine nouns is often masculine, which here represents the Latin 
 neuter, that gender not being recognised in Italian grammar, and latavola, the 
 table, may have il tavolino, the little table, for its diminutive. 
 
 In the young of animals, the general external form marks the distinction of sex 
 mnch less plainly than in the adult. This is doubtless the reason why the neuter 
 pronoun it is so commonly applied to infants and other young creatures in 
 English, and it may be from analogy with this fact that the diminutives I have 
 mentioned have been made neuter. There are many reasons, however, for be- 
 lieving that grammatical gender was originally wholly independent of sex. 
 
110 GRAMMATICAL GENDER LecT. III. 
 
 man speak of a woman as he, or read the concluding sentence 
 of the preface to the Portuguese Guide of Fonseca and Caroline, 
 in which the authors, after expressing the hope that their book 
 may secure acceptance with studious persons, add : ' and espe- 
 cially of youth, at which we dedicate him particularly.'* But 
 to us, who in general treat inanimate obiects as without gender, 
 it is hard to see why it should provoke the mirth of a French- 
 man, when a foreigner, in speaking French, makes the noun 
 t a b 1 e a masculine instead of a feminine. 
 
 The Anglo-Saxon adjectives also had three genders, though 
 these were by no means accurately or uniformly discriminated, 
 and they had that farther inconvenience, which beginners find 
 such a stumbling-block in German grammar, of distinct de- 
 finite and indefinite forms ■ — a subtlety which answers no pur- 
 pose but to embarrass and confound. The adjectives were 
 compared by inflection, and both adjective and noun had several 
 inflections for case, but these were not so well discriminated as 
 to add essentially to precision of expression ; and I do not know 
 that English syntax is in any respect more equivocal or am- 
 biguous for the want of them. 
 
 Upon the whole, I am inclined to think that while our pre- 
 sent syntax is in many respects more direct, precise and simple 
 than the ancient, the Anglo-Saxon grammar had no advantages 
 over the modern English but these : first, greater liberty in the 
 arrangement of words in the period, which is an important 
 rhetorical convenience, both with respect to force of expression 
 and to melodious sequence of sound ; and, second, a somewhat 
 greater abundance of rhymes, as well as variety of metrical feet, 
 which, in inflected languages, facilitate poetical composition and 
 relieve the ear from the perpetual recurrence of the same 
 
 * Novo Guia da Conrersa9ao, em Portuguez 6 Inglez. The Ne-w Guide of 
 the Conversation in Portugxiese and English, por Jos6 da Fonseca e Pedro Caro- 
 lino. Paris, 1855. 
 
 This is, I imagine, the most ridiculous collection of blunders anywhere to be 
 found in a single volume. 
 
Lect. III. ENGLISH GRAMMAR 111 
 
 pairs of rhyming words now become so wearisome in English 
 poetry.* 
 
 English grammar is now too settled, if not in its forms, at 
 least in its tendencies, to be likely to revive any of the obsolete 
 characteristics of Anglo-Saxon inflection, but we may possibly 
 restore, for poetical purposes, the old English infinitive and 
 plural verbal endings in en, as to loven for to love, they loven 
 for they love, which Spenser did not scruple freely to use, 
 though in his time they were quite obsolete in prose. Lan- 
 guage seldom goes back in its forms, though the re-animation 
 of seemingly dead words is common in all literatures. The 
 freedom of syntactical arrangement which was possessed by the 
 Anglo-Saxon is irrecoverably gone, and it is the only one of our 
 losses for which modern syntax gives us no equivalent. But 
 this was a rhetorical, not a logical advantage; for the usual 
 order of words in Anglo-Saxon did not conform to any natural 
 or so called logical succession, and therefore — though it might 
 make a period more effective, in a spoken harangue, by putting 
 the most stirring words in the most prominent positions, or 
 where, according to the national periodic intonation, the em- 
 phasis naturally falls — yet it did not make the grammatical 
 construction clearer, but, on the contrary, rather tended to 
 involve and obscure it.f 
 
 The principal philological gains to be expected from the 
 study of Anglo-Saxon are, a more thorough acquaintance with 
 English etymology and a better understanding of the radical lin- 
 guistic principles which are the foundation of the grammatical 
 structure of our mother tongue; and we sliall gain, as I have 
 already remarkea, a considerable adaition ot expressive native 
 words to the present vocabulary and a corresponding enrich- 
 ment of our literary diction. That the revival of words of the 
 Gothic stock will supplant or expel much of the Eomance por- 
 tion of our modern English is neither to be expected nor de- 
 
 ♦ See First Series, Lectures XXIII. and XXIV, 
 t See Fiist Scries, Lecture XVL, pp. 352, 358. 
 
112 REVIVAL OP ANaLO-SAXON WOEDS Lect. HI. 
 
 sired. Social life in our time has become too many-sided, it 
 appropriates too much of the new and foreign, and resuscitates 
 too much of the departed and the dormant, to be content with 
 anything short of the utmost largeness of expression. Images, 
 if not ideas, are multiplying more rapidly than appropriate 
 names for them, and our vocabulary will continue to extend as 
 long as our culture advances. 
 
 The view I have taken of Anglo-Saxon grammar is extremely 
 general, it would be nearer the truth to say, superficial, but 
 anything of minuteness and fulness would be inconsistent with 
 oral exhibition, and would, moreover, consume such an amount 
 of time that too little would be left for the discussion of points 
 of more immediate interest. A comparison of a few periods 
 from the narrative of Ohther in King Alfred's Orosius, and from 
 the preface to Alfred's Boethius, with English translations, 
 will serve better than more of formal detail, to illustrate the 
 most important differences between the two languages * ; and in 
 future lectures I shall endeavour to convey a general notion of 
 the gradual processes of linguistic change, by presenting a 
 psalm and a chapter of the Anglo-Saxon Gospels with a series 
 of versions of the same in the successive stages of English. Be- 
 fore proceeding to the comparative analysis, it is necessary to 
 present a few paradigms of the principal parts of speech iu 
 Anglo-Saxon ; the other grammatical peculiarities of the lan- 
 guage may be gradually brought out as we advance in the de- 
 composition and construction of sentences.! 
 
 * See Illustration IV., at end of this I/ectiire. 
 t See lUustxation HI., at end of this Lecture. 
 
NOTES AM) ILLirSTEATIONa 
 
 I. (p. 95.) 
 
 ANGLO-SAXOIf POTTER OF DEEITATION AND DEVELOPMEHT OF 
 KADICAL SIGNIi'ICATION OF ■WOBDS. 
 
 From Turner's History of tlie Anglo-Saxons, Appendix L 
 
 Ancient Noun: 
 
 hyge or hige, mind or thought. 
 
 Secondary meaning: — care, diligence, study, 
 hoga, care, 
 hogu, care, industry, elFort. 
 
 A^ectives, being the nonn so applied: 
 hige, dUigent, studious, attentiye. 
 hoga, prudent, solicitous. 
 
 Verbs from the noun : ^ - 
 
 hogian, to meditate, ^to_stgdj, to think, to be wise; to be' 
 anxious : and h ence, toj;roan.* 
 
 , ^° ' I to study, to be solicitous, to endeayour. 
 iyggan, J •" 
 
 hicgan, ) to study, to explore, to seek vehemently, to en- 
 
 hycgan, j deavour, to struggle. 
 
 Secondary noun derived from the verb : 
 
 hogung, care, effort, endeavour. 
 Secondary nouns compounded of the ancient noun and anotiher: 
 
 higecraeft, acuteness of mind. 
 
 higeleast, negligence, carelessness. 
 
 higesorga, anxieties, mental griefi 
 
 hogascip, I ^^g^^g, 
 
 hogoscip, j ^ 
 
 hy gel east, folly, madness, scurrility. 
 
 hygesceaft, the mind or thought. 
 
 I 
 
114 NOTES AND IIJ.TJSTEATIONS Lect. IIL 
 
 Adjectives composed of the ancient noun and a meaning word: 
 hygelease, void of mind, foolish. 
 
 ,. ^' I magnanimous, excellent in mind. 
 
 ^ i' ' J. \ prudent, 
 
 hogoieart, J '^ 
 
 hogfull, anxious, full of care, 
 hige frod, wise, prudent in mind, 
 hige leas, negligent, incurious, 
 hige Strang, strong in mind, 
 hige thancle, cautious, provident, thoughtfiiL 
 Adverbs from the adjective: 
 
 higeleaslice, negligently, incuriously, 
 hogfull lice, anxiously. 
 Ancient Nodn : . -, 
 
 Mod, the mind; also, passion, irritability. 
 
 Verb: 
 
 median, 
 
 modigan, 
 
 modgian. 
 
 Adjectives composed of the noun and another word or syllable: 
 mod eg, ] irritable, 
 mo dig, J angry, proud, 
 modful, full of mind, irritable.' 
 modga, elated, proud, distinguished, 
 modhwata, fervid in mind, 
 modilic, magnanimous. 
 mod leas, weak-minded, pusillanimous, 
 mod stathol, firm-minded, 
 modthwer, patient in mind, meek, mild 
 
 Secondary nouns composed of the ancient noun and some other : 
 mod gethanc, thoughts of the mind, council. 
 m.od gethoht, strength of mind, reasoning, 
 mod gewinne, conflicts of mind. 
 
 modes mynla, the affections of the mind, the inclinations, 
 modhete, heat of mind, anger, 
 modleaste, folly, pusillanimity, slothfuhiess. 
 modnesse, pride. 
 
 modsefa, the intellect, sensation, intelligence, 
 mod sorg, grief of mind. 
 
 to be high-minded, 
 to rage, 
 to swell. 
 
Lect. III. NOTES AND IXLtrSTRATIONS 115 
 
 Secondaiy nouns, of later formation, composed of an adjective and 
 another noun : 
 
 modignesse, ) 
 
 modinesse, | moo^mess, prid^, ammosity. 
 
 mod seocnesse, sickness of mind. 
 
 mod statliolnysse, firmness of mind, fortitude. 
 
 mod sumnesse, concord. 
 
 mod thwernesse, patience, meekness. 
 
 Adverb formed from the adjective : 
 modiglice, proudly, angrily. 
 
 Ancient Nodn: 
 
 Wit, ) 
 
 C pwit I *^® mind, genius, intellect, sense. 
 
 Secondary meaning ; — wisdom, prudence. 
 
 Noun applied as an adjective: 
 
 .^'\ wise, skilful, 
 wite, J ' 
 
 gewita, conscious; hence, a witness. 
 
 Verb formed from the noun : 
 
 wit an, to know, to perceive, 
 gewitan, to understand, 
 witegian, to prophesy. 
 
 Adjectives composed of the ancient noun, and an additional syllable 
 or word : 
 
 wittig, wise, skilled, ingenious, prudent, 
 ge-witig, knowing, 
 ge-witleas, ignorant, foolish, 
 ge-wittig, intelligent, conscious, 
 ge-witseoc, ill in mind, demoniac, 
 witol, wittol, wise, knowing. 
 
 Secondary nouns formed of the ancient noun and another noon : 
 wite do m, the knowledge of judgment, prediction, 
 witega, a prophet, 
 witegung, prophecy, 
 wite saga, a prophet, 
 ge-witleast, folly, madneea. 
 ge-wit looa, the mind, 
 ge-witness, witness. 
 
 1 1 
 
116 NOTES AND ILLUSTEATIONS Lect. IH 
 
 ge-witscipe, witness. 
 
 ■wite-clofe, trifles. 
 
 witsord, tlie answer of the wise. 
 
 Nouns of more recent date, haying been formed out of the adjectives; 
 gewitseocness, insanity, 
 witigdom, knowledge, wisdom, prescience, 
 witolnesse, knowledge, wisdom. 
 
 Secondary adjective, formed upon the secondaiy noun: 
 witedomlic, prophetical. 
 
 Conjunctions ; 
 
 witedlice, ) . . j j. x. ^ . 
 
 • i J T r mdeed, lor, out, to-wit. 
 witodlice, j ) > J 
 
 Adverbs formed from participles and adjectives: 
 
 witendlice, ) , . , 
 
 wittiglice, 1 J^^°^i°Sl7- 
 
 Ancient Noun: 
 
 Ge-thanc, 
 Ge- 
 
 thanc, the will, 
 thonc, the thought. 
 
 Secondary meaning : an act of the will, or thants. 
 
 ^, .' \ a coimcil. 
 ge-thing,J 
 
 And from the consequence conferred from sitting at the conncU came 
 
 ge-thincth, honour, dignity. 
 Verbs formed from the noun : 
 
 thincan, 1 to think, to conceive, to feel, to reason, to con- 
 
 thencan, J sider. 
 
 ge-thencan, 1 ,, . , 
 
 ge-tnengcan, j 
 
 thancian ) . ., . 
 
 ^, . Mo thank, 
 ge-thanoian, ) 
 
 thingan, to address, to speak, to supplicate. 
 
 ge-thancmetan, to consider. 
 
 Adjectives formed from the ancient noun : 
 
 , ,' [ thoughtful, meditative, cautions. 
 
 inon col, f 
 
 ge-thancol, mindful. 
 
 , ' Y the mind, thought, opinion. 
 
Lect. IIL motes and ILLUSTEATIONS 117 
 
 tliancful, thankful, ingenious, content, 
 thancwnrth, grateful, 
 thancolmod, provident, wise. 
 Secondary nouns formed from the verb : 
 
 ge-thoht, I t^^nknig. thought, 
 ge-theaht, council, 
 ge-theahtere, councillor, 
 thancung, thanking, 
 thancmetuncg, deliberation. 
 Secondary verb from secondary noun { 
 ge-theahtian, to consult. 
 
 More recent noun from this verb : 
 
 ge-thea thing, council, consultation. 
 Another secondary verb : 
 
 ymbethencan, to think about any thing. 
 Adjective from secondary verb : 
 
 ge-theahtendlic, consulting. 
 Adverb from adjective : 
 
 thancwurthlice, gratefully. 
 
 It is evident that in this list, which might be considerably enlarged 
 from the same roots, different orthographical forms are occasionally 
 given as different words, and the proficient in Anglo-Saxon will see 
 that there is room for criticism in several other respects. But I choose 
 to print my author as I find him in the Philadelphia edition of 1841, 
 making no changes in the words, except, to lessen the chances of typo- 
 graphical mistake, the substitution of the modem English for the Saxon 
 character. There is always something to be learned from even the 
 errors of a scholar, — at least the lesson of humility, when we consider 
 our own liability to similar shortcomings. 
 
 II. (p. 97.) 
 
 MONOSYLLABIC CATALAN POETET. 
 
 The rarity of Gatalaa books in America justifies me, I think, in 
 planting a, part of this poem, which Ballot y Torres, who quotes it in 
 
118 MOTES AND ILLTJSTKATIONS Lect. III. 
 
 the preface to his G-ramatica y Apologia de la Llengua Cathalana, 
 thus introduces : 
 
 ' He ja dit tamb^ que ab dificultat se podra trobar altra llengua, que 
 sia mes breu y concisa que la nostra ; j ax6 es per la abundancia que 
 tfe de monossillabos, com es de veurer en las seguents quartetas, que 
 compongu6 lo niimen poetich de Don Ignasi Ferreras, doctor en medi- 
 
 QUABTETAS. 
 
 A Deu, un en tres, y al Fill fet horn. 
 
 Tin sol Deu, que tot ho pot, 
 Es lo qui es, un ser en tres : 
 No son tres D^us, un sol es 
 Lo Deu del eel, que es en tot. 
 
 Si ab est iin sol ser tres son, 
 C6m pot ser no mes que un D^u, 
 Qui fa lo foch y la neu, 
 La Hum, los eels y lo men ? 
 
 Un sol es ; puix i ser tres. 
 Fins 4 tres sers se han de dar ; 
 
 Y si es un sol ser, es clar 
 Que es un sol Deu y no mes. 
 
 Es ell lo qui ha fet lo llum, 
 Lo blanch, lo foch y lo net, 
 Per qui dels pits surt la Uet, 
 Per qui del foch ix lo fum, 
 
 Es del mon y dels eels rey, 
 Qui tot ho te dins sa ma : 
 Tot lo que vol eU, se fa. 
 Que tot quant vol es sa Uey. 
 
 Al torn sou son tots los sants, 
 
 Y prop d'ell son los chors nou, 
 
 Y en un sol chor la veu se on, 
 De sant, sant, sant, en. fins cants. 
 
 etc. etc. etc. 
 
tsCT. in. KOTES AMD ILLtrSTRATIOSa 119 
 
 ni. (p. 112.) 
 
 AHatO-SAXON INFLECTIONAL PAEADIGMS. 
 
 THE AUTICLE. 
 
 Most grammarians agree that the Anglo-Saxon had neither definite 
 nor indefinite article. Klipstein treats the declinable se, se6, fast, 
 and the indeclinable pe, both of ■which are generally considered pro- 
 perly pronouns, as definite articles, but he denies that tliere was an in- 
 definite. In the early stages of the language, for example in Beowulf, 
 the poems of Csedmon, and other ancient monuments, the nouns are 
 commonly construed, as in Latin, without a deteiminative; but at later 
 periods both se, seo, fset, and f e, are employed as definite articles. 
 But it is equally true that an, one, served as an indefinite, as in the 
 second of the passages quoted from Ohther, in Illustration TV., post, 
 an port, a harbour, and an mycel ea, a great river, Pauli's Alfired, 
 p. 248, &c. We must therefore either admit both articles or reject 
 both. 
 
 Se, seo, ]>set, is thus inflected : 
 
 ''■ar. 
 
 
 m. 
 
 
 / 
 
 n. 
 
 N. 
 
 se 
 
 
 se6 
 
 ysBt 
 
 G. 
 
 fffia 
 
 
 fae're 
 
 fees 
 
 D. 
 
 fam 
 
 
 fae're 
 
 yam 
 
 A. 
 
 fone 
 
 N, 
 G. 
 D. 
 A. 
 
 fa 
 
 Flural. 
 m.f.n. 
 
 yk 
 
 fAra 
 
 Tp&ax 
 
 fset. 
 
 NOUNS. 
 
 The following table shows tbe variable endings of the nouufl in the 
 different declensions. 
 
120 BOXES AND ILLtJSTEATIOSS Lect. Ill, 
 
 
 
 SIMPLE ORDER. 
 
 
 
 
 
 First Declension. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Bing%dar. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Maso. 
 
 Fem. 
 
 
 Neut. 
 
 Nom 
 
 , 
 
 -a 
 
 -e 
 
 
 -e 
 
 Gen. 
 
 
 -an 
 
 -an 
 
 
 -an 
 
 Dat. and 
 Abl. . ■ 
 
 -an 
 
 -an 
 
 
 -an 
 
 Ace. 
 
 
 -ap 
 
 -an 
 
 
 -e 
 
 
 
 Plural. 
 
 
 
 
 Nom. and Ace. 
 
 -an 
 
 
 
 
 Gen. 
 
 -ena 
 
 
 
 
 Dat. and Abl. 
 
 -um 
 
 
 
 
 
 COMPLEX OEDEB. 
 
 
 
 
 Second Declension. 
 
 Third Declension, 
 
 
 , 
 
 Singular. 
 
 
 
 Singular. 
 
 
 Maso. 
 
 Fem. 
 
 Neut. 
 
 Maso. 
 
 Fem. Neut. 
 
 Nom. 
 
 -(-e) 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 -u 
 
 -u -(-e) 
 
 Gen. 
 
 -es 
 
 -e 
 
 -es 
 
 -a 
 
 -e -es 
 
 Dat. and 
 Abl. 
 
 ■ -e 
 
 -e 
 
 -e 
 
 -a 
 
 -e -e 
 
 Ace. 
 
 -(e) 
 
 -e 
 
 Plural. 
 
 — 
 
 -u 
 
 -e -C-e) 
 
 Plural. 
 
 Nom. and ) 
 Ace. J 
 
 -a 
 
 — 
 
 -a 
 
 -a -u 
 
 Gen. 
 
 -a 
 
 -aC-ena) -a 
 
 -a 
 
 -a (-ena) -a 
 
 Dat. and 
 Abl. 
 
 j- -um 
 
 -iim 
 
 -um 
 
 -um -um -um 
 
 
 
 ADJECTIVES. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Indefinite endings 
 
 
 
 
 
 Singular. 
 
 
 
 Plural. 
 
 
 tn. 
 
 f. 
 
 n. 
 
 
 m.f.n. 
 
 N. 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 
 -e (-U) 
 
 G. 
 
 -ea 
 
 -re 
 
 -es 
 
 
 -ra 
 
 D. 
 
 -um 
 
 -re 
 
 -um 
 
 
 -um (-on, -an) 
 
 A. 
 
 -ne 
 
 -e 
 
 — 
 
 
 -«. 
 
Lscr. III. 
 
 KOTES AND ILLTJSTEATIOSS 
 
 121 
 
 
 
 Defim 
 
 ite endings. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Singular. 
 
 
 Plural. 
 
 
 
 m. 
 
 /. 
 
 n. 
 
 m.f. n. 
 
 
 N. 
 
 -a 
 
 -e 
 
 -e 
 
 -an 
 
 
 G. 
 
 -an 
 
 -an 
 
 -an 
 
 -ena 
 
 
 D. 
 
 -an 
 
 -an 
 
 -an 
 
 -nm (-on, 
 
 -an) 
 
 A. 
 
 -an 
 
 -an 
 
 -e 
 
 -an 
 
 
 C03IPAEIS0K. 
 The Comparative is formed from the Positive indefinite by annexing 
 -ra for the mascnline, -re for the feminine and neuter; the Superlative 
 from the same by adding -ost or -est for the indefinite, and -est a for 
 the masculine, -este for the feminine and neuter, definite form. 
 
 
 
 PEONOUNS. 
 
 
 
 
 First Person. 
 
 
 
 Singtilar. 
 
 
 Dual. 
 
 Flur<d. 
 
 N. 
 
 ic 
 
 
 wit 
 
 we 
 
 G. 
 
 nun 
 
 
 imcer 
 
 lire 
 
 D. 
 
 me 
 
 
 unc 
 
 us 
 
 A. 
 
 me 
 
 
 uno 
 
 us. 
 
 
 
 Second Person. 
 
 
 
 Singular, 
 
 
 Dual. 
 
 Plural. 
 
 N". 
 
 H 
 
 
 git 
 
 ge 
 
 G. 
 
 ]jin 
 
 
 incer 
 
 eower 
 
 D. 
 
 P^ 
 
 
 iuc 
 
 eow 
 
 A. 
 
 H 
 
 
 inc 
 
 eow. 
 
 
 
 Third Person. 
 
 
 
 Singular. 
 
 
 Plural. 
 
 
 m. 
 
 f. 
 
 n. 
 
 m.f.n. 
 
 N. 
 
 he 
 
 hei 
 
 hit 
 
 hf 
 
 G. 
 
 his 
 
 hire 
 
 his 
 
 hira 
 
 D. 
 
 him 
 
 hire 
 
 hiru 
 
 him 
 
 A. 
 
 hine 
 
 hi 
 
 hit 
 
 hi. 
 
 The Possessive Pronouns are the genitives of personal pronouns of 
 the first ana second persons, treated as nominative stem-forms, and de- 
 clined like the indefinite adjective. There is no possessive pronoun of 
 the third person, the genitive plural of the personal pronoun being used 
 instead. 
 
122 S0TE8 AND ILLi;STBATIO:NS Lect. III. 
 
 EELATIVE AND INTERROGATIVE PRONOUNS. 
 
 The parts of speech given under the head Article, declinable and 
 indeclinable, are generally used as Relative Prononns. The Interro- 
 gative is thus declined : 
 
 Bingular. 
 
 Tfl. J, 9lm 
 
 N. hw4 hwset 
 
 G. hwEes hwass 
 
 D. hwdm hwdm 
 
 A. hwone iwset. 
 
 YERBS. 
 
 There are several classes of verbs, both strong, or inflected by aug- 
 mentation, and weak, or inflected by letter-change. A few examplea 
 of each must suffice. 
 
 SIMPLE ORDER, OR FIRST CONJUGATION. 
 
 INDICATIVE MODE. 
 
 Present. 
 
 Class I. Class II. Class HL 
 Sing. ic luf-ige hyr-e tell-e 
 
 \A luf-ast hyr-st tel-st 
 
 he luf-a6 hyr-S tel-6 
 
 Plur. we, ge, hi luf-iaS h;^r-aS tell-aS 
 
 If, as in interrogative sentences, the pronoun follow the verb, the 
 plural is luf-ige, h^r-e, tell-e. 
 
 Imperfect. 
 
 Sing. ic luf-ode hyr-de teal-de 
 
 pii luf-odest h^r-dest teal-dest 
 
 he luf-ode hyr-de teal-de 
 
 Plur. we, ge, hi luf-odon hyr-don teal-don 
 
 SUBJUNCTIVE MODE. 
 
 Present. 
 
 Sing. luf-ige h^-e tell-e 
 
 Plur. luf-ion h^r-on tell-on. 
 
Lect. III. NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 123 
 
 Imperfiet. 
 
 Sing. luf-ode hyr-de teal-de 
 
 Plwr, luf-odon Lj^r-don teal-don. 
 
 IMPEEATrVE MODE. 
 
 Sing. luf-a hyr tel-e 
 
 p. J luf-iaS r h^r-aS f tell-a5 
 
 l luf-ige 1 hj^r-e I tell-e. 
 
 rNFINITIVE MODE. 
 
 Pres. luf-ian h3h--an tell-an 
 
 Gerund. to luf-igenne to hyr-enne t6 tell-anne 
 
 t luf-igende hyr-ende 
 
 tell-ende 
 
 Part. Pres 
 and Active 
 
 Jd'Pa^Sve}^^"-')^'^-''^ (ge-)hyr-ed (ge-) teal-d. 
 
 COMPLEX OEDEE, OE SECOND CONJUGATION. 
 
 INDICATIVE MODE. 
 
 Present. 
 
 Sing. 
 Plur. 
 
 Sing. 
 Plur. 
 
 Sing. 
 Plur. 
 
 { 
 
 Class L Class II. 
 
 Class nL 
 
 brece healde 
 
 drage 
 
 bricst hyltst 
 
 drsegst 
 
 bricS hylt (healt) 
 
 drsegtS^ 
 
 brecatS J healdaS 
 brece \ healde 
 
 f dragaS 
 I drage 
 
 Mperfeet. 
 
 
 brsBC he6Id 
 
 dr6h 
 
 brsBce he61de 
 
 dr6ge 
 
 brsec heold 
 
 dr6h 
 
 brajcon lie<51don 
 
 Ax6gaa. 
 
 StTBJUNCTIVE MODE. 
 
 
 Present. 
 
 
 breoe healde 
 
 drage 
 
 brecon healdon 
 
 dragon 
 
124 
 
 MOIES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Lect. IU^ 
 
 Sing. 
 Plur. 
 
 Sing. 
 Plur. 
 
 { 
 
 Imperfect. 
 
 bras'ce heolde droge 
 
 brse'con heoldon drogon. 
 
 IMPERATIVE MODE. 
 
 brec lieald drag 
 
 brecaS f liealdatS f dragaS 
 
 brece |_.healde \ drage. 
 
 INFINITIVE MODE. 
 
 heal dan 
 t6 healdanne 
 
 dragan 
 to draffanne 
 
 brecende healdende dragende 
 
 (ge-) brocen (ge-) bealden (ge-) dragen. 
 
 Pres. brecaii 
 
 Gerund. t6 brecanne 
 Part. Pres. "I 
 and Active J 
 Part. Past [ 
 and Passive j 
 
 The perfect and phiperfect tenses are formed, as in the cognate 
 Gothic languages and in modei-n English, by the verb h abb an, to 
 have, used as an auxiliary with the past or passive participle. 
 
 There is no true passive voice ; but, as in English, the place of the 
 passive is supplied by the past or passive participle, with the substan- 
 tive verb wesan, to be, as an auxiliary. 
 
 Wesan is thus conjugated : 
 
 INDICATIVE MODE. 
 
 Present ic eom 
 
 pd eart 
 
 he is, ys 
 Plur. yte, gc-t, hi synd, syndon 
 
 ■u 
 
 was 
 
 1 
 
 wsere 
 
 wees 
 
 . waeron 
 
 Present, a, 
 Plur. 
 
 Sing. 
 
 SUBJUNCTIVE MODE. 
 
 83^, slg, se6 Imperfect, s. wajre 
 
 sya Plur. 
 
 IMPEEATIVE. 
 
 wes Plur. 
 
 Gerund. i6 wesanne 
 
 Part. Pres. wesende 
 
 „ Past (ge-) wesea. 
 
 wajron. 
 
 wesa8 
 wese 
 
Lect. III. NOTES AKD ILLCSTEATIONS 125 
 
 The Anglo-Saxon rerb has no futftre tense in either mode ; the pre- 
 sent being employed instead of a future. The present of the defective 
 verb be6n, to be, however, has frequently a distinct future significa- 
 tion, and thus serves as a future to wesan. 
 
 Beon is thus conjugated : 
 
 Indk. pi-es. 1. be6 Subj. pres. be6 
 
 2. byst Flur. be6n 
 
 3. b}'^ Imper. beo 
 
 Plur. J I'^f Flur. P'°^ 
 
 I beo I beo 
 
 Infin. beon, Ger. t6 beonne, Part. pres. beonde. 
 
 rv. (p. 112.) 
 
 EXTRACTS FEOM OHTHER's NAEEATITE, AND FROM ALFRED'S 
 TRANSLATION OF BOETHIIIS. 
 
 This narrative, which is inti-oduced by King Alfred into his transla- 
 tion of Orosius, is interesting both as being, so far as style is concerned, 
 probably Alfi-ed's own work, and as containing the eai-liest authentic 
 information we possess concerning the geography and the people of the 
 countries it describes. In what language Ohther communicated ivith 
 the king does not appear, but it was probably in the Old-Northern 
 rather than in the Anglo-Saxon. We have reason to beheve that 
 the two speeches resembled each other sufEciently, in the ninth century, 
 to be mutually intelligible to those using them, and there is evidence 
 that the lays of the Northern bards who visited England were under- 
 stood by at least the Saxon nobles. 
 
 I give : 1. the Anglo-Saxon text, from the appendix to Pauli's Life 
 of Alfred. London, 1857 ; I have, however, to diminish the chances 
 of typographical error, used the common English type instead of the 
 Anglo-Saxon letter, so tar as the alphabets correspond; 2. an English 
 word-for-word vei-sion; 3. Thorpe's translation, in which, as will be 
 Been by the notes, I have corrected an obvious error; 4. A French 
 translation of Thorpe's version. 
 
 1. Fela spella him saedon fa Beormas, segfer ge 
 
 2. Many things him told the Beormas, both 
 
 3. The Beormas told him many particulars, both 
 
 4. Lea Beormas lui racontferent plusieurs ddtaUs, tant 
 
126 
 
 NOTES AND IIXTJSTEATI0N3 
 
 Lect. IIL 
 
 1. of hyra agenum lande. 
 
 2. of tlieir own land 
 3 of tlieir own land, 
 4. de leur propre pays, 
 
 1. ]>e ymb hy utan wserpn. 
 
 2. that around them about were; 
 
 3. lying around them; 
 
 4. qui les environnaient; 
 
 1 faes soSes wa;r. forffem he 
 
 2. (of-) the sooth was, for-that he 
 
 3. was true, because he 
 
 4. etait vrai, parce qu'il 
 
 and 
 and 
 que 
 
 ac 
 but 
 but 
 mais 
 
 of 
 
 of 
 of 
 des 
 
 he 
 he 
 he 
 
 ])8em 
 the 
 the other 
 autres 
 
 nyste 
 wist-not 
 knew not 
 
 lande 
 land 
 lands 
 pays 
 
 hwait 
 what 
 what 
 
 il ne savait pas ce qui 
 
 hit sylf ne geseah : 
 it self not saw. 
 did not see it himself, 
 ne le voyait pas lui-mlme. 
 
 1. Da Finnas him fuhte. and pa Beormas sprjecon 
 
 2. The Finns him thought, and the Beormas spoke 
 
 3. It seemed to him that the Finns and the Beormas spoke 
 
 4. II lui semblait que les Finois et les Beormas parlaient 
 
 1. neah an geSeode: 
 
 2. nigh one language. 
 
 3. nearly one language. 
 
 4. a peu prfes un seul langage. 
 
 SwiSost he for Syder. 
 Chiefliest he fared thither, 
 He went thither chiefly, 
 II y alia principalement, 
 
 1. to-eacan 
 
 2. besides 
 
 3. in addition 
 
 4. non-seiilement 
 
 fass landes sceawunge. 
 the land's seeing, 
 to seeing the country, 
 pour voir la contree. 
 
 for ))8em 
 for the 
 on account of the 
 mais a cause des 
 
 1. hors-hwailum, forfsem hi habbaS swytSe seBele ban on 
 
 2. horse-whales, for-that they have very noble bones in 
 
 3. walrusses, because they have very noble bones in 
 
 4. morses, parce qu'ils ont de belles defenses k 
 
 1. hyra toSum. fa te^ hy brohton sume 
 
 2. their teeth, these teeth they broiight some 
 
 3. their teeth, some of these teeth they brought 
 
 4. lours m&choires, defenses dont ils porterent quelques-imes 
 
 1. fsem cyninoge. and hyra hyd biS swyt5e god to 
 
 2. (to-) the king: and their hide is very good for 
 
 3. to the king: and their hides are very good for 
 
 4. au roi: et leuxs peaux sont bonnes pour lei 
 
Lect. III. HOTES AND ILLTJSTIUXIONS 127 
 
 1. scip-rapnm: Se hwasl biS micle lassa 
 
 2. ship-ropes. This whale is much less 
 8. sliip-ropes. This wliale is much less 
 
 4. cordages des navires. Cette baleine est heaucoup plus petite 
 
 1. Sonne oSre hwalas. ne biS he lengra fonne syfen 
 
 2. than other whales, not is he longer than seven 
 
 3. than other whales, it being not longer than seven 
 
 4. que les autres baleines, n'etant pas plus longue que sept 
 
 1. elna lang. ac on his agnum lande is se betsta 
 
 2. ells long; but in his own land is the best 
 
 3. ells ; but in his own country is the best 
 
 4. aunes ; mais dans son propre pays il y a la meilleure 
 
 1. hwael-huntaS, fa beoS eahta and feowertiges elna 
 
 2. whale-hunting, they are eight and forty ells 
 
 3. whale-hunting, there they are eight-and-forty eUs 
 
 4. chasse a la baleine, la elles ont quarante-huit aunes 
 
 1. lange. and fa maestan fiftiges elna lange. fara 
 
 2. long, and the largest fifty ells long ; (of-) these 
 
 3. long, and the largest fifty ells long; of these 
 
 4. de longueiu", et les plus grandes en ont cinquante; deceUes-ci 
 
 1. he ssede l>aet he syxa sum ofsloge syxtig on 
 
 2. he said that he (of-) six some slew sixty in 
 
 3. he said that he and five others slew sixty in 
 
 4. il dit que lui et cinq autres en avaient tu6 soixante en 
 
 1. twam dagum:' He was swy&e spedig man on faem 
 
 2. two days. He was (a) very wealthy man in the 
 
 3. two days. He was a very wealthy man in those 
 
 4. deux jours. C'^tait un homme tres-riche dans les 
 
 1. sehtum fe heora speda on beo'S. f is on 
 
 2. ownings that their wealth in is, that is in 
 
 3. possessions in which their wealth consists, that ia in 
 
 4. biens qui constituent leurs richesses, c'est-a-dire en 
 
 1. wild-deorum:' fie hjefde pa-gyt. ])a he fone cyningc sohte, 
 
 2. wild deer. He had yet, when he the king sought, 
 
 3. wild deer. He had at the time he came to the king, 
 
 4. ceris sauvages. II avait a I'^poque ou il vint vers le roi, 
 
128 NOTES AND ILLUSTEATiONS Lect. HI; 
 
 1. tamra deora imLebohtra syx hund :• Da deor lii hataS 
 
 2. (of-) tame deer tmsolJ six hrmdred. These deer they bight 
 
 3. six hundred unsold tamt: deer. These deer they call 
 
 ' 4. six cents cerfs apprivoises invendus. lis appellent ces cerfs 
 
 1. liranas. fara wasron syx sta;l-hranas. tSa 
 
 2. reins, (of-) them were six stale-reins, these 
 
 3. rein-deer, of which there were six "'decoy rein-deer, which 
 
 4. des rennes, parmi ceux-ci six ^talent des rennes privfe, qui 
 
 1. 
 
 beotS 
 
 s-vvySe dyre 
 
 mid 
 
 Finnum. 
 
 forSajm 
 
 2. 
 
 are 
 
 very dear 
 
 with 
 
 (the) Finns, 
 
 for-that 
 
 3. 
 
 are 
 
 very valtiable 
 
 amongst 
 
 the Fins, 
 
 because 
 
 4. 
 
 ont 
 
 une grande valeur 
 
 chez 
 
 les Finois, 
 
 parce que 
 
 1. by fod pa wildan hranas mid :• 
 
 2. they catch the wild reins with (them). 
 
 3. they catch the wild rein-deer with them. 
 
 4. par leur moyen ils prennent les rennes sauvages. 
 
 Notes, fela, indeclinable adj. obsolete in Engliab, but extant in So. 
 fell; — spella, ace. pi. from spell, tidings, information, &c., obsolete 
 in this sense, but extant in spell, a charm, the verb to spell, and the 
 last syllable of Gospel; — scedon, 3. p. pi. imp. indie, trom secgan, 
 seggan, swgan, to say, or tell; — ceg]Ter ge — ge, both — and, extant, 
 as an alternative only, in either, not as a conjimctive. A eg]>e7- is more 
 generally used in the sense of both than bd, bu, bdtwd {bd, both, 
 tied, two), buta, butv, butioa, which are the etymological equivalents 
 of both, or than beg en; — of, about, from, ovt of, but never sign of 
 possessive in Anglo-Saxon; — hijra, poss. pi. of the 8. p. of the personal 
 pronoun. See p. 121; — ]>mm, dat. for more common form ]>dm; — ymb, 
 Ger. um, about, around, obsolete; ac, — but, obsolete. Butan, bute, 
 exists in Anglo-Saxon as a conjunction, though seldom used. Alfred 
 employs it in Boethius, c. xxxiv. § 10. ; — nyste, 3. p. sing. imp. indio. 
 from nitan or nytan, not to hnow, a negative verb tbrmed by the 
 coalescence of the particle ne, not, and wit an, to know. The tendency 
 to coalescent formations was cai'ried fiuther in Early English than in 
 Anglo-Saxon. See First Series, Lecture XVUI ; — \ices so^es, soScs 
 is the genitive of the noun soti, and the phi'ase nearly corresponds to 
 the of a truth, of the scriptural dialect; — ]>uhte, 3. p. sing. imp. indie, 
 from }^ in can, to seem, here used impersonally with the dative him, 
 as, in the modem form, with the first person, me-thmight ; — ge'6eode, 
 
Lect. III. 
 
 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 129 
 
 language, obsolete; — s^riSost, superlative, from siyrSe, verij much. 
 The root is adj. stnifi, $wi/^, strong, powerful, great, wliich, ■with ita 
 twenty derivatives and coniponnds, is entirely obsolete. It is a singular 
 instance of the mixti^re of vocabularies in English, that so common and 
 so simple a native word should have been superseded by a borrowed 
 root. Very is the Latin verum, French vrai, and was at first used in 
 English as an adjective. Thus Chaucer, Wife of Bath's Tale : 
 
 Tliiirgh wliicli he may his vcrai/ frendes see ; 
 
 to-eacan, extant in ehe; — sceawunge, root extant insJiow, but with 
 an objective meaning; — hors-hroailum, Icel. rosmhvalr, walnis; — 
 fpSeZe, Ger. edel, noble, precious, obsolete in English; — mmstan, 
 nom. pi. superlative, definite, associate with my eel, large. Thorpe 
 translates fa mcestan. ' <Ae7nosJo/rtem,' which is a strange oversight, 
 for incest is properly significative of quantit}^, not of number; and be- 
 sides, this rendering is inconsistent with the context, because if the 
 genei-al length of the whole was forty-eight ells, ' the most of them ' 
 could not have been fifty ells long ; — speclig, prosperous. Our modern 
 verb to speed means, often, to prosper; — f, contraction for ]uet; — > 
 hataS, we use hight only in a passive sense, but hatan like the Ger. 
 heissen, meant both to call and to he called. 
 
 FEOM THE SAME. 
 
 1. Ohthere sffide f sio scir 
 
 2. Ohthere said that the shire 
 
 3. Ohthere said that the shire 
 
 4. Ohthere dit que le comte 
 
 hatte Halgoland fe he on 
 
 hight Halgoland that he in 
 
 in which he dwelt is called 
 
 oil ildemeurait s'appelle 
 
 He cwk5 f nan man ne bude be norSan 
 
 He said that no man not dwelt by north 
 
 He said that no one dwelt to the north 
 
 II dit que personne n'habitait plusaunord 
 
 Donne is an port on suSeweardum ])EBm 
 There is a port to southwards fof) that 
 
 3. of him. There is hkewise a port to the south of that 
 
 4. que lui. H y a aussi un port au sud de cette 
 
 J)one man hset Scyringes-heal. fy'Ser he cwasS 
 
 which men hight Scyringes-heal; thither, he said, 
 
 which is called Scyringes-heal; thither, he said, 
 
 qui est appele Scyringes-heal; ace port, dit-U, 
 
 1. bude'." 
 
 2. dwelt. 
 
 3. Halgoland 
 
 4. Halgoland, 
 
 1. him-.- 
 
 2. (of) him, 
 
 1. lande, 
 
 2. land, 
 
 3. land, 
 
 4. coutree. 
 
130 
 
 NOTES AND ILLTTSTEATIONS 
 
 Lect. III. 
 
 1. f .\\\si ne mihte geseglian on anum moncTe, gyf man 
 
 2. that one not miglit sail in one month, if one 
 
 3. no one could sail in a month, if he 
 
 4. perixinne ne pent naviguer dans un mois, s'il 
 
 1. on niht wicode, and Eelce dfege ha3fde ambyrne wind. 
 
 2. by night lay-by, and each day had fair wind; 
 
 3. landed at night, and every day had a fair wind; 
 
 4. abordait de nuit, et que chaque jour il eftt un vent favorable ; 
 
 1. and ealle fa hwile he sceal seglian be lande. and on Jjeet 
 
 2. and all the while he should sail by (the) land, and on the 
 
 3. and all the while he would sail along the land, and on the 
 
 4. et tout le temps il cotoyerait la terre, et au 
 
 1. steorboid him biS aerest Iraland. and fonne ]>a 
 
 2. stai-board (of ) him will-be erst Iraland, and then the 
 
 3. starboard will first be Iraland, and then the 
 
 4. tribord il y aura premierement Iraland, et ensuite les 
 
 1. igland J>e synd betux Iralande. and fissum lande'.' Donne 
 
 2. islands vhich ai-e betwixt Iraland and this land. Then 
 
 3. islands which are between Iraland and this land. Then 
 
 4. lies qui sent entre Iraland et cette contr^e. Ensuite 
 
 1. is j)is land o8 he cymS to Sciringes-heale, and 
 
 2. is this land till he cometh to Sciringes-heal, and 
 
 3. it is this land until he comes to Sciringes-heal, and 
 
 4. c'est cette contr^e ju.squ'k ce qu'il vienne k Sciringes-heal, et 
 
 1. ealne weg on fset bajcbord NorSwege. wiS suSan fone 
 
 2. all (the) way on the larboard, Norway. To south (of) 
 
 3. all the way on the larboard, Norway. To the south of 
 
 4. tout le trajet au babord, c'est la Norvege. Au sud de 
 
 1. Sciringes-heal fyl3 swySe my eel sse up in on fast 
 
 2. Sciringes-heal runs(a) very great sea up into the 
 
 3. Sciringes-heal a very great sea runs up into the 
 
 4. Sciringes-heal une vaste mer s'avance dans la 
 
 1. land, seo is bradre fonne senig man oferseon msege. 
 
 2. land, which is broader than any man over-see may, 
 
 3. land, which is broader than any one can see over, 
 
 4. terre, qui est si large que personne nepeutvoirderautreooti. 
 
Lect. III. 
 
 NOTES AND ILLUSTIIATIONS 
 
 131 
 
 1. and is Gotland on oiSre liealfe ongean. and siStSa Sillende*.' 
 
 2. and is Gotland on(tlie) other side against, and tlien Seeland. 
 
 3. and Jutland is opposite on the other side, and then Seeland. 
 
 4. et Jutland est vis-a- vis de I'autre cote, et aprfes Seelande. 
 
 1. Seo sae litS msenig hund mila up in on faet land. 
 
 2. This sea lieth many hundred miles up in that land. 
 
 3. This sea lies many miles up in that land. 
 
 4. Cette mer s'avance plusieurs milles dans ce pays. 
 
 1. and of Sciringes-heal he cwseS f he seglode on fif dagan 
 
 2. And from Sciringes-heal he said that he sailei in five days 
 
 3. And from Sciringes-heal he said that he sailed in five days 
 
 4. Et de Sciringes-heal il dit qu'il navigua en cinq jours 
 
 1. to fsem porte ]>e mon htet set-HseSum. se stent 
 
 2. to the port that men hight at-Heaths; this stands 
 
 3. to the port -which is called ^t-Hsethuia; which is 
 
 4. a ce port qui est appel^ jEt-Hathum; qui est 
 
 1. betuh Winedum and Seaxum. and Angle, and hyrS 
 
 2. betwixt (the) Wends and Saxons, and Angles, and belongs 
 
 3. between the Wends and Seaxons, and Angles, and belongs 
 
 4. situe entre lesWendes et les Saxons, etles Angles, etquiappartient 
 
 1. in on Dene. 
 
 2. to (the) Danes. 
 
 3. to Denmark. 
 
 4. au Danemarc. 
 
 Notes. It will be observed that the construction of this passage conforms 
 more nearly than thatof the former to the English idiom. I make no attempt 
 to solve the geographical difficulties it presents, but it is well to observe that 
 some critics suppose that I r aland should be read Isaland or Island, 
 Iceland, and that Gotland is not Jutland, as translated by Thorpe, 
 but the island of Go^Afawrf. bude is still extant in the noun booth, 
 and the last syllable of neighbour is from the same root; — civcbS, from 
 cweSan or civce'San, is the modern quoth; — an, one, is the origin of 
 the indefinite article a, an; — port is no doubt the Latin portus; 
 
 . wicode, imp. indie. fi:om wician. The root wic seems to have 
 
 meant originally an abiding or resting place, a station. The Northmen, 
 who depended principally on navigation for a livelihood, applied the 
 corresponding Old-Northern vile, exclusively, to a bay or harbour of 
 
 K 2 
 
13-2 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS Lect. IH. 
 
 refuge; the Anglo-Saxons, to any place of abode, as a town. This is 
 the probable origin of the termination —wich in Norwich, &c. In this 
 passage, wicode involves the notion of a bay, as a coaster could not lie- 
 by without entering a harbour; — amhyrne, obsolete in English; — 
 cere St, erst, superlative oi cer, ere; — bii, from beon, to be, has here 
 the force of a future ; — hoe chord, now superseded by larboard. 
 Eichardson gives no earlier authority for this latter word than Ealeigh. 
 Babord, evidently identical with bcechord, is found in most of the 
 European languages, but no satisfactory etymology has been suggested 
 for either word; — fe man host cet-Haiium. This use of the dative, 
 singular or plural, with a preposition, as the appellative of a to'^vn, is 
 very common in Icelandic. The fact is important, because it shows 
 that the derivation of the ending -um in the names of towns from Ger. 
 heim is, in many cases, erroneous. See First Series, Lecture II. p. 44, 
 and Appendix, 4. In the sagas, ait-Hcs^um is generally called 
 HeiSabaar or HeiSabyr, in which forms the name often occurs in 
 Knytlinga-Saga. In the present instance, the form is no doubt that 
 which the Norwegian Ohther gave it, but this construction, though 
 rare, appears not to be unprecedented in Anglo-Saxon, at least in the 
 singular. Kemble, Cod. Dip. Mv. Sax. No. 353, as quoted for another 
 piurpose in Haupt's Zeitschrift, XII. 282., gives this phrase from a gi-ant 
 of Athelstan to Wulfgar : ' quandam telluris particulam in loco quem 
 solicole at Hamme vocitant;' — /jj/rS, 3. p. indie, pres. sing, from 
 hyran, to hear, to obey, and hence, like the German gehoren, to 
 belong. 
 
 I have introduced a French translation made by a friend from 
 Thorpe's version, for the purpose of a comparative view of the Anglo- 
 Saxon, the English, and the French periodic conbtruction. I think the 
 latter might, without violence to the idiom of the language, have been 
 made to show a closer conformity to Thorpe's syntax, but, though it 
 was not executed with any such purpose, it will be apparent from a 
 ■comparison of the different texts that English syntax corresponds almost 
 as nearly with French as with Gothic precedent. I believe port and 
 mil are the only words of Latin extraction used by Alfred in these 
 extracts. Thorpe's translation, which studiously a\-oids non -Saxon 
 words, has thirteen derived from French and Latin. About ten of the 
 words employed by Alfred are now obsolete 
 
ICCT. IlL NOTES AND ILLUSTKATIONS 133 
 
 PEEFACE TO ALFRED'S TRANSLATION OF BOETHIUS. 
 
 From Cai-dale's edition, London, 1829 ; with (2) a literal version ; 
 and (3) Cardale's translation. 
 
 1. Aelfred Kuning wks wealhstod ?Sisse bee and 
 
 2. Alfred, king, was translator (of-) this book and 
 
 3. Alfi-ed, king, was translator of this book and 
 
 1. hie of bee Ledene on Englisc wende swa hio nu is gedon, 
 
 2. it from book-leden into English turned as it now is done. 
 
 3. turned it from book-latin into English as it now is done. 
 
 1. hwilum he sette word be worde. hwilum andgit of 
 
 2. Whiles he set word by word, whiles sense for 
 
 3. Sometimes he set word by word, sometimes meaning of 
 
 1. andgite. swa swa he hit fa sweotolost and andgitfullicost 
 
 2. sense, just as he it the most-clearly and intelligibly 
 
 3. meaning, as he the most plainly and most clearly 
 
 1. gereccan mihte. for faem mistlicum and manigfealdum weoruld 
 
 2. speak might, for the distracting and manifold world 
 
 3. could render it, for the various and manifold worldly 
 
 1. bisgum fe hine oft aegper ge on mode ge on lichoman 
 
 2. business which him oft both in mind and in body 
 
 3. occupations which often busied him both in mind and in body. 
 
 1. bisgodan. Da bisgu us sint swife earfof rime 
 
 2. busied. The businesses us are veiy hard (to) count 
 
 3. The occupations are to us very difficult to be numbered 
 
 1. fe on his dagum on )ia ricu becomon ]>e he 
 
 2. which in his days upon those realms came that he 
 
 3. which in his days came upon the kingdoms which he 
 
 1. underfangen haefde, and feah ]>& he fas boc 
 
 2. undertaken had, and yet when he this book 
 
 3. had undertaken, and nevertheless when he had learned 
 
 1. hsefde geleornode, and of Lsedene to Engliscum 
 
 2. had learned, and from Latin into English 
 
 3. this book, and turned it li-om Latin into the 
 
134 NOTES AND ILLUSTIIATIONS I«fCV lit 
 
 1. spelle gewende. fa geworhte he hi efter fc> leope. 
 
 2. speech turned, then wrought he it afterwards to (a) lay, 
 
 3. English language, he afterwards composed it in verse, 
 
 1. swa swa heo nu gedon is, and nu bit rti»rt for Gode*- 
 
 2. so as it now done is; and now prays and for God's 
 
 3. as it now is done. And he now prays and for God's 
 
 1. naman healsaf selcne fara Se fas Ijj:; rsedan lystfe. 
 
 2. name begs each (of-) them that this boot (to) read lists, 
 
 3. name implores every one of those whom it lists to read this book, 
 
 1. ^ he for hine gebidde and him ne wite gif he 
 
 2. that he for him pray and him not blame if he 
 
 3. that he would pray for him and not blame him if he 
 
 1. hit rihtlicor ongite fonne he mihte forfsemde selo mon 
 
 2. it rightlier understand than he might; for that each man 
 
 3. more rightly understand it than he could. Tor every man 
 
 1. sceal be his andgitea mseSe and 
 
 2. should by his understanding's measure and 
 
 3. must according to the measure of his understanding and 
 
 1. be his semettan sprecan Sset he sprecf. and 
 
 2. by his leisure, speak that he speaketh, and 
 
 3. according to his leisure, speak that which he speaks, and 
 
 1. don f f he def. 
 
 2. do that that he doeth. 
 
 3. do that which he does. 
 
 Notes, wealhstod, from wealh, a foreigner, stranger, Welshman, 
 stod ia apparently allied to standan, to stand, but its force in this com- 
 pound is not clear. We alhstod is wholly obsolete ; — bec-ledene, 
 led en is. used for Latin and for language. See First Series, Appendix, 
 1. Chaucer uses leden, in this latter sense, in the Squieres Tale : 
 
 Eight in hire haukes leden thus she sayde. 
 
 The phrase bec-leden belongs to a period when Anglo-Saxon was so 
 rarely, and Latin so universally employed for literary purposes, that the 
 latter was emphatically the language of books; — wende from wen dan, 
 to turn, obsolete in this sense, but surviving probably in wend, to go, 
 and went, associate imp. of ^o; — hwilum, dative pi. from hwil, hwile, 
 
liECT. III. NOTES AND ILLTJSTKATIONS 135 
 
 a while, time, space; — andgit, andgyt, or andget, mind, intelligence, 
 meaning, physical sense, wholly obsolete with its many derivatives and 
 compounds. The moral and intellectnal nomenclatiure of the Anglo- 
 Saxon had become almost wholly lost before Chaucer's time, as will be 
 shown in Lecture VIII. The substitution of Romance words for Gothic, 
 or Anglo-Saxon, extended also very tar in the vocabulary of common 
 material life. Of the English names of the five senses, two, taste and 
 touch, are Eomance. See also First Series, Lecture VI. p. 139. Bos- 
 worth, imder andget, quotes an Anglo-Saxon writer as saying: ])a 
 fif andgita fass lichoman sj-nd. gesiht, hlyst, spraec, stceng or 
 stenc, and hrcepung; the five senses of the body are sight, hearing, 
 {hlyst, Engl, listen), speech, smell, and touch. Bosworth does not ap- 
 pear to suspect any error in this passage, but it is possible that sprwc, 
 speech, is a misreading for sm(BC, taste, still extant in smack. But ^his 
 is by no means certain. In the Ancren Eiwle, about a.d. 1200, it is said : 
 |)e heorte wardeins beoS ]>e vif wittes — sihSe & herunge, spebunge and 
 smellunge, & eueriches limes uelunge ; and we wulleS speken of alle, 
 uor hwo se wit feos wel, he de6 Salomones heste. The wardens of the 
 heart are the Jive senses : sight and hearing, speaking and smell, and 
 every limVs feeling, and we will speak of them all ; for tohosoever keeps 
 these well, he doeth* Soloinon^s hest. Another manuscript reads smec- 
 chinge for spekunge, and the learned editor of the Camden Society's 
 edition of the Ancren Riwle thinks that, in the copy he printed from, 
 spekunge is an error for smekunge. But the author of the Ancrea 
 Eiwle, in discussing the temptations to which the indulgence of the 
 senses exposes us, dilates fii-st upon sight, then upon speech, thus pre- 
 facing his remarks on this subject : Spellunge & smecchunge beoS ine 
 muSe boSe, ase sihSe is i6en f eien : auh we schulen leten smecchunge 
 vort til we speken of ower mete. Talking and taste are both in the 
 mouth, as the sight is in the eyes : but we shall omit taste until we speak 
 of your meat. He then goes on to treat of hearing, then of sight, speech 
 and hearing, jointly, concluding this .section by saying : pis beoS nu fe 
 |)reo wittes f ich habben ispeken of. Speke we nu schortliche of ]ie two 
 o5re : fauh nis nout spellunge pe mu6es wit, ase smecchunge, pauh heo 
 beon beoSe ine muSe. These are now the three senses that I have spoken 
 of. Speak we now shortly of the other two ; though talking is not a 
 
 * Doeth. It is to be regretted that the false learning of grammarians has re- 
 jected the important distinction between doth, auxiliary, and doeth, independents 
 
 t Note the curious coalescences, ine for in the, sing.; iSen for in the, Q>!em) 
 plur. 
 
136 NOTES AND ILLUSTEATIONS Lect. III. 
 
 sense of the mouth as tasting is, though the?/ are both in the mouth. He 
 tHen proceeds to treat of the smell and of the touch or feeling, but makes 
 no mention of the taste, though in the Vlllth and concluding part, he 
 gives rules of abstinence. In the second paragraph of this part he says: 
 Of sihSe and of speche, and of the oSre wittes is inouh i-seid ; Of sight, 
 and of speech, and of the other senses enough has been said. Notwith- 
 standing the writer's protest, then, that ' talking is not a sense of the 
 mouth as tasting is,' yet he habitually treated speech as a sense. Of 
 the five names of the senses enumerated in the passage cited by Bos- 
 worth under andget, gesiht, sight is the only one now used to indi- 
 cate a sense, and hrcepung, from hrcepan, to touch, with all its cog- 
 nates, is lost altogether. 
 
 There was a strange confusion in the use of the names of the senses 
 in the Middle Ages. Chaucer's employment oi feel for smell is an 
 instance : 
 
 I was so nigh, I might fele 
 
 Of the bothum the swete odour. 
 
 liomaunt of the Eose, v. 1844. 
 
 Whan I so nigh me might /eZe 
 Of the bothum the swete odour. 
 
 S. li. Y. 3012. 
 
 In the original, the verb is sentir, Lat. sentire, to perceive; sentir 
 signifies to smell in modern French also ; — sioeotolost, adverb superl. 
 fi:om sweotol, plain, clear, which is obsolete, with all its progeny; 
 gereccan, recan, to speak, extant only in reckon. Between recan, 
 to speak, and reckon, to count, there is the same analogy as between the 
 two corresponding senses of the verb to tell; — for has here nearly the 
 meaning oi in sjnte of, notiuithstanding ; — mistlicum, dat. pi. from 
 mistlic or mislic, is not allied to mix, but is a compound from 7nis 
 and lie, mis-like, unlike, discordant ; — lichoman, body, obsolete ex- 
 cept in the un-English lyke- or like-wake, corpse-watch; — earfo'^, 
 obsolete; — rime, number, not the Graaco-Latin rhythmus, is the 
 true source of our rhyme. The resemblance between rime and Greek 
 apiOuui in both form and meaning deserves notice; — ricu, realm, Ger. 
 Eeich, allied to rich, but otherwise obsolete; — geivorhte x X to 
 leo]ie, turned into a lay or verse. This may, and probably does refer 
 to the metrical, or rather rhythmical portions of Boethius, which Alfred 
 translated into both prose and verse; but some have supposed that the 
 whole version is to be considered as a species of measured composition. 
 
Lect. III. NOTES AND ILLrSTEATIONS 137 
 
 It would be hard, however, to liken it to anything we call verse, unless 
 it be Eichter's Streckvers; — healsa]), infin. halsian, from hals, 
 the neck, to implore, to persuade by embracing. The root and all its de- 
 rivatives are now obsolete in English; — luite, blame, allied to twit; — 
 mai'6e, measure, extant in verb, to mete; — cemettan, leisure, allied to 
 empty. The Latin vacuus, the equivalent of empty, was used in the 
 sense of at leisure. 
 
 In this preface, Alfred uses no Latin word. Cardale's ti-anslation 
 has seventeen, of Latin and French derivation. Many of Alfred's most 
 important words, as will be seen by the above notes, have entirely dis- 
 appeared from the English vocabulary. 
 
LECTUEE IV. 
 
 SEMI-SAXON LITEKATUEE. 
 
 That which is sown is not quickened except it die. The 
 decay of an old literature is a necessary condition precedent for 
 the origination of a new mode of intellectual life, in any people 
 which has a prose and a poetry of its own. Had not the speech 
 of the Anglo-Saxons perished, and with it the forms of Uterary 
 effort which employed it as a medium, the broader-spreading 
 and more generous vine, which now refreshes the whole earth, 
 had never sprung from the regenerated root of that old stock. 
 
 The Norman Conquest gave the finishing stroke to the effete ' 
 commonwealth of which I spoke in a former lecture, and through 
 the intellectual winter and spring-time of three centuries, which 
 followed that event, the germ of a new and nobler nationality 
 lay buried in the soil, undergoing the slow and almost imper- 
 ceptible changes that were gradually fitting it for a vigorous 
 and prolific growth. 
 
 During this period, the Saxon, the Norman, the Danish 
 settler and the few remains of the Celt were slowly melting and 
 coalescing into a harmonized whole, if not into a homogeneous 
 mass, and thus a new nation, a new character, and a new social 
 and political influence in the world of letters, of art and of arms, 
 were gradually developed. 
 
 The immediate moral and intellectual results of the Conquest 
 were fully realized, and the character of English intellect, taste 
 and temper, so far at least as foreign action was concerned, was 
 completely formed in the reign of Edward III. — the era of 
 Langlande, and Chaucer, and Grower, and Wycliffe. The new 
 
I^CT- IV. CONTINENTAL INFLTJENCE 139 
 
 ingredients had been introduced and incorporated, and a unity 
 of feeling and spirit established, before those great writers com- 
 menced their labours. In short, English nationality had become 
 full-grown, and all that it remained for the Continent to do, in 
 its capacity of an informing influence, was to furnish new ad- 
 ditions to the stock of words at the command of the English 
 ■writer, and models of literary form to serve as leading-strings 
 for the first essays of an incipient literature. 
 
 In the history of Anglo-Norman England, we find compara- 
 tively few traces of that hostility of race which is so common 
 between a conquered and a conquering people, and I think that 
 recent English writers have exaggerated the reciprocal dislike 
 and repugnance of the Norman and the Anglo-Saxon. A jealousy, 
 indeed, existed — for the causes of it lie too deep in human 
 nature to be eradicated — and there are not wanting evidences 
 of its occasional manifestation ; but the civil and social discords 
 seem generally results of the conflicting interests and sympathies 
 of ranks and classes, rather than of a settled animosity between 
 the home-born and the comeling. 
 
 Down to the time of Edward III. the two languages, native 
 and stranger, if not the two peoples, existed side by side, each 
 forming a separate current in the common channel. Their 
 intermingling was very gradual. Norman-French, which was 
 the language of the schools, disturbed the inflections and the 
 articulation of English, while English contributed no inconsider- 
 able number of words to the vocabulary of Norman-French, 
 modified its grammar in some particulars*, and thus created the 
 dialect known as Anglo-Norman, which still survives in import- 
 ant literary remains, but is most familiarly known as, for a long 
 period, the forensic and judicial language of England. 
 
 The Normans found in England as many objects and insti- 
 tutions new to themselves as they brought with them and 
 
 * For instance, it overthrew the Norman-French law of the formation of the 
 plural in noons. 
 
140 ENGLISH OF THIBTEENTH CENTUET. Lect. IV. 
 
 imposed upon the English people. Hence, so long as the two 
 dialects co-existed as independent speeches, the Norman, in its 
 various applications and uses, borrowed as much as it gave; and 
 accordingly, down at least to the accession of Edward III. we 
 find in the French used in England, including the nomenclature 
 of law and government, quite as large a proportion of Saxon 
 words as contemporaneous English had borrowed from the 
 Korman. 
 
 The entire English vocabulary of the thirteenth century, as 
 far as it is known to us by its printed literature, consists, accord- 
 ing to Coleridge's Grlossarial Index, of about eight thousand 
 words. Of these, only about one thousand, or between twelve 
 and thirteen per cent., are of Latin and Eomance derivation. In 
 the actual usage of any single author, such words do not exceed 
 four or five per cent., and of this small proportion, some were 
 probably taken directly from Latin moral and theological lite- 
 rature, though in form they may have been accommodated to 
 Norman modes of derivation. The language thus far was sub- 
 stantially Anglo-Saxon, but modified in its periodic structure, 
 and stripped of a certain number of inflections, the loss of which 
 was compensated by newly developed auxiliaries, and by a more 
 liberal use of particles and determinatives. 
 
 Philologists have found it impossible to fix, on linguistic 
 grounds, a period when Anglo-Saxon can be said to have ceased 
 and English to have begun ; and this is one of the reasons why 
 some are disposed to deny that any such metamorphosis ever 
 took place, and to maintain the identity of the old speech and 
 the new. The change from the one to the other was so gradual, 
 that if we take any quarter or even half of a century, it is not 
 easy to point out any marked characteristic difference between 
 the general language of the beginning and the end of it, though 
 particular manuscripts of the same work, differing not very 
 much in date, sometimes exhibit dialects in very different states 
 of resolution and reconstruction. The difficulty of discriminating 
 the successive phases of the language by a chronological arrange- 
 
Lect. IV. STANDAED OF LANQUAGE 14] 
 
 ment is much increased by the fact, that although there are 
 numerous written monuments from every age of English history, 
 yet there is, in the series of printed vernacular writings, almost 
 a hiatus, which extends through a large part of the thirteenth 
 century, or in other words through one of the most important 
 eras of English philological revolution. Besides this, we are in 
 many oases wholly unable to distinguish with certainty, or even 
 with reasonable probability, dialectic or iadividual pecuUarities 
 from the landmarks of general change and progress ; for not- 
 withstanding the confidence with which critics assign particular 
 writings to particular localities, upon internal evidence alone, 
 we really know very little on the subject. In fact, in the pre- 
 sent linguistic school, British as well as Continental, hastily 
 generalized conclusions and positive assertion are so often sub- 
 stituted for sufficient documentary proof, that he, who studies 
 the early philology of modern Europe onty so far as it is ex- 
 hibited in grammars and dictionaries, and speculative essays, is 
 very frequent accumulating unsubstantial theories, instead of 
 acquiring definite truths which can be shown to have ever had 
 a real existence. 
 
 In ages, when a native literature has not yet been created, or 
 the structural forms of language established by the authorita- 
 tive example of great and generally circulated works of genius, 
 there can be no standard of diction or of grammar. Most writers 
 will be persons whose intellectual training has been acquired 
 through older literatures and foreign tongues. Their first efforts 
 will incline to be imitative, and they will follow alien models 
 not only in theme and treatment, but even in grammatical com- 
 position. Every author will aim to be a philological reformer, 
 and will adopt such system of orthography and of syntactical 
 form and arrangement as accidental circumstances, or his own 
 special tastes and habits of study, may have suggested to him. 
 Hence no safe conclusions as to the common dialect of an age 
 or country, at a period of linguistic transition, can be drawn 
 from a single example, or from the consistent usage of a single 
 
142 PEEIODS IN ENGLISH Lect. IV 
 
 writer. No historically probable theory of progress and change 
 can explain the remarkable grammatical differences between 
 the older and the not much later text of Layamon, or between 
 either of these and the nearly contemporaneous work of Ormin, 
 because the intervening period is entirely too short for such 
 revolutions to have been accomplished. And in like manner, 
 even after the language had assumed the general character 
 which now marks it, we find between the two texts of the Wy- 
 cliffite translations of the Bible, or rather between Hereford's 
 and Wycliffe's translation and the first recension of it, gram- 
 matical differences, which it would be extravagant to ascribe to 
 a general change in English syntax during the very few years 
 that are supposed to have elapsed between the execution of the 
 first version and the revision of it by Purvey. 
 
 Although the process of transformation from Anglo-Saxon to 
 English was too gradual and too obscure to admit of precise 
 chronological determination, yet subsequent epochs of change 
 in our vernacular, after it had once dropped the formal, or, to 
 speak more accurately, the inflectional peculiarities of Anglo- 
 Saxon grammar, are somewhat more distinctly marked, and it is 
 practicable to indicate its successive periods by tolerably well 
 characterised and easily recognisable tokens, though, as in the 
 history of other languages, the dates assumed as the beginning 
 and the end of those epochs are somewhat arbitrary. It is not, 
 however, that the later growth of English has actually been 
 more per saltum than at earlier periods, but because, from the ■ 
 increasing uniformity of the written dialect — a natural result 
 of the general circulation of the works of distinguished authors, ^ 
 and the consequent universal prevalence of the forms which 
 they had consecrated — and also from the much greater number 
 of literary monuments which are historically known to have 
 been produced in different parts of the island, we can trace the 
 history of the language, and follow all its movements with far 
 greater facility than through periods when contemporaneous 
 
Lect. IV. PETJIODS IN ENGLISH 143 
 
 writers differed more widely and the philological memorials are 
 fewer. 
 
 The London Philological Society, in its 'Proposal for the 
 publication of a New English Dictionary,' divides English, for 
 philological purposes, into three periods : the first, from its rise, 
 about 1250, to the Eeformation, of which the first printed 
 English translation of the New Testament, in 1526, may be 
 taken as the earliest monument ; the second, from the Eeform- 
 ation to and including the time of Milton, or from 1526 to 
 1674, the date of Milton's death; and the third, from Milton 
 to our own day. 
 
 These periods, I suppose, are fixed for lexicographical con- 
 venience in the collection of authorities, as I do not discover 
 any other sufBcient ground for the division. Neither is Craik's 
 distribution altogether satisfactory. The first, or Early English 
 period of that author extends from 1250 to 1350; his second, 
 or Middle English, from the latter date to 1530 ; and his third, 
 or Modern English, from the middle of the sixteenth century 
 to the present day.* This, however, seems an objectionable 
 division as to the second period, because it embraces, in one 
 group, writers so unlike in literary and philological character 
 as Langlande and Wyatt, Wycliffe and Sir Thomas More ; and 
 as to the last, because it overlooks the philological revolution 
 due to the introduction of printing, the more general diffosion 
 of classical literature, and the first impulse of the Eeformation, 
 and classes together writers who have so little in common as 
 Sir Philip Sidney and Walter Scott. I attacli very little im- 
 portance to these arbitrary divisions of the annals of our lan- 
 guage and literature, but having on a former occasion adopted 
 an arrangement not coinciding with either of these systems, I 
 shall, both for the sake of uniformity, and because I have found 
 it at once convenient and suited to my views of English philo- 
 logical history, substantially adhere to it in this course, f The 
 
 * Outlines of the History of the English Language. 
 t See First Series, Lecture L, p. 48. 
 
144 PEEIODS IN ENGLISH Lect. IV. 
 
 first period I woTild, with Craik, consider as extending from, 
 about the middle of the thirteenth to the middle of the four- 
 teenth century ; the second would terminate with the third 
 quarter of the sixteenth century ; the third would embrace all 
 subsequent phases of both the language and the literature 
 down to the time of Milton, with whom the second period of 
 the Philological Society concludes. The question of subsequent 
 division or subdivision is at present unimportant, because, for 
 reasons already given, I do not propose to carry down my 
 sketches later than to the age of Shakspeare, when I consider the 
 language as having reached what in the geography of great 
 rivers is called the lower course*, and as having become a flow- 
 ing sea capable of bearing to the ocean of time the mightiest 
 argosies, a mirror clear enough to reflect the changeful hues of 
 every sky, and give body and outline to the grandest forms 
 which the human imagination has ever conceived. 
 
 The literature of England, were it to be considered without 
 reference to the revolutions of its vehicle, might admit and per- 
 haps require a division into very different eras. Some of these 
 would commence with prominent and well-marked epochs of 
 sudden transition, while in others, the periods are separated by 
 an age of apparent intellectual inactivity, during which the 
 monuments are too few and too insignificant to enable us easily 
 to trace the course of those hidden influences, which were secretly 
 and silently training and costuming the dramatis personce for 
 a new and more triumphant entiy upon the stage of literature. 
 
 But we propose to consider the language and its literary pro- 
 ductivity as co-ordinate powers, reciprocally stimulating and in- 
 tensifying each other, and hence, so far as their history is not 
 concurrent, we must distinguish their respective chronological 
 
 * In German, TJnterlauf, or with some 'writers, Strom, is that lowest and 
 usually navigable part of the course of a river, where its motion is due less to the 
 inclination of its bed than to the momentum acquired by previous rapidity of flow; 
 and to the hydrostat'c pressure of the sviifter cuiTents from higher parts of its 
 valley. 
 
Lect. IV. 0EI6IN OF NATIONAL LITEEATURE 145 
 
 eras. I have already stated tta.t the English language attained 
 to a recognizable existence as a distinct individuality about the 
 middle of the thirteenth century. We must now fix a period 
 which is to be regarded as the birth-day of English literature. 
 
 ^^^len then can England be said to have first possessed a na- 
 tive and peculiar literature ? The mere existence of numerous 
 manuscripts, in the popular dialect, belonging to any given pe- 
 riod, does not prove the existence of a national literature at that 
 epoch. A national literature commences only when the genius 
 of the people expresses itself, through native authors, upon to- 
 pics of permanent interest, in the grammatical and rhetorical 
 forms best suited to the essential character of the vernacular, 
 and of those who speak it. It is under such circumstances only 
 that prose or poetry exerts a visible influence upon the speech, 
 the tastes or the opinions of a nation, only by concurrent action 
 and re-action that literature and associate life begin to stimulate 
 and modify each other. In order that such effects may be pro- 
 duced in a mixed people, the races which enter into the compo- 
 sition of the nation, and the dialects of those races, must have, 
 to a considerable extent, been harmonized and melted into one, 
 and the people and the speech, though ethnologically and histo- 
 rically derived from different and unallied sources, must have 
 become so far amalgamated as to excite a feeling of conscious 
 individuality of nature and community of interest in the popu- 
 lation, and of oneness of substance and structure in the tongue. 
 
 In a composite nation, such a union of races and of tongues 
 strange to each other, such a neutralization and, finally, assimi- 
 lation of antagonist elements, can only be the effect of a gradual 
 interfusion and a long commingling, or of some vis ah extra 
 which forces the reciprocally repellent particles into that near 
 contiguity when, as in the case of magnetic bodies, repulsion 
 ceases and attraction begins. 
 
 The English political and other occasional ballads and songs 
 of the thirteenth, the beginning of the fourteenth and probably 
 earlier centuries, do not constitute a literature, nor would they 
 
 L 
 
146 Ftr'SION OF NATIONS AND OF DIALECTS Lect. IV. 
 
 do SO, Tvere they ten times more numerous, because neither the 
 public to which they were addressed, nor the speech in which 
 they were penned, yet possessed any oneness of spirit or of 
 dialectic form, and because they were founded on events too 
 circumscribed in their action, and on interests too temporary in 
 their nature, to appeal to the sympathies of more than a single 
 class or province or generation. 
 
 These compositions were sometimes in Latin, sometimes in 
 Norman-French, and sometimes in dialects of Saxon-English, 
 which had lost all the power of poetic expression that character- 
 ized the ancient Anglican tongue, without having yet acquired 
 anything of the graces of diction and adaptation to versified 
 composition already developed in the neighbouring Eomance 
 languages ; and lastly, they were sometimes macaronic. They 
 cannot, therefore, be regarded as the expression of anything 
 which deserves to be called the national mind, though, indeed, 
 we trace in them, here and there, the germs which were soon to 
 be quickened to a strong and genial growth. 
 . The welding heat, which finally brought the constituents of 
 English nationality into a consistent and coherent mass, was 
 generated by the Continental wars of Edward III. The con- 
 nection between those constituents had been hitherto a political 
 aggregation, not a social \mion ; they had formed a group of 
 provinces and of races, not an entire and organized common- 
 wealth. Up to this period, the Latin as the official language of 
 the clergy, the Norman-French as that of the court, the nobility, 
 and the multitude of associates, retainers, dependents, and trades- 
 men whom the Norman Conquest had brought over to the 
 island, and the native English as the speech of the people of 
 Saxon descent, had co-existed without much clashing interfer- 
 ence, and without any powerfully active influence upon each 
 other ; and those who habitually spoke them, though apparently 
 not violently hostile races, were, nevertheless, in their associa- 
 tions and their interests, almost as distinct and unrelated as the 
 Ifinguages themselves. 
 
Lect. IV. ORIGIN OF LITEBATUKB 147 
 
 There was, then, neither a national Lspeech nor a national 
 spirit, and of course there was and could be no national litera- 
 ture, until the latter half of the fourteenth century. True, the 
 Ormulum, and the chronicles of Eobert of Gloucester, and 
 Robert of Brunne, voluminous works to be noticed hereafter, 
 as well as many minor productions in the native language, 
 existed earlier; but they were in no sense organic products of 
 English genius, or stamped with any of the peculiarities which 
 we now recognise as characteristic of the literature of England. 
 "We have no proof that any of these writings exerted much general 
 influence in the formation of the English character or the 
 English tongue, but they are important as evidences of the nature 
 and amount of changes which political, social, and commercial 
 causes, rather than higher intellectual impulses, had produced 
 in the language and the people. 
 
 In one aspect, then, the general subject of our course pro- 
 perly begins with the age of Langlande and WyclifFe and Gower 
 and Chaucer ; but we propose to make a special study of the 
 language, not merely as a passive medium of literary effort, 
 but as an informing element in the character of that effort ; and 
 hence we must preface our more formal literary discussions 
 with something more than a hasty glance at an era of blind 
 and obscure influences — a stage of that organic, involuntary, 
 and, so to speak, vegetal action by which the materials of our 
 maternal tongue were Eissimilated, and its members fashioned, 
 just as in animal physiology the powers of nature form the 
 body and its organs before the breath of conscious life is breathed 
 into them. 
 
 In investigating the origin of a literature and the relations 
 between it and the tongue which is its vehicle, it is a matter of 
 much interest to ascertain the causes which have determined 
 the character of the language in its earliest individualised form ; 
 and we can, not unfi-equentiy, detect the more general influences 
 and their mode of operation, as certainly in the speech itself as in 
 historical monuments. When, for example, we find, in foUow- 
 
 1. 2 
 
148 CHAEACTEE OF EAELT ENGLISH Eect, IVi 
 
 ing the history of a given tongue, an infusion of new words or 
 idioms of a particular linguistic character, we can generally 
 recognize the source from which they proceeded, with little 
 danger of mistake ; and the class of words and combinations 
 so borrowed will often furnish very satisfactory evidence as to 
 the historical or ethnological character of the influences which 
 have been operative in their introduction. If, for example, the 
 vocabulary of trade, and especially of navigation, be foreign in 
 its origin, there is a strong presumption that the people was not 
 originally a commercial one, but that it possessed or elaborated 
 natural products suited to the wants or the tastes of other 
 nations, who were more addicted to traffic and foreign inter- 
 course by sea or land — and that strangers have bestowed a 
 mercantile nomenclature upon those to whom they resorted for 
 purchase or exchange. If the dialect of war be of alien 
 parentage, it is nearly certain that the people has, at some 
 period of its existence, been reduced by conquest and subjected 
 to the sway of another race, or at least that it has learned, by 
 often repulsing foreign invasion, effectually to resist it. If the 
 phraseology of law and of religion be not of native growth, we 
 may be sure that the jurisprudence and the creed of the land 
 have been imposed upon it by immigrant legislators and 
 teachers. 
 
 In early Anglican linguistic and literary history, however, we 
 are not left to infer the nature of the causes of change from 
 their visible effects. The contemporaneous political and histo- 
 rical records and monuments — or rather the materials for the 
 construction of such — are so numerous and so full, that though 
 "we are left much in the dark with reference to the social and 
 domestic life of the Norman, and more especially the Saxon 
 population, and to many grammatical changes, yet the general 
 relations between the Anglo-Saxon people, the Romish mis- 
 sionaries who converted them to Christianity, the Northmen 
 who plundered and for a brief period ruled over them, and the 
 Norman-French who finally subdued them and gradually amal* 
 
Lect. IV. CAUSES which: rNFLTJENCED EARLY EA'aLISH 149 
 
 gamated witli them, are well understood ; and we can accord- 
 ingly see in what way, though not always to what precise extent, 
 each of these disturbing influences may have affected the speech 
 of England. 
 
 The difficulty of measuring and apportioning the relative 
 amount of effect produced by these different causes arises from 
 the fact, that although they may sometimes have neutralized 
 each other, they are frequently concurrent in their action, or 
 fall in with already existing tendencies inherent, as some hold, 
 in the Anglo-Saxon language, but more probably impressed 
 upon it by circumstances common to all the nations which have 
 participated in the influences of modern European civilization. 
 There are many cases in which it is quite impracticable to de- 
 termine to which of several possible causes a given effect is to 
 be ascribed. "With respect to these, we must content ourselves 
 with a balance of probabilities ; and as to those numerous phi- 
 lological data which can be historically connected with no known 
 older fact, a simple statement of the phenomena is, for the 
 present, better than the shrewdest guess at the rationale of them. 
 
 I shall have occaaion to illustrate the Dark Age of English 
 philological history, the thirteenth century, by more or less full 
 references to many of its most important relics, but the attention 
 of the student should be specially directed to the four most 
 conspicuous monuments which serve to mark the progress of 
 change from the Anglo-Saxon to the English. These are 
 Layamon's Chronicle of Brutus, the Ancren Eiwle, the Ormulum, 
 and Eobert of Gloucester's Chronicle. The dialect of the first 
 three of these is generally called Semi-Saxon; that of the last 
 Early-English, or simply, English. Excepting the Ancren 
 Eiwle, they are, unfortunately, all in verse. I say imfortunately, 
 because in tracing the history of the fluctuations of language, 
 prose writings are generally much more to be depended on than 
 poetry. The dialect of poetry is, for rhetorical reasons, always 
 more or less removed from the common speech, and the fetters 
 of rhythin, metre, alliteration, and rhyme inevitably affect both 
 
150 POETIC diction: Lect. it. 
 
 the choice of words and the employment of inflected forms.* 
 The conventional canons of verse, and the habitual istudies and 
 training of poetical writers, tend to beget in them a deference 
 to the authority of older models and an attachment to archaic 
 modes of expression. Hence it follows that the vocabulary of 
 poetry is usually in an earlier stage of development than that of 
 contemporaneous prose, and especially of contemporaneous ver- 
 nacular speech, and it is consequently rather behind than in 
 advance of the language of common life, and of ordinary written 
 communication. We cannot, therefore, suppose that either of 
 the works to which I refer presents a true picture of the language 
 in which Englishmen spoke and corresponded upon the moral 
 and material events and interests of their time, at the several 
 periods when they were written. 
 
 On the other hand, the diction of poetry is less subject to 
 accidental and temporary disturbances than that of prose ; ita 
 vocabulary and syntax usually conform more truly to the essen- 
 tial genius of the speech, and radical and abiding characteristics 
 of language are more faithfully exhibited by it than by the dia- 
 
 * Van Maerlant, A. D. 1235 — 1300, in his Lcven van Franciscus, quoted by 
 Bosworth, says; 
 
 Ende, omdat ic Tlaminc ben, 
 Met goeder herte biddic hen. 
 Die dit Dietsche sullen lesen, 
 Dat si myns genadicb wesen; 
 Ende lesen sire in somich woort, 
 Dat in her land es ongehoort. 
 Men moet om de rime soukea 
 MisseUke tonghe in bouken. 
 
 As translated by Bowring, Batav. Anthol. p. 25. 
 
 Por I am Flemysh, I you beseeho 
 Of youre eourtesye, al and eche, 
 That shal thys Doehe chaunce peruse; 
 Unto me nat youre grace refuse ; 
 And yf ye fynden any worde 
 In youre countrey that ys unherde, 
 Thynketh that derkys for her ryme 
 Taken an estrange worde sometyme. 
 Bosworth, Origin of the Germ, and Scand. Lang. p. 101. See First 
 Series, Lecture VIII., p. 176, and XVII., p. 372. 
 
Lf.CT. IV; rWELFTlI AND iniETEENTH CENTURIES 151 
 
 lect of other forms of composition, which are more affected by 
 the caprices or peculiarities of the individual, or by other con- 
 tingent causes. 
 
 We shall, then, not widely err if we consider these works as 
 examples, not indeed of the daily speech of their own times, 
 but as following, at a considerable interval, the general move- 
 ment of the English tongue, and, in the main, faithfully record- 
 ing its greater mutations. 
 
 But, as has been before observed, there is reason to believe 
 that the confusion of dialects was such during almost the whole 
 of the three centuries next following the Norman Conquest, 
 that no one could fairly lay claim to be considered as the stand- 
 ard of the national tongue. We have not the means of knowing 
 how far either of the writings ia question corresponded with 
 some local modification of the common speech, or how far, on 
 the contrary, it stands as a representative of the more general 
 language of the land. Critical writers speak of particular works 
 as marked by Northern, or Southern, or Western, or Northum- 
 brian, or Anglian peculiarities ; but these terms are, from our 
 ignorance of the local extent of such pecuUarities, necessarily 
 used in a vague and loose application, and it would be very 
 hazardous to suppose that they have any precise geographical or 
 ethnological accuracy. 
 
 Of prose English compositions of the twelfth and thirteenth 
 centuries, we have not enough in print to enable us to compare 
 the poetic and prose dialects of those periods, and our knowledge 
 of actual speech in the vernacular of those centuries is extremely 
 limited, our conclusions based upon uncertaiu premises. The 
 Saxon Chronicle comes down to about the year 1150. The dia- 
 lect of the latter portion of it approximates to English syntax, 
 but it is generally considered as unequivocally Anglo-Saxon ; 
 and there are many fragments, in both prose and verse, of later 
 periods, in which that language was stiil employed, others so 
 confused in syntax, that it is very difficult to determine whether 
 they are most closely related to the old language or to the new. 
 
152 SAXON CHEONICLB Eec*. IV 
 
 The following extract from the Saxon Chronicle will serve to 
 show sufficiently the grammatical character of Anglo-Saxon at a 
 period soon after the Conquest; for though it- is not certain at 
 ■what precise date it was written, it is evidently older than the 
 chapters which contain the annals of the twelfth century. 
 
 Millesimo LXXXIII. On fisiim geare ara's seo tmgefwEernea ou 
 Glifistingabyrig betwyx ]'am abbode Durstane & his munecan. ^rest 
 hit com of })£es abbotes unwisdome. f he misbead his munecan on fela 
 Jiingan. & pa munecas hit majndon hifelice to him. & beadon hine f 
 he sceolde healdan hi rihtlice. & lufian hi. & hi woldon him beon 
 holde & gehyrsume. Ac se abbot nolde fass naht. ac dyde heom yfele. 
 & beheot heom wyrs. Anes dasges pe abbot, eode into capitulan. & 
 gprsec uppon ]ja munecas. & wolde hi mistukian. & sende asftei- Itewede 
 mannum. & hi comon into capitulan on uppon fa munecas full gewe- 
 pnede. And ])a wseron fa munecas swi6e dferede of heom. nyston 
 hwet heom to donne wsere. ac toscuton. sume urnon into cyrcan & be- 
 lucan fa duran into heom. & hi ferdon asfter heom into fam mynatre. 
 (& woldon hig lit dragan. fa fa hig ne dorsten nd ut gan. Ac reowlie 
 .fing fser gelamp on d^g. ■p fa Frencisoe men brsecen f one oh6r. & 
 torfedon toward fam weofode. fser fa munecas wsron. & sume of 
 Jjam cnihtan ferdon uppon f one uppflore. & scotedon adunweard mid 
 arewan toweard fam haligdome. swa f on f rere rode, f e stod bufon 
 fam weofode. sticodon on maenige arewan. & fa wreccan munecas 
 lagon onbuton f am weofode. & sume crupon under. & gyrne cleopedon 
 to Gode. his miltse biddende. fa fa hi ne mihton nane miltse aat man- 
 num begytan. Hwaat magon we secgean. buton f hi scotedon swiSe. 
 & fa oSre fa dura brascon f ffir adune. & eodon inn. & ofslogon sume 
 fa munecas to deaSe. & msenige gewundedon f Eerinne. swa f f et blod 
 com of fam weofode uppon fam gradan. & of fam gradan on fa Here. 
 't>reo fser wssron oislagene to deaSe. & eahtateone gewundade. 
 
 . By Thorpe's nearly literal translation of this passage, it will 
 be seen that the construction of the period was rapidly ap- 
 proaching to the modern English arrangement. Keeping this 
 in mind, the student will be able to compare the text and the 
 translation by the aid of these observations. 
 
 Ungef wsernes is from the adjective gef wEcr, or f wter, agreeing, 
 consonant, pleasant, beyond which I can trace no radical, nor do I re- 
 
Xect. IV. SAXON CHRONICLE ]53 
 
 memter any probably cognate word in the Gothic languages. It is 
 quite obsolete in English; — misbead is from misbeodan, comp. of 
 the particle mis- and beodan, to hid, command or govern; — lufelice 
 is an adverb from lufian, to love, meaning here, kindly, attcctionately, 
 .^hold, faithfiil, gentle, now obsolete, but extant in the sister-tongues; 
 — beheot is from behatan, to promise; — mistukian is a compound 
 of mis- and tucian, to punish or discipline, obsolete in English, 
 but stiU found in all the Gothic languages; — dfered of lieom, 
 afraid of them; dfered is a participle from afaeran, to put in 
 fear ; afraid is a corruption of it; — of is not a sign of the possessive, 
 but means by; — toscuton is fi-om sceotan, to shoot, rush, flee; — 
 urnon, from yrnan, a transpositive form of rennan, to run; 
 — belucan, from beliican, to shut or lock, whence the English 
 lock; — gelamp fi-om gelimpan or limpian, to happen, now obso- 
 lete; — torfedon, from torfian, to throw or shoot, obsolete ; — weo- 
 fod, altar, said to be fi-om wig, an idol, and bed, a resting-place, now 
 obsolete; — rode from rod, cross, gallows, extant in rood-loft. Holy- 
 rood, &c.; — gyrne, alUedto the modem ?/earra ; — miltsefrom mild, 
 merciful, mild; — begytan, extant in get, beget; — eodon, imp. asso- 
 ciate with gan, to go, obsolete in modem English, though still used in 
 the fouiteentli century; — sume ]>a munecas, some the monks. The 
 modem form, some of the monks, is a foreign idiom; — gradan, from 
 grad, a step, Lat. gradus. I have no doubt that gree, gris, a step, 
 which occurs in so many forms in early English, and which some refer 
 to a Celtic orig-in, is the same word, and that the Celts also took their 
 term from the Latin. 
 
 Thorpe's translation is as follows : — 
 
 AfT. MLXXXni. In this year arose the discord at Glastonbury, be- 
 twixt the abbot ThurstSn and his monks. It came first from the abbot's 
 lack of wisdom, so that he misi-uled his monks in many things, and the 
 monks meant it kindly to him, and prayed him that he would entreat 
 them rightly, and love them, and they would be faithful to him, and 
 obedient. But the abbot would naught of this, but did them evil, and 
 threatened them worse. One day the abbot went into the chapter- 
 house, and spake against the monks, and would misuse them, and sent 
 after laymen, and they came into the chapter-house upon the monks 
 full-armed. And then the monks were greatly afraid of them, knew 
 not what they were to do, but fled in all directions : some ran into the 
 church and locked the doors after them ; and they went after them 
 into the monastery, and would drag them out, as they durst not go out. 
 But a ruefiil thing happened there on that day. The Frenchman broke 
 
154 LATAMON Lect. IY. 
 
 into the quire, and hurled towards the altar where the motiks were; 
 and some of the young ones went up on the upper floor, and kept 
 shooting downward with arrows towards the sanctuary, so that in the 
 rood that stood above the altar there stuck many arrows. And the 
 wretched monks lay about the altar, and some crept under, and earn- 
 estly cried to God, imploring his mercy, seeing that they might not ob- 
 tain any mercy from men. What can we say, but that they shot 
 cruelly, aud the others brake dovnx the doors there, and went in, and 
 slew some of the monks to death, and wounded many therein, so that 
 the blood came from the altar upon the steps, and from the steps on the 
 floor. Three were there slain to death, and eighteen wounded. 
 
 Although this extract shows an approximation to the modern 
 syntactical construction, which, as I have endeavoured to show 
 in a former lecture, is in a considerable degree borrowed from 
 the French, yet thus far the Saxon vocabulary had received very 
 few contributions from that source. There is not a single 
 French word in the whole passage, while Thorpe's translation 
 contains fourteen, and eight of the Anglo-Saxon words of the 
 original, with numerous compounds and derivatives from the 
 same roots, have become entirely obsolete. 
 
 The work of Layamon, or perhaps Lagamon — for we do not 
 . know the sound of the 5 in this name — is a versified chronicle 
 of the early fabulous history of Britain and its ancient royal 
 dynasty. It commences with the destruction of Troy and the 
 flight of .(Eneas, from whom descended Brutus, the founder of 
 the British monarchy, and extends to the reign of Athelstan. 
 The authorities on which Layamon founds his narrative, as he 
 himself states, are ' the English book that St. Beda made ' 
 (meaning probably King Alfred's Anglo-Saxon translation of 
 Beda's Ecclesiastical History, from which however, he seems to 
 have borrowed little), two wi'iters, Albinus and Austin, who are 
 not known to have produced any historical works, — though Bede 
 acknowledges his obligations to the former for materials fiu-nished 
 him for the composition of his Ecclesiastical History of England; 
 and lastly and chiefly, a third ' book, that a French clerk hight 
 Wace made.' This latter work is the romance of Brut, trans- 
 
Lect. IV. LATAMON 155 
 
 lated by Wace or Gasse, into Norman-I\-ench, from Geoffrey of 
 Monmouth's Latin History of the Britons, and completed, as 
 appears by the concluding couplet of the poem, in the year 
 1155. 
 
 Layamon has enlarged upon his original, for the version 
 of Wace contains but 15,300 lines, while Layamon's work 
 extends to more than 32,000, though, as the lines in the 
 latter are shorter than the octo-syllabic verse of Wace, the 
 quantity of matter is not twice as great. Some unimportant 
 passages of Wace are omitted, and much is added. The addi- 
 tions by Layamon are the finest parts of the work, almost the 
 only part, in fact, which can be held to possess any poetical 
 merit. We have not the means of ascertaining how far these 
 are of Layamon's own invention, for he occasionally refers, in 
 a vague way, to other ' books ' as authorities for his narratives, 
 and it is probable that many of the incidents were borrowed 
 from older and now forgotten legends. In general, however, 
 the work has more the air of an original than of a translation. 
 It seldom conforms closely to the text of Wace, and it has a 
 comparative elevation of diction, of thought, and of imagery, 
 which entitles it to a higher rank than that work, and stamps it 
 as a production of some literary merit. 
 
 The versification is irregular, sometimes unrhymed and allite- 
 rative, like that of the Anglo-Saxons, and sometimes rhymed 
 like that of Wace ; sometimes merely rhythmical, sometimes 
 in lines composed of regular feet, thus showing, in the structure 
 of the verse as well as in the syntax, evidences of Norman influ- 
 ence. The two systems of versification are intermixed, both 
 occurring sometimes in a single couplet, and the employment of 
 neither rests on any discoverable principle, except that of mere 
 convenience to the writer. The rhymed lines bear but a small 
 proportion to the alliterative, and in general the rhythm follows 
 that of Anglo-Saxon models. It is remarkable that asso- 
 nance, or correspondence of vowels while the consonants differ, 
 elsewhere hardly known in English verse, is much used. 
 
156 lATAMON Lect. IV. 
 
 These remarkable discrepancies in versification suggest a 
 doubt whether the chronicle of Layamon is to be regarded as an 
 entire work, and not rather as the production of several different 
 hands, whose labours have been collected and fashioned into a 
 whole by later editors and copyists. But the plan has too much 
 unity to render this supposition probable, and the lapse of time 
 between the completion of Wace's poem and the date of the 
 oldest manuscript of Layamon is too short to allow of a succes- 
 sion of independent translators. It is, however, by no means 
 unlikely that Layamon availed himself of versions by earlier 
 writers, who translated directly from Geoffrey of Monmouth^ 
 and this may serve in some degree to explain the want of uni- 
 formity in his verse. 
 
 There is neither internal nor external evidence by which the 
 date of the poem can be fixed with exact precision, but there 
 are allusions to events which occurred late in the twelfth 
 century ; and, on the other hand, the character of the diction 
 and grammar justify us in saying that it could scarcely have 
 been written after the commencement of the thirteenth. 
 
 It appears from the prologue, that Layamon resided at Ernley 
 in North Worcestershire, and it is hence argued that the dialect 
 in which he wrote was characteristic of that region. This is too 
 slight evidence to establish a proba])ility that he confined him- 
 self to the dialect of a shire, of which he may not have been a 
 native and where his residence may have been short, and the 
 external proof iipon this point is not entitled to much con- 
 sideration.' 
 
 There exists a manuscript of Layamon, which appears to have 
 been written about the beginning of the thirteenth century, a,nd 
 was therefore nearly contemporaneous with the author. In the 
 want of evidence to the contrary, we are authorised to presume 
 that this manuscript gives us the work substantially as Layamon 
 wrote it. There is also extant a manuscript supposed to be 
 only half a century, or thereabouts, younger. This exhibits 
 differences too great to be explained upon the supposition of a 
 
Lect. IV. LATAMON 157 
 
 general change in the syntax of the language in so brief a 
 period, and which moreover are not easily reconciled with any 
 theory of the characteristics of local dialects. We must con- 
 elude, either that this manuscript belongs to a later period than 
 that assigned to it by the critics, that the dialect of the older 
 manuscript was much behind its time, or that there were two 
 nearly contemporaneous dialects in more widely dififerent states 
 of progress, than we should infer from any other evidence. 
 
 The inflectional and syntactical character of Layamon I shall 
 discuss in remarks upon the passages I cite by way of illustra- 
 tion, and I will here barely notice what is perhaps the most 
 remarkable, though not the most important, peculiarity in the 
 grammar of Layamon — the use of the possessive pronoun his 
 as a sign of the possessive ctise, as when, in more modern 
 English, it was not unusual to write John his book, instead of 
 John^s hook. As I have somewhat fully examined this point in 
 my former series of Lectures on the English Language, I will 
 not now again enter upon it.* 
 
 Although the Chronicle of Layamon still retains a large 
 proportion of the Anglo-Saxon inflectional forms, yet it approx- 
 imates so closely to modem English in structure of period, that 
 no previous grammatical study is required to read it. The glos- 
 sarial index of the admirable edition published by Sir Frederic 
 Madden in 1857, contains all the stem-forms and all the inflec- 
 tions, with references to the passages where they occur ; so that, 
 with this help and that of the notes, not to speak of the trans- 
 lation which accompanies the text, any person of ordinary 
 intelligence may peruse it with entire ease and satisfaction. 
 
 The specimens I select for illustration of Layamon's dic- 
 tion and grammar are among his additions to Wace. The 
 first consists of what Sir Frederic Madden calls : ' The amusing 
 and dramatic passages relative to the Irish, and their conflict 
 with the Britons.' The second and third are characterized by 
 
 » See First Series, Lecture XVIII, p. 401, and note at the end of the lectm«. 
 
158 
 
 LATAMOJI 
 
 Lect, IV. 
 
 the same editor as: 'tie highly curious passage [s] -regarding 
 the fairy elves at Arthur's birth, and his transportation by them 
 after death in a boat to Avalon, the abode of Argante, their 
 queen.' They will not give the reader so high an opinion of 
 Layamon's genius as some of his critics have entertained, and in 
 fact his merits as a translator seem to be greater than his power 
 as an original writer. 
 
 In the following examples, the first column exhibits the oldest 
 known text, believed to be of Layamon's own time, or very near 
 it ; the second, as has been observed, is thought to have been 
 written about half a century later. The points are prosodical, 
 not marks of punctuation. 
 
 per ifah GiUomar i 
 
 Whar him com Vther. 
 
 & hsehde hif cnilites i 
 
 to wepne for^ rihtes. 
 
 & heo to-biliue i 
 
 & gripen heore cniues. 
 
 & of raid here breches i 
 
 feolcut) weoren heore lecheC 
 
 & igripen on heore hond i 
 
 heore Iperen longe. 
 
 hengen an heore £exle ! 
 
 mucle wi-£exe. 
 
 pa faBide GiUomar fe king i 
 
 a fwiSe feoUic fing. 
 
 Her cumeS V6er i 
 
 Aurilies broder. 
 
 he wule bidden mi gri3 5 
 
 & noht fehten me wiS. 
 
 |)a formefte beoS hif fweines i 
 
 fare we heom to-jeines. 
 
 ne piirfe 53 nauere rehchen i 
 
 1'ah je flasn fa wrecchen. 
 
 For jif Vther Goftantinef fune i 
 
 wulle her mi mon bicimie. 
 
 & PaflTente aseuen i 
 
 hif fader riche. 
 
 po i-feh GiUomar i 
 war hi com Vther. 
 and hehte his cnihtes I 
 wepni heom forf rihtef. 
 And hii to-bliue i 
 neomen hire cniues, 
 
 and gripen on hire honde S 
 hire speres longe. 
 
 Po faide GiUomar ]>e king i 
 a fwife felhch ]>ing. 
 Her coraep Vther i 
 Aurelie his brof er. 
 he wole bidde, min grip J 
 and noht fihte me wi|). 
 
 And jef Vther Conftantines fone! 
 wole her mi man bi-come. 
 
Lect. IV. 
 
 LATAMON 
 
 159 
 
 ich liine wullen gviSien i 
 
 it latten hine liiiien. 
 
 iS: inne faaire beden i 
 
 lieden hine to mine londe. 
 
 ]>e king wordede J'us i 
 
 ])a while him a-lomp wurf. 
 
 "Weoren Vtheres cnihtes i 
 
 at fan tune foi-6 rihtes. 
 
 leiden fur a fone tun i 
 
 & fehten biliue. 
 
 mid fweovden heom to rakeden i 
 
 and fa Irifce weoren nakede. 
 
 pa ifejen Irifce me i 
 
 J)at Bi'utten wes an eorneft. 
 
 feondliche heo ftiht i 
 
 and neoiSeles heo feollen. 
 
 heo cleopede on heore king i 
 
 ^^^lar sen ])u niSing. 
 
 ■whi nult \>\\ hider wendenJ 
 
 fu lezft uf her fcenden. 
 
 and Paffent fin ipere i 
 
 ifih us fallen here. 
 
 cumeS us to halpe i 
 
 mid hahjere ftrengSe. 
 
 fif iherde Gillomari 
 
 fer foren wes hif heorte fser. 
 
 mid hif Irifce cnihten i 
 
 he com to fan fihte. 
 
 and PalTend vorS mid him ! 
 
 beien heo weoren usie. 
 
 pa ifeh VSer S 
 
 fat icumen wes f er Gillomar. 
 
 to him he gon riden '. 
 
 and' finat hine i fere fide. 
 
 fat fat fpere f urh rade '. 
 
 & fa heorte to-glad. 
 
 Hijendliche hie hine biwet i 
 
 & of-toc Paflent. 
 
 and fas word sEeide i 
 
 Vther f e fele. 
 
 Paffent fu fcalt abiden J 
 
 ich hine woUe grif ie . 
 and lete hine libbe. 
 and in faire bendes i 
 him lede to mine londe. 
 f e kig wordede f us '. 
 f e wile hit bi-fuUe worf 
 Weren Vther his chnihtes! 
 in fan toune forprihtes. 
 and fetten ftir oueral i 
 in bour and in hal. 
 and fatle to jam rakede J 
 and hii were alle nakede. 
 po i-feh5e Yriffe men ' 
 
 fat hii f uffe fullen. 
 
 hii gradde to hire king i 
 
 War hart f ou nif ing. 
 
 wi nelt f ou hider wende i 
 
 feu leteft vs alle afende. 
 
 f is ihorde Gillomar i 
 
 far Tore his heort was Cor. 
 
 mid his Yreffe cnihtes i 
 
 he com to fan fihte. 
 
 and Pafcent forf mid him t 
 
 beine hii weren veie. 
 
 po ifeh Vther i 
 
 fat icome was Gillomar. 
 
 to him he gan ride i 
 
 and fmot hi in fan fide. 
 
 fat f e IJDere f orh-rod i 
 
 and f e heoite to-glod. 
 
 Hijenliche he hine bi-went ! 
 
 of-tock he fone Pafcent. 
 
 and f eos word faide i 
 
 Vther f e fjple. 
 
 Pafcent wi nelt abide 5 
 
160 
 
 LATAMON 
 
 Lect. IV. 
 
 her cumetS Vther riden. 
 
 He fmat hine uuenen fat hseued i 
 
 fat he adun halde. 
 
 and fat fweord putte in his mutS i 
 
 swTilc mete hira wes uncufS. 
 
 fat f e ord of fan sworde i 
 
 wod in fere eorSe. 
 
 pa feide Vther i 
 
 Paflent lig nu f er. 
 
 nil f II haiieft Brutlond ! 
 
 al bi-tald to fire hond. 
 
 Swa fe if nu irjed S 
 
 f er on f ii asrt ded. 
 
 wikien je foullen here i 
 
 f u and Gillomar fin ifere. 
 
 & brukeS wel Brutlod i 
 
 for nu ic hit bitseche inc an hond. 
 
 fat jit majen to-jere S 
 
 mid uf wiinien here. 
 
 ne puriie je nauere adrede S 
 
 wha eou foullen feden. 
 
 puffffiide Vder i 
 
 und seoSSe he arnde f er. 
 
 and drof Irifce men i 
 
 jeond wateres and jeond fenes. 
 
 and floh al fa uerde i 
 
 f e mid Paflent commen to eerde. 
 
 Summg to fere sa; iwiten i 
 
 & leoppen in heore fcipen. 
 
 mid wederen & mid wateren i 
 
 f ser heo forferden. 
 
 puf heo ilp^dden her J 
 
 Paffent and Gillomar. 
 
 her comef Vther ride. 
 
 He fmot hine ouenon fat heuedJ 
 
 fat he ful to pan grunde. 
 
 and fat fweord f ut in his muf i 
 
 foch mete him was oncouf . 
 
 fat f e ord of f e fweord i 
 
 wond in fan eorf e. 
 
 po faide Vther i 
 
 Pafcent ly nou far. 
 
 nou f ou haueft Brutlond i 
 
 al awonne to fin hond. 
 
 wonief nou here J 
 
 f ou an Gillomare. 
 
 and broukef wel Brutlond 5 
 
 for nou je hit habbef an hond. 
 
 ne f erh he noht drede i 
 fat 50U fal feode. 
 
 pus i-fped here '. 
 Pafcent and Gillomare. 
 Layamon, II. pp. 332 — 336. 
 
 The next specimen is from vol. ii. pp. 384, 385. 
 
 pe time co f e wes icoren i 
 fa wes ArtSur iboren. 
 Sone fwa he com an eorSe 5 
 aluen hine iuengen. 
 
 pe tyme com fat was icore ! 
 f o was Arfur ibore. 
 Sone fo he to worle com i 
 aluene him onderfenge; 
 
Lect. IV. 
 
 LAYAJION 
 
 161 
 
 lieo bigolen fat child i 
 mid galdere fwiSe ftronge. 
 heo 5eue him mihte S 
 to beon bezll aire cnihten. 
 heo jeuen him an 0(5er fing i 
 fat he fcolde beon riche king, 
 heo jiuen hi fat fridde i 
 fat he scolde longe libben. 
 heo jifen him fat kine-bern i 
 cuften fwiSe gode. 
 fat he wes mete-cufd i 
 of aUe quikemonnen. 
 fis f e alue him jef ! 
 and al fwa fat child if ash. 
 
 and jetien him mihte f 
 to beon beft aire cnihte. 
 hii geuen hint an of er fing i 
 fat he folde beo riche king, 
 hii 5euen him fat pridde i 
 fat he folde lange libbe. 
 hii jenen fane beorn ! 
 jeftes fwif e gode. 
 fat he wes mete-oufti i 
 of alle cwike manne. 
 fis fe alfe him geaf i 
 and al fo fat child i-f eh. 
 
 The following passage is from vol. iii. pp. 142 — 146. 
 
 per wes Modred of-sla5e i 
 and idon of lif-daje. 
 
 * * * * « 
 
 in fan lihte. 
 per weoren of-fla5e '. 
 alle fa IheUe. 
 Arduref hered-men I 
 heje. 
 
 and fa Bruttef alle i 
 of ArtSuTpf borde. 
 and aUe hif fofterlTges ! 
 of feole kinerichef. 
 And ArSur fonvmided i 
 mid wal-lpere brade. 
 fiflene he hafde i 
 feondliche vnmden. 
 mon mihte i fare laften i 
 twa glouen if rafte. 
 pa naffer na mare '. 
 i fan fehte to laue. 
 of twa hundred f nsend monnen i 
 fa far leien to-hauwe. 
 buten ArSur f e king ane i 
 & of hif cnihtef tweien. 
 
 par -was Modred of-flaje i 
 and idon of lif-daje. 
 and alle his cnihtes i 
 illaje in fan fihte. 
 par weren of-flaje i 
 alle f e fnelle. 
 Arthures hiredmen i 
 hehje and lowe. 
 and f e Bruttes alle i 
 of Arthiir his borde. 
 and alle hi. fofterlin..s i 
 
 of ne riche. 
 
 And him seolf for-w...... 
 
 mid one fpere brode. 
 
 ... tene he hadde '. 
 
 feond .. che wond.. 
 
 man mihte in fan leafte i 
 
 two gloues freafte. 
 
 po naf far na more i 
 
 ileued in fan fihte. 
 
 of two hundred f oiisend manna i 
 
 fat far Jay to-hewe. 
 
 bote Arthur f e king i 
 
 and twei of hif cnihtes. 
 
 M 
 
162 
 
 lATAMON 
 
 Lect. 17, 
 
 Ar?lur wes for-wunded i 
 
 wunder ano iwiSe. 
 
 ]>er to him com a cnaue i 
 
 ])e wes of hif cunne. 
 
 he wef Cadoref fmie i 
 
 ]7e eorlef of Covwaile. 
 
 Conftantin hehte fe cnaue 5 
 
 he wef fan kinge deore. 
 
 Arcur him lokede on i 
 
 fer he lai on folden. 
 
 and pas word feide i 
 
 mid sorhfuUe heorte. 
 
 Coftsetin fu art wilcume i 
 
 ]n\ weore Cadoref fone. 
 
 icli fe bitache here i 
 
 .mine kineriche. 
 
 End wite mine Bruttef S 
 
 a to jjinef lifef. 
 
 and hald heom alle fa lajen i 
 
 ]>a. habbeoS iftonden a mine da^en. 
 
 and alle fa lagen gode i 
 
 fa l)i VSeref dajen ftode. 
 
 And ich wuUe uaren to Aualu i 
 
 to naircft ah-e maidene. 
 
 to Argante fere qiiene i 
 
 ahien fwiSe fceone. 
 
 & heo flal mine wunden i 
 
 makien alle ifunde. 
 
 al hal me makien i 
 
 mid haleweixo drechen. 
 
 And feot5e ich cumen wuUe ! 
 
 to mine kineriche. 
 
 and wunien mid Bmtten i 
 
 mid muchelere wimne. 
 
 iElhe fan worden '. 
 
 per com of fe wenden. 
 
 fat wes an sceort bat liSen i 
 
 fceonen mid v^en. 
 
 and twa wimme far inne i 
 
 ■wunderliche idihte. 
 
 and heo nomen ArSur ana i 
 
 Arthur was for-wonded i 
 wonderliche fwife. 
 far com a ;iong cnaue i 
 fat was of his cunne. 
 he was Cador his fone i 
 eorl.of Comwale. 
 Conftantin he hehte 5 
 f e king hine louede. 
 pe king to him bi-heold f 
 
 and f eos word iaids. 
 
 Constantin f oix hart wilcome 5 
 
 f ou were Cador.. s f.ne. 
 
 ich f e bi-take here i 
 
 mine kineriche. 
 
 and wite mine Bruttus i 
 
 wel bi fine liue. 
 
 And ich wolle Avende to Auelun i 
 
 to Argant fare cweane. 
 
 and jeo fal mine wondes i 
 
 ma al ifunde. 
 
 al ie i 
 
 mid halewei 
 
 .nd fuffe ich jenS 
 
 to mine 
 
 Eafhe fan .... 
 ..r com of fe^ wende. 
 a lu... fort bot i 
 wandri mid f .. beres. 
 
 and two wimm ineS 
 
 wonderliche igynned. 
 men Arthur anonf 
 
Let. IV. 
 
 LAT.mON 
 
 163 
 
 and ancoufle Line nereden. 
 and fofre hine adun leiden i 
 & for^i gunnen hine liSen. 
 pa -wef hit iwuitieu i 
 ))at M'lin feide whilen. 
 ])ut weore vmimete care i 
 of ArSuref forS-fai-e. 
 BnittefileneS jete .' 
 J)<it he bon on line, 
 and wunnien in Aualun 5 
 mid fairtft aire aluen. 
 and lokieS enere Buttef gete 
 ■whan ArSur cume liSe. 
 Nif nauer fe mon ibore i 
 
 of nauer nane burde icoren. 
 
 fe cunne of ];an foSe ! 
 
 of ArSure fugen mare. 
 
 Bute while wef an wUeje 5 
 
 Mffivlin ihate. 
 
 he bodede mid worde i 
 
 hif quidef weoren foBe. 
 
 fat an ArSur fcrdde gete i 
 
 cum Anglen to fulfte. 
 
 an. ..])an bote here. 
 
 and hine foht. .dun leyde ! 
 
 and for]? ...gan wende. 
 
 po was onde i 
 
 pat Merljn faide wile. 
 
 fat foldc beon mochel care i 
 
 after Artliures forf-fare. 
 
 Bvutt.. ileuef jete i 
 
 fat ha be. on line. 
 
 and w.nie in Auailun i 
 
 mid .... efte ahe cwene. 
 
 Nas neuere f e man ibore i 
 
 ne of womman icore. 
 
 fat conne of fan fof e i 
 
 of Arthur fegge more. 
 
 Bote wile was a witti i 
 
 Merlin ihote. 
 
 he faide mid wordes i 
 
 his fiijef were fofe. 
 
 fat Arthur folde ^ite '. 
 
 come Bruttef ... for to healpe. 
 
 In the nouns, the earlier text shows a gi'adual, not an abrupt, 
 departure from the Anglo-Saxon inflectional system, the later 
 copy a much wider divergence, and a confusion of forms which 
 is more embarrassing to the syntax than the dropping of the 
 ease-endings altogether would have been. The most obvious 
 changes in the inflections and construction of nouns are that in 
 both texts the plural in s is very freely used, and that, in the 
 later, the preposition of is employed with the genitive, or, with 
 a stem-form of the noun, as a sign of the genitive. 
 
 In the adjective, the distinction between the definite and in- 
 definite forms is generally observed, though not unfrequently 
 neglected. 
 
 The personal pronouns are, in the main, substantially the 
 same a.s in Anglo-Saxon, but the dual form of none of them 
 occurs in the later text. 
 
 H 2 
 
164 LAYAMTON Lect. IV. 
 
 The conjugation of the verb in most points resembles the in- 
 flection of the same part of speech in Anglo-Saxon, but the 
 infinitive, which in the later text drops the characteristic n, 
 commonly takes the preposition to, and the gerund is, not 
 unfrequently, confounded with the infinitive on one side, and 
 the active participle in -nde on the other. The plural verb in- 
 dicative present has generally the ending -eS, except when the 
 pronoun of the first or second person follows its verb, in which 
 case it ends in -e, or sometimes in -en. 
 
 Some instances of the confounding of the active participle 
 with the verbal noun in -inge are met with, but these are rare, 
 and in fact the participle is not of freqiient occurrence in either 
 text. But perhaps the most important novelty in Layamon's 
 construction of the verb is the regular employment of will and 
 shall as technical auxiliaries. In both texts, as will be seen by 
 the extracts, they are used almost precisely as in modem 
 English, and indeed with a closer conformity to the present 
 practice than is found in many works of even as late a date as 
 the fourteenth century. 
 
 These are the general characteristics of Layamon's syntax, 
 but there are certain specific points in the diction and grammar 
 of the passages above quoted which merit more particular 
 notice. 
 
 In the first extract : 
 
 to-biliue, quickly, in a lively manner, common in old English, but 
 now obsolete; — seoIcuS, sel-couth, seldom known, strange, obsolete; 
 — wi-sexe, battle-axe, from wig, war, obsolete; — swi'Se, very, ob- 
 solete; — seollic, obsolete, at least in this sense, though probably allied 
 to A.-S. gesajlig, prosperous, and to the modern silly; — griS, 
 peace, obsolete; — formeste, foremost. This word is often used in the 
 sense of first, and is, probably, etymologically identical with it; — fur- 
 fen, obsolete, but perhaps allied to dare. The two words coincide in 
 some of the Gothic languages; — richen, realm, obsolete, though allied 
 to rich; — gri^ien, to spare, pardon, make peace with, obsolete; — 
 wordede, imp. This verb does not occur in Anglo-Saxon, nor is it 
 found in the Ancren Eiwle, in the Ormulum, or in Coleridge's Glossa- 
 
I 
 Lect. IV. lATAMON 165 
 
 lial Index. It seems to be a coinage of Layamon's ■which failed to ob- 
 tain circulalion, though it has been revived in later ages as a participial 
 adjective, Mid oven as a verb; — a-lomp, imp. from a-limpian, to 
 happen, obsolete; — to-rakeden, from raken, to rush, obsolete; — 
 feondliche, with fury or hate, from feond, an enemy, whence 
 Jiend, obsolete; — nioing, Iccl. niSingr, ci'aven, obsolete; — scenden, 
 to disgrace, to destroy, obsolete; — ifere, companion, obsolete; — uajie, 
 fated, Sc. fey, obsolete. Fatatus is used in mediaeval Latin, and fajge 
 is foimd, though rarely, in Anglo-Saxon. Historically, uasie, as well as 
 A.-S. fffige, doubtless comes from Icel. feigr, fated, which does not 
 seem to be in any way allied to fatum; — sele, good, obsolete; — 
 riden, her cumeS Vther riden, ridden, ridingly. Riden is here 
 not the active, but die passive participle, in analogy with the German, 
 er kommt geritten. See Lecture II., Illustration II; — halde, imp. 
 from hselden, halden, to sink or fell, obsolete, except, perhaps, in 
 the nautical tei-m to heel; — uncud, unknown, extant in uncouth, in a 
 different, but derivative sense; — ord, point, obsolete; — wod, went, 
 obsolete; — bi-tald, from bi-tellen, to win or prove, obsolete, unless 
 we suppose it to be the modern verb tell, so that bi-tald would mean 
 told-off, counted, and hence, delivered; — irasd, happened, obsolete; — 
 wikien, to dwell, obsolete; — brukef , from bruken, to use, obsolete; 
 — inc, dual, you two, obsolete; — arnde, imp. from urn en, trans- 
 positive form of A.-S. rennan, to run. In the Glossarial Notes, how- 
 ever, Sir F. Madden expresses the opinion that arnde is from sernan, 
 a causative form of urnen, signifying to ride; — uerde, ferde, host, 
 army, obsolete; — i wit en, from i-witen, to flee, perish, obsolete; — 
 
 In the second extract : 
 
 icoren, chosen, obsolete; — iuengen, part, fi-om fengen, to take, 
 obsolete; — bigolen, enchanted, obsolete; — galdere, magic, obsolete; 
 — kine-bern, child, obsolete; — custen, gifts, conditions, obsolete, 
 but perhaps allied to choose; — mete-custi, liberal, or rather hospit- 
 able. Sir F. Madden ascribes no special force to mete in this com- 
 pound, but, as in the corresponding Icelandic matarmildr, matar- 
 goSr, matg68r, it means meat, and the signification is, generous of 
 food, hospitable. It is obsolete; — i-faeh, imp. from i])eon, to thrive, 
 obsolete; — 
 
 In the third extract : 
 
 snelle, active, brave, obsolete, — hered-men, attendants, courtiers, 
 retainers, from A.-S. hired, hyred, a family, a royal court. The 
 
166 LATAMON Lect. IV. 
 
 compound liired-man, so common in America, tliough more probably a 
 new word fi-om the verb to hire and man, may, possibly, have come 
 down from the A.-S. hired-man, Icel. hir'3-ma'Sr. The word is 
 otherwise obsolete; — feole, Icel. feil, many, obsolete; — wal-spere, 
 fi-om wal, wEcl, carnage, death, a dead body, and spere, spear. 
 Wal, in Icel. valr, is the first element in valkyria, chooser of 
 the slain. Wal is obsolete; — cnihtes, Ger. knecht, knights, 
 soldiers; — cnaue, Ger. knabe, boy, servant, hiave; — cunne, dat. 
 of cun, kin; — fold en, ground, obsolete, imless poisibly extant 
 in fallow; — bitache, commit, deliver. Take often has this sense 
 in old English; — wite, govern, rule, obsolete; — slal, error of scribe 
 for seal; — hale-weije, balsam. Madden thinks this word is from 
 hsel, healing, and hwceg, whey. It is obsolete; — drench en, a cau- 
 sative fi-om drinchen, to drink. At least this is quite as probable as 
 that it means to bathe. The noun drench is still used in an analogous 
 sense. SeoSe, sithen, since; — wunien, to dwell, Ger. wohnen, 
 obsolete in this sense, but extant in ivont, wonted; — wunne, bliss, 
 Ger. Wonne, obi5olete; — vSen, waves, obsolete; — nomen, imp. 
 fi-om nimen, to take; — aneouste, quickly, fi-om A.-S. neah, near, 
 obsolete; — gunnen, from gon, gan, old Engl, gan, often used as an 
 auxiliary to form the past tense; — liSen, to go or come, obsolete;.^ 
 iwurSen, Ger. geworden, come to pass, used in old English, but 
 now obsolete; — unimete, immeasurable, extant in unmeet; — ileue'5, 
 believe; — burde, woman, extant in bride; — witeje, A.-S. witega, 
 prophet, sage, from witan, to know, obsolete; — bodede, from bodien, 
 to say; — quizes, words, allied to quoth; — fulste, fulsten, aid, 
 obsolete. 
 
 In the orthography, the remarkable change from hw, initial, to wh 
 occurs. There are a few examples of this transposition in earlier ma- 
 nuscripts, but I believe it was not regularly used by any writer before 
 the time of Layamon. 
 
 In the above extracts no word of Latin or French etymology 
 occurs, unless we adopt the improbable supposition that care, 
 A.-S. carUj cearn, is from the Latin cura. Madden's trans- 
 lation contains twenty Latin and French -words, exclusive of 
 repetitions. At least fifty of the words employed by Layamon 
 ia these few verses are wholly obsolete. 
 
 Sir F. Madden's translation of these passages is subjoined. 
 Words and phrases included in quotation-marks are in the 
 
Lect. IV. LATA3I0X 167 
 
 earlier, but not in the later text; words in brackets are the 
 variations of the later text. 
 First extract : 
 
 There [Then] saw Gillomar where Uther came to him, and com- 
 manded his knights to weapon [them] forth-right. And they very 
 speedily grasped [took] their knives, 'and off with their breeches — 
 stnmge were their looks,' — and gi-asped in their hands their long spears, 
 ' and hung on their shoulders great battle-axes.' Then said Gillomar 
 the king a thing very strange: — "Here cometh Uther, Aiu'elies-[Aure- 
 lie lus] brother ; he will ask my peace, and not fight with me. ' The 
 foremost are his swains; march me against them ; ye need never reck, 
 though ye slay the wretches I ' For [And] if Uther, Constantines son, 
 will here become my man, ' imd give to Pascent his fathers realm,' I 
 will him grant peace, and let him live, and in fair bonds lead him to 
 my land." The king spake thus, the while worse him [it] befell 1 
 Uthei-s [Uther his] knights were in the town forth-right, [and] laid 
 [set] fire in the town, and fought shai-ply ; with swords [over all, in 
 bower and in hall, and fast] rushed toivards them ; and the Irish [thoy ] 
 were [all] naked. When the Irish men saw, that ' the Biitons were in 
 conflict, they fought fiercely, and' nevertheless [thus] they fell; they 
 called on [to] their king : " Where art thou, nithing ! why wilt thou 
 not come hither ? thou lettest us here [all] be destroyed ; — ' ;md 
 Pascent, thy comrade, saw us fall here; — come i/e to us to help, with 
 great strength I ' " Gillomar heard this ; therefore his heart was sore ; 
 with his L-ish knights he came to the fight, and Pascent forth with him 
 — both they were fated ! When Uther saw, that Gillomar was 'there' 
 come, to him he gan ride, and smote him in the side, so that the bj ear 
 through pierced, and ghded to the heart. Hastily he passed by him, 
 and [he soon] overtook Pascent ; and said these words Uther the good : 
 " Pascent, thou shalt [why wilt thou not] abide ; here cometh Uther 
 riding!" He smote him upon the head, so that he fell down [to the 
 giound], and the sword put in his mouth — such meat to him was 
 strange, — so that the point of the swoi-d went in the earth. Then said 
 Uther: "Pascent, he now there; now thou hast Britain all won to thy 
 hand 1 ' So is now hap to the ; therein thou art dead; ' dwell ye shall 
 [now] here, thou, and Gillomar ' thy companion,' and possess well 
 Britain ! For now I deliver it to you [ye it have] in hand, ' so that ye 
 may presently dwell with us here; ' ye need not ' ever' dread who you 
 shall feed!" ' Thus said Uther, and afterv/ards he there ran, and drove 
 the Irish men over waters and over fens, and slew aU the host that witli 
 
168- LATAMON Lect. IV., 
 
 Pascent came to land. Some to the sea fled, and leapt into their ships; 
 with weather and with water there they perished ! ' Thus they ' sped ' 
 here, Pascent and Gillomar. 
 
 Second extract : 
 
 The time came that was chosen, then was Arthur born. So soon as 
 lie came on earth [in the world], elves took [received] him ; ' they en- 
 chanted the child with magic most strong,' they [and] gave him might 
 to be the best of all knights ; they gave him another thing, that he 
 should be a rich king; they gave him the third, that he should live 
 long; they gave to him the prince [the child] virtues [gifts] most good, 
 so that he was most generous of all men aUve. This the elves gave 
 him, and thus the child thrived. 
 
 Third extract : 
 
 There were slain all the brave, Arthurs warriors, high and low, and 
 all the Britons of Arthurs [Arthur his] board, and all his dependants, 
 of many kingdoms [a kingdom]. And Arthur [himself] wounded with 
 [a] broad 'slaughter-'spear; iifteen dreadful wounds he had; in the 
 least one might thrust two gloves ! Then was there no more remained 
 in the fight, of two hundred thousand men that there lay hewed in 
 pieces, except Arthur the king ' alone,' and two of his knights. Arthur 
 was wounded wondrously much. There came 'to him' a [young] lad, 
 who was of his kindred; he was Cadors [Cador his] son 'the' earl ot 
 Cornwall; Constautine the lad [he] hight, he was dear to the king [the 
 king him loved]. Arthur looked on [The king beheld] him, 'where 
 ' he lay on ^Ae ground,' and said these words, 'with sorrowful heart': 
 " Constantine, thou art welcome; thou wert Cadors [Cador his] son, 
 I give tUee here my kingdom, and defend thou my Britons ever in 
 [well by] thy life, ' and maintain them all the laws that have stood in 
 my days, and all the good laws that in Uthers days stood.' And I will 
 fare to Avalun, ' to the fairest of all maidens,' to Argante the queen, 
 ' an elf most fair,' and she shall make my wounds all sound ; make me 
 all whole with healing draughts. And afterwards I will come [again] 
 to my kingdom, ' and dwell with the Britons with mickle joy'." Even 
 with the words there approached from the sea 'that was' a [little] short 
 boat, floating with the waves; and two women therein, wondrously 
 formed; and they took Arthur anon, and bare him quickly [to the 
 boat], and laid him softly down, and forth they gan depart. Then was 
 it accomplished that Merlin whilom said, that mickle care (sorrow) 
 diould be of [after] Arthurs departure. The Britons believe yet that 
 
Lect. IV. THE ANCREN EIWLE 169 
 
 he is alive, and flwelletli in Avalnn -witli the fairest of all elves [queens]; 
 'and the Britons ever yet expect when Arthur shall return.' Waa 
 never the man born, [nor] of ever any lady [woman] chosen, that 
 knoweth of the sooth, to say more of Arthur. But whilom was a sa^e 
 liight Merlin; he said with words, — his sayings w-ere sooth, — that 'an' 
 Arthur sliould yet come \Jieve for] to help the Englisli [Britons], 
 
 Another monument of little literary interest, but of not in- 
 ferior philological, or, to speak more accurately, lexical and 
 grammatical importance, is the Ancren Eiwle, a code of monastic 
 precepts drawn up in prose by an unknown author, for the 
 guidance of a small mmnery, or rather religious society of 
 ladies. This work was probably composed if not in the latter 
 part of the twelfth, at latest very early in the thirteenth century, 
 and is therefore nearly contemporaneous with the chronicle of 
 Layamon, to the earlier tsxt of which it bears much resemblance. 
 The learned editor of the only printed edition, that published 
 by the Camden Society in 1853, says nothing of the probable 
 age of his manuscript, but Wright, Eel. Ant. i. 65, states it to 
 be of the middle of the thirteenth century. There are at least 
 three other manuscripts, besides a Latin translation, and one of 
 the English copies is described as older than that from which 
 the Camden Society's edition is printed. They differ from each 
 other considerably in orthographj^, and these differences— some 
 of which no doubt, were due to successive changes in the current 
 modes of spelling — and the multiplication of copies of a work 
 intended for the private use of three ladies, not members of any 
 religious order, prove that it must have been written a consider- 
 able length of time before the execution of the latest manu- 
 script. I believe, therefore, that it may be considered as 
 belonging to the litei ature of the twelfth, quite as appropriately 
 as to that of the thirteenth century. 
 
 About one third of the Ancren Eiwle is occupied with in- 
 structions for ceremonial observances, the residue with moral 
 and religious teachings. Like so many other ascetic treatises of 
 the Middle Ages, whether intended for the edification of the 
 
170 THE ANCEEN KIWLE Lect. IV. 
 
 professed recluse or of the layman, it contains little of dogmatic 
 theology, and few of those broader views of Christian duty 
 which belong to the contemplation of man as what Grod made 
 him — a social being. Hence it has neither the philosophical 
 reach of thought which characterizes the works of WyclifFe and 
 Pecock, and which is a natural result of free theological inquiry, 
 nor the enlightened philanthropy and comprehensive charity, 
 which breathe from the writings of divines emancipated from 
 the narrow corporate interests and exclusive duties of cloistered 
 life. 
 
 In a literary point of view, it has no such value as to entitle 
 it to critical notice, and, bearing no stamp of English birth-right 
 but its dialect, it is only for the value of its vocabiilary and its 
 syntax that I embrace it in my view of English philological 
 history. Details on these points will be given in connection 
 with the specimen selected as an illustration, and I shall at 
 pi-esent confine my observations to the stock of words which 
 compose its vocabulary. The most obvious difference in this 
 respect between Layamon and the Ancren Eiwle is the much 
 larger proportion of Latin and Norman words in the latter. 
 Sir Frederick Madden finds less than one hundred such in the 
 57,000 verses of the two texts of Layamon.* The quantity of 
 matter in the Ancren Eiwle, exclusive of Latin quotations, is 
 less than half of that in Layamon, but the glossary to the 
 former contains twice as many French words as Layamon, and 
 yet omits a large number because they were thought too familiar 
 to need explanation. Much of this difference in vocabulary is 
 
 * If we niim'ber words derived from the French (eren including some that may 
 have come directly from the Latin), we do not find in the earlier text of Lay amon's 
 poem so many as fifty, several of which were in usage, as appears by the Saxon 
 Chronicle, previous to the middle of the twelfth century. Of tliis number the 
 later text retains about thirty, and adds to them rather more than forty, which are 
 not foimd in the earlier version; so that if v.e reckon ninety words of French 
 origin in both texts, containing together more than 56,800 lines, wo shall be able 
 to form a tolerably correct estimate how little the English language was really 
 affected by foreign converse, even as late as the mldille of the thirteenth century. 
 Sir F. Madcjen, Pref, to Layamon, vol. i. p, xxiii. 
 
Lect. rV. THE ANCREK EIWLB 171 
 
 doubtless to be ascribed to the fact that the Ancrea Riwle, 
 treating of religious subjects, naturally adopted the dialect of 
 the Romish ascetic discipline, which was in great part of Latin 
 derivation ; but still, as the Ancren Riwle was written in English, 
 while Layamon's work was translated from French and Latin, 
 we should have expected a larger relative share of the foreign 
 element in the latter production than a comparison of the two 
 exhibits. The Latin and French words of the Ancren Riwle, 
 however, are by no means all due to its religious character, and 
 we find in it many Norman terms belonging to the common 
 dialect of secular life. Compound words of Saxon etymology 
 are less frequent in Layamon than in the latter work, which has 
 some remarkable agglutinations, such, for example, as stude- 
 stapeluestnesse, meaning nearly what N. P. Willis some- 
 where calls siay-at-home-itlveness, the oiKovpla of the Greeks. 
 This greater frequency of Norman words might be thought to 
 prove that the prose work is of later date than the poetical, but 
 it is by no means conclusive evidence, because, as I have already 
 remarked, the diction of poetry is always archaic, and Layamon 
 probably confined himself to the conventionally established 
 vocabulary of his art. The orthography appears to point to the 
 opposite conclusion, though this is a very doubtful question. 
 In the Ancren Eiwle, the Anglo-Saxon ce has almost disappeared 
 and the combination eo is less frequent, but, on the other hand, 
 it retains the iw, as riwle, rule, and, oddly enough, G-kus, 
 Gmverie, Jews, Jewry, while in Layamon this combination is 
 often replaced by ew or eow. The Ancren Riwle preserves the 
 hzu, but Layamon, except in one or two instances, has always 
 wh.* The arrangement of words, however, the periodic con- 
 struction, which is less likely to be a dialectic peculiarity than 
 
 * Most orfhoepists consider hw as a true phonographic representation of the 
 Bound supposed to be indicated by it, which is that of the modern wh in vhalc, 
 but Klipstein's Anglo-Saxon Grammar, p. 47, note, says: 'this combination of 
 Bound is, indeed, one.' I know no criterion by which we can determine whether 
 a sound be one, but the experimental test of capacity of prolongation. A sound 
 (if the singular aiticle can be applied to an articulation composed of successive 
 
172' THE AKCREN EIWLE LtCT. IV. 
 
 a result of the general movement of speech, is almost modem 
 in the Ancren Riwle — so much so, sometimes, as to lead one to 
 question the authenticity of the manuscripts — but this I think 
 is to be ascribed to the colloquial style of the work ; for the 
 diction of common speech among educated men at that period 
 must have been much influenced by the dialect of the court and 
 the Norman nobility. 
 
 The following extract is from Part IV. on Temptations. 
 Camden Society edition, pp. 210 — 216 : — 
 
 Suinme iuglurs beoS Jjet ne kunnen seruen of non oSer gleo, biiten 
 inakien cheres & wrenclien mis liore muS, & schulen mid hore eien. 
 Of f)is mestei-e sevueS feo uniselie ontfule iSe deofles kurt, to bringen o 
 leihtre hore ontfule louerd. Uor gif ei seiS wel oSer deS wel, nonesweis 
 ne muwen heo loken fiderward mid riht eie of gode beorte : auh 
 winckeS o'Sere half, & biholde^ o luft & asquint : & jif per is out to 
 eadwiten, oSer lodlich, fiderward heo schuleS mid eiSer eien i & hwon 
 heo ihere8 fet god, heo sleate8 adun boa two hore earen i auh fet lust 
 agean fet vuel is ever wid open, peonne heo wrenclieS hoi'e muS mis, 
 hwon heo turned god to vuel i & jif hit is sumdel vuel, Jiui'uh more 
 lastunge heo wrench eS hit to wurse. peos beoS hore owune prophetes 
 forcwiddares. peos bodieS biuoren hwu J)e ateliche deouel schal get 
 agesteu ham mid his grimme grennunge, & hu heo schulen ham sulf 
 grennen & niuelen, & makien sur semblaunt uor f e muchele angoise, 
 iSe pine of helle. Auh for fui heo beo6 fe lesse te menen, ])et heo 
 biuorenhond leorneS hore meister to makien grimme ohere. 
 
 pe wreSfulle biuoren fe ueonde skirmei5 mid kniues, & he is his 
 knif-worpare, & pleieS mid sweordes, & bereS ham bi fe scherpe orde 
 uppen his tunge. Sweord & knif eiSer beo^ scherpe & keoruinde 
 wordes f et he worpetS frommard him, & skirmeS touward oSre. Auh 
 
 elements), which requires either two emissions of breath or two diiferent positions 
 of the organs of speech, cannot be prolonged, though the separate elements of it 
 often may be. The combination hw, wh, is not only incapable of prolongation, but 
 cannot be uttered at all without the aid of a third element, namely, a vowel 
 following. 
 
 There are, however, a few sounds which may be indefinitely prolonged, and yet 
 seem to be composed of two still more elementary articulations. I refer to those 
 into which the y consonant appears to enter as a subordinate component. The 
 jEnglish cA, sh, are very nearly < + y and s + y, and in some orthographies, the 
 Swedish, for example, in which j corresponds to our t/ consonant, they are ex- 
 pressed accordingly, as tjader, in English spelling, chader, sjal, shale, &c. &o. 
 
Lect. IV. THE ANCpiN EIWLE 173 
 
 heo bodietJ hwu fe deoflen scliulen' pleien mid ham, mid hore schorpe 
 aules, & sliirmen mid ham abiiten, & dvsten ase enne pilohcclut, enchon 
 touward oSer, & mid helle sweordes alsnesien ham Jnii-uhut, fet beotS 
 kene & keoiuinde, & atoliche pinen. 
 
 pe dowe liS & slepeS iSe deofles berme, ase his deore deorling '. & te 
 deouel leieS his tutel adun to his eai'en, & tutelcB him al fet he ener 
 ^Tule. Uor, so hit is sikerliohe to hwamso is idel of god i f e ueond 
 matSeleS jeorne, & te idele imderuotJ lutieliche his lore, pe fet is idel 
 & gemeieas, he is fes deofles berries slep : atili he schal a domesdei 
 grimliche abreiden mid te dredful dreame of fe englene bemen i & ine 
 helle wondrede ateliche awakien. ' Surgite, mortui, qui jacetis in se- 
 pulchris : surgite, et venite ad judicium Saluatoris.' 
 
 pe giscare is ]jes feondes askebaiSie, & liS euer iSen asken, & faretJ 
 abuten asken & bisiliche stui-eS him uorte rukelen muchele & monie 
 ruken togedere, & bloweS ])erinne, & ablent him sulf i pa'SereS & maketS 
 ferinne figures of angi-im, ase feos rikenares doS 'f habbeS muchel uorto 
 rikenen. pis is al fes canges blisse, & te ueond bihalt al fis gomen, & 
 lauhwecS pet he to bersted. Wei tinderstond euerich wis mon pis i ()et 
 gold & seoluer botie, & euerich eorSlich eihte, nis buten eorSe & asken, 
 pet ablent euerichne mon pet bloaweeS in ham i pet is, pet boluweS him 
 ine ham i puruh ham ine heorte prude i & al pet he rukeleS & gedereS 
 togedere, & ethalt of eui pinge pet nis buten asken, more pen hit beo 
 neod, al schal ine helle iwurSen to him tadden & neddren, & boSe, ase 
 Isaie seiS, schulen beon of wurmes his kurtel & his kuuertur, pet nolde 
 her pe neodfiile ueden ne schruden. ' Subter te sternetur tinea, et ope- 
 rimentum tuum vermis.' 
 
 pe jiure glutun is pes fondes manciple. Uor he stikeS exier it5e 
 celere, oSer iSe kuchene. His heorte is iSe disches '. his pouht is al itSe 
 neppe i hi."? lif iSe tunne i his soule itSe crocke. KumeS forS biuoren 
 his Louerde bismitted & bismeoruwed, a dischs ine his one bond, & a 
 scoale in his o8er i matieled mid wordes, & wigeleS ase uordrunken mon 
 pet haneS imunt to uaUen i bihalt his greate wombe, & te ueond lauh- 
 vreS pet he to bersteS. God preateS peos pus puruh Isaie. ' Servi mei 
 comedent, et vos esurietis,' &c. i ' Mine men,' he seiS, ' schulen eten, & 
 ou schal euer hungren i & je schulen beon ueondes fode, world a buten 
 ende.' ' Quantum glorificavit se et in deliciis fiiit, tantum date ei luctum 
 et tormentum.' In Apocalipsi : ' Contra unum poculum quod miscuit, 
 miscete ei duo.' Gif pe gulchecuppe weaUinde bres to driucken, & 5eot 
 in his wide prote pet he aswelte wiSinnen. Ajean one, gif him two, 
 Lo ! swuch is Codes dom ajean pe jiure, & ajean pe di-inckares iSe 
 Apocalipse. 
 
174 THE ANCBEN KIWLB LeCT. IV. 
 
 Tlie following words require explanation, or merit notice, cheres, 
 faces, wry faces, grimaces. No satisfactory etymology has been suggested 
 for this word, which occurs in the Low Latin of the seventh century. 
 See Diez in voc. ; — uniselie, unhappy, fi-om A.-S. sselig, happy, ob- 
 solete ; — ontfule, malignant, from Icel. vondr, Dan. ond, evil, 
 wicked. I believe this root occurs in A.-S. only in compounds. It is 
 obsolete; — kurt. This and the numerous allied words are, according 
 to Diez, fromLat. chors,(cohors)cortis. See Ducange, s. v., where 
 the earliest definition is: atrium rusticum stabulis et aliis 
 sedificiis ciroumdatum; — auh,but, A.— S. ac, obsolete, if not extant 
 in certain uses of the interjection ah; — o luft, A.-S. lyft, air, sky, ex- 
 tant in a-loft\ — out, aught; — eadwiten, to blame, A.-S., extant in 
 to twit; — lodlich, loathsome, A.— S. laSlic. This root seems to have 
 passed from the Gothic into the Eomance languages, as in Fr. laid; — 
 sleateS is defined by Morton: ' sleeteth, aims at, hangs down his ears, 
 like a dog in pursuit of game.' If this is correct, the root would be 
 Blot (Icel. sl68r, a path), a track; — lastunge, slander, Ger. Laster- 
 Ting, obsolete; — forcwiddares, foretellers, from cweSen, to say, 
 obsolete; — ateliche, hateful; — agesten, to frighten, either the A.-S. 
 egesian, or from the same root as aghast; — niuelen. Morton sug- 
 gests to beat with the fists, in analogy with Sc. to nevel, to strike, as 
 the meaning. I think, however, the A.-S. neowel, prostrate, furnishes 
 a better etymology, and if this is the root, niuelen means to throiV 
 themselves to the ground; — sur, sour; — menen, to moan, bemoan, 
 lament; — skirmeS, fenceth, from skirmen, Fr. escrimer, allied to 
 Ger. schirmen, not found in A.-S., and extant in English only in 
 skirmish; — knif-worpare, knife-thrower, knif and worpen or 
 •weorpen, A.-S. weorpan, to throw, obsolete; — ord, point, edge, 
 obsolete;— .pilch-clout: pilch is supposed to be Lat. pelliceus, 
 of fur, and to have acquired the meaning of flannel; — alsnesien, 
 A.-S. asnsesan, to run against, to strike, obsolete; — berme, bosom, 
 obsolete; — tutel, mouth, lips, tuteleS, from tutelen, to speak. 
 The etymology of the.se words is not obvious, unless we refer them to 
 A.-S. f eotan, which is imitative: obsolete; — ma'Sele'5, from ma- 
 ts el en, to talk, obsolete; — jeorne, willingly, extant only in the verb 
 to yearn ; — iinderfo'S, receives, from underuongen, obsolete; — 
 ^emeleas, heedless, from jeme, care, heed, obsolete; — abreiden, 
 to awake suddenly, to be startled, obsolete; — bemen, trumpets, obso- 
 lete; — jiscare, covetous man, from A.-S. gytsian, to desire, to 
 covet, obsolete; — askebaSie, ash-gatherer, obsolete; — rukelen, 
 to heap up, A.-S. hreac, a heap, obsolete; — pa'Sere'S, poketh, tba 
 
Lect. IV. THE ANCKEN EIWLE 175 
 
 modem pother, pntter ; — augrim, algorism, algorithn, arithmetic; — . 
 cang,afool. This -word does not appear to be A. -S. Obsolete; — eihte, 
 possession, obsolete; — bolu\veS, disturbs himself, A.-S. bolgan, 
 obsolete; — ethalt, from etholden, to retain, obsolete except in 
 hold, and its derivatives and compounds; — iwurSen, to become, ob- 
 solete; — schruden, to clothe, obsolete; — j lure, greed}', obsolete; 
 
 — ncppe, table-cloth, Fr. nappe, extant in diminutive form, na^Mn; 
 
 — scoale, bowl, Dan. Skaal, obsolete; — imunt, allied with mind. 
 haueS imunt, has in mind to, hence, is about to; — a butan ende, 
 a, always, obsolete; — butan, without; — gulchecuppe, gulchen, 
 to swallow, cognate with Lat. gula; — weallinde, welling, boiling, 
 molten; — jeot, pour, A.— S. geotan, obsolete; — aswelte, perish, 
 extant in sivelter. 
 
 In this extract there are about twenty words, excluding repe- 
 titions, of Latin and French origin. This is more than three 
 per cent, of the whole number, and if we exclude the repeti- 
 tions of native words also, that proportion would be greatly 
 increased. More than thirty words used in these passages have 
 become obsolete, and of these, many, as will he seen by the 
 above notes, are important. I add Morton's translation : 
 
 There are some jesters who know of no other means of exciting mirth 
 but to make wiy faces, and distort their mouth, and scowl with their 
 eyes. This art the unhappy, envious man practiseth in the devil's 
 court, to excite to laughter their envious Lord. For, if any one saith 
 or doeth well, they cannot, by any means, look that way with the direct 
 eye of a good heart ; but wink in another direction, and look on the 
 left hand, and obliquely : and if there is anything to blame or dislike, 
 there they scowl with both eyes ; and when they hear of any good, they 
 hano- down both their ears ; but their desire of (,'vil is ever wide open. 
 Then they distort their mouth, when they turn good to evil ; and if 
 there is somewhat of evil, they distort it, and make it worse by de- 
 traction. These are their own prophets — foretelling their own end. 
 They shew beforehand how the hateful fiend shall strike terror into 
 them with his hideous grinning ; and how they shall themselves gnash, 
 their teeth, and beat their breasts, with rueful looks for the great an- 
 guish of the pains of hell. But they are the less to be pitied, because 
 they have learned beforehand their trade of making grim cheer. 
 
 The wrathful man fenceth before the devU with knives, an'l he is his 
 
176 THE ANCEEN urWLE Lect. IV» 
 
 Icnife-thrower, and playetli with swords, and beareth them upon his 
 tongue by the sharp point. Sword and knife both are sharp and citttT 
 ing words which he casteth forth, and therewith attacks others. And 
 it forebodes how the devils shall play with thenj with their sharp awls, 
 and skirmish about with them, and toss them like a pilch-clout every 
 one towards another, and strike them through ,with hell- swords, which 
 are keen, cutting, and horrible pains. 
 
 The sluggard lieth and «leepeth in the devil's bosom, as his dear 
 darling ; and the devil applieth his mouth to his ears, and tells him 
 whatever he will. For, this is certainly the ease with every one who 
 is not occupied in any thing good : the devil assiduously talks, and the 
 idle lovingly receive his lessons. He that is idle and careless is the 
 devil's bosom-sleeper : but he shall on Doomsday be feai-fully startled 
 with the dreadful sound of the angels' trumpets, and shall awaken in 
 terrible amazement in hell. ' Arise, ye dead, who lie in graves : arise, 
 and come to the Savior's judgment.' 
 
 The covetous man is the devil's ash-gatherer, and lieth always in the 
 ashes, and busily bestirs himself to heap up much, and to rake many 
 together, and bloweth therein, and blindeth himself, poketh, and maketh 
 therein figures of arithmetic, as those accountants do who have much 
 to reckon up. This is all the joy of this fool, and the devil seeth all 
 this game, and laugheth so that he bursteth. Every wise man well 
 understandeth this ; that both gold and silver, and all earthly goods, 
 are nothing but earth and ashes, which blind every man that bloweth 
 upon them ; that is, disquieteth himself for them ; is proud in heart 
 through them ; and all that he heapeth up and gathereth together, and 
 possesses of any thing more than is necessary, is nothing but ashes, and 
 in hell it shall all become toads and adders to him ; and both his kirtel 
 and his covering, as Isaiah saith, shall be of worms, who would not 
 feed nor clothe the needy, ' The worm is spread under thee, and the 
 worms cover thee.' 
 
 The greedy glutton is the devil's purveyor; for he always haunts the 
 ■cellar or the kitchen. His heart is in the dishes ; all his thought is of 
 the table-cloth ; his life is in the tun, his soul in the pitcher. He 
 cometh into the presence of his Lord besmvitted and besmeared, with a 
 dish in one hand and a bowl in the other. He talks much incoherently, 
 and staggereth like a drunken man who seemeth about to fall, looks at 
 his great belly, and the devil laughs so that he bursteth. God thus 
 threateneth such persons by Isaiah, ' Servi mei comedent, et vos esu— 
 rietis,' &c. : ' My servants shall eat, but ye shall always hunger ; ' and 
 ye shall be food for devils, world without end ! ' How much she hath 
 
Lect. IV. THE OEMULUM 177 
 
 ■glorified herself, and Kath lived deiiciously, so much torment and sor- 
 row give her.' ' Contra unum pocuhim quod miscuit, miscete ei duo.' 
 Give the tosspot molten brass to drink, and pour it into his wide throat, 
 that he may die inwardly. Lo ! such is the judgment of God against 
 the glutton, and against drunkards, in the Apocalypse. 
 
 The Ormiilum, of which I have spoken as one of the most 
 important philological monuments of the period under consi- 
 deration, has excited, and, in some respects, merits more atten- 
 tion than the Ancren Riwle.* 
 
 The Ormulum consists of a paraphrase of scripture with a 
 homiletic commentary, and is constructed much on the plan of 
 Otfrid's Krist. The extant fragments, which fortunately contain 
 the dedication and commencement, amount to twenty thousand 
 verses, but are apparently only an inconsiderable portion of the 
 entire poem. The author was Ormin, or. Orm, an English 
 monk of the order of St. Augustine, and he named the poem 
 Oemulum after himself, saying, at the opening : — 
 
 piss boo iss nemmnedd Ori-mulum 
 Forrfi fatt Orrm itt wrohhte. 
 
 The bestowal of his own name upon the work may be con- 
 sidered an indication of personal vanity on the part of the 
 author, and it is evident that he was ambitious to distinguish 
 himself as a reformer, both in English philology, or at least 
 orthography, and in religion. His system of spelling,— not new 
 in principle, and to a certain extent common to all the Grothic 
 languages — though cuBcbersome in practice, is carried out by 
 Ormin with a consistency and uniformity that show a very 
 careful attention to English phonology, and give it something 
 of the merit of an original method. He evidently attached 
 much value to this system, and expected a considerable circu.^ 
 lation of his book, for he earnestly enjoins upon all who copy it, 
 
 « See, on the vocabulary and the prosody of the Ormulum, First Series, 
 Lectures V., pp. 110, HI ; VI., p. 123 ; XIX., p. 424 ; XXIV, pp. 620~S22. 
 
 M 
 
178 THE OEMULUM I,BOT. IV. 
 
 to follow scrupulously the spelling employed by himself. Either 
 for want of poetical merit, or for the great freedom with whic) . 
 he censured the corruptions of the Church, or because readers 
 were repelled by the uncouth appearance of his orthography, or 
 for some other unknown reason, the book failed to secure the 
 popularity its author hoped for, and it does not seem to have 
 ever been copied at all. The only existing manuscript is pro- 
 bably the original of the author himself, and there is no reason 
 to believe that his spelling was ever adopted by any other 
 writer. The principal peculiarity of Ormin's orthography is 
 that the consonant is doubled after short vowels, except in a few 
 cases where, probably for want of room in the manuscript for 
 two consonants, a semicircular mark is put over a vowel to indi- 
 cate its quantity. There are also marks of contraction, and 
 some other signs the force of which is not always apparent. 
 
 It is obvious that if the spelling of the Ormulum were 
 proved truly to rtipresent the general contemporaneous pronun- 
 ciation of English at the time it was written, this orthography 
 would be a very important aid in acquiring a knowledge of that 
 pronunciation, because the temporal ((uantity of all the vowels 
 is indicated in every combination hi which they can possibly 
 occur. The author evidently designed to make it a phono- 
 graphic expression of the normal English articulation, for he 
 expressly declares that English — a term which he would hardly 
 have applied to a local dialect — can be properly written in no 
 other way. Besides this, it may be observed that, with respect 
 to the temporal length of the vowels, the notation of Orm, in 
 most cases, corresponds with what is, and is supposed to have 
 long been, the habitual pronunciation of English, though in 
 many cases, the essential quality of vowels and the accentuation 
 of syllables has certainly been changed. 
 
 On the other hand, the number of Scandinavian words and 
 idioms in the vocabulary and syntax has led many critics to 
 regard the work of Orm as a specimen of a North-eastern patois, 
 deriving a special character from the Danish colonists in that 
 
tECT. IV. THE OEMULTIM 179 
 
 quarter of England.* The weight of this evidence has perhaps 
 been exaggerated, and I do not attach much importance to the 
 coincidences between the Danish orthography and that of the 
 Ormulum. English pronunciation agrees with llie Danish in 
 many points in which both differ from the German, and I am 
 much disposed to believe that the spelling of the Ormulum 
 constitutes as faithful a representation of the oral English of its 
 time as any one work could be, at a period of great confusion of 
 speech.f 
 
 The versification differs from the Anglo-Saxon models in 
 wanting alliteration, and in possessing a regular metrical flow ; 
 from the Norman French in wanting rhyme ; and, allowing for 
 the difference between accent and classical quantity, it closely 
 resembles that of some Latin poems of the Middle Ages, from 
 which it was probably imitated. 
 
 The vocabulary contains a few words borrowed from sacred or 
 ecclesiastical Latin, but scarcely any trace of Norman influence. 
 The syntax of Orm, as will be seen by an examination of the 
 passages I select for illustration, does not differ much from that 
 of modern English, and if the work were reduced to the present 
 orthography, it would present very few difficulties to a reader, at 
 all familiar with old English literature. The most remarkable 
 general characteristic of the syntax is its regularity, which, in 
 spite of the temptations to licence, common to all modes of 
 versification, is greater than is to be found in any other English 
 
 * Perhaps the most important Scandinavianism in the Ormulum is the use of 
 aren, the origin of the modem are, as the third person plural indicative present 
 of the verb beon, ben, beo, <o 4e. Aren occurs, for the first time in English so 
 far as I have observed, on pp. 157 and 237 of the first volume of the Ormulum, 
 though sinndenn, which in Layamon is represented by b eon, beo, beoS, biS, 
 &C. is the more common fovm of this plural. 
 
 t The orthography of the Ormulum, if it does not disprove the doctrine of the 
 diphthongal pronunciation of the long vowels, certainly lends no countenance to it. 
 Had this been a very marked characteristic of the EngUsh articulation of his time, 
 it could hardly have escaped so acute an ear as that of Orm ; and, on the other 
 hand, if the vowels had been divided into distinct shades, as in modern Danish, 
 he would have found himself under the necessity of inventing characters to repre- 
 sent these varieties of soond. 
 
 Ma 
 
180 THE ORMUHTJt Lect. IV'. 
 
 composition, except those of modern date. This implies not 
 only a closer attention to the subject than had been bestowed 
 upon it by other authors, but a general stability of grammatical 
 forms, evidence of which is not to be found elsewhere. Ths 
 departures from the author's own system are, with very few 
 exceptions, as might be expected, sacriiices to the canons of 
 metre. 
 
 Considered as a poem, the Ormulum has no merit but that of 
 smooth, fluent, and regular versification, and it exhibits none of 
 the characteristic traits of English genius. With the exception, 
 therefore, of its remarkable prosody, its claims to the attention 
 of the student are of the same character as those of the Ancreu 
 Eiwle, and it is not a fit subject for literary criticism. 
 
 I have embraced this poem in the same class with Layamou 
 and the Ancren Eiwle in deference to the opinion of English 
 philologists, who generally incline to treat its dialect as semi- 
 Saxon, rather than as distinctively English. It appears to me 
 to belong to a later date than either of those writings, or than 
 some productions which I shall have occasion to consider here- 
 after ; but its total want of all trace of nationality of thought 
 and character induces me to accede the more readily to its 
 separation from the literature which forms the subject of the 
 next lecture, and which, in some cases at least, shows a faint 
 glimmering of the spark that was soon to be kindled to a radiant 
 ilame. 
 
 Affterr fatt tatt te Laferrd Crist 
 After that that the Lord Christ 
 
 Wass cumenn off Egyppte 
 was come from Egypt 
 
 Inntill pe land oif Galileo, 
 into the land of Galilee, 
 
 Till Nazarsef'ess chesstre, 
 to Nazareth's town, 
 
 pseraffterr sej5}) ]>e Goddspellboo 
 thereafter saith the Gospelbook 
 
tKCT. IV. THE OEMUHJM 181 
 
 Bilsef he far well lannge 
 remained he there well long 
 
 Wi})]) hise frend tatt haffdenn himm 
 with his friends that had him 
 
 To jemenn & to gsetenn, 
 to keep and to protect, 
 
 Wiff Marge J'att hiss moderr wass 
 with Maiy that his mother was 
 
 & masjdeim fwerrt St clene, 
 and maiden throughout clean, 
 
 & wiff Josaep fatt wass himm sett 
 and with Joseph that was him set 
 
 To fedejm & to fosstrenn. 
 to feed and to foster. 
 
 & illke Lenntenn forenn fejj 
 and every Lent fared they 
 
 Till 5errsal£emess chesstre 
 to Jerusalem's city 
 
 A55 att te Passkemessedajj, 
 aye at the Passoverday, 
 
 Swa summ fe hoc hemm tahhte, 
 so as tie book them taught. 
 
 To frellsenn ]>xt fatt hejhe tid 
 to keep there that holyday 
 
 O fatt Judisskenn wise, 
 in the Jewish wise, 
 
 Forr fatt tejj wserenn gode menn, 
 for that they were good men, 
 
 & Godess lajhess heldenn. 
 and God's laws held. 
 
 And siffenn o fatt jer ];att Crist 
 And afterwards in the year that Christ 
 
 Wass ofi tweUf winnterr elde 
 was of twelve winters age 
 
182 THE OEMtJLUlt tECT. IV; 
 
 pe25 comenn inntill Serrsalsem 
 they come into Jerusalem 
 
 Att tejs^-e Passkemesse, 
 at their Passover, 
 
 & heldenn f aar f att halljhe tid 
 and held there that holy time 
 
 O f att Judisskenn wise. 
 in the Jewish wise. 
 
 & Jesu Crist wass Jiser wi])]> hemm, 
 and Jesus Christ was there with them, 
 
 Swa summ f e Goddspell kif eff. 
 so as the Gospel saith. 
 
 & affterr fatt te tid wass gan 
 and after that the time was gone 
 
 pej5 wenudenn fra fe temmple, 
 they wended from the temple, 
 
 & ferrdenn towarrd Nazaraef 
 and fared towards Nazareth 
 
 An dajjess gang till efenn, 
 a day's journey till evening, 
 
 & wenndenn f att te Laferrd Crist 
 and weened that the Lord Christ 
 
 Wiff hemm f att gate come ; 
 with them that way came ; 
 
 & he wass fa behinndenn hemm 
 and he was then behind them 
 
 Bilefedd att te temmple; 
 remaining at the temple; 
 
 & tatt ne wisste nohht hiss kinn 
 and that not wist not his kin 
 
 Ace wennde fatt he come, 
 but weened that he came, 
 
 & jedenn heore wejje forr)) 
 and went their way forth 
 
I^T- IV^. XHE OKMULUM 183 
 
 Till fatt itt conim tiU efenn, 
 till that it came to evening, 
 
 & ta ))e55 misstenn fejsre child, 
 and then they missed their child, 
 
 & itt hemm offerrfuhhte, 
 and it them gi-ieved, 
 
 & jedenn till, & sohhtenn himm 
 and (they) went, and sought him 
 
 Bitwenenn sibbe & cufe, 
 
 among relations and acquaintance, 
 
 & tejs ne fundenn nohht off himm 
 and they not found nought of him, 
 
 Forr he wass att te temmple. 
 for he was at the temple. 
 
 & te55 fa wenndenn effl onnjsen 
 and they then turned back again 
 
 ]>att dere child to sekenn, 
 that dear child to seek, 
 
 & comenn efft till 3errsal£em, 
 and came again to Jerusalem, 
 
 To sekenn himm fser binnenn. 
 to seek him there within. 
 
 & te55 himm o fe f ridde dajj 
 and they him on the third day 
 
 fjer fondenn i fe temmple 
 there found in the temple 
 
 Bitwenenn f att Judisskenn flocc 
 among the Jewish flock 
 
 patt lasredd wass o boke; 
 that learned was in book ; 
 
 & taere he satt to frajjnenn hemm 
 and there he sat to ask them 
 
 Off feggre bokess lare, ' 
 of their book's lore. 
 
184f THE OKMTTLDM tBCT- IV. 
 
 & alle f att himm herrdenn pser, 
 and all that Mm heard there, 
 
 Hemm fuhhte mikell wunnderr 
 them thought much ■wonder 
 
 Off fatt he wass full jssp & wis 
 of that he was fuU shrewd and wise 
 
 To swarenn & to frajjnenn. 
 to answer and to ask. 
 
 & Sannte Mar^e comm till himm 
 and Saint Mary came to him 
 
 & sejgde himm fuss wifj) worde, 
 and said (to) him thus with word, 
 
 Wlii didesst tu, lef sune, fuss 
 Why didst thou, dear son, thus 
 
 Wif f uss, forr uss to swennkenn ? 
 with us, for us to trouble? 
 
 Witt hafenn sohht te widewhar 
 we-two have sought thee widewhere 
 
 Ice & ti faderr bafe 
 I and thy father both 
 
 Wiff serrhfuU herrte & sarij mod, 
 with sorrowful heart and sorry mood, 
 
 Whi didesst tu fiss dede? 
 why didst thou this deed ? 
 
 & tanne sejjde Jesu Crist 
 and then said Jesus Christ 
 
 Till bafe fuss wiff worde, 
 to both thus with word, 
 
 Whatt wass juw swa to sekenn mo, 
 what was (there tc) you so to seek me, 
 
 Whatt wass juw swa to serrjhenn ? 
 what was (there to) you so to sorrow 7 
 
 Ne wisste ^e nohht tatt me birrf 
 not wist ye not that me becomes 
 
Lect. IV. THE ORMULUM 185 
 
 Min faderr wille forfenn? 
 my father's -will (to) do ? 
 
 Ne fatt me bii-rjj beon hojhefull 
 nor that me becomes (to) be careful 
 
 Abutenn hise f ingess ? 
 about his things ? 
 
 & tejj ne mihhtenn nohht tatt word 
 and they not might not that word 
 
 jit ta wel 1 inn derrstanndenn ; 
 yet then wel understand; 
 
 & he fa jede forjj wifj) hemm 
 and he then went forth with them 
 
 & dide hemm heore wille, 
 and did them there will, 
 
 & comm wiff hemm till Nazarsef, 
 and came with them to Nazareth, 
 
 Swa summ fe Goddspell kifej)]), 
 so as the Gospel saith, 
 
 & till hemm bafe he lutte & bseh 
 and to them both he obeyed and bowed 
 
 furrh sopfesst herrsummnesse, 
 through soothfast obedience, 
 
 & wass wi])]) hemm tiil f att he wass 
 and was with them till that he was 
 
 Off ])ritti5 winnterr elde. 
 of thirty winters' age. 
 
 & tu:e laffdij Marje too 
 and our lady Mary took 
 
 AH fatt jho sahh & herrde 
 all that she saw and heard 
 
 Off hire sune Jesu Crist, 
 of her son Jesus Christ, 
 
 & off hiss Goddcunndness^ 
 and of his Divinity, 
 
186 THE OEMULUM tECT. IV. 
 
 & all jliot held inn hire f ohht, 
 and all she-it held in her thought, 
 
 Swa summ fe GoddspeU kipefji, 
 so as the Gospel saith, 
 
 & le55de itt all tosamenn ajs 
 and laid it aU together aye 
 
 Inn hire fohhtess arrke. 
 in her thought's ark. 
 
 & hire siTne wax & f raf 
 And her son waxed and throve 
 
 I wissdom & inn elde, 
 in wisdom and in ago, 
 
 & he wass Godd & gode menn 
 and he was (to) God and good men 
 
 Well swipe lef & dere ; 
 well very pleasing and dear ; 
 
 & tatt wass rihht, forr he wass Godd, 
 and that was right, for he was God, 
 
 & god onn alle wise, 
 and good in all ways. 
 
 Her ende])]) nu f iss GoddspeU ])uss 
 Here endeth now this Gospel thus 
 
 & uss birrjj itt furrhsekenn, 
 and us (it) becomes it to through-search, 
 
 To lokenn whatt itt Iserefji uss 
 to observe what it teacheth us 
 
 Off ure sawle nede. 
 of our soul's need. 
 
 Notes. — I have already stated the general principle of Orm's ortho- 
 gi-aphy. There are apparent deviations from his own rules, but these, 
 when not mere accidents, are doubtless expUcable as special cases, 
 though we cannot always reconcile them to his usual practice. It wiU 
 be seen that in words beguining with p, and now pronounced with the 
 th sound, t is often substituted, but this is always done in conformity witi 
 
Lect. IV. THE OElIULtJM 187 
 
 what was doiibtless an ortlioepical rule. After •words ending in d, t, 
 and sometimes s^, J) becomes t, as in the first line of the above extract. 
 There are some exceptions to this rule, but they are not important 
 enough to be noticed, trend, the sign of the plural is here omitted; — 
 wass — bilefedd. This corresponds with the German war geblie- 
 ben; — witt, we- two, dual form; — whatt wass Jtiw, what was to 
 you, what had you, what ailed you; — me birr J), the verb is here an 
 impersonal, as ought sometimes was at a later period ; — faderr wille, 
 the omission of the possessive sign after words indicative of family re- 
 lation was very common for at least two centuries after the time of 
 Orm ; — ghot, contraction for jho itt. 
 
LECTUEE V. 
 
 ENGLISH LAJSTGUAGE AND LITEEATUEE OF THE FIEST PEEIOD : 
 FEOM THE MIDDLE OF THE THIRTEENTH TO THE MIDDLE 
 OF THE FOUETEEKTH CENTUEY. 
 
 As I have remarked in a former lecture, the change from 
 Anglo-Saxon and Semi-Saxon to English was so gradual, that 
 the history of the revolution can be divided only by arbitrary 
 epochs ; and I have given some reasons for thinking that what- 
 ever date we may assign to the formation of the English 
 speech, English literature cannot be regarded as having had a 
 beginning until the English tongue was employed in the 
 expression of the conceptions of a distinctively national genius. 
 This, as we have seen, cannot be said to have taken place until, 
 after the middle of the fourteenth century; but the incipient 
 chemical union of Saxon and French was attended with an 
 effervescence which threw off some spirited products, though it 
 must be confessed that most of what is called the English 
 literature of the thirteenth century, when compared with'the 
 contemporaneous poetry of Continental Europe, and especially 
 of France, resembles dregs and lees rather than anything more 
 ethereal. 
 
 To the grammarian and the etymologist, the history of the 
 transition period, or the larva and chrysalis states, is of in- 
 terest and importance as necessary to a clear view of the phy- 
 siology of the English speech ; but, both because I aim to exhibit 
 the literarv adaotations of the lansruasre rather than its genesis 
 
Lkct. V. THIKTEENTH CENTTTET 189 
 
 or its linguistic affinities, and because of the extreme difficulty 
 of intelligibly presenting niceties of grammatical form to the 
 ear alone, I attempt nothing beyond a very general statement 
 of the leading facts of this period of English philological 
 history. 
 
 We shall have time and space to criticise only the more con- 
 spicuous writers and their dialect, and even among these writers 
 I must confine myself to those who were something more than 
 merely products of their age and country. I can notice only 
 two classes, namely, such as are emphatically important witnesses 
 to the state of English philology in their time, and such as con- 
 tributed — by the popularity of their writings and their sym- 
 pathy with the tendencies of the yet but half-developed nation- 
 ality which was struggling into existence — to give form and 
 direction to contemporaneous and succeeding literary effort, and 
 are consequently to be regarded, not as examples, results, 
 simply, but as creative influences in English letters. 
 
 Of the former class, the most celebrated is the short proclg,- 
 mation issued in the year 1258, in the reign of Henry III., 
 which many English philologists regard as the first specimen of 
 English as contradistinguished from Semi-Saxon.* There is 
 no very good grammatical reason for treating this proclamation 
 as belonging to an essentially different phase of English philo- 
 logy from many earlier writings of the same century; for 
 though it is, in particular points, apparently more modern than 
 
 * I suppose the editors of tbe great English Dictionary now in course of pre- 
 paration under the auspices of the London Philological Society, consider this 
 state-paper as not English, but Serai-Saxon ; for it is not among the monuments 
 enumerated as examined for Coleridge's Glossarial Index to the English literature 
 of the thirteenth centxuy. Short as it is, it contains, besides some variant forms 
 not noticed by Coleridge, these words not found in the Glossarial Index : u, al- 
 ways, aye; aforesaid itoforenisoide) \ bcs'(jt^\ provision, ordinance; freme^ profit, 
 good; fultume, help; riiogr, nobles [?] ; oursclf (ussJum); rcdisman, councillor; 
 sHnees (isi-tnesi), law, decree ; siffn (iseived), verb ; worsen {iwcrsed) ; worthnesse, 
 honour. We may hence infer that the still unpublished relics of the literature of 
 the thirteenth century will furnish a considerable number of words not yet in- 
 corporated into English vocabularies. 
 
190 PEOCLAMATION OF HENET III. Lect. V; 
 
 some of ttem — the Ancren Eiwle for instance — it is, in other 
 respects, quite as decidedly of an older structure. Its real im- 
 portance arises chiefly from the fact, that it is one of the 
 very few specimens of the English of that century, the 
 date of which is positively known*, that of the older text of 
 Layamon being rather doubtful, those of the later text and of 
 the Ormulum, as well as of the Ancren Eiwle, and of most 
 other manuscripts ascribed to the thirteenth century, altogether 
 uncertain. 
 
 Another circumstance which adds much to its value is, that 
 it was issued on an important political occasion — the establish- 
 ment of a governmental council or commission, in derogation of 
 the royal authority, and invested with almost absolute powers — 
 and that, as appears from the document itself, copies of it were 
 sent, for public promulgation, to every shire in England. The 
 probability therefore is strong, that this translation — for the 
 proclamation appears to have been drawn up in French — was 
 not written in the peculiar local dialect of any one district, but in 
 the form which most truly corresponded to the general features 
 of the popular speech, ia order that it might be everywhere 
 intelligible. It must then be considered the best evidence 
 existing of the condition of English at any fixed period in the 
 thirteenth century. 
 
 It has been objected against this view of the philological 
 importance of this document, that, being an official paper, ' it is 
 made up, in great part, of established phrases of form, many of 
 which had probably become obsolete in ordinary speech jind 
 writing,' f and hence is to be regarded as no true representative 
 of the current English of its time, but as an assemblage of 
 archaic forms which had lost their vitality, and, of course, as 
 
 * I am perhaps in error in treating the period to which this monument helongs, 
 as altogether certain. There is no doubt as to the date of the original composi- 
 tion, but are we sure that this particular English copy is contemporaneous with 
 the original f 
 
 t Craik, Outlines of the History of the English Language. 
 
LeCT. V. PROCLAMATION OF HENRY III. 191 
 
 belonging philologically to an earlier period. This objection is 
 founded on what I think an erroneous view of the facts of the 
 case. After the Conquest, the Anglo-Saxon was superseded by 
 French and Latin as the mediums of official communication, 
 and there is reason to believe that, except in grants to indi- 
 viduals and other matters of private concern, Semi-Saxon and 
 Early English were little, if at all, used by the government, this 
 proclamation being, I believe, the only public document known 
 to have been promulgated in the native tongue during the whole 
 of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It was probably em- 
 ployed on this occasion, because the political movement which 
 extorted from the crown the establishment of the commissiiin 
 was, r.s far as in that age any political movement could be, of a 
 popular character, and it was thought a prudent measure to 
 publish this concession to the demands of the people in a dialect 
 intelligible to all. 
 
 There were, then, at that time, no ' established phrases of 
 form ' in the political dialect of the English language. The 
 government could not have used a stereotyped phraseology, for 
 the reason that none such existed ; and accordingly this procla- 
 mation must be viewed as an authentic monument of the popular 
 speech of England in the middle of the thirteenth century, so 
 far as that speech had yet acquired a consistent and uniform 
 character. 
 
 It is very short, containing, besides proper names, only about 
 three hundred words in all, and only between one hundred and 
 thirty and one hundred and forty different words, even counting 
 as such all the different inflections of the same stem. Of course, 
 it exempliiies but a small proportion of either the grammatical 
 forms or the vocabulary. In this latter respect it shows no 
 trace of Norman influence, all the words being English, except 
 the proper names, a couple of official titles, duke and marshcd, 
 and one or two words which the Anglo-Saxon had, in earlier 
 ages received from the I^atin; but in the gramman, the break- 
 ing down of the Anglo-Saxon inflectional system is plainly per- 
 
192 PKOCLAMATIOK OF HENKT III. LiCT. V. 
 
 ceptible. I give the text as I find it in Haupt's Zeitschrift, 
 xi. 298, 299, after Pauli.* 
 
 Henr', thurg Godes fultiime King on Engleneloande, Ihoaverd on Ir- 
 loand, duk' on Norm', on Aquitain', and eorl on Aiiiow, send igretinge 
 to all hise halde ilaerde and ilae vede on Huntendon' scliir'. 
 
 Thaet witen ge wel aUe, thaet we wiUen and unnen, thaet tLaet ure 
 raedesmen alje other the moare dael of heom, thaet beoth ichosen thurg 
 us and thurg thaet loandes folk on ure kuneriche, habbeth idon and 
 schuUen don in the worthnesse of Gode and on ure treowthe for the 
 freme of the loande thurg the besigte of than toforeniseide redesmen, 
 beo stedefaest and ilestinde in aUe thinge a buten aende, and we hoaten 
 aUe ure treowe in the treowthe, that heo us ogen, thaet heo stedefaest- 
 liche healden and swerien to healden and to werien the isetnesses, thaet 
 beon imakede and beon to makien thurg than toforeniseide raedesmen 
 other thurg the moare dael of heom alswo alse hit is biforen iseid, and 
 thaet aehc other helpe thaet for to done bi than ilche othe agenes aUe 
 men, rigt for to done and to foangen, and noan ne nime of loande ne 
 of egte, wherethurg this besigte muge beon ilet other iwersed on onie 
 wise and gif oni other onie cumen her ongenes, we wiUen and hoaten, 
 thaet alle ure treowe heom healden deadliche ifoan, and for thaet we 
 wiUen, thaet this beo stedefaest and lestinde, we senden gew this writ 
 open iseined with ure seel to halden amanges gew ine hord. 
 
 "Witnesse usselven aet Lunden' thane egtetenthe day on the monthe 
 of Octobr' in the two and fowertigthe geare of ure cruninge. 
 
 And this wes idon aetforen ure isworene redesmen : 
 [here foUow the signatures of several redesmen or councillors] 
 and aetforen othre moge. 
 
 And al on tho ilche worden is isend in to aeurihce othre shcire ouer 
 al thaere kuneriche on Engleneloande and ek in tel Irelonde. 
 
 In modern English thus : 
 
 Henry, by the grace of God king in (of) England, lord in (of) "Ire- 
 land, duke in (of) Normandy, in (of) Aquitaine, and carl in (of) Anjou, 
 sends greeting to all his lieges, clerk and lay, in Huntingdonshire. 
 
 This know ye well all, that we wiU and grant that what ova council- 
 
 * I regret that I am unable to furnish a literal copy of this interesting docu- 
 ment. Pauli, from whom the text in Haupt is printed, has thought fit to reject 
 the ; of the original, and I suppose also the ]> and ^, one or hoth of which it 
 probably employed. Whether other changes have been made, I do not know, hut 
 even these are as unjustifiable as it would be to substitute g for 7, or ch for x 
 in printing a unirjue Greek manuscript. 
 
Lect. V. PEOCL.VMATION OF HEKRT III. 193 
 
 lors, all or die major part of them, who are chosen by us and by the 
 land's people in our kingdom, have done and shall do, to the honour of 
 God and in allegiance to us, for the good of the land, by tlie ordinance 
 of the aforesaid councillors, be stedfast and permanent in all things, 
 time without end, and we command all our lieges by the faith that they 
 owe us, that they stedfastly hold, and swear to hold and defend the re- 
 gulations that are made and to be made by the aforesaid councillors, or 
 by tlie major part of them, as is before said, and that each help others 
 this to do, by the same oath, against all men, right to do and to receive, 
 and that none take of land or goods, whereby this ordinance may be 
 let or impaired in any Avise, and if any [sing.] or any [plural] trans- 
 gTess here against, we will and command that all our lieges them hold 
 as deadly foes, and because we will that this be stedfast and permanent, 
 we send you these letters patent sealed with our seal, to keep among 
 you in custody. 
 
 "Witness ourself at London the eighteenth day in the month of Octo- 
 ber in the two and fortieth year of our coronation. 
 
 And this was done before our sworn coxmcillors : 
 [Signatures] 
 and before other nobles [?]. 
 
 And all in the same words is sent into every other shire over all the 
 kingdom in (of) England and also into Ireland. 
 
 The first thing which strikes us in the aspect of this proclamation is 
 a structure of period so nearly corresponding with present usage, that, 
 as the above translation shows, it is easy to make a modern English 
 version, conforming to the original in verbal arrangement and syntax, 
 and yet departing very httle from the idiom of our own time. The 
 positional syntax had become established, and the inflectional endings 
 had no longer a real value. True, from the force of habit, they con- 
 tinued long in use, just as in spelling we retain letters which have 
 ceased to be pronoimced ; but when it was once distinctly felt that the 
 syntactical relations of words had come to depend on precedence and 
 sequence, the cases and other now useless grammatical signs were 
 neglected, confounded, and finally dropped, as were the original symbols 
 of the larger numbers in the Arabic notation, when it was discovered 
 that po.sition alone might be made to indicate the value of the factors 
 of which the digits were the exponents.* 
 
 The principle, that the grammatical categories of the words in a 
 
 * See an explanation of the origin of the decimal notation in a note to 
 Humboldt's £osmo3. 
 
J 94 PEOCLAMATION OF HENET III. Lect. V. 
 
 period are determined by their relative positions, is the true character- 
 istic of English as distinguished from Saxon, and if we coiild fix the 
 epoch at which this principle became the controlling law of construction, 
 we could assign a date to the origin of the English language as a new 
 linguistic individual. 
 
 Eegel considers the orthography of this proclamation so important 
 that, in an article in the second number of the eleventh volume of 
 Haupt, he devotes no less than eight and twenty closely printed octavo 
 pages to an examination of it. Were I convinced of the soundness of 
 these speculations, the present would not be a fit place for the exhibition 
 of the results arrived at by this writer ; but, however ingenious may 
 be his views, it appears to me that, in the excessive irregularity of all 
 orthography at that period, we may find sufficient reason for doubting 
 whether we are yet in possession of sufficient data to justify any posi- 
 tive conclusions on the relations between the spoken and the written 
 tongue of England in the middle of the thirteenth century.* 
 
 * We can never determine, by internal evidence, 'whether changes in orthography 
 are contemporaneous with changes in pronunciation, and it is only in a very few 
 recent cases that we have any external evidence on the subject. The presumption 
 is always that the spelling remained unaltered long after the spoken -word had 
 become very different in articulation. 
 
 If we compare the orthography of our time with that of Shakspeare's agCj^we 
 find very considerable changes, and we know that English pronunciation has been 
 much modified since that period. (See the evidence on this subject in First Series, 
 Lect^e XXII.) But the changes in spelling have not, in general, been made for 
 the purpose of bringing the written into closer accordance with the spoken tongue, 
 but for etymological reasons, for convenience of the printer, for iiniformity, and 
 in some cases from caprice ; nor have we any reason to believe that oiu: present 
 orthography is more truly phonographic than it was two hundred years ago, except, 
 perhaps, so far as it has been made so by dropping the mute e in many words. 
 
 The Spanish Academy has succeeded in bringing about a revolution in the ortho- 
 graphy of the Castilian language, and in this instance, the modern spelling more truly 
 represents the articulation than the old orthography did. The change was not made 
 because the orthoepy had been recently modified, but to make the orthography 
 a more uniform and convenient expression of what had been for a long time the 
 normal pronunciation. This we know historically, but if the discussions on the 
 subject should be lost, posterity might as justly infer, from the internal evidence 
 in the ease, that the articulation of the Spanish underwent a sudden change in the 
 first half of the nineteenth century, as we can that the pronunciation of Saxon words 
 in English, in the time of Henry III , differed materially from that employed in 
 the same words at the epoch of the Coni^uest. And in the same way, leaving the 
 external evidence out of the question, a stranger to Anglo-American iisage, ob- 
 serving the general employment of Webster's unhappy cacography in New York 
 newspapers and school books, coyld come to no other coudusiou than that the 
 
Lect. V. PKOCLAMATION OF HENRY III. 195 
 
 The following words seem to reqiiire special notice : 
 
 Verbs, send, 3 per. iudic. sing, is without infiectional ending or 
 other sign of conjugation; — witen, imperative, ends in n instead of e, 
 which latter was the A.-S. form when tlie nominative pronoun foUowed 
 the verb; — willen, with n final instead of f or S, but beoth and 
 habbeth with the latter sound; — schullen with /i, as m A.-S. ; — 
 hoaten with n instead of ]> or S; — healden and swerien, sub- 
 junctive, with n as in A.-S.; — to healden and to werien, infini- 
 tives with to, contrary to A.-S. ; beon with re instead of A.-S. t ; — to 
 makien, gerundial according to A.-S. construction, but without the 
 characteristic -ne ; — helpe, subjunctive, with e as in A.-S.; — to 
 done, gerundial with characteristic ending; — to foangen, gerundial 
 without characteristic ending; — nime, subj. with e as in A.-S.; — 
 muge, subj. with e as in A.-S. ; — cumen, probably subj., with re as in 
 A.-S.; — healden, subj. with n as in A.-S.; — senden, with n for 5; 
 — to halden, gerund, without characteristic. 
 
 Nouns. Igretinge is not a participle, but a noun, greeting, Lat. 
 salutem. The i, originally an augment of the participle and past 
 tense of the verb, is prefixed also to two other nouns, isetnesses and 
 ifoan, and to ilaewede, which is probably to be considered as an ad- 
 jective, though not, like ileerde, a participial; besigte is allied to 
 sight, and therefore etymologicaUy corresponds to provision. 
 
 Adjectives, mo are. It is worth noticing, as an instance of the 
 approximation of languages which have long diverged, that the A.-S. 
 maera and the Latin major, are, in consequence of orthoepic changes, 
 represented in modern English and in Portuguese, respectively, by the 
 same word, niore, Eng., mor. Port. In the same way — in pursuance 
 of more remarkable laws of change by which, in the Cimbric of the 
 Sette and the Tredici Comuni, the G-er. w becomes h, the diphthong ei 
 is sounded o, and the palatal ch is changed into g — the Oerman adjective 
 weich is, in Cimbric, spelled and pronounced bog, which agrees in 
 form, and in at least one meaning, with the Celtic bog. See a note on 
 Buck, in the American edition of Wedgwood's Diet, of Eng. Etym. 
 Oni other onie, Eegel supposes the e final in the latter example to 
 be the sign of the plural ; others have treated it as a feminine singular 
 ending. The question cannot be determined by the syntax, for the 
 plural might have been used after an alternative, but the distinction of 
 
 people of the American cominercial metropolis had lately become so lamentably 
 depraved in speech as to talk of travi-lers, of dissolute reve-lers, and of libc-linjj 
 smuggled goods. 
 
 O 2 
 
196 EOMANCE OF ALEXANDER Leot. V. 
 
 grammatical gender was now so little regarded that the e is, most pro- 
 bably, a plural sign. The orginal French of the proclamation, which, 
 imfortiinately, my atithority does not give, would decide this question. 
 
 Particles. f had not yet become well recognised as a sign of the 
 genitive or possessive, and the document presents several instances of a 
 confusion between this particle and on, in. On, in the address, must 
 have represented the French de, while, in the body of the proclamation, 
 the same preposition is translated by of; — a buten aende, Pauli 
 had printed abuten aende, treating abuten as a single word. Eegel, 
 upon the authority of numerous passages m Semi-Saxon MSS., rightly 
 separates them, a is an adverb, the modern aye, forever. 
 
 One of the most famous among the fictions of the Middle 
 Ages, which were made familiar to the English people of the 
 thirteenth century by a vernacular translation, was the story of 
 Alexander the Great. The remarkable exploits of this famous 
 captain filled the world with his renown, in his own short life- 
 time ; but the splendour of his victories was for a time eclipsed 
 by the perhaps greater achievements, and the certainly more 
 permanent conquests, of Koman generals, and, during a period 
 of some centuries, his fame passed quite out of the popular 
 memory of Europe. After the downfall of the Eoman Empire, 
 his forgotten glory was revived on the Levantine shores of the 
 Mediterranean, and then in Western Europe, not in consequence 
 of the increasing study of classical authors, but by an echo from 
 the literature of far-off countries, where Eome had won but 
 transient and doubtful triumphs. The name and exploits of 
 Secunder Dhulkarnein *, or the two-horned Alexander, seem 
 
 * May not this Oriental epithet he the origin of the word dulcarnon, which has 
 proved too hard a. problem for Chaucer's commentators to solve ? Alexander was 
 known to the Middle Ages as the great hero of the heathen world, the paynim 
 par excellence, and it is not at all probable that the signification of Dhulkarnein 
 was familiar to them. The meaning hiathcn would precisely suit the word in the 
 passage in Stanihurst's Ireland, referred to by Halliwell as suggesting an ex 
 planation of Chaucer's dukarnvn. Stanihiu-st, in Holinshed, vol. vi. p. 36, 
 reprint of 1808, speaking of the conversion of the people of Ulster by St. Patrick, 
 says : " S. Patrike, considering that these sealie soules were (as all dulcarnancs 
 for the more part are) more to be terrified from infidelitie through the paines of 
 hell, than allured to Chiistianitie by the ioies of heauen," &e. &c. 
 
Lect. V. SOIIANCE OF ALEXANDER 197 
 
 never to have been obscured in the East, and, in the Middle 
 Ages, translations of Oriental romances founded on his life, and 
 imitations of them, constituted an important feature in the 
 literature of every European people possessing a written 
 speech. 
 
 The most celebrated and popular, though not the earliest, of 
 these poems, was the Alexandreis of Philip Gautier, of Lille, or 
 Chatillon, which was composed, as appears from internal 
 evidence, between the years 1170 — 1201. This is modelled 
 mainly after Curtius, and is written in Latin hexameters. It 
 served as the prototype of numerous versions and paraphrases 
 in many languages, and was even translated into Old-Northern 
 or Icelandic prose, by command of Magnus Hakonsson, a Nor- 
 wegian king, about the middle of the thirteenth century. 
 
 Several of the translations or imitations of Grautier's work 
 ■were written in verses of twelve syllables, or six iambic feet,~ 
 which were probably thought the nearest approximation to the 
 classic hexameter practicable in modern poetry * ; and it is said 
 
 Xhtkarmm occurs twice in Troilus and Creseide, iiiv. 914, 916. Creseide 
 Bays: 
 
 And, eme, ywis, faine would I don the best, 
 If that I grace had for to do so, 
 But whether that ye dwell, or for him go, 
 I am, till God me better minde send. 
 At dvlcamon, right at my wittes end. 
 
 Pandarus replies : 
 
 Ye, nece, wol ye here, 
 2)u?camon is called fieming of wretches, 
 It semeth herd, for wretches wol nought lere, 
 For very slouth, or other wilful tetches, 
 This is said by hem that be not worth two fetches, 
 But ye ben wise, and that ye han on hond, 
 N' is neither harde, ne skOfull to withstond. 
 
 Here the sense of dullness or stupidity, so commonly ascribed to the heathen, is 
 plainly implied, though it must be admitted that the precise sense of the phrases 
 in which the word occurs is not easily made out. 
 
 » The earliest attempt at imitation of the classical hexameter which I have 
 met with in English is a rhymed couplet translated from Virgil in Purvey*! 
 
198 ROMANCE OF ALEXANDER Lect. V. 
 
 that alexandrine, as a designation of a particular metre, took 
 its name from its employment in these popular and widely cir- 
 culated poems. Chaucer, though he does not himself write 
 in this verse, speaks of it, under the name of exametron, as a 
 common heroic measure. 
 
 Tregedis is to sayn a certeyn storie, 
 As olde bookes maken us memorie, 
 Of hem that stood iii gret prosperity, 
 And is yfallen out of heigh degr^ 
 In to miserie, and endith wrecchedly. 
 And thay ben versifyed comunly 
 Of six feet, ■which men clepe exametron. 
 
 Monhes Tale, Prologue. 
 
 The old English poem of Kyng Alisaunder is, however, not 
 in the same metre as most of the Romance poems on the same 
 subject, but in a very irregular rhjrmed verse of seven or eight, 
 and sometimes more syllables. It is not a translation of the 
 work of Gautier, but of some French poem now unknown, so 
 that we have not the means of determining how far it is merely 
 a faithful version, or how far it was modified by the translator. 
 The story, as narrated in Kyng Alisaunder, does not rest upoi^ 
 classical authority, but is, much more probably, made up from 
 the spurious Alexander of Callisthenes and other mediaeval trans- 
 lations from Oriental romances, and from confused Eastern 
 traditions brought home by pilgrims and crusaders.* That it is 
 
 rersion of Jerome's prologue to his Latin Bible. Wyeliffite Versions, I. 67, 
 where it is printed as prose : 
 
 Now maide tumeth aje, Satumus turneth his rewmes ; 
 Now newe kyn eometh fre, from an hi}, fro heuenli lewmes. 
 
 * The work which, in the Middle Ages, passed under the name of Callisthenes, 
 is known to have been translated irom the Persian into Greek about the year 
 1070, by Simon Seth, an officer of the court of Constantinople in the reign of 
 Michael Ducas. See Weber's Metrical Romances, vol. i., Introduction, p. xx. 
 
 The intercourse between Western Europe and the Levant, which became so 
 frequent soon after tliis date, introduced this romance to the Latin nations, and, 
 by means of translations, it was soon generally diffused among a public in whien 
 the wars for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre had excited a new interest in th» 
 history and the geography of the East. The wide popularity which this feeUng 
 
I-Ecr. v. BO:\rANCE OF ALEXANDER 199 
 
 substantially a translation, or at least an imitation, and not an 
 original English composition, satisfactorily appears from a 
 variety of passages, and among others from this : 
 
 This batail destuted is, 
 In the French, wel y-wis, 
 Therefore Y have, hit to colour, 
 Borowed of the Latyn autour. 
 
 2199—2202. 
 
 To what Latin author reference is here made, does not appear, 
 but it is not probable that it was Grautier, for if the translator had 
 been familiar with that author, he would hardly have failed to 
 introduce into his work some notice of the death of Thomas a 
 Becket, who was so popular a saint in England in the thirteenth 
 century, and whose martyrdom, as some of his admirers both 
 ancient and modern choose to call it, is mentioned by Grautier. 
 
 The author professes to enumerate his sources at the com- 
 mencement of chap. i. of Part II., but it is quite evident that 
 he knew little or nothing of the real works of the writers he 
 specifies, or of the authorship of the manuscripts he used, and 
 the testimony of all ' Latin books ' was, in his eyes, of equal 
 weight. 
 
 The list of authorities, in which the form of the names shows 
 it to be a translation from the French, is as follows* : — 
 
 Thoo Alisaunder went thorough desert, 
 
 Many woadres he seigh apert, 
 
 Whiche he dude wel descryue 
 
 By good clerkes in her lyue ; 
 
 By Aristotle his maister that was; 
 
 Better clerk sithen non nas. 
 
 Bccnrcd to the story served to stimulate still further the curiosity and the enthu- 
 siasm of Europe, and many a warrior of the cross dreamed of victories as 
 brilliant, and conquests as extensive, as those of Alexander. But this and other 
 romances did another and better service, by turning the attention of scholars 
 to the more authentic sources of historical information respecting the life of 
 Alexander, which were to he found in Curtius and other Latin authors, and thufl 
 contributed, in some degree, to the revival of a taste for classic literature. 
 » Weber, Metrical Eomances, L pp. 199, 200. 
 
200 EOMANCE OF ALEXANDEE Lect. V. 
 
 He was with hym, and seigh, and wroot 
 
 Alle thise wondres, ((^od it woot ! ), 
 
 Salomon, that all the werlde thorough yede, 
 
 In sooth witnesse lielde hym myde. 
 
 Ysidre also, that was so wys, 
 
 In his bokes tellet"h this. 
 
 Maister Eustroge bereth hym witnesse 
 
 Of the wondres more and lesse. 
 
 Seint Jerome, yee shullen y-wyte, 
 
 Hem hath also in book y-wryte ; 
 
 And Magestene, the gode clerk, 
 
 Hath made therof mychel werk. 
 
 Denys, that was of gode memorie, 
 
 It sheweth al in his book of storie ; 
 
 And also Pompie, of Rome lorde, 
 
 Dude it ivriten every worde. 
 
 Beheldeth me therof no fynder ; 
 
 Her bokes ben my shewer. 
 
 And the lyf of Alysannder, 
 
 Of whom fleigh so riche sklaiinder. 
 
 The ' Lyf of Alysaunder ' here referred to is very probably the 
 ■werk falsely ascribed to Callisthenes, who is not mentioned by 
 name among the writers from whom the author drew. 
 
 The most interesting and really poetical features of this ro- 
 mance are the few couplets of descriptive and sentimental verse, 
 introduced at the commencement of the divisions of the story. 
 These have, in general, no connection with the narrative, and, 
 as far as we can judge by internal evidence, are interpolations 
 by the translator, and therefore probably original English com- 
 positions. Thus Part I. chap. ii. : 
 
 AverU is meory, and longith the day ; 
 Ladies loven solas, and play ; 
 Swayncs, justes ; knyghtis, turnay ; 
 Syngith the nyghtyngale, gredeth theo jay ; 
 The hote sunne chongeth ' the clay, 
 As ye well y-seen may. 
 
 ' chongeth is protably an error of the pen or press for clongeth or clinffefh, 
 makes to crack by drying and skrinlcage. It is not in Coleridge. 
 
Leot. V. KOMANCE OF ALEXANDER 201 
 
 Chapter IV. 
 
 When com ripeth in every steode, 
 Miiry hit is in feld and hyde ; ' 
 Synne hit is and schame to chide ; 
 Knyghtis wollith on huntyug ride ; 
 The deer galopith by wodis side. 
 He that can his time abyde, 
 Al his wille him shal bytyde. 
 
 Chapter V. 
 
 Chapter VI. 
 
 Chapter VII. 
 
 Chapter X. 
 
 Mnry time is the weod to sere ; • 
 The com riputh in the ere : 
 The lady is rody in the chere ; 
 And maide bryght in the lere ; ' 
 The knighttes hunteth after dere, 
 On fote and on destrere. 
 
 Clere and fiiire the somerys day spryng, 
 
 And makith mony departyng 
 
 Bytweone knyght and his swetyng. 
 
 Theo sunne ariseth, and fallith the dewyng; 
 
 Theo nesche clay hit makith clyng. 
 
 Mony is jolif in the momyng, 
 
 And tholeth deth or the evenyng ! 
 
 N' is in this world so siker thyng 
 
 So is deth, to olde and yyng ! 
 
 The tyme is nygh of heore wendyng. 
 
 Ofte springeth the bryghte morwe 
 Mony to bUsse, and mony to sorwe ; 
 Qued hit is muche to borwe : 
 And worse hit is ever in sorwe. 
 Tho that can nought beon in pes, 
 Ofte they maken heom evel at ese. 
 
 In tyme of May hot is in boure ; 
 Divers, in medewe, sprjmgith Houre ; 
 
 ' hyde is a measure of land, a field. Perhaps here it is heatK 
 » the weod to sere ; to dry and burn the weeds or stubble. 
 * lere, countenance, A.-S. hie or. 
 
'202 EOMANCE OF AXEXANDEB 'LeCT. V. 
 
 The ladies, knyghtis honouritli ; 
 
 Treowe love in heorte durith, 
 
 Ac nede coward byhynde kourith ; 
 
 Theo large geveth ; the ny thyng lourith ; 
 
 Gentil man his leman honourith, 
 
 In burgh, in cit^, in castel, in toure. 
 
 Chapter XII. 
 
 Mury hit is in sonne-risyng ? 3 
 
 The rose openith and unspryng; 
 
 Weyes fairith, the clayes clyng ; 
 
 The maideues flourith, the foulis syng ; 
 
 Damosele makith mornyng, 
 
 Whan hire leof makith pertyng. 
 
 These passages, it will be observed, as well as tbe others of 
 similar character which occur in the poem, nearly all refer to a 
 time or season of the day or year, but they are introduced 
 without any regard to the period of the occurrences the narra- 
 tive of which they introduce. They have much the air of having 
 been composed as poetical embellishments of a calendar or 
 almanack, and I suspect them to have been taken from some 
 such work — perhaps a previous production of the translator 
 himself — instead of having been written expressly for intro- 
 duction into his version of the Eomance of Alexander. 
 
 The geography and the history, natural and military, of this 
 poem, are of about equal value, as will appear from the following 
 extracts : 
 
 There is another ydle hatt Gangerides 
 
 There ben jnne castels and of poeple pros; 
 
 Hy beeth also mychel and bolde, 
 
 As chiLde of seven yeres^elde, 
 
 Hy ne ben no more verreyment : 
 
 Ac hy ben of body faire and gent ; 
 
 Hy ben natheles faire and wighth, 
 
 And gode and engynefiil to fighth, 
 
 And have horses auenaunt, 
 
 To hem stalworthe and asperaunt. 
 
Lkct. V. ROMANCE OF ALEXANDEK 203 
 
 Clerkes hy ben with the best 
 
 Of alle men hy ben queyntest ; 
 
 And evermore hy beth werrende ; 
 
 And upon other conquerrende ; 
 
 By the mone and by the sterren, 
 
 Hy connen jugge all werren. 
 
 Hy ben the altherbest 
 
 That ben from est into west ; 
 
 For hy connen shete the gripes fleigheyng 
 
 And the dragons that ben brennyng. 
 
 Verses 4862 — i881. 
 
 Michel is the wonder that is vnder Crist Jesus. 
 
 There byonden is an hyll is cleped Malleus. 
 
 Listneth now to me I praie for my loue ! 
 
 This hyll is so heie that nothing cometh aboue ; 
 
 The folk on the north-half in thester stede hy beth, 
 
 For in al the yer no sunne hy ne seeth. 
 
 Hy on the south -half ne seen sonne non 
 
 Bot in on moneth, atte fest of Seint John ; 
 
 Thoo that woneth in the est partie, 
 
 The Sonne and the hote skye 
 
 Al the day hem shyneth on 
 
 That hy ben black so pycches som. 
 
 Verses 4902—4913. 
 
 Ac thoo hem aroos a vyle meschaunce 
 Kyng Alisaunder to gret greuaunce. 
 Tpotamos comen flyngynge, 
 Out of roches, loude nayinge, 
 Grete bestes and griseHch, 
 More than olifaunz sikerHche. 
 Into the water hy shoten onon 
 And freten ' the knighttes everychon. 
 
 Verses 5164—5170. 
 
 The gode clerk, men cleped Solim, 
 Hath y-writen in his latin, 
 That ypotame a wonder beest is 
 More than an olifaunt, I wis ; 
 
 ' freten, devour. 
 
204 EOMANCK OF ALEXANDER Lect. V. 
 
 Toppe, and rugge,' and croupe, and cors, 
 
 Is semblabel to an hors. 
 
 A short beek, and a croked tayl 
 
 He batb, and bores tussh, saunz fayle ; 
 
 Blak is his heued as pycche. 
 
 It is a beeste ferhche ; 
 
 It wil al fruyt ete, 
 
 Applen, noteu, reisyns, and whete. 
 
 Ac mannas flesshe, and mannes bon 
 
 It loneth best of everychon. 
 
 Verses 5182—5195. 
 
 Theo dehyns woneth hire byside ; 
 
 A strong best of gret pryde. 
 
 They haveth schiildren on the rygge, 
 
 Eohe as scharpe as sweordis egge. 
 
 Whan the delJyn the cokadrill seoth, 
 
 Anon togedre \vTOth the buth, 
 
 And smyteth togedre anon ryght, 
 
 And makith thenne a steorne fyght, 
 
 Ac the delfyn is more qneynter, 
 
 And halt him in the water douner ; 
 
 And whan theo kocadrill him over swymmeth, 
 
 He rerith up his brustehs gxymme, 
 
 And his wombe al to-rent ; 
 
 Thus is the cokadriU y-schent, 
 
 And y-slawe of theo delfyn. 
 
 God geve ows god fyn ! 
 
 Verses 6610--C625 
 
 The syntactical construction and inflections of this poeii* wotdd in- 
 dicate a higher antiquity than its vocabulary, the latter of which 
 abounds in French words, while the syntax seems to belong co a period 
 when Enghsh had as yet borrowed little from the Norman tongue. 
 Thus I find that in the eighth chapter of the first part "more than six per 
 cent, of the words, exclusive of proper names, are French. Several 
 Scandinavian words also make their first appearauce in English in this 
 romance, though the syntax shows no trace of Old-Northern influence. 
 Thus hauine is the Icelandic hamr, a disguise, generally the form of an 
 animal, assumed by magic power ; — onde, bre.atb, is Icel. andi; — or- 
 
 l rugge, back. 
 
Lect. V. THE OWL AND THE NIOHTINGALE 205" 
 
 ped, valiant, is tlioiight to be the Icel. participle orpinn, from verpa, 
 to throw, but as orpinn is not used in this sense in Icelandic, the 
 etymology is at least doubtful ; — punge, purse, is the Icel. pungr. 
 
 An important work, sometimes ascribed to a more ancient 
 date, but I believe pretty certainly belonging to this century, is 
 The Owl and Nightingale, a rhyming poem of about eighteen 
 hundred verses, in octosyllabic iambic metre. This has not been 
 traced to any foreign source, and is probably of native inven- 
 tion, — a circumstance which invests it with some interest, as 
 the earliest known narrative poem, of a wholly imaginative 
 character, conceived in the native tongue after the Saxon 
 period. 
 
 It is a dispute between an owl and a nightingale concerning 
 their respective powers of song. The smoothness of the versifi- 
 cation shows a practised ear, and of course a familiarity with 
 foreign models, for English verse had hardly been yet cultivated 
 extensively enough to furnish the requisite training. The 
 vocabulary contains few Norman words, but many of Scandi- 
 navian origin, while its dialectic peculiarities, such as the sub- 
 stitution of V for the initial /, do not indicate that the poem 
 was composed in a northern or north-eastern district. The 
 dialogue, though neither elegant nor refined, is not wanting in 
 spirit, and the general tone of the composition is in advance of 
 that of the period to which other evidence, internal and external, 
 assigns it. 
 
 The commencement is as follows : — 
 
 Ich was in one sumere dale, 
 
 In one suthe dijele hale,' 
 
 I-herde ich holde grate tale 
 
 An hule and one nijtingale. 
 
 That plait was stif and stare and strong, 
 
 Sum wile softe, and lud among ; 
 
 • Suthe di^ele hale, very retired or secret hollow. 
 
206 ' THE OWL AND THE NIGHTINGALE LecT. V. 
 
 An aither ajen other sval,' 
 And let that wole^ mod ut al. 
 And either seide of otheres custe' 
 That abe-worste that hi 'wTiste ; 
 And hure and hure of othere sunge 
 He holde plaiding suthe stronge. 
 
 The nijtingale bi-gon the speche, 
 In one hurne'' of one breche' ; 
 And sat upone vaire boje, 
 Thar were abute blosme i-noje, 
 In ore^ waste thicke hegge, 
 I-meind' mid spire and grene segge, 
 Ho was the gladur vor the rise,* 
 And song a vale cunne wise : ^ 
 
 Het thujte the dreim '" that he were 
 Of harpe and pipe, than he nere, 
 Bet thujte that he were i-shote 
 Of harpe and pipe than of throte. 
 
 Tho stod on old stoo thar bi-side, 
 Thar tho ule song hire tide, 
 And was mid ivi al bi-growe, 
 Hit was thare hule earding-stowe." 
 
 The ni5tingale hi i-sej, 
 And hi bi-hold and over-sej. 
 An thujte wel wl'^ of thare hule. 
 For me" hihalt lodlich'^ and fule : 
 " Unwi5t," ho sede, " awey thu flo I 
 Me is the wrs " that ich the so ; 
 I- wis for thine wle lete'^ 
 Wel oft ich mine song for-lete ; 
 Min horte at-flith, and fait mi tonge, 
 Thonne thu art to me i-thrunge." 
 
 ' tval, swelled with indignation. '' viole, evil. " custe, Icel. kostr, haUts, 
 character, conditions. * hurne, comer. ' breche, Coleridge suggests beech, 
 here beech-grove. ' ore, one, a. ' i-meind, mingled. ' rise, branches. 
 ' song a vele cunns wise, probably, sung many kinds of notes ; wise, Ger. W e i s e. '° Het 
 ihu^te the dreim, it seemed the tone ; Bet thuite, it seemed rather. " eardinff' 
 «iowe, dwelling-place. "wl,iU. '' me, men, Fr. o n. " lo^lich, loathsome, 
 >» wrs, worse. " lete, voice, " i-thrunge, pressed near. 
 
liECT. V. THE OWL AND THE NIGHTINGALE 207 
 
 Me hist bet' speten, thane singe 
 Of thine fide jojehnge." ^ 
 
 Thos hule abod foit hit was eve, 
 Ho ne mijte no leng bdeve, 
 Vor hire horte was so gret, 
 That wel nej hire fnast ^ at-schet ; 
 And warp a word thar after longe : 
 " Hu thincthe nu bi mine songe ? 
 West thu that ich ne cunne singe, 
 Thej icli ne cimne of writelinge ? 
 I-lome * thu dest me grame,^ 
 And seist me bothe tone^ and schame; 
 jif ich the holde on mine note,^ 
 So hit bi-tide that ich mote ! 
 And thu were ut of thine rise, 
 Thu sholdest singe an other wse.'* 
 
 After much reciprocal abuse, the nightingale bursts into 
 Bong. 
 
 Thos word ajaf the nijtingale. 
 And after thare longe tale 
 He song so lude and so scharpe, 
 Eijt so me grulde scliiUe harpe,' 
 Thos hule luste thider-ward, 
 And hold here ege nother-ward, 
 And sat to-svolle and i-bolye,'" 
 Also ho hadde one frogge i-svol5e. 
 
 The birds then agree, upon the proposal of the nightingale 
 to refer the question of superiority to 'Maister Nichole of 
 Guldeforde,' who 
 
 is wis and war of worde ; 
 He is of dome suthe gleu,ii 
 And him is loth evrich untheu ; 
 
 ' me lust let, I would rather. ' ^o^elinffe, chattering. " /nasi, breath. 
 
 * ir-lmne, often. ' grame, offence. ° tone, pain, -vpiong, injury. ' riote, 
 power, possession. " wse, wise, manner. ° n'j< so me grulde schille harpe, 
 as if one were touching a shrill harp. "■ i-holye, swollen. " gleu, skilfull. 
 
208 THE OWL AND THE NISHTINGALE Lect. V. 
 
 He wot insijt in eche songe, 
 Wo singet wel, wo singet wronge ; 
 And lie can schede ' vrom the rijte 
 That woje,^ that thuster' from the ligte. 
 
 Before repairing to the arbiter, towever, they recommence 
 their dialogue, and the poem is almost entirely taken up with 
 their abuse of each other, the nightingale beginning the dis- 
 pute. 
 
 ' Hule,' ho sede, ' seie me soth, 
 
 Wi dostu that un-wijtis doth ? 
 
 Thu singist a nijt, and no^t a dai, 
 
 And al thi song is wailawai ; 
 
 Thu mijt mid thine songe afere 
 
 Alle that i-hereth thine i-bere ; * 
 
 Thu schircheat and jollest to thine fere* 
 
 That hit is grisUoh to i-here, 
 
 Hit thinchest bothe wise and snepe^ 
 
 Nojt that thu singe, ac that thu wepe. 
 
 Thu flijst a ni5t and nogt a dai ; 
 
 Tharof ich wndri, and wel mai : 
 
 Vor evrich thing that schuniet rijt, 
 
 Hit luveth thuster and hatiet lijt.' 
 
 The owl replies much in the same strain, and, as will be 
 seen by the following extracts, the two birds continue to abuse 
 each other, in good set terms, to the end of the poem. The 
 owl: — 
 
 Thu wenist that ech song bo' grislich 
 
 That thine pipinge nis i-lich : 
 
 Mi stefne^ is bold and nojt un-orne,* 
 
 Ho is i-lioh one grate home, 
 
 And thin is i-lich one pipe 
 
 Of one smale wode un-ripe. 
 
 Ich singe bet than thu dest ; 
 
 Thu ohaterest so doth on Irish preost ; 
 
 ' schede, distinguish. * rooji?, -wrong. ' thuster, darkness. * i-here, 
 
 Toice. " fere, mate. ' snejpe, foolish. ' Jo, be. » atefne, Tcice. 
 
 • un-orne, rude. 
 
LkCT. V. THE OWL AND THE NIGHTINGALE 209 
 
 Ich singe an eve a rijt time, 
 And soththe won hit is bed-time, 
 The thridde sithe ad middel nijte, 
 And so ich mine song adijte 
 Wone ich i-so '■ arise voiTe 
 Other dai-rim^ other dai-sterre, 
 Ich do god mid mine throte, 
 And warne men to here note.' 
 Ac thu singest alle-longe ni5t, 
 From eve fort hit is dai-lijt. 
 And evre seist thin o song 
 So longe so the nijt is long, 
 And evre croweth thi wrecche crei 
 That he ne swiketh night ne dai ; 
 Mid thine pipinge thu adunest* 
 Thas monnes earen thar thu wunest. 
 And makest thine song so un-wrth 
 That me ne telth of thar nojt wrth. 
 Everich murjthe mai so longe i-leste, 
 That ho shal like wel tm--\vreste ; * 
 Vor harpe and pipe and fujeles songe 
 Misliketh, jif hit is to long, 
 Ne bo the song never so murie, 
 That he shal thinche wel un-murie, 
 Zef he i-lesteth over un-wille.* 
 
 The nightingale : — 
 
 ' Hule,' ho seide, ' wi dostu so 7 
 Thu singest a winter wolawo ; 
 Thn singest so doth hen a snowe,^ 
 Al that ho singeth hit is for wowe ; 
 Hit is for thine fule nithe,** 
 That thu ne mijt mid us bo blithe. 
 For thu forbemest^ wel ne5 for onde "* 
 Than iu:e blisse cumeth to-londe. 
 
 • i-to, see. " dai-rim, day-break, dawn. • note, good, benefit, labour. 
 * adunest, stiumest, dinnest. * un-wreste, worthless. • over un-wille, beyond 
 what is desirable. ' so doth hen a snowe, like a hen in the snow. ' nithe, 
 envy. ' foriemcst, bumest. "■ onde, malice. 
 
210 THE OWIi AND THE NIGHTINGALE Lect. V. 
 
 Tlra farest so doth the ille, 
 
 Evrich blisse him is un-wille ; 
 
 Grucching and luring him both ' rade,* 
 
 Dif he i-soth that men both glade ; 
 
 He wolde that he i-seje 
 
 Teres in evrich monnes e^e : 
 
 Ne rojte he thej flockes were 
 
 I-meind bi toppes and bi here.' 
 
 Al so thu dost on thire side ; 
 
 Vor wanne snou litli thicke and wide 
 
 An all wijtes habbeth sorje, 
 
 Thu singest from eve fort a morja. 
 
 Ac ich alle blisse mid me bringe ; 
 
 Ech wijt is glad for mine thinge, 
 
 And blisseth hit wanne ich cume, 
 
 And hijteth ajen mine cume. 
 
 The blostme ginneth springe and sprede 
 
 Both in tro and eke on mede ; 
 
 The hlie mid hire faire wlite* 
 
 Wolcumeth me, that thu hit wte, 
 
 Bid me mid hire taire bio ^ 
 
 That ich shulle to hire flo ; * 
 
 The rose also mid hire rude, 
 
 That cuxoeth ut of the thorne wode, 
 
 Bit me that ich sliuUe singe 
 
 Vor hire luve one skentinge.^ 
 
 The owl: — 
 
 Wi nultu singe an oder theode,' 
 War hit is muchele more neode ? 
 Thu neaver ne singst in Irlonde, 
 Ne thu ne cumest nojt in Sootlonde : 
 Wi nultu fare to Noreweie ? 
 And singin men of Galeweie 7 
 Thar beodli men that lutel kunne 
 Of songe that is bineodhe the sunne ; 
 
 • both, lecth, is. ^ rade, ready, present. ^ floclces * * i-meind bi toppei 
 and by here, companies * * quarrelling and pulling hair. * wlite, oolom 
 
 ? bio, bleo, blee, colour. • flo, flee. ' skentinge, a merry song. • theode, 
 place, people. i 
 
I-KCT. V. THE GESTE OF KTNG HORN 211 
 
 Wi nultu thare preoste singe, 
 An teche of thire \vTitelinge ? 
 And wisi ' hom mid tliire stevene, 
 The engeles singeth ine heovene ? 
 Thu farest so dodh an ydel wel, 
 That springeth bi bume thar is snel,* 
 An let for-drue^ the dune,'' 
 And floh on idel thar a-dune. 
 
 The disputants become irritated, and are about to proceed to 
 violence, when the wren, who 
 
 for heo cuthe singe, 
 War com in thare more^eiing, 
 To helpe thaxe nijtegale, 
 
 interferes, reminds the parties of their agreement to refer their 
 differences to an arbiter, and sends them to abide his judgment. 
 The poem concludes : — 
 
 Mid thisse worde forth hi ferden, 
 Al bute here and bute verde,' 
 To Portersham that heo bi-come ; 
 Ah hu heo spedde of heore dome 
 Ne chan ich eu namore telle ; 
 Her nis namore of this spelle. 
 
 The Geste of Kyng Hom, a romantic poem of about sixteen 
 hundred verses, belongs to the thirteenth century, and has not 
 been traced to a foreign original ; but the existence of nearly 
 contemporaneous versions of the same story, in French and 
 other languages, renders it highly probable that the first con- 
 ception of the poem was of a much earlier date. 
 
 Tfie following is a condensed outline of the plan. King 
 Murray, the father of Hom, the hero of the tale, is defeated 
 and slain by heathen, or, as the poet calls them, Saracen, 
 
 ' wisi, show, teach. ' snel, swift. ' for-drue, dry-up. * dune, the 
 heath. ' Al bute here and bute verde, without army and troops, that is without 
 followers or retinue. 
 
 p a 
 
212 THE GESTE OF KTNG HORN Lect. V. 
 
 vikings, from Denmark, who seize Horn, and put to death all 
 his countrymen, except such as consent to renounce Christianity. 
 Horn is compelled to put to sea in a small boat, with several 
 companions, and lands in Westernesse, where he is hospitably 
 received by King Aylmer, is carefully educated in all the 
 accomplishments of a page, and excites a strong passion in the 
 breast of Eimenhild, the only daughter of the King. 
 
 After being dubbed knight, he departs in quest of adventures, 
 and, aided by a magic ring given him by the princess, he defeats 
 a party of Saracen vikings, and carries the head of the chief to 
 King Aylmer, but is exiled by that prince, who is not disposed 
 to favour his love for Eimenhild. On taking leave of his mis- 
 tress, he begs her to wait seven years for his return, and gives 
 her liberty to accept the hand of another suitor unless she has 
 a satisfactory account of him within that period. During his 
 absence, he meets with a variety of adventures, but is finally, 
 sent for by Eimenhild, and arrives in time to rescue her 
 from King Modi, who is pressing for her hand, and Horn and 
 Eimenhild are married. After the marriage, he goes with a 
 troop of Irish soldiery to Suddens, his native land, which he 
 recovers from the' infidels. He finds his mother, who had con- 
 cealed herself in a cave at the time of his capture, still alive, 
 and returns to Westernesse. During his absence, his false 
 friend Fykenild, who had occasioned his former banishment, 
 had got possession of Eimenhild, and was trying to compel her 
 to consent to a marriage with him. Horn enters Fykenild's 
 castle in the disguise of a harper, kills the traitor, and recovers 
 his wife. The poem commences thus : — 
 
 Alle been he blife, 
 pat to my song lyfe : 
 A sang ihc schal jou singe 
 Of Miirry fe kinge. 
 King he was bi waste 
 So longe so hit laste. 
 Godhild het his quen ; 
 Faire ne niijte non ben. 
 
Lkct. V. THE GESTE OF KTNG HORN 213 
 
 He hadde a sone, fat liet Horn ; 
 Fairer ne mijte non beo bora, 
 Ne no rein upon birine, 
 Ne smine iipon biscliine ; 
 Fairer nis non fane lie was, 
 He was so brijt so fe glas; 
 He was wliit so fe flur, 
 Eose red was Ms colur. 
 He was feyr and eke bold. 
 Ant of fiftene wynter old. 
 In none Idnge riche 
 Nas non Ms iliclie. 
 Twelf feren he hadde 
 pat aUe with hem ladde ; 
 Alle riche niannes sones, 
 And alle hi were faire gomes; 
 Wif Mm for to pleie : 
 And mest he Invede tweie, 
 pat on him het Haf ulf child, 
 And fat of er FykenUd. 
 Af ulf was f e beste, 
 And Fikenylde f e werste. 
 
 When Horn lands from the boat into which he had been driven 
 to embark by the heathen pirates, he takes leave of it with this 
 benediction : — 
 
 Schup, bi f e se flode 
 Dales have f u gode ; 
 Bi f e se brinke 
 No water f e nadrinke. 
 3ef fu cume to Suddene, 
 Gret f u wel of myne kenne ; 
 Gret f u wel my moder, 
 Godhild qnen f e gode ; 
 And seie f e paene kyng, 
 Jesu Cristes wif ering, 
 pat ihc am hoi and ier, 
 On tMs lond arived her; 
 And seie fat hei schal fonde 
 pe dent of myne honde. 
 
214 THE GESTE OF KTNG HORN Lect. V. 
 
 King Aylmer meets Horn and his companions soon after they 
 land, and, after hearing their story, conducts them to the 
 palace, and gives them into the charge of his steward AJ>elbrus, 
 with these instructions : — 
 
 Stiwaxd, tak nu here 
 
 Mi fundlyng, for to lere 
 
 Of fine mestere, 
 
 Of ■wnde and of ri vera; 
 
 And tech him to harpe 
 
 Wip his nayles soharpe ; 
 
 Bivore me to kerve, 
 
 And of fe cupe serve ; 
 
 pu tech him of all e fe liste 
 
 pot ])u evre of wiste; 
 
 In his feiren fou wise 
 
 Into of ere servise. 
 
 Horn f u Tindervonge, 
 
 And tech him of harpe and songe. 
 
 At his parting from Kimenhild, she gives him a ring, with these 
 
 words : — 
 
 ' Kni^t,' quaf heo, ' trewe, 
 
 Ihc mene ihc mei f e leue.' 
 
 Tak nu her f is gold ring, 
 
 God him is f e dubbing.^ 
 
 per is upon f e ringe 
 
 I-grave llymenhild f e jonge ; 
 
 per nis non betere an onder sunne^ 
 
 pat eni mon of telle cunne. 
 
 For mi luve f u hit were, 
 
 And on f i finger f u him here. 
 
 Pe stones beof of such grace, 
 
 pet pu ne schalt in none place 
 
 Of none duntes^ beon of drad, 
 
 Ne on bataille beon amad,^ 
 
 Ef f u loke f er an, 
 
 And f enke upon f i lemman. 
 
 ' leiie, lere, Tjelieve. ' dubbing, finishing, or setting, or perhaps it refers to 
 the device engraved upon the stone, or tlie magic powers conferred upon it. 
 • duntee, dints, blows. * amad, dismayed. 
 
Lect. V, THE GESTE OF KYNQ HORN 215 
 
 The Geste of Kyng Horn has very little merit as a poem, and it is 
 far from possessing the philological importance which has sometimes 
 been ascribed to it. There are, however, besides the words explained 
 in the preceding notes, a few vocables and combinations which deserve 
 notice, because, if I am not mistaken, they are not found in any earlier 
 English work. Thus, alone occurs in its primitive form in verse 626 : — 
 
 po gunne fe hundes gone 
 Abute Horn al one.^ 
 
 But in verses 861 and 1055 it is written, as at present, alone ; and 
 in verse 539 we find the more ancient simple one, used without the 
 all: — 
 
 Nolde he nojt go one, 
 
 Af ulf was his mone. 
 
 At one, the probable origin of the modem verb to atone, which is 
 supposed to be not older than the sixteenth centiuy, appears in the 
 verse 953 : — 
 
 At on he was wij) fe king 
 Of fat ilke wedding. 
 
 There is, in couplet 545, 546, a singular compound rhyme, which I 
 have not observed in any other poem of the thirteenth century, and 
 which, though a departure from the laws of harmonious consonance, 
 seems to have been a favourite with old EngUsh poets, for it is several 
 times employed by Chaucer, Gower, and Occleve : — 
 Knijt, nu is fi time 
 For to sitte hi me. 
 
 The French words, counting repetitions, constitute about two per 
 cent, of the vocabulary, and they are principally from the secular litera- 
 ture of the Continent. The Scandinavian words are few. The meaning 
 and Northern origin of one of them, /er, v. 155, appear to have escaped 
 the glossarists. It is evidently the Danish for, Icel. fcerr, which the 
 Scandinavian etymologists refer to the verb at far a, the primitive mean- 
 ing being able to walk, active. Tlie more modem sense is strong, ivell, 
 and in the passage cited, hoi and fer evidently signifies safe and sound. 
 Boy, a word for which no satisfactory etymology has been suggested, 
 occurs in verse 1107, but as it is applied to the porter of a castle, it ia 
 used rather in the Irish, than in the modem English sense.* 
 
 ' See on the word alone, Fir-it Series, Appendix, p. 696, also Lecture XI., 'post. 
 
 * I regret to say that, with every possible effort, I have been unable to procure 
 
 a copy of Havelok the Dane, and I prefer rather to omit all notice of it than to 
 
216 THE SURTEES PSALTER Lect. V. 
 
 Another interesting production of the period vinder consider- 
 ation is the metrical version of the psalms, published by the 
 Surtees Society. The date of this translation is unknown, but 
 it can hardly be later than the first half of the thirteenth century, 
 though I believe no manuscript copy older than the middle of 
 the reign of Edward II. is known to exist. Its diction resembles 
 in many respects the dialect of the Owl and the Nightingale, 
 but an important grammatical distinction is that it generally 
 uses the Danish plural ere instead of hen, beth or beoth, and 
 another is that for the Anglo-Saxon ending of the verb in -th, in 
 the indicative present, third person singular, and all persons of 
 the plural, as also in the imperative, it substitutes s. Chaucer 
 employs this form in the Eeeves Tale, as a peculiarity of the 
 speech of two persons from the North of England : — 
 
 Of o toun were they born that highte Strothir, 
 Fer in the North, 
 
 and it has sometimes been said to characterise the dialects of 
 districts where the Scandinavian element is most perceptible. 
 But it is highly improbable that this change is due to Danish 
 influence ; for the Danes did not make the corresponding inflec- 
 tions of their own verb in s, and, though what is absurdly called 
 the hard sound of th (as in thinli) is extinct in the normal pro- 
 nunciation of Danish, yet there is no reason to believe that it 
 became so imtil long after the last Danish invasion of England. 
 The origin of the new form is obscure, and at present not 
 historically demonstrable, but it is perhaps to be found in the 
 difficulty of the pronunciation of the ih. The substantive verb 
 to he, which occurs more frequently than any other verb, had ' 
 always the third person singular, indicative present and past, in 
 s, for is and ivoes were used in Anglo-Saxon just as they are 
 now. The Normans could not pronounce th, and in attempting 
 
 ■borrow an account of it at second hand. The extracts I have seen do not lead 
 me to concur in the opinions which have been sometimes expressed concerning 
 the high philological importance of this work. 
 
Lkct. V. THK SUETEES PSALTEK 217 
 
 it, a Frenchman gives it the s or rather z sound which s most 
 usually has as a verbal ending. It seems to me, therefore, not 
 improbable, that this Norman-French error in articulation, 
 combined with the fact that the most important of all verbs, the 
 verb to he, already employed s as the ending of the third per- 
 son singular, occasioned its general adoption as the characteristic 
 of 1 hat inflection.* ^ 
 
 I select as a specimen of this translation. Psalm CII. (CIII. 
 of the standard English version), and, for the purpose of com- 
 parisons which I leave the student to make for himself, I 
 accompany this text, numbered 3, with 1, the Anglo-Saxon 
 metrical version ; 2, the older WyclifBte, or Hereford's, prose 
 translation ; 4, the Latin, from the Surtees Psalter ; and 5, a 
 French prose translation, of the twelfth century, published by 
 
 F. Michel in 1860. 
 
 I. 
 
 1. Bletsa, mine sawle, bliSe drihten ; 
 
 2. Blesse thou, my soule, to the Lord; 
 
 3. Blisse, my saule, to Laverd fii isse ; 
 
 4. Benedic, anima mea, Dominum ; 
 
 5. Beneis, la meie aneme, a noBtre Segnor ; 
 
 1. and eall min inneran his ftene ecean naman I 
 
 2. and all thingus that withinne me ben, to his holl name ! 
 
 3. And alle fat with in me ere, to hali name hisse ! 
 
 4. et omnia interiora mea nomeii sanctum ejus ! 
 
 5. e tres-tutes les coses qtii dedenz mei sunt, al saint num de lui t 
 
 II. 
 
 1. Bletsige, mine sawle, bealde dryhten ! 
 
 2. Blesse thou, my soule, to the Lord ! 
 
 3. Blisse, mi saul, to Laverd, of alle thinges 1 
 
 4. Benedic, aninia mea, Dominum ! 
 
 5. Beneis, la meie aneme, a nostra Segnor 1 
 
 1. ne wylt fu ofergeottul sefre weorSan. 
 
 2. and wile thou not foi-gete alle the geldingus of him. 
 
 3. And nil for-gete alle his for-yheldinges. 
 
 4. et noh oblivisci omnes retributiones ejus. 
 
 5. 6 ne voilles oblier tutes les gucredunances de lui. 
 
215 THE SUETEES PSALTER Lect. Vi 
 
 m. 
 
 1. He J)inum mandsedum miltsade eallum ; 
 
 2. That hath mercy to alle thi wickidnessis ; 
 
 3. pat winsomes to alle fine wickenesses ; 
 
 4. Qui propitius fit omnibus iniquitatibus tuis ; 
 
 5. Chi at merci de tutes les tues iniquitez ; 
 
 1. and fine adle ealle gehselde. 
 
 2. that helith alle thin infirmytees. 
 
 3. fat heles alle fine sekenesses. 
 
 4. qui sanat omnes languores tuos. 
 
 5. chi sained trestutes les tues enfermetez. 
 
 IV. 
 
 1. He alysde fin lif leof of forwyrde ; 
 
 2. That ajeen bieth fro deth thi lif; 
 
 3. fat bies fra sterving f i life dei-li ; 
 
 4. Qui redemit de interitu vitam tuam ; 
 
 5. Chi racated de mort la tue vie ; 
 
 1. fylde finne willan ftegere mid gode. 
 
 2. that crouneth thee in mercy and mercy doingifc 
 
 3. fat crounes f e ■with rewf es and with merci. 
 
 4. qui coronat te in miseratione et misericordia. 
 
 5. chi coruned tei en misericorde e miseraoiuna. 
 
 1. He fe gesigefseste soSre miltse 
 
 and f e mildheorte mode getrymede ; 
 
 2. That fulfilleth in goode thingus thi diseyr ; 
 
 3. fat filles in godes f i yherninges al ; 
 
 4. Qui satiat in bonis desiderium tuum ; 
 
 5. Chi raemplist en bones coses le tuen desiderie ; 
 
 1. eart f u eadnowe earne gelicast 
 on geoguSe nu gleawe geworden. 
 
 2. shal be renewid as of an egle thi^ outhe. 
 
 3. Als erne f i yhouthe be newed sal. 
 
 4. renovabitur sic ut aquite juventus tua. 
 
 5. sera renov^e sicume d'aigle la tue jurente. 
 
Lect. v. the surtees psalter 219 
 
 VI. 
 
 1. Hafast fu milde mod, mihta strange 
 drihten, 
 
 2. Doende mercies the Lord, 
 
 3. Doand mercies Laverd in land, 
 
 4. Faciens misericordias Dominus, 
 
 5. Faisanz misericordes nostra Sire, 
 
 1. domas eallum fe deope her 
 and ful treaflice teonan folian. 
 
 2. aad dora to alle men siifFrende wrong. 
 
 3. And dome til alle un-right tholand. 
 
 4. et judicium omnibus injuriam patientibus. 
 
 5. e jugement a tuz torceunerie suffranz. 
 
 VII. 
 
 1. He his wegas dyde wise and cuSe 
 Moyse fam maran on msenige tid ; 
 
 2. Knowen he made his weies to Moises; 
 
 3. Konthe made he to Moises his waies wele ; 
 
 4. Notas fecit vias suas Moysi ; 
 
 5. Cuneudes fist les sues veies k Moysen ; 
 
 1. swylce his willan eac werum Israhela. 
 
 2. and to the sones of Irael his willis. 
 
 3. His willes til sones of Irael. 
 
 4. filiis Israhel voluntates suas. 
 
 6. as fils Israel ses voluntez. 
 
 vin. 
 
 1. Mildheort J>u eart and mihtig, mode gefyldig, 
 ece dryhten, swa J)u a waere, 
 
 2. Eeewere and merciful the Lord, 
 
 3. Eew-ful and milde-herted Laverd gode, 
 
 4. Misericors et miserator Dominus, 
 
 5. Merciere e merciable nostre Sire, 
 
 1. is fin milde mod mannum cySed. 
 
 2. long abidende and myche merciiuL 
 
 3. And milde-herted and lang-mode. 
 
 4. patiens et multum misericors. 
 
 5. pacient e mult merciable. 
 
220 THE STTETEES PSALTEK LecT. 7. 
 
 IX. 
 
 1. Nelle ))U oS ende yrre habban, 
 
 2. In to euennore he shal not wrathen, 
 
 3. Noghte wreth he sal in evermore, 
 
 4. Non in finem irascitur, 
 
 5. Neient en parmanableted iraistra, 
 
 1. ne on ecnesse fe awa belgan. 
 
 2. ne in to withoute ende he shal threte. 
 
 3. Ne in ai sal he threte far-fore. 
 
 4. neque in setemum indignabitur. 
 
 5. ne en pardurableted ne manacera. 
 
 X. 
 
 1. Na fu be gewyrhtum, wealdend, urum 
 wommnm wyrhtum woldest us don, 
 
 2. Aftir oure synnes he dide not to vs, 
 
 3. Noght after our sinnes dide he til us, 
 
 4. Non secundum peccata nostra fecit nobis, 
 
 5. Neient sulunc les noz pecchez fist a nus, 
 
 1. ne sefter urum unryhte awhser gyldan. 
 
 2. ne aftir oure wickidnessis he 5elde to us. 
 
 3. Ne after our wickenes for-yheld us fus. 
 
 4. neque secundum iniquitates nostras retribuit nobia 
 
 5. ne sulunc les noz iniquitez ne regueredunad h, nus. 
 
 XI. 
 
 1. Forjjon ])u sefter heahweorce heofenes fines 
 mildheortnysse mihtig drihten, 
 
 2. For after the heijte of heuene fro erthe, 
 
 3. For after heghnes of heven fra land, 
 
 4. Quia secundum altitudinem coeli a terra. 
 
 5. Kar sulunc la haltece del ciel de la terre, 
 
 1. lustum cySdest fam }>e lufedon Jje. 
 
 2. he strengthide his mercy vpon men dredende hym. 
 
 3. Strenghf ed he his merci over him dredand. 
 
 4. confirmavit Dominus misericordiam suam super timentes eum. 
 
 5. esforfad la sue misericorde sur les cremanz sei. 
 
J«ECT. V. THE SCETEES PSALTER 221 
 
 xn. 
 
 1. Swa fas foldan fedme bewindetS, 
 J)es eastrodor and sefter west, 
 
 2. Hou niyclie the rising stant fro the going doun, 
 
 3. How mikle est del stand west del fra, 
 
 4. QuantiTm distat oriens ab occasu, 
 
 5. Cumbien desestait li naissemenz del dechedement, 
 
 1. He betweonan fam teonan and imriiit 
 us fram afyrde £eghwa;r symble, 
 
 2. aferr he made fro vs oure wickidnessis, 
 
 3. Fer made he fra us cure wickenes swa. 
 
 4. elongavit a nobis iniquitates nostras. 
 
 5. luinz fist de nus les noz felunies. 
 
 xin. 
 
 1. Swa feeder fenceS fegere his bearnum 
 milde weordan, 
 
 2. What maner wise the fader hath mercy of the sonua, 
 
 3. Als rewed es fadre of sones, 
 
 4. Sic ut miseretur pater filiis, 
 
 5. Cum faitement at merci li pere des filz, 
 
 1. swa us mihtig god 
 fam fe hine lufiaS, litSe weor6et5. 
 
 2. the Lord dide mercy to men dredende hym; 
 
 3. Eewed es Laverd, fare he wones, 
 
 4. Ita misertiis ^st Dominus 
 
 5. merci ad li Sire 
 
 3. Of fa fat him dredand be ; 
 
 4. timentibus se ; 
 
 5. des cremanz sei ; 
 
 XIV. 
 
 1. forf an he caUe can ure f earfe. 
 
 2. for he knew oure britU making. 
 
 3. Fore our schaft wele knawes he. 
 
 4. Quia ipse scit figmentum nostrum. 
 
 5. kar il conut la nostre faiture. 
 
222 THE SITKTEES PSAITEE Lect. V. 
 
 1. Gemune, mihtig god, f et we synt moldan and dust, 
 
 2. He recordide for ponder wee be, 
 
 3. Mined es he wele in thoglit 
 
 4. Memento Domine 
 
 5. Eecorda 
 
 3. fat dust ere we and wortli nogLt, 
 
 4. quod pulvis sumus, 
 
 5. qui nus sumes puldre ; 
 
 XV. 
 
 1. beot5 mannes dagas mawenum hege 
 segliwer anlice, 
 
 2. a man as hey his dajes, 
 
 3. Man his daies ere als hai, 
 
 4. homo sic ut fenum dies ejus, 
 
 5. huem sicume fain li jurz de lui, 
 
 1. eorSan blostman 
 swa his lifdages Isene syndan. 
 
 2. as the flour of the feld so he shal floure out, 
 
 3. Als blome of felde sal he welyen awa. 
 
 4. et sic ut flos agri, ita fioriet. 
 
 5. ensement cume la flur del camp, issi flurira. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 1. ponne he gast ofgifeS, 
 
 2. For the spirit shal thurj passen in hym, 
 
 3. For gaste thurgh-fare in him it sal, 
 
 4. Quia spii-itus pertransiit ab eo, 
 
 5. Kar li espiriz trespassera en lui 
 
 1. sy86an hine gsersbedd sceal 
 wunian wide-fyrhS, 
 
 2. and he shal not stonde stille ; 
 
 3. And noght undre- stand he sal with-al. 
 
 4. et non erit. 
 
 5. e ne parmaindra. 
 
 1. ne him man sytSSan wast 
 a3ghwer elles senige stowe. 
 
 2. and he shal no more knowen his place. 
 8. And knawe na-mare sal he 
 
 4. et non cognosoit amplius 
 
 5. e ne cunuistra ampleis 
 
Lect. V. THE SORTKL'S FSALTEB 223 
 
 S. His stede, where fat it sal be. 
 
 4. locum suom. 
 
 5. sun liu. 
 
 xvn. 
 
 1. fin mildheortnes, mihtig dnhten, 
 
 purh ealia ■worulda woruld wislic standet5, 
 
 2. The mercy fbrsothe of the Lord fro withoute ende, 
 8. And Laverdes merci evre dwelland, 
 
 4. Misericordia autem Domini a sseculo est, 
 
 5. Mais la misericorde nostre Segnur de parmanableted, 
 
 1. deorust and gedefust ofer ealle fa fe ondrsedaS him, 
 
 2. and vnto withoute ende, vpon men dredende hym. 
 
 3. And til ai onr him dredand. 
 
 4. et usque in sasjulum sjeculi super timentes eum. 
 
 5. e desque en parmanableted sur les cremanz lui. 
 
 1. Swa his soSfsestnyss swylce standetS 
 ofer fara bearna bearn, 
 
 2. And the rijtwisnesse of hym in to the sones of sones, 
 
 3. And in sones of sones his rightwisenesj 
 
 4. et justitia ejus super filios filiorum, 
 
 5. e la justise de lui es filz des filz, 
 
 xvin. 
 
 1. f e his bebodu healdaS ; 
 
 2. to hem that kepen his testament. 
 
 3. To fas fat yhemes wite-word his ; 
 
 4. custodientilDus tesramentum ejus ; 
 
 5. a icels chi guardent le testament de lui ; 
 
 1. and fajs gemynde mycle habbaS 
 
 2. And myndeful thei ben 
 
 3. And mined sal fai be, night and dai, 
 
 4. et memoria retinentibus 
 
 5. e remembreur sunt 
 
 1. fat heo his -wisfffist word -(wnnura efban. 
 
 2. of his maundemens, tn do tlien». 
 
 3. Of his bodes to do pam hi. 
 
 4. mandata ejus ut faciant ea. 
 
 5. des cumandemenz de lui medesme, k iaire lea. 
 
224: THE SURTEES PSALTER Lbct. Y. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 1. On lieofonhame halig drihten 
 bis heahsetl hror timbrade, 
 
 2. The Lord in heuene made redi his sete, 
 
 3. Laverd in heven graifed sete Ms, 
 
 4. Dominus in coelo paravit sedem suam, 
 
 5. Li Sire el ciel aprestad sun siege, 
 
 1. fanon he eor'Sricum eallum wealdeS. 
 
 2. and his reume to alle shal lordshipen. 
 
 3. And his rike til alle sal Laverd in blis. 
 
 4. et regnum ejus omnium dominabitur. 
 
 5. e le regne de lui-medesme a tutes choses segnurerad. 
 
 XX. 
 
 1. Ealle his englas eone drihten 
 bletsian bealde, 
 
 2. Blisse gee to the Lord, aUe his aungelis, 
 
 3. Blisses to Laverd with alle yoiu- might, 
 
 4. Benedicite Dominum, 
 
 5. Beneiseiz le Segnor, "^ 
 
 3. Alle his aungels fat ere bright ; 
 
 4. omnes angeli ejus ; 
 
 5. tuit 11 angele de lui ; 
 
 1. heora bliSne frean 
 msigyn and mihta ]>a his mtere word, 
 habbaS and healdati and hyge fremmatS, 
 
 2. mi5ti bi vertue doende the woord of hym, 
 
 3. Mightand of thew, doand his worde swa, 
 
 4. potentes virtute, qui facitis verbum ejus, 
 
 5. poanz par vertud, faisanz la parole de lui, 
 
 1. [wanting in Anglo-Saxon text] 
 
 2. to benjierd the vols of his sermounea. 
 
 3. To here Steven oi ms sagns ma. 
 
 4. ad audiendum vocem sermunum eius. 
 
 5. k o'ir la voiz de ses sermuua. 
 
Xect. V. rHE SURXEES PSALTER 225 
 
 XXI. 
 
 1. Bletsian driliten eal his bearna msegen, 
 
 2. Blessith to the Lord all jee his vertues, 
 
 3. Blisses to Laverd, alle mightes his, 
 
 4. Benedicite Domlnum, omnes virtutes ejus, 
 
 5. Beneisseiz al Segnor, tutes les vertuz de lui, 
 
 1. and his fegna freat, fe past fence nu, 
 fset hi his willan wyrcean georne. 
 
 2. gee his seruauns that don his wil. 
 
 3. His hine fat does fat his wille is. 
 
 4. Ministri ejus qui facitis voluntatem ejus. 
 
 5. 11 suen ministre, chi faites la voluntad de lui. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 1. Eall his agen geweorc ecne drihten 
 on his agenum stede eac bletsige, 
 
 2. Blessith to the Lord, alle gee his werkis. 
 
 3. Blisses Laverd, with wille and thoght, 
 
 4. Benedicite Dominum, 
 
 5. Beneisseiz le Segnur, 
 
 8. Alle f 8 werkes fat he wroght. 
 
 4. omnia opera ejus. 
 
 5. trestutes les ovres de lui, 
 
 1. f£er him his egsa anweald standeS. 
 
 2. in alle place gee his domynaciouns. 
 
 3. In alle stedes of his laverdshipe ma, 
 
 4. in omni loco dominationis ejus. 
 
 6. en chescun liu de la sue dominaciun. 
 
 1. Bletsige min sawl bliSe drihten ! 
 
 2. blesse thou, my soule, to the Lord I 
 
 3. Blisse, mi saule, ai Laverd swa ! 
 
 4. benedic, anima mea, Dominum I 
 
 5. beneis, la meie aneme, al Segnor I 
 
 The only remark I think it necessary to make on the grammar of 
 this psalm is that the phrase, man his dates, in verse xv., where Itis 
 
226 EICHAED C(EUE DE LION Lect. ?. 
 
 serves as a possessive sign, is evidently a literal trandation from the 
 Latin homo * * dies ejus. The origin of this anomalous form in 
 Layamon may perhaps be traced to a similar source. It should be 
 added that the translators have often followed different texts of their 
 original. 
 
 A circumstance which shows the continued poverty of English 
 intellect in the thirteenth century, its want of nationality, and 
 its incapacity for original composition, is that, while it produced 
 numerous translations of French authors, and revived old-world 
 fables of domestic growth, it gave birth to no considerable work 
 connected with the real history of England, except the chronicle 
 of Eobert of Gloucester. We can hardly imagine a finer subject 
 in itself, or one which appealed more powerfully to the sympa- 
 thies and prejudices of the time, and especially to the national 
 pride of Englishmen, if any such were felt, than the crusades of 
 Eichard Cceur de Lion ; and it would infallibly have inspired 
 poetry, if, in an age when tales of wild adventure were so 
 popular, any poetical genius had existed in the people. I can- 
 not find, however, that, at that period, the exploits of Eichard 
 had been made the subject of any original English poem, and 
 the only early work we have on the subject, in an English dress, 
 belongs to the following century, and is avowedly translated 
 from the French. 
 
 It appears, however, that Joseph of Exeter, a contemporary 
 and companion of Eichard, celebrated his exploits in a Latin 
 poem called Antiocheis, of which only a few verses are extant, 
 and that a pilgrim called Gulielmus Peregrinus wrote in Latin 
 verse on the same subject, but these do not seem to have ever 
 found English translators. 
 
 The following extract will serve as a specimen of the diction 
 and poetical character of the principal poem on the exploits of 
 this king, which were made known to English readers in the 
 fourteenth century by a translation from the French of an 
 unknown writer. 
 
Lect. V. EICHAED CCEITE DE LION 227 
 
 Lord Jesus kyng of glorye 
 
 Suclie grace and vyctorye 
 
 Thou sente to Kyng Rychard, 
 
 That neuer was found coward ! 
 
 It is ful god to here in jeste 
 
 Off his prowesse and hys conqueste. 
 
 Fele romanses men make newe, 
 
 Of good knyghtes, strong and trewe, 
 
 Off liey dedys men rede romance, 
 
 Botlie in Engeland and in France : 
 
 Off Eowelond, and of Olyver, 
 
 And of every doseper; 
 
 Of Alisander, and Charlemain, 
 
 Off kyng Arthor, and off Gawayn, 
 
 How they wer knyghtes good and ciirteys; 
 
 Off TurpjTi, and of Ocier Daneys; '. ' 
 
 Off Troye men rede in ryme, 
 
 What werre ther was in olde tyme ; 
 
 Off Ector, and of Achy lies, 
 
 "What folk they slowe in that pres. 
 
 In Ti-ensshe bookys tliis rym is wrought, 
 
 Lewede menne knowe it nought ; 
 
 Lewede menne cunne French non; 
 
 Among an hondryd unnethis on ; 
 
 And nevcrtheles, with glad chere, 
 
 Fele off hem that wolde here, 
 
 Noble justis, I undyrstonde, 
 
 Of doughty knyghtes off Yngelonde. 
 
 Par foie, now I woll yow rede. 
 
 Off a kyrg, doughty in dede ; 
 
 KjTig Ey chard, the werryor best, 
 
 That men tynde in ony jeste. 
 
 Now alle that liereth this talkyng, 
 
 God geve hem alle good endyng! 
 
 Lordynges, herkens befome, 
 How Kyng Rychard was borne. 
 Hys fadyr hyghte Kyng Hemy. 
 Li hys tyme, sykyrly, 
 Als I fynde in my sawe, 
 Seynt Thomas was i-slawe ; 
 
 Q2 
 
228 EICHAED C(EUR DE LION Lect. V. 
 
 At Cantyrbury at tbe awter-ston, 
 
 Wher many myraclys are i-don. 
 
 When he was twenty wynter olde, 
 
 He was a kyng swythe bolde, 
 
 He wolde no wyff, I undyrstonde, 
 
 With grete tresore though he her fonde. 
 
 Nevyrtheles hys barons hym sedde, 
 
 That he graunted a wyff to wedde. 
 
 Hastely he sente hys sondes, 
 
 Into manye dy verse londes, 
 
 The feyreste wyman that wore on liff 
 
 Men wolde bringe hym to wyff. 
 
 Messangeres were redy dyght ; 
 
 To schippe they wente that ylke nyght. 
 
 Anon the sayl up thay drowgh, 
 
 The wynd hem servyd wel inowgh. 
 
 Whenne they come on mydde the sea, 
 
 (No wynd onethe hadden hee; 
 
 Therfore hem was swythe woo.) 
 
 Another schip they countryd thoo, 
 
 Swylk on ne seygh they never non ; 
 
 All it was whyt of huel-bon, 
 
 And every nayl with gold begrave : 
 
 Off pure gold was the stave ; 
 
 Her mast was yvory; 
 
 Off samyte the sayl wytterly. 
 
 Her ropes wer off tuely sylk, 
 
 Al so whyt as ony mylk. 
 
 That noble schyp was al withoute, 
 
 With clothys of golde spred aboute, 
 
 And her loof and her wyndas, 
 
 Off' asure forsothe it was. 
 
 In that schyp ther wes i-dyght 
 Knyghts and ladyys of mekyll myght} 
 And a lady therinne was, 
 Bryght as the sunne thorugh the glas. 
 Her men aborde gunne to stande, 
 And sesyd that other with her honde^ 
 And prayde hem for to dwelle, 
 And her counsayl for to telle: 
 
liBCT. V. BICHAKD CCEUR DE LION 229 
 
 And they graunted with all sky lie 
 
 For to telle al at her wylle : 
 
 ' Swoo wyde landes we have went, 
 
 For Kyng Henry us has sent, 
 
 For to seke hym a qwene, 
 
 The fayreste that myghte fonde bene.' 
 
 Upros a kyng off a chayer, 
 
 With that word they spoke ther. 
 
 The chayer was charbocle ston, 
 
 Swylk on ne sawgh they never non: 
 
 And two dukes hym besyde, 
 
 Noble men and mekyl off pryde, 
 
 And welcomed the messangers ylkone. 
 
 Into that schyp they gunne gone. 
 
 Thrytty knyghtes, withouten lye, 
 
 Forsothe was in that companye. 
 
 Into that riche schyp they went, 
 
 As messangers that weren i-sent ; 
 
 Knyghtes and ladyes com hem ayene; 
 
 Sevene score, and moo I wene, 
 
 Welcomyd hem alle at on worde. 
 
 They sette tresteles, and layde a borde; 
 
 Cloth of sylk theron was sprad, 
 
 And the kyng hymselve bad. 
 
 That his doughter wer forth fette, 
 
 And in a chayer before him sette. 
 
 Tmmpes begonne for to bio we; 
 
 Sche was sette forth in a throwe, 
 
 With twenty knyghtes her aboute, 
 
 And moo off ladyes that wer stoute; 
 
 All they gunne knele her twoo. 
 
 And aske her what she wolde have doo. 
 
 They eeten and drank and made hem glade^ 
 
 And the kyng hymseh" hem bade. 
 
 Whenne they hadde nygh i-eete. 
 Adventures to speke they nought forgeete. 
 The kyng ham tolde, in hys resoun, 
 It com hym thorugh a vysyoun. 
 In his land that he cam froo. 
 Into Tngelond for to goo ; 
 
23C EICHAED CCEnK DE LION Lect. V. 
 
 And his doughtyr that was so dere, 
 For to wende bothe in fere. 
 ' In this manere we have us dyght, 
 Into that lond to wende ryght.' 
 Thenne aunsweryd a messanger, 
 Hys name was callyd Bernager, 
 ' Forther wole we seke nought, 
 To my lord she schal be brought t 
 When he her with eyen schal sen, 
 Fol wel payed woU he ben.' 
 
 The wynd was out off the northeste, 
 And servede hem atte the beste. 
 At the Tour they gunne arryve. 
 To London the knyghtes wente belyve. 
 The messangera the kyng have told 
 Of that lady fayr and bold, 
 Ther he lay, in the Toiu-, 
 Off that lady whyt so flour. 
 Kyng Henry gan hym son dyght. 
 With erls, barons, and many a knyght, 
 Agayn the lady for to wende: 
 For he was curteys and hende. 
 The damysele on lond was led. 
 And clothis off gold before her spred, 
 And her fadyr her beforn, 
 With a coron off gold i-corn; 
 The messangers by ylk a syde. 
 And menstralles with mekyl pryde, 
 
 Weber's Metrical Somances, vol. ii^ 
 
 The early Englisli rhymers and annalists observe a similar 
 mysterious silence with regard to King Alfred, the memory of 
 whom, as a Saxon King, one would suppose, could hardly ever 
 have perished among the direct descendants of his subjects, 
 fellow-soldiers, and citizens. But the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 
 which devotes about ten octavo pages to a dry detail of some of 
 the principal military and political events of his reign, does not 
 notice a single trait of his moral or intellectual character, a 
 single interesting incident of his private life, or a single 
 fact from which it is possible to TO^mTeveii the most ereneral 
 
Lect. V. EGBERT OF GLOUCESTER 231 
 
 estimate of his merits as a ruler, or his personality as a man. 
 Early English vernacular literature is equally barren of infor- 
 mation respecting this remarkable prince, and popular tradition 
 retained no remembrance of him, except as his name was 
 connected with several collections of proverbs which -were 
 ascribed to him. 
 
 The poems — for such we must call them if all rhymed com- 
 positions are poetry — of Robert of Gloucester, who flourished 
 about the year 1300, are of considerable philological importance, 
 and of some value as contributions to our knowledge of the 
 history of England, though their literary merit is of a humble 
 order. 
 
 The principal work of this author is a chronicle of England, 
 and there is a collection of lives of the English saints, which is 
 now ascribed, upon satisfactory evidence, to the same writer. 
 The subject of this latter production would naturally tend, in 
 that age, to give to it a wider circulation than could be acquired 
 by a voluminous chronicle in great part relating to remote 
 secular events ; and accordingly we find that the manuscripts of 
 the lives are much more numerous than those of the history. 
 
 The chronicle deserves notice, not only for its contributions of 
 otherwise unknown facts, but because it is the most ancient 
 professed history in the English language. It extends from the 
 siege of Troy to the death of Henry III. in 1272. The earlier 
 part is founded on Greoffrey of Monmouth, the latter generally 
 on more trustworthy sources, and it conveys some information 
 of value upon both the physical and the social condition of 
 England in the thirteenth century. The following lines are 
 favourable specimens of the author's manner : — 
 
 Engelond ys a wel god lond, ich wene of eche lond best, 
 
 Y set in ]>e ende of Tpe world, as al in fe West. 
 
 fe see gof hym al a boute, he stont as an yle. 
 
 Here fon' heo^ durre^ pe lasse doute, but hit be forw gjrle 
 
 Of fol'' of fe selue lond, as me' ha]? y seye wyle. 
 
 'fon, pi. foes. ^ heo, pers. pron. referring to England. ' durre, needs, Ger. darfi 
 fol, probably error for folc. ' me, men. 
 
232 EOBEET OF QLOtTCESTER Lect. V. 
 
 From Sonp to NorJ> lie ys long eijte hondred myle : 
 
 And foure tondred myle brod from Est to West to wende, 
 
 A mydde f o lond as yt be, and nojt as by fe on ende. 
 
 Plente me may in Engelond of alls gode y se, 
 
 Bute folc yt for gulte ofer 5eres f e worse be. 
 
 For Engelond ys ful ynow of fruy t and of tren, 
 
 Of wodes and of parkes, fat ioye yt ys to sen. 
 
 Of foules and of bestes of wylde and tame al so. 
 
 Of salt fysch and ecbe frescli, and fayre ryueres f er to. 
 
 Of Welles swete and colde ynow, of lesen ' and of mede. 
 
 Of seluer or and of gold, of tyn and of lede. 
 
 Of stel, of yrn and of bras, of god corn gret won. 
 
 Of whyte and of wolle god, betere ne may be non. 
 
 Wateres he haf eke gode y now, ac ^ at be fore aUe of er fre 
 
 Out of the lond in to fe see, armes as fei be. 
 
 Ware by f e schippes mowe come fi'o fe se and wende, 
 
 And brynge on lond god y now, a boute in eche ende. 
 
 In fe contre of Canterbury mest plente of fysch ys. 
 
 And mest chase a boute Salesburi of wylde bestes y wys. 
 
 At London schippes mest, & wyn at Wyncestre. 
 
 At Herford schep & orf ^, & fruyt at Wii-cestre. 
 
 Sope a boute Couyntre, yrn at Gloucestre. 
 
 Metel, as led & tyn, in fe contre of Excestre. 
 
 Euerwik of fairest wode, Lyncolne of fayrest men, 
 
 Grantebrugge and Hontyndone mest plente of dup fen. 
 
 Ely of fairest place, of fairest si5te Eoucestre. 
 
 Euene ajeyn Fraunce stonde J)e contre of Chichestre, 
 
 Norwiche ageyn Denemarc, Chestre ajeyn Yrlond, 
 
 Duram ajeyn Norwei, as ich vnderstonde. 
 
 tre wondres fer bef in Engolond, none more y not. 
 
 fat water of Bafe ys fat on, fat euer ys yliche hot. 
 
 And fersch & euere springe, ne be chela'' no so gret. 
 
 Suche baf es f er bef fele in f e clos & in the stret. 
 
 Upon f e pleyn of Salesbury fat of er wonder ys, 
 
 fat Stonhyngel ys y clepud, no more wonder nys. 
 
 f e stones stondef f er so grete, no more ne mowe be, 
 
 Euene vp ry^t & swyf e hye, fat wonder it is to se : 
 
 > lesen, pastuiea. ' ac, tut. The punctuation is regulated rather by the 
 metre than by the syntax. ' orf, cattle, here, and generally, black cattle^ 
 wrongly explained by Coleridge as sheep, ^ * cheU, cold, modern chiU. 
 
Lect. V, BOBEET OF QLOTICESTER 233 
 
 And ofer liggef tye aboue, fat a mon may be of a ferd, 
 
 fat vche mon wondre may how lieo were first a rered. 
 
 For nofer gyn, ny monne's strengfe, yt fynkef, ne myjte yt do. 
 
 Telle me schal here afturward of fis wondres bofe two, 
 
 And how heo were first y mad. }>e Jjridde wonder ya 
 
 Up fe htd of fe pek. Nor]) wynd pere y wys 
 
 Out of fe erfe ofte comej), of holes as y t were, 
 
 And blowef vp of filke holes, so J>at yt wolde a rera 
 
 And bere vp grete clofes, jef heo were fer ney, 
 
 And blowe hem here and fere vpon f e lofte on hey. 
 
 Fayre weyes monyon f er bef in Engolonde, 
 
 Ac fonre mest of alle fer bef ich vnderstonde, 
 
 fet fe old kynges mad, were foru me may wende 
 
 From fe on ende of Engelond uorf to fe ofer ende. 
 
 From fe Souf tillef ' in to f e Norf Eningestret; 
 
 And from f e Est in to fe West Ikenildestrete. 
 
 From Douere ia to Chestre tillef Wathngestrete, 
 
 From Soujj Est in to Norf West, and fat ys som del grete. 
 
 f e ferf e is mest of alle, fat tillef from Tottenais, 
 
 From f e on ende Cornewayle anon to Catenays, 
 
 Fro f e Norf Est in to Souf West in to Engelonde's ende : 
 
 Fosse me clepuf f ike wey, fat by mouy god toun dof wende, 
 
 So clene lond ys Engolond, and so pur with outen ore,^ 
 
 fat f e fairest men of f e world f er inne bef y bore. 
 
 So clene, and fair, & piurwyt', among ofer men heo bef, 
 
 fat me knowef hem in eche lond by syjte, where me hem sef . 
 
 So clene al so is fat lond, and monne's blod so pur, 
 
 fat f e gret vnel' comef not f er, fat me clepuf f o holy fur, 
 
 fat for fretef monnes lymes, ry5t as heo were brende. 
 
 Ac men of France in f ilke vnel me syf sone a mende, 
 
 jef heo ben brou5t in to Engolond : war f orw me may wyte, 
 
 fat Engelond ys lond best, as yt is y write. 
 
 The Lives and Legends of the Saints, by the same author, do 
 not differ grammatically from the Chronicle, but they are more 
 popular in- tone, and in general more interestiug, because they 
 are, no doubt, very faithful reflections of the opinions and senti- 
 
 • fUle]), leads. ' ore, here dross, as of metal, elsewhere, mercy. ■ purwyt, 
 pnre- white, fair-complexioned. * vnel, sickQess, plague. 
 
234 EOBEET OF GLOUCESTER Lect. Vn, 
 
 ments, as well as of the habits and manners of the English 
 people, at a period concerning which our sources of information 
 are scanty. 
 
 The Life of St. Brandan, published by the Percy Society, is 
 of the same fabulous character as a large proportion of the 
 monkish legends of the Middle Ages, but the martyrdom of 
 Becket, also published by the same Society, has very much 
 higher pretensions to literary merit than most parts of the 
 Chronicle can boast, and is by no means wanting in dramatic 
 life and spirit. The most curious part of the Lives of the 
 Saints is a cosmographical, astronomical, and physiological 
 fragment printed in Wright's Popular Treaties on Science. Of 
 course, scientific accuracy is not to be looked for in a work of 
 that period, but the treatise in question, in its views of the laws 
 of nature, and of great cosmical facts — such as the relative mag- 
 nitudes and distances of the sun and moon, the phases of the 
 latter, which are illustrated by comparing her to a ball shone 
 upon by a candle, and the moon's influence on the tides — is much 
 less absurd than most popular works of the age, and therefore, 
 with all its errors, it may be looked upon as containing truth 
 enough to make it an instructive essay. The sun is stated to 
 be one hundred and sixty-five times, the earth nine times, as 
 large as the moon, and as to the distance of the heaven or firma- 
 ment from the earth, we are told that, — 
 
 Moche is bituene hevene and urthe, for the man that miste go 
 
 Eche dai evene fourti myle uprigt and eke mo, 
 
 He ne scholde to the hexte hevene, that al day je i-seoth, 
 
 Come in eijte thousend ger, ther as the sterren beoth; 
 
 And the5 Adam oure ftu-ste fader hadde bi-gonne anon, 
 
 Tho he was furst y-maked, toward hevene gon. 
 
 And hadde ech dai fourti myle evene uprijt i-go. 
 
 He nadde nogt gut to hevene i-come bi a thousend jer and mo. 
 
 The proportion of Eomance words in the general diction of 
 Eobert of Gloucester does not exceed four or five per cent., but 
 the number of vocables of this class, which make their first 
 
Lect. V. ROBERT OF BRUNNE 235; 
 
 appearaoice in his works, is considerable, and his additions to 
 the current vocabulary of English are important, though other- 
 wise he cannot be said to have done much for the elevation of 
 the native literature. 
 
 The rhymed history usually known as the Chronicle of Eobert 
 Manning, or Eobert of Brunne, is the most voluminous work in 
 the English of the early part of the fourteenth century, and it 
 is the last conspicuous production belonging to what most phi^ 
 lologists consider as the first period of the English language, 
 which, as before remarked, extends from about 1250 to about 
 1350. The first part of this chronicle is a translation from 
 the Brut of Wace. It comes down to the death of Cadwalader, 
 and has never been printed. The second, a translation from 
 the Anglo-Norman of Peter de Lanjj'toft, but with many 
 enlargements and corrections, brings down the history of 
 England to the death of Edward I. This was published by 
 Hearne in 1725, under the name of Langtoft's Chronicle, and 
 was reprinted in 1810. The style of de Brunne is superior to 
 that of Eobert of Grloucester in ease, though we can hardly say, 
 grace of expression. His literary merits are slender, and his 
 diction, which is formed upon that of Eobert of Gloucester, 
 though belonging to a rather more advanced period of philo- 
 logical development, is distinguished from that of his master 
 by some important characteristics. The vocabulary is consi- 
 derably enlarged by new Eomance words, but the principal 
 difference between Eobert of Grloucester and Eobert of Brunne 
 is, that while the former makes the third person singular indi- 
 cative present of the verb in th, and generally, though indeed 
 not uniformly, uses the Saxon form of the personal pronoun, 
 the latter regularly employs the verbal ending s, and has scJio 
 for the nominative singular feminine, and J»ei in the nomina- 
 tive, )? e r in the genitive or possessive plural of the personal 
 pronoun. 
 
 The prologue to the unpublished part of the work, which is 
 le Brunne's own, is remarkable for its bearing on certain 
 
236 EOBEKT OF BRTTNNB Lect. V. 
 
 questions of old English versification. I introduce it as a favour- 
 able specimen of his style, and it is proper to remark that the 
 translator, in both divisions of his work, followed the versifica- 
 tion of his original ; the metre in the first part being octosyllabic, 
 while the lines in the latter vary from eight syllables to the 
 Alexandrine, or exametron of six feet, which was the heroic 
 measure of that age. It will be found in Heame's edition. 
 Appendix to Preface, p, xcvi. 
 
 Lordynges, tLat be now here, 
 
 If 56 wille listens & lere 
 
 All ])e story of Inglande, 
 
 Ala Robert Mannyng wryten it fand, 
 
 & on Inglysch has it schewed, 
 
 Not for fe lerid hot for pe lowed, 
 
 For J)o fat in f is land wonn, 
 
 ])at pe Latyn no Frankys conn, 
 
 For to haf solace & gameii 
 
 In felawschip when fai sitt samen. 
 
 And it is wisdom forto wytten 
 
 fe state of fe land, and haf it wryten: 
 
 What manere of folk first it wan, 
 
 & of what kynde it first began. 
 
 And gude it is for many thynges, 
 
 For to here ]je dedis of kynges, 
 
 Wliilk were foles & whilk were wyse. 
 
 & whilk of Jiam couth mast quantyse ; 
 
 And whilk did wrong & whilk ryght, 
 
 & whilk mayntend pes & fyght. 
 
 Of fare dedes salle be my sawe. 
 
 In what tyme & of what lawe, 
 
 I saUe 50W schewe fro gre to gre, 
 
 Sen fe tyme of sir Noe, 
 
 Fro Noe vnto Eneas, 
 
 & what betwix J)am was, 
 
 And fro Eneas tUle Brutus tyme, 
 
 fat kynde he telles in fis ryme. 
 
 Fro Brutus tille Cadwaladres, 
 
 fe last Bryton fat [(is laude lees. 
 
Lect. V. EGBERT OP BRTJNNE 237 
 
 Alle fat kynde & alle tlie frute, 
 fat come of Brutus fat is f e Brute; 
 And fe rjght Brute is told nomore, 
 fan the Brytons tyme wore. 
 After f e Bretons f e Inglis camen, 
 f e lordschip of f is lande f ai namen ; 
 Soutli & North, West & Est, 
 fat calle men now f e Inglis gest. 
 When f ai first amang f e Bretons, 
 fat now ere Inglis fan were Saxons, 
 * Saxons Inglis hight alle oliche. 
 
 fat aryued vp at Sandwjfche, 
 In f e kynge's tyme Vortogerne, 
 fat f e lande walde f am not werne. 
 fat were maysters of alle f e tof ire, 
 Hengist he hight & Hors his brof ire. 
 f es were hede, als we fynde, 
 Where of is comen oure Inglis kynde. 
 A hundrethe & fifty jere f ai com. 
 Or fat receyued Cristendom. 
 So lang woned f ai f is lande in. 
 Or fa herde out of Saynt Austyn, 
 Amang f e Bretons with mykelle wo, 
 In sclaundire, in threte & in thro, 
 f es Inglis dedes 5e may here. 
 As Pers telles alle f e manere. 
 One mayster Wace f e Frankes telles, 
 f e Brute alle fat f e Latyn spelles, 
 Fro Eneas tille Cadwaladre, 
 f is mayster Wace f er leues he. 
 And ryght as mayster Wace says, 
 I telle myn Inglis f e same ways. 
 For mayster Wace f e Latyn alle rymes, 
 fat Pers ouerhippi's many tymes. 
 Mayster Wace f e Brute alle redes, 
 & Pers tellis alJe f e Inglis dedes. 
 f er mayster Wace of f e Brute left, 
 Eyght begynnes Pers eft, 
 AJid tellis forth f e Inglis story, 
 and as he says, fan say L 
 
238 EOBEET OF BEUHNB Lect. V. 
 
 Als ]>ai haf wryteii & sayd, 
 
 Haf I alle in myn Inglis lajfd, 
 
 In symple speche as I couthe, 
 
 fat is lightest in manne's mouthe. 
 
 I mad noglit for no disours, 
 
 Ne for no seggers no harpours, 
 
 Bot for ]>e luf of symple meii, 
 
 pat strange Inglis can not keii. 
 
 For many it ere |)at strange Inglis 
 
 In ryme wate neuer what it is, 
 
 And bot fai wist what it mente, • 
 
 EUis me thoght it were alle sohente. 
 
 I made it not forto be praysed, 
 
 Bot at fe lewed men wore aysed. 
 
 If it were made in ryme couwee, 
 
 Or in strangere or enterlace, 
 
 fat rede Inglis it ere inowe, 
 
 fat couthe not haf coppled a kowe, 
 
 fat outhere in couwee or in baston 
 
 Som suld haf ben fordon, 
 
 So fat fele men fat it herde, 
 
 Suld not witte howe fat it ferde. 
 
 I see in song in sedgeyng tale 
 
 Of Erceldoun & of Kendale, 
 
 Non fam says as f ai fam wroght, 
 
 & in f er sayng it semes noght. 
 
 fat may f ou here in Sir Tristrem, 
 
 Ouer gestes it has f e steem, 
 
 Ouer all fat is or was, 
 
 If meii it sayd as made Thomas, 
 
 Bot I here it no man so say, 
 
 fat of som copple som is away. 
 
 So fare fajae saying here befome. 
 
 Is fare trauayle nere forlorne. 
 
 f ai sayd it for pride & nobleye, 
 
 fat non were suylk as f ei, 
 
 And alle fat f ai wild ouerwhere, 
 
 Alle fat ilk wille now forfare, 
 
 f ai sayd in so quainte Inglis, 
 
 fat manyone wate not what it is. 
 
Lecx. V, EGBERT OF BEUHNB 239 
 
 ferfore heuyed wele ])e more 
 
 In strange r^me to trauayle sore, 
 
 And my witte was oure tliynne, 
 
 So strange speclie to trauayle in, 
 
 And forsoth I couth noght 
 
 So sti-ange Inglis as fai wi-oght, 
 
 And men besoght me many a tyme. 
 
 To turne it hot in light ryme. 
 
 ]jai sayd, if I in strange it turne, 
 
 To here it manyon suld skni-ne. 
 
 For it ere names fulle selcouthe, 
 
 fat ere not vsed now in mouthe. 
 
 And ferfore for ]>e comonalte, 
 
 ])at blythely wild listen to me, 
 
 On light lange T it begaii, 
 
 For luf of fe lewed man, 
 
 To telle fam fe chaimces bolde, 
 
 fat here before was don & tolde. 
 
 For Jiis makyng I wille no mede, 
 
 Bot gude prayere, when ge it rede. 
 
 ferfore, je lordes lewed, 
 
 For wham I haf f is Inglis schewed, 
 
 Prayes to God he gyf me grace, 
 
 I trauayled for gour solace. 
 
 Of Brunne I am, if any me blame, 
 
 Eobert Mannyng is my name. 
 
 Blissed be he of God of heuene, 
 
 fat me Eobert with gude wille neuene. 
 
 In f e thrid Edwarde's tyme was I, 
 
 When I wrote alle fis story. 
 
 In fe hous of Sixille I was a throwe, 
 
 Danz Eobert of Maltone fat je know 
 
 Did it wryte for felawes sake, 
 
 Wben f ai wild solace make. 
 
 The thirteenth century produced some interesting and curious 
 didactic poems. Those which are translated or imitated from 
 French or Latin models have, as might be expected, greater 
 smoothness of versification, but less originality of thought than 
 those which seem to be of native invention. One of the best 
 
240 THE BODY AND THE SOUL Lect. V. 
 
 specimens of the former class is the dialogue between the body 
 and the soul, printed in the Appendix to the Camden Society's 
 edition of the Latin poems ascribed to Walter Mapes. 
 
 This poem is believed by the editor to be of the thirteenth 
 century, and there are manuscripts of the English version, as 
 well as of corresponding French and Latin texts, which cannot 
 be of a much later date. I cannot, however, resist the con- 
 viction that the manuscript from which this text is printed is 
 more recent, for its dialect is grammatically more modern than 
 that of almost any English writer before the time of Chaucer. 
 The English poem is a translation, but there is reason to think 
 that the Latin original is a native English composition. It has 
 merit both of thought and of expression, and the interesting 
 glimpses it gives of the life and manners of its time invest it 
 with some historical value ; for though it extends to but two 
 hundred and fifty lines, it contains no inconsiderable amount of 
 real information on these subjects.* 
 
 The commencement of the poem is as follows : — 
 
 Als I lay in a winteris ny t, in a droukening ' bifor the day, 
 Vor sothe I sauj a selly ^ syt, a body on a here lay, 
 That havde ben a mody ^ knyjt, and Intel served God to payj; 
 Loren he haved the lives lyjt ; the gost was cute, and scholde away. 
 Wan the gost it scholde go, yt bi-wente '' and with-stod, 
 Bi-helod the body there it cam fro, so serfulli with dredli mod ; 
 It seide, ' weile and walawo ! wo worthe thi rieys, thi foule bled ! 
 Wreche bodi, wjy listouj so, that jwilene were so wilde and wod? 
 
 * There are many points of resemblance tetween this poem and an Anglo-Saxon 
 dialogue on the same subject, published from a MS. of the twelfth century, by 
 Sir T. Phillips. The mutilated condition of the latter renders the comparison 
 dificult, but the list of luxuries in the old English work seems to be much mors 
 copious than that in the Anglo-Saxon, and of course to indicate an advance in 
 the comforts and refinements of life. Although the copy published by Sir T. 
 Phillips is of the twclftli century, the dialect belongs to an earlier date, and the 
 poem was, in all probability, written before the Norman Conquest had introduced 
 the elegancies, which soon followed the transfer of the English crown to the head 
 of a French prince. 
 
 ' droukening, slumber. ' gclly, straLge. ' Tnody, proud, brave. * M- 
 wentc, turned back. 
 
Lect. v. the eodt and soul 241 
 
 Thow that were woned to ride lieyre on horse in and out, 
 So koweynte kiiit\ i-kud' so wide, as a lyun fers and proud, 
 jwere is al thi micliele pride, and thi lede' that was so loud?' 
 jwi listoiT there so bare side, i-prlcked'' in that pore soliroud? 
 jwere beon thi castles and thi toures ? thi chaunibres and thi riche 
 
 halles ? 
 I-peynted with so riche flourcs? and thi riche robes alle? ' 
 
 Thine cowltes''' and thi covertoures? thi cendels and thi riche palles? 
 Wrechede, it is now thi bour, to moruwe thou; schalt ther inne falle. 
 jwere ben thi murdli*" wedes? thi soniers^, -with thi riche beddes? 
 Thi proude palefre3-s and thi stedes, that thouj haddest in dester 
 
 leddes?* 
 Thi faucouns that were noujt to gi-ede ? and thine houndes that thou 
 
 leddc? 
 Me thinketh God is the to gucdo^, that alle thine fi-end beon fro the 
 
 fledde. 
 jwere ben thine cokes snelle, that scholden gon greithe thi mete, 
 "With spetes'", swete for to smelle? that thouj nevere werere fol of 
 
 frete,ii 
 To do that foule fleys to suwelle '^, that foule wormes scholden ete? 
 And thouj havest the pine of helle with glotonye me bi-gete, 
 For God schop the aftir his schap, and gaf the bothe wyt and skil; 
 In thi loking'^ was i-]aft, to wisse aflir thin oune wil.' 
 'Ne toe I nevere wyche-craft, ne vryst I ^wat was guod nor il. 
 Bote as a wretche dumb and mad, bote as touj taujtest ther til. 
 Set to serven the to querao'*, bothe at even and a moruen, 
 Sithin I was the bi-taujt '= to jeme ""', fro the time that thouj; was born; 
 Thou5 that dedes couthest deme, scholdest habbe be war bi-fom 
 Of mi folye, as it semet ; now with thi selve thouj art for-lorn. 
 
 The minor poems of the fa-st age of English literature may 
 be divided into ballads, political songs and devotional verse. 
 Many of these, including some of the most curious and im- 
 portant, are in J^atin. ITiese of course have not much pliilo- 
 
 ' iowcynU knit, quaintly, cunningly framed. ^ i-lcud, Icno-mi. ' Icde, voice. 
 • i-pricked, wrapped or decked. * cnwU< s, quilts. " mvrdli, mii'thful, g;iy. 
 ' somcrs, bedsteads. ° in dester kddcs, led on the right hand ; the plural form of 
 the participle is curious. ' guede, should be gnede, niggardly, severe. " spcts, 
 this would regularly be 6tp8i4', but I suspect it is here spins. "/rc^c, eating. 
 " auwdle, meat, relish to bread. " loking, care, custody, power. " to q^iieme, 
 to please. " bi-tauit, committed. '° to leme, to keep. 
 
242 POLITICAL SONGS Lect. V. 
 
 logical relation to our present subject, and I cannot notice them 
 further than to state their existence, and to invite attention to 
 them as well worthy of perusal. 
 
 The variety of metres in these productions is great, and 
 though we do not find all the modern forms of the stanza in 
 early English verse, yet there are few poetic measures examples 
 of which may not be produced from that period. The narrative 
 poems in general have little to mark them as English, except 
 the language in which they are written. Poems of this character 
 would circulate mainly among the comparatively uneducated 
 classes, and the copyists, by whom they were transcribed, would 
 generally be persons of less accurate scholastic training and 
 habits than those engaged in the multiplication of works de- 
 signed for readers of higher culture. Hence the manuscripts 
 containing them would be more negligently executed, and, con- 
 sequently, are less to be relied on, as evidences of the gram- 
 matical character of the language, than works of higher aims 
 and greaicr literary merit. 
 
 These poems are generally anonymous, a circumstance which 
 has been thought to show that they were translations ; but of 
 this we have often better proof in internal evidence, or in the 
 existence of the French originals, in manuscripts of more 
 ancient date. In fact, it was only when the na«tional spirit 
 was awakened to distinct consciousness, by the internal struggle 
 called the Barons' wars, that sufficient literary ambition was 
 roused to prompt to original composition ; and it has been justly 
 remarked that the general want of literary taste is shown by 
 the fact that the best, most natural, and most graceful pro- 
 ductions of French poets were neglected, while far inferior 
 works were translated in: considerable numbers. 
 
 The political songs and satires of the thirteenth and fourteenth 
 centuries are an interesting feature of early English literature, 
 not as possessing merit of conception or of execution, but 
 because they are the first symptoms of a new life, the first 
 evidences of nascent nationality in modern England. They 
 
LbcT. V. rSE OF FEENCH IN EUROPE 243 
 
 times, at least they have its grossness, but they are wantiDg in 
 the humour which characterises later English verse of the 
 same class. Most of the extant political poems of the period 
 we are discussing are in Anglo-Norman, or in Latin, for the 
 reason, among others, that in the thirteenth century, at least, 
 written English was not much employed for any purpose ; and 
 as there was at that epoch no people, in the modern social sense 
 of that word, there existed no native public interested in 
 political affairs, which could be addressed in the native tongue. 
 
 At this time, the French rankecj first among the literary 
 languages of Europe, for it had reached a much more advanced 
 stage of grammatical and rhetorical culture than any other, 
 and was, therefore, better suited, not only for poetical compo- 
 sition, but for every branch of higher intellectual effort. Its 
 superiority for literary purposes was felt and admitted, even in 
 states where the influence of France in political matters was 
 far from great ; and French acquired, in tlie thirteenth century, 
 that viidely diffused currencj', as a generally known and there- 
 fore convenient common medium of communication, which it 
 has ever since maintained throughout Continental Europe. 
 Martino de Canale, a Venetian annalist of the thirteenth 
 centm"y, composed his chronicle in French, because, to use his 
 own words : ' the French tongue is current throughout the 
 world, and is more delectable to read and to hear than any 
 other.' * Brunetto Latini, the teacher of Dante, wrote his most 
 important work in the same language, and he thus apologizes 
 for using it instead of Italian : ' If any shall ask why this book 
 is written in Romance, according to the patois of France, I 
 being born Italian, I will say it is for divers reasons. The one 
 is that I am now in France, the other is, that French is the 
 most delightsome of tongues, and partaketh most of the com- 
 mon nature of all other languages.'! 
 
 The employment of French by native English authors is by 
 
 * Ystoire de li Normanz. Introduction, xclv. 
 
 t Et se aueuns demandoit por coi cest liures est escrit en romas selonc le pacoyi 
 
244 USE OF FRENCH IN EN6LAKD Lect. V= 
 
 no means to be ascribed wholly to the predominance of Norman 
 influence in England, but, in a considerable degree, to the fact 
 that, for the time, it occupied much the same position which 
 had hitherto been awarded to the Latin, as the common dialect 
 of learned Christendom. This fact has been too generally over- 
 looked by literary historians, and consequently too much weight 
 hasbeen ascribed to political and social causes, in accounting for the 
 frequent use of French by English writers, when, in truth, its em- 
 ployment was very much owing to purely literary considerations. 
 
 Many of the poems on English political affairs were the work 
 of native Norman, not English writers, though English subjects, 
 and some were written even in Provenpal. 
 
 As has been already observed, a great variety of metres are 
 employed in these poems ; but most of the English, though 
 rhymed, and resembling Eomance poetry in structure, retain 
 the ancient national characteristic of alliteration, and thus 
 combine the two sj'stems, as they do the vocabularies, of both 
 languages. Others again are partly in English, partly in French, 
 thus showing that those for whom they were written were 
 equally familiar with both languages. Thus a poem of the year 
 1311, upon the violation of the provisions of Magna Charta, so 
 often confirmed and so often broken by English kings, com- 
 mences with a stanza in the two languages. 
 
 L'en puet fere et defere, 
 
 Ceo f;iit-il trop sovcnt ; 
 It nis nouther wel ne faire ; 
 
 Therfore Engelond is shent. 
 
 de france, puis que iios comesames ytalliens ie diroie que ce est por diuersea 
 raisoiis. I'une q nos somes en france et 1' autre por ce q la parleure est plus 
 delitable et plus comuiie a tous leugages. 
 
 Manuscrijpt oj the Lilrrary of ths Umv'rsiti/ of Turin, Cod. L. II. 18. 
 The form pacoys, generally written patois, is remarkable, but I know not how 
 far it is justified by other ancient authorities. Diez tuppopcs patois to be 
 an imitative word, and cites the Henuegau provincial pati-pata, geschnatter, 
 chattering, as analogous. 
 
 Although we cannot be certain as to the precise definition which Brunette 
 Latini would have given to pacoys, he apparently uses it in the sense oi dialect, 
 and regards the Eomance as a general, speecEpSf^whiBh Freustwas a, local form. 
 
I^CT. V. ENGLISH POLITICAL POEMS 245 
 
 Nostre prince de Engletere, 
 
 Par le consail de sa gent, 
 At Westminster after the feire 
 
 Made a gret parlement. 
 La chartre fet de eyre, 
 
 Jeo I'enteink et bien le crey, 
 It was liolJe to neih tlie fire, 
 
 And is molten al awey. 
 Ore ne'say mes que dire, 
 
 Tout i va Ji Tripolay, 
 Hundred, chapitle, court, and shire, 
 
 Al hit goth a devel way. 
 Des plusages de la tere 
 
 Ore escotez un sarmoun, 
 Of iiij. wise-men that ther were, 
 
 Whi Engelond is brouht adoun. 
 
 The ferste seide, ' I understonde 
 Ne may no king wel ben in londe, 
 
 Under God Almihte, 
 But he cunne himself rede, 
 Hou he shal in londe lede 
 Everi man wid rihte. 
 
 For might is riht, 
 
 Liht is night. 
 
 And fiht is fliht. 
 For miht is riht, the lond is laweles ; 
 For niht is liht, the lond is loreles ; 
 For fiht is flUit, the lond is nameles.' 
 
 That other seide a word ful god, 
 ' Whoso roweth ajein the flod, 
 Off sorwe he shal drinke ; 
 Also hit fareth bi the unsele, 
 A man shal have litel hele 
 Ther agein to swinke. 
 
 Nji on is two, 
 
 Another is wo, 
 
 And frend is fo. 
 For on is two, that lond is streintheles; 
 For wel is wo, the lond is reutheles ; 
 For frend is fo, the lond is lovelea.' 
 
246 ENGLISH POLITICAL POEMS Lect, V. 
 
 That thridde seide, ' It is no wonder 
 Off tliise eyres that goth under, 
 
 Whan theih comen to londe 
 Proiide and stoute, and ginneth jelpe, 
 Ac of thing that sholde helpe 
 Have theih noht on honde. 
 Nn lust haveth leve, 
 Thef is reve, 
 And pride hath sieve. 
 For lust hath leve, the lond is theweles; 
 For thef is reve, the lond is penyles ; 
 For pride hath sieve, the lond is almusles.' 
 
 The ferthe seide, that he is wod 
 That dwelleth to muchel in the fiod, 
 
 For gold or for auhte ; 
 
 For gold or silver, or any wele. 
 
 Hunger or thurst, hete or cliele, 
 
 Al shal gon to nohte. 
 
 Nu wille is red, 
 
 "Wit is qued. 
 
 And god is ded. 
 For wille is red, the lond is wrecful ; 
 For wit is qued, the lond is wrongful ; 
 For god is ded, the lond is sinful. 
 
 Wid wordes as Ave han pleid, 
 Sum wisdom we han seid 
 
 Off olde men and gunge ; 
 Off many a thinge that is in londo, 
 Whoso coude it understonde. 
 
 So have I told wid tongue, 
 
 Eiche and pore, bonde and fre, 
 That love is god, je mai se ; 
 
 Love clepeth ech man brother; 
 For it that he to blame be, 
 Forjif hit him par charite, 
 
 Al theih he do other. 
 
 Love we God, and he us alle, 
 That was bom in an oge stalle^ 
 
LecT. V. ENGLISH POLITICAL rOElTS 247 
 
 And for US don on rode. 
 His swete heite-blod he let 
 For us, and us faire het 
 
 That we sholde be gode. 
 
 Be we nu gode and stedefast, 
 So that we muwen at the last 
 
 Haven hevene blisse. 
 To Gtid Almihti I preie 
 Lat us never in sinne deie, 
 
 That joye for to misse, 
 
 Ac lene us alle so don here, 
 And leve in love and god manere, 
 
 The devel for to shende; 
 That we moten alle i-iere 
 Sen him that us bouhte dere. 
 
 In joye withoute ende. Amen. 
 
 The authors of some of these songs might even boast with 
 Daate : Locatns sum in lingua trina ; for occasionally French, 
 I^atin and English are intermixed, as in the following poem, of 
 the early part of the reign of Edward II., also contained in the 
 Political Songs published by the Camden Society. 
 
 Quant honme deit parleir, videat quEe verba loquatur ; 
 
 Sen covent aver, ne stultior inveniatur. 
 
 Qiiando quis loquitur, bote resoun reste theiynne, 
 
 Derisum patitur, ant lutel so shal he wj'nne. 
 
 En seynt eglise sunt multi sa;pe priores ; 
 
 Summe beoth wyse, multi sunt inferiores. 
 
 When mon may mest do, tunc velle suum manifestat, 
 
 In donis also, si vult tibi pramia prasstat. 
 
 Ingrato benefac, post hajc a peyne te veiTa ; 
 
 Pur bon vin tibi lac noji dat, nee rem tibi rendra. 
 
 Sensum custodi, quasi mieu valt sen qe ta mesoun; 
 
 Thah thou be mody, robur nichil est sine resoun. 
 
 Lex lyth doun over al, faUax fiaus fallit ubique; 
 
 Ant love nys bote smal, quia gens se gestat inique. 
 
 Wo walketh wyde, quoniam movet ira potentes: 
 
 Eyht con nout ryde, quia vadit ad insipientes. 
 
248 ENaLisn political poems Lect. v. 
 
 Dummodo frans snperest, lex nul notit lonen y londe ; 
 
 Et quia sio res est, ryth may nout radlyclie stondc. 
 
 Fals raon freynt covenaimt, quamvis tibi dicat, ' habebis.' 
 
 Vix dabit un veu gaunt, lene les mon postea flebis. 
 
 Myn ant tLj'n duo sunt, qui frangunt plebis amorem ; 
 
 Ce deus pur nus sunt facienda sajpe dolorem. 
 
 Tresoun danipnificat, et paucis est data resoun ; 
 
 Eesoun oertificat, confundit et omnia tresoun. 
 
 Pees may nout wel be, dum stat per nomina bina; 
 
 Lord Crist, that thou se, per te bit in hiis raedicina ! 
 
 Infirmus moritur, thah leohcraft ligge bysyde ; 
 
 Viviis decipitur, nis non that her shal abyde 
 
 Tels phisours troverez, qui de te plurima prendrotint ; 
 
 Au dreyn bien verrez, quod nullam rem tibi rendrount. 
 
 Esto paoificus, so myh thou weldo thy wylle ; 
 
 Also veridious, ant stond pro tempore stille. 
 
 Pees seit en tere, per te, Deus, alma potestas I 
 
 Defendez guere, ne nos invadat egestas. 
 
 God Lord Almyhty, da pacem, Christe benigne I 
 
 Thou const al dyhty, fac ne pereamus in igne ! 
 
 This confusion of tongues led very naturally to the corruption 
 of them all, and consequently none of them were written or 
 spoken as correctly as at the period when they were kept distinct. 
 In short, the grammar of both English and Anglo-Norman 
 became more and more irregular, as French and Latin became 
 more familiar to the English people. The Anglo-Norman, as 
 it was observed in the last lecture, departed from the Norman- 
 French inflections, and Anglo-Latin became almost as macaronic 
 as the works of Folengo, or as the Daco-Latin of Wallachia, 
 where the traveller Walsh says, that he was waked before dawn, 
 by the tapster of a humble inn, who was; standing over him 
 with brandy-bottle and glass, and offering him a morning 
 draught, with the classic salutation : ' Visne schnapps, 
 Domine ? ' 
 
 In fact, a macaronic stage seems very often to mark the 
 decline of an old literature and language, in countries exposed 
 
Lect. V. MIXTURE OF LANGUAGES 249 
 
 to powerful foreign influences. We find examples of Latinisras 
 in Byzantine Greek, and of Hellenisms in the decay of classic 
 Latin. Ausonius — not the last lawyer who has exchanged the 
 bar for the chair — introduces Greek vocables into his verses, 
 and, in his twelfth epistle, after saying, in hybrid words, that he 
 has wasted time enough in arguing causes in the Common Pleas 
 and in Bank, and in delivering lectures on rhetoric : 
 
 Jam satis, h! ipiXe IlaiiXe, vrovwv airtTTEipfidrifiEV, 
 Ev Tt fopo) caiisaic TE Kai ingratatcri KadiSpais, 
 PijropiKoie luSo»(Ti, &c. &c. 
 
 he invites his friend Paulus to visit him and share with him a 
 bottle of veritable Chateau Marganx, which he calls : 
 
 viicrap vinoio bonoto. 
 
 The English political poem oldest in subject, if not in date, 
 contained in the Canjden Society's volume, is a satire upon the 
 Emperor, or King of Almaigne. It is as follows : — 
 
 SONG AGAINST THE KING OF ALMAIGNE. 
 [MS. Hail. No. 2253, Fol. 58vo, of the reign of Edward IL* 
 
 Sitteth alle stille ant herkneth to me : 
 The Kyn of Alemaigne, hi mi leautd, 
 Thritti thousent pound askede lie 
 For te make the pees in the country, 
 
 ant so he dude more. 
 Eichard, thah thou be ever trichard, 
 
 trichen shalt thou never more. 
 
 Eichard of Alemaigne, whil that he wes kyng, 
 
 • »»»*• 
 
 Haveth he nout of Walingford o ferlyng :— 
 Let him habbe, ase he brew, bale to dryng, 
 maugre Wyndesore. 
 Eichard, thah thou be ever, etc. 
 
 The Kyng of Alemaigne wende do ful wel, 
 He saisede the mulne for a castel, 
 
250 POLITICAI, SONGS Lect. V. 
 
 "With hare sharpe swerdes he grounde the stel, 
 He wende that the sayles were mangonel 
 to helpe Wyndesore. 
 Richard, etc. 
 
 The Kyng of Alemaigne gederede ys host, 
 Makede him a castel of a mulne post, 
 Wende with is prude ant is muchele host, 
 Brohte from Alemayne mony sori gost 
 to store Wyndesore. 
 Eiohard, etc. 
 
 By God, that is aboven ous, he dude muche synne, 
 That lette passen over see the Erl of Warj'nne : 
 He hath robbed Engelond, the mores, ant th[e3 fenne, 
 The gold, ant the selver, ant y-boren henne, 
 for love of Wyndesore. 
 Eiohard, etc. 
 
 Sire Simond de Mountfort hath swore bi ys chyn, 
 Hevede he nou here the Erl of Waryn, 
 Shulde he never more come to is yn, 
 Ne with sheld, ne with spere, ne with other gyn, 
 to help of Wyndesore. 
 Eichard, etc. 
 
 Sire Simond de Montfort hath suore bi ys oopj 
 Hevede he nou here Sire Hue de Bigot, 
 Al he shulde quite here twelfmoneth scot, 
 Shulde he never more with his fot pot 
 to helpe Wyndesore. 
 Eichard, etc. 
 
 Be the luef, be the loht, sire Edward, 
 Thou shalt ride sporeles o thy lyard 
 Al the ryhte way to Dovere ward ; 
 Shalt thou never more breke fore -ward, 
 ant that reweth sore : 
 Edward, thou dudest ase a shreward, 
 
 forsoke thyn ernes lore. 
 Eichard, etc. 
 
 Early English satirists by no means confined themselves to 
 censuring political abuses, and in their comnlaints of the cor- 
 
Lect. V. POLITICAL SONGS 251 
 
 ruption of the Church they show a holdness worthy of the 
 martyr age of the Eeformation, The Latin poems of this class 
 are particularly severe, and they are often written in a tone of 
 mournful seriousness, which is not likely to have been employed 
 except by ecclesiastics who deeply felt the degradation to which 
 their profession was reduced, by the depravity of the higher 
 classes of the clergy. Some of the English songs on this 
 subject are full of curious information both on the relations 
 between the clergy and the laity, and on the habitual modes of 
 life of the middling and lower cleisses of the people. The 
 following is the commencement of a long poem, contained in 
 the volume I have so often referred to. 
 
 Whii werre and wral^e in londe and manslauht is i-come,- 
 Whii hungger and dertlie on eorthe the pore hath undernome, 
 Whii bestes ben thus storve, whii corn hath ben so dere, 
 ge that wolen abide, listneth and ge muwen here 
 
 the skile. 
 I nelle lijen for no man, herkne who so wile. 
 
 God greteth wel the clergie, and seith theih don amis, 
 And doth hem to understonde that litel treuthe ther is ; 
 For at the court of Rome, ther treuthe sholde biginne, 
 Him is forboden the paleis, dar he noht com therinne 
 
 for doute ; 
 And thouh the pope clepe him in, jit shal he stonde theroute. 
 
 Alle the popes clerkes han taken hem to red. 
 If treuthe come amonges hem, that he shal be ded. 
 There dar he noht shewen him for doute to be slain, 
 Among none of the cardinaus dar he noht be sein, 
 
 for feerd, 
 If Symonie may mete wid him he wole shaken his herd. 
 
 Voiz of clerk is sielde i-herd at the court of Eome ; 
 Ne were he nevere swich a clerk, silverles if he come, 
 Thouh he were the wiseste that evere was i-bom, 
 But if he swete ar he go, al his weye is lorn 
 
 i-souht. 
 Or he shal singe si dedero, or al geineth him noht. 
 
252 POLITICAL SONGS Leot. V. 
 
 For if there be in countre an Loreling, a shrewe, 
 
 Lat liim come to the court hise nedes for to shewe, 
 
 And bringe wid him silver and non other wed, _ 
 
 Be he nevere so muchel a wrecche, hise nedes sholen be spade 
 
 ful stille, _ 
 For Coveytise and Symonie han the worldto wills. 
 
 And erchebishop and bishop, that ouhte for to enquere 
 Off ale men of holi churche of what lif theih were, 
 Summe beth foles hemself, and leden a sory lif, 
 Therfore doren hii noht speke for rising of strif 
 
 thurw clerkes, 
 And that everioh biwreied other of here wrecchede werkea. 
 
 But certes holi churche is inuohel i-brouht ther doune, 
 Siththen Seint Thomas was slain and smiten of his croune. 
 He was a piler ariht to holden up holi churche, 
 Thise othere ben to slouwe, and feinteliche kunnen worche, 
 
 i-wis ; 
 Therfore in holi churche hit fareth the more amis. 
 
 But everi man may wel i-wite, who so take jeme, 
 
 That no man may wel serve tweie lordes to queme. 
 
 Summe beth in ofice wid the king, and gaderen tresor to hope, 
 
 And the fraunchise of holi churche hii laten ligge slepe 
 
 ful stille ; 
 Al to manye ther beth swiche, if hit were Godes wille. 
 
 The feeling of conscious national life, which had been 
 awakened by the Barons' Wars, seems to have been much less 
 freely manifested in the early part of the fourteenth century, 
 and in fact to have become almost dormant, for a considerable 
 time before the French wars of Edward III. roused it again to 
 a long and vigorous activity. The volumes of political poems 
 of the reign of Edward III., which form a part of the series 
 of Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland, do 
 not contain a single English song older than those of Lawrence 
 Minot, which were written after the year 1350. 
 
 The various collections of poetry belonging to the first age 
 of English literature, which the philological zeal of scholars 
 
Iject. V. LTKIC POETRY 253 
 
 has lately giTen to the world, contain many descriptive, amatory, 
 and religious songs of no inconsiderable merit. I select the 
 following from the Specimens of Lyric Poetry composed in 
 England in the reign of Edward I., published by the Percy 
 Society. 
 
 With longyng y am lad, 
 On molde y waxe mad, 
 
 a maide luan-eth me; 
 Y grede, y grone, un-glad, 
 For-selden y am sad 
 
 that semly forte se; 
 
 levedi, thou rewe me, 
 To routhe thou havest me rad ; 
 Be bote of that y bad. 
 
 My lyf is long on the. 
 
 Levedy, of alle londe 
 Les me out of bonde, 
 
 broht icham in wo, 
 Have resting on honde. 
 Ant sent thou me thi sonde, 
 
 sons, or thou me slo; 
 
 my teste is with the ro : 
 Thah men to me han onde, 
 To love nvily noht wonde, 
 
 ne lete for non of tho. 
 
 Levedi, with al my miht 
 My love is on the hht, 
 
 to menske when y may ; 
 Thou rew ant red me ryht, 
 To dethe thou havest me diht, 
 
 y dege longe er my day ; 
 
 thou leve upon mi lay. 
 Treuthe ichave the plyht, 
 To don that ich have hyht, 
 
 whil mi hf leste may. 
 
 Lylie-whyt hue is. 
 Hire rode so rose on rys, 
 that rcveth me mi reat. 
 
254 LYKIC POETKY Lect. T. 
 
 Wynitnon ■war ant wys, 
 
 Of prude hue bereth the pris, 
 
 burde on of the best; 
 
 this woramoa woneth by west, 
 Brihtest under bys, 
 Hevene y tolde al his 
 
 That o nyht were hire gest. 
 
 Lenten ys come with love to toune, 
 "With blosmen ant with briddes roune, 
 
 that al this blisse bryngeth; 
 Dayes-e5es in this dales, 
 Notes suete of nyhtegales, 
 
 Tich foul song singeth. 
 The threstelcoc him threteth oo, 
 A-way is huere wynter wo, 
 
 when woderovespringeth; 
 This foules singeth ferly fele. 
 Ant wlyteth on huere wjmter wele, 
 
 that al the wdde ryngeth. 
 
 The rose raylethhire rode, 
 The leves on the lythe wode 
 
 waxen al with wille ; 
 The mone mandeth hire bleo, 
 The lilie is lossom to seo, 
 
 the fenyl ant the fille; 
 Wowes this wilde drakes. 
 Miles murgeth huere makes, 
 
 ase strem that striketh stills; 
 Mody meneth, so doll mo,„ 
 Ichot ycham on of tho, 
 
 for love that likes ille. 
 
 The mone mandeth hire lyht, 
 So doth the semly sonne bryht, 
 
 when briddes singeth breme ; 
 Deowes donketh the dounes, 
 Deores with huere deme rounea, 
 
 domes forte deme; 
 Wormes woweth under cloude, 
 Wymmen waxeth wounder proude. 
 
I«aCT. v. LXEIC POETRY 265 
 
 SO well hit wol hexa seme, 
 jef me slial wonte ■wille of on, 
 This MTimne weole y wole tbr-gon, 
 
 ant wyht in wode be lleme. 
 
 Wtstee wateneth al my care, 
 Nou this leves waxeth bare, 
 Ofte y sike ant monrne sare, 
 
 When hit cometh in my thoht 
 
 Of this worldes joie, hou hit goth al to noht. 
 
 Now hit is, ant now hit nys. 
 
 Also hit ner nere y-wys. 
 
 That moni mon seith soth his ys, 
 
 Al goth bote Godes wille. 
 
 Alle we shule deye, thath us like ylle. 
 
 Al that gren me graneth grene, 
 Kon hit faleweth al by-dene; 
 Jhesu, help that hit be sene, 
 
 And shild us from helle, 
 
 For y not whider y shal, ne hou longe her duelle. 
 
 Jes0, for thi muchele miht, 
 
 thou gef us of thi grace. 
 That we mowe dai ant nyht 
 
 thenken o thi face. 
 In myn herte hit doth me god, 
 When y thenke on Jesu blod, 
 
 that ran doun bi ys syde, 
 From his herte doun to his fot, 
 For ous he spradde is herte blod, 
 
 his wondes were so wyde. 
 
 When y thenke on Jhesu dei, 
 
 min herte over-werpes, 
 Mi soule is won so is the led 
 
 for my fole werkes. 
 Ful wo is that iike mon. 
 That Jhesu ded ne thenkes on, 
 
256 LTKIC POETET LecT. V. 
 
 ■wTiat he sofFrede so sore .' 
 For ray synnes y wil wete, 
 Ant alle j wyle hem for-lete 
 
 nou ant evermore. 
 
 Mon that is in joie ant blis, 
 
 ant lith in shame ant synne, 
 He is more then un-wis 
 
 that ther-of mil noutblynne. 
 Al this world hit geth a-way, 
 Me thynketh hit nejyth domesday, 
 
 nou man gos to grounde ; 
 Jhesu Crist that tholede ded, 
 He may oure soules to hevene led, 
 
 withinne a Intel stounde. 
 
 Thah thou have al thi wille, 
 
 thenk on Godes virondes, 
 For that we ne shulde spille, 
 
 he tholede harde stoundes ; 
 Al for mon he tholede ded, 
 jyf he wyle leve on is red, 
 
 ant leve his folie, 
 We shule have joie ant blis, 
 More than we conne seien y-wys 
 
 in Jesu compagnie. 
 
 Jhesu, that wes milde ant fre, 
 
 wes with spere y-stonge ; 
 He was nailed to the tre, 
 
 with scourges y-swongen. 
 Al for mon he tholede shame, 
 Withouten gult, withouten blame, 
 
 bothe day ant other. 
 Mon, ful muchel he lovede the, 
 When he wolde make the fire, 
 
 ant bicome thi brother. 
 
Lect. V. rNFLECTIONAL CHANGES 257 
 
 NOTE ON INFLECTIONAL AND GRAMMATICAL CHANGES. 
 
 The origin of changes in inflection can very seldom be traced, because 
 they originate in popular speech, and are not adopted by the written 
 tongue until the mode and occasion of their introduction is forgotten ; 
 ')ut in cases where the native has been brought into contact with a 
 foreign language, we can often see how a new tendency might have 
 been created, or an existing one strengthened, towards a revolution in 
 a particular direction. Let us take the case of the old verbal plural in 
 -en. The Anglo-Saxon plural indicative present, as we have already 
 seen, ended in th, so that instead of we lore, or we lovera, the Saxons 
 said we lufia?A, with the same consonantal ending as in the singular, 
 he luf-af A. The past tense of the indicative, as we Int-odon, we 
 loved, and of both tenses of the subjunctive, as we luf-i'oji, that we 
 may love, we luf -o don, that ive might love, always ended in -on. 
 But though the present indicative plural of all regular verbs ended in 
 th, all the semi-auxiliaries, except willan, to will, made the plural in 
 on, and the Anglo-Saxons said we -wiUath, we will, but, at the 
 same time, we scealore, we magore, we cunnore, we moton, for 
 we shall, we may, we can, we must. 
 
 The Norman-French, hke modern French, made the first person 
 
 plui'al, in all cases, in ons — the s being probably silent as it now is 
 
 and said nous aim ons, ive love. This termination, though a nasal, 
 bore a considerable resemblance to the Saxon plural in on. There was, 
 then, a common point in which the two languages concurred. The 
 Frenchman could not pronounce the th, and as the two nations had 
 agreed to adopt s, the nearest approximation a Norman could make to 
 the sound of th, as the sign of the third person singular of the verb, 
 it was very natural that they should employ the sign o n, which was 
 common to both, as the sign of the phu-al. 
 
 The Saxon ending on was not accented, and the vowel was pro- 
 bably somewhat obscurely articulated, like the e, in the modern termi- 
 nation en, in the verb harden and others of that ehding. These cir- 
 cumstances tend to explain why we find the plural of the indicative 
 present in the Ormulum with the ending in en instead of th. This 
 soon became the regular form in English, and this was the first step of 
 progress to the modern dialect, in which we have dropped the plural 
 ending altogether, giving it, in all the persons, the same form as the 
 first person singular. Thus we say, I love, and we love, you love, they 
 
 S 
 
258 INFLECTIONAL CHANGES Lect. V. 
 
 love, -veliile early English writers said : I love, but we loven, you loven, 
 they loven. 
 
 In modem French, and there is every reason to believe in Old 
 Norman-French also, the three persons of the singular and the third 
 person of the plural of the verb, thovigh the latter has an additional 
 syllable in writing, are pronounced alike, the terminal syllable being 
 silent in speech; for the plural aiment is pronounced aime, just 
 like the singular, aime. Of the six persons, singular and plural, the 
 French pronounce four alike, rejecting the plural ending ent alto- 
 gether, and this fact probably contributed to facilitate the dropping 
 of the new English plural ending in en, which did not long remain in 
 use. 
 
 Another new form of expression first exemplified, so far as I know, 
 in the thirteenth century, is the use of the plural pronoun instead of 
 the singular, in addressing a single person. I do not observe this use 
 of the pronoim in contemporaneous French, nor in any of the Northern 
 Gothic languages, but it was already common in Dutch, and it is pos- 
 sible that the English borrowed it from that soui-ce. .Not many English 
 words or forms are derived from the Dutch, but Chaucer quotes a 
 Flemish proverb, and one of the words occurring in it, quad or qued, 
 bad, evil, is found in the Owl and Nightingale, the Surtees Psalter, as 
 well as in other early English writers. Bidine, too, common in old 
 ballads, occurs in the Surtees Psalter.* These words are not Anglo- 
 Saxon, and as they were probably taken fi-om the Dutch, other words 
 and forms may have been received from the same language. 
 
 But though the plural pronoun was thus early applied to single per- 
 sons, the complete separation of the two, and the confinement of the 
 singular thou to the religious dialect, are very much later. They seem 
 to have been employed indiscriminately for several centuries, and in 
 the Morte d' Arthur, printed in 1485, thou and you, thy and your are 
 constantly occurring in the same sentence, and addressed to one and 
 the same person. 
 
 * Huydeeoper, in his Breedere aa-nteTceningen op Melis Stoke, I, 227, examines 
 the etymology of bi'deen at considerable length. It is a compound of the 
 particle by and the demonstrative pronoun: by dicn, the primitive meaning 
 being, thereby, thereupon, anrl ^»nee, immediately. 
 
LECTURE VI 
 
 COHMENCEMEST OF SECOND PERIOD: FROM 1350 TO THE 
 Tlisns OF THE AUTHOR OF PIERS PLOUGHMAN. 
 
 We are now to enter on a new philological and literaiy era, an 
 era in -wliich English genius first acquired a self-conscious in- 
 dividuality, and the English language and its literature dis- 
 entangled themselves from the confusion in which the conflict- 
 ing authority of Saxon precedent and French example had 
 involved them. In this second period, the speech of England 
 became, no longer an ill-assorted mixture of discordant in- 
 gredients, but an organic combination of well assimilated, though 
 heterogeneous elements, animated by a law of life, and endowed 
 with a vigour of constitution which has given it a luxuriant 
 youth and a healthful manhood, and still promises it a length 
 of days as great, an expansion as wide, as have fallen to the 
 lot of any of the tongues of man. 
 
 Considering English, then, as primarily and radically a Grothic 
 speech, invested with a new aspect, and inspired with a new 
 life by Eomance influences — just as animals are so modified, 
 in habits, instincts, size and specific characteristics, by changes 
 of nutriment, climate, and other outward circumstances, that 
 the unscientific observer hesitates to recognise them as still 
 belonging to the primitive stock — let us inquire for a moment 
 into the nature of the action by which external forces could 
 produce such important revolutions. 
 
 There are two principal modes in which foreign conquest 
 and foreign influence affect language. The first and most 
 
260 VOOABTJLAKT OF OLD ENGLISH Lect, VI. 
 
 obvious is, by the introduction of foreign words, idioms, and 
 grammatical forms, which may be carried far without any very 
 appreciable effect upon the radical character of the language, 
 or upon the spirit of the people who use it. The other is 
 the more slowly and obscurely manifested action of new insti- 
 tutions, laws, and opinions upon the intellectual constitution 
 and habits of thought of the people, and, indirectly, upon the 
 logical structure of the language as the vehicle of the expres- 
 sion of the national mind and character. 
 
 We should suppose, a priori, that the first influence of a 
 cultivated language, employed by a conquering people, upon 
 the less advanced speech of a ruder subject race, would be to 
 denationalize its vocabulary by the introduction of a large 
 number of foreign words, and that syntactical changes would 
 be slower in finding their way into the grammar ; but the 
 history of the modern languages known in literature seems to 
 show that this is not universally the case. 
 
 I have already mentioned the curious inversion of periodic 
 arrangement which the Turkish has produced in the modern 
 Armenian, without much affecting the vocabulary ; and I have 
 given reasons for believing that both Moeso-Gothic and Anglo- 
 Saxon were influenced, in certain points of their grammar, by 
 Greek and Latin syntax. The Gothic languages, which seem 
 to have modified the structure of the Romance dialects, have not 
 bestowed upon them any very large proportion of Northern 
 words ; and though the syntax of the native speech of England 
 underwent important changes between the Norman Conquest and 
 the close of the period we have just dismissed, yet the number of 
 Eomance words which had been naturalized in England was, thus 
 far, by no means considerable. As has been before observed, the 
 whole number of Greek, Latin, and French words found in the 
 printed English authors of the thirteenth century, even in- 
 cluding those which Anglo-Saxon had borrowed from the 
 nomenclature of theology and ethics, scarcely exceeds one 
 
I-ECT. VI. NEW NATIONALITY 261 
 
 thousand, or one eighth part of the total vocabuhiry of that 
 era; and in the actual diction of any one English writer of 
 the period in question, not above one word in twenty or twenty- 
 five is of Latin or Eomance derivation. 
 
 But while these influences were so slow and so gradual in 
 their operation on the lexical character of English, moral causes 
 were at work, which, at the critical moment, gave new energy to 
 the assimilative power of the English tongue, and when the 
 craving for a more generous intellectual diet was distinctly felt, 
 and larger facilities were demanded, English suddenly enriched 
 itself by a great accession of Latin and Eomance words. It is a 
 remarkable fact, as we shall see more fully hereafter, that at the 
 very moment when it was naturalizing this foreign element with 
 the greatest rapidity, it asserted most energetically its gram- 
 matical independence, and manifested a tendency to the 
 revival of Anglo-Saxon syntactical forms which had become 
 well-nigh obsolete. 
 
 Hitherto, change had been principally in the way of disor- 
 ganization, decomposition, but when the inhabitants of England 
 no longer consisted of a corporation of foreign lords and a herd 
 of aboriginal serfs, when a community of interest had grown up 
 between the native and the stranger, and mutual sympathies 
 were born, then a new, heroic and genial nationality sprang into 
 being, revived the sparks that yet slumbered in the ashes of 
 departed Saxondom, and fed them with a fuel borrowed alike 
 from the half-forgotten stores of native growth and from the 
 more abundant products of sunny and luxuriant France. 
 
 Eomance words and forms had been imposed by foreign 
 authority upon a reluctant and unreceptive speech, the sufficient 
 medium of communication for a people too rude and unculti- 
 vated to feel its own debasement, and to know the extent of its 
 own intellectual deficiencies ; but when revived, or rather new- 
 born, England awakened to a consciousness of the wants which 
 make themselves so imperiously felt, whenever a new national 
 
262 POPULAR LITEBAT0EE Lect. VL 
 
 life is developed, it proceeded to supply those wants by the sum- 
 mariest methods, from all accessible sources. 
 
 Thenceforward, to use the comparison of St. Jerome, it seized 
 and appropriated foreign words as a conqueror, — no longer un- 
 willingly received and bore than as a badge of servitude to an 
 alien yoke. 
 
 English, as distinguished from Anglo-Saxon, thus far can 
 hardly be said to have gained other than a negative existence, 
 for it had lost the formal characteristics of the old speech, and 
 had not yet acquired the shape or spirit of the new. The 
 spoken and written dialect was but a corrupted a.nd denaturalized 
 jargon, or rather congeries of jargons, for every district had its 
 local patois which was broadly distinguished from the speech of 
 other shires. The necessities of social and political life, indeed, 
 compelled the occasional employment of these native dialects in 
 written communication, by persons whose scholastic training 
 was Latin or French ; but until the close of the thirteenth 
 century, there was no indigenous public which possessed a 
 written vernacular, to any such extent as to be accessible to 
 literary influences. For all the purposes of common national 
 culture, therefore, English may be regarded as still un- 
 written. 
 
 I have before remarked that the popular ballads, which ex- 
 isted in local dialects, did not constitute a literature, and that 
 England had no peculiar literature of her own till after the 
 middle of the fourteenth century. The mass of those who 
 spoke the native tongue, of those who listened to, and even 
 those who composed, the popular ballads, were, in all proba- 
 bility, wholly ignorant of letters, and for them English existed 
 only as a spoken language. The traditions and the legends, 
 the ballads and the war-songs, which float from mouth to 
 mouth, in any unwritten speech, cannot constitute a literature, 
 for they cannot exist in fixed and permanent forms. In the 
 retentive memory of the humblest class of bards and narrators, 
 
Lect. YI. popular LITfiltATUEE 263 
 
 they may dwell and be repeated for years with little change of 
 form or substance. But most of the poetical reciters and saga- 
 men are themselves creators, and if memory chance to fail, or 
 if a finer ear or a more imaginative temperament suggest 
 improvements in the ballad or the story they recite, they will 
 not scruple to make verbal or inventive changes. Hence every 
 bard is continually moulding and remoulding his lays into 
 accordance with his habitual tastes and sentiments, or with the 
 changeful temper which the humour of the moment may 
 inspire. The leading facts, the raw material, may remain the 
 same, but the poem or the saga, so long as it is unrecorded, will 
 continually appear and reappear in a new dress, a new phraseo- 
 logy, and often in a new predominant strain of imagery, of 
 thought or of sentiment. 
 
 Now, constant peculiarities of verbal combination, of prevalent 
 tone, and especially of the aspect in which the relations between 
 man and man, and man and nature, are viewed, constitute the 
 characteristic and essence of every primitive national literature, 
 and difference the imaginative creations of one nascent people 
 from those of another. They are at once the flesh that clothes, 
 and the organic principle that animates and individualises the 
 intellectual products of 'all uncultivated races. In partially civi- 
 lized nations, living under similar climatic and other physical 
 conditions, the subjects will be alike, the leading facts of life 
 nearly identical ; but it is the point of view from which facts 
 are regarded, the embeffisBments of fancy with which they 
 are decorated, that characterize and distinguish the national 
 treatment of them, or, in other words, the national literature, 
 in ruder periods of associate life. 
 
 The poems and tales of primitive ages turn mainly on the 
 material interests of men, though the events which act upon 
 those interests may be occasioned by moral affections, passions, 
 or emotions. The moral judgment on facts, and even the 
 exhibitioQ of their moral results, the discussion of their bearing 
 
264 ENLAKaEMENT OF VOCABTJLAET Lect. VL 
 
 on the interests of society, belong to later ages, and to an 
 entirely different phase of literature.* 
 
 TJntil the intellectual productions of rude eras are recorded, 
 and preserved in permanent memorials, so as to afford oppor- 
 tunities for study, comparison, imitation, they will be individual 
 in the moral and the imaginative element that enters into them ; 
 and while they bear the general likeness which belongs to all 
 the productions of uncultivated races, differenced only by the 
 special character of each writer, they will not be marked by the 
 finer analogies, the subtler contrasts, and the nicer shades of 
 colour, which are the result of artificial culture, and which be- 
 come, when made in a certain degree uniform and permanent, 
 the characteristics of national genius. 
 
 The birth or revival of a truly national and peculiar literature 
 is generally contemporaneous with an enlargement of the voca- 
 bulary, by foreign importation, or by the resuscitation of obsolete 
 words of native growth. It is not always easy to say whether 
 this extension of the means of expression is the cause or the 
 consequence of the conception and fa.miliarization of new ideas; 
 but, in any event, new thoughts and new words are necessarily 
 connected, if not twin-born. Hence the awakening of a new 
 spirit of nationality — which was a result of the French and 
 Scotch wars of Edward III. — the enlargement of the Enghsh 
 vocabulary, and the impulse to the creation of an original 
 English literature, were nearly simultaneous. English scholars, 
 though trained as all educated Englishmen thus far had been, 
 
 * In the Icelandic sagas, it is rare to find any condemnation of the acts of 
 cruel violence in which those narratives abound, and a Woody mm-der is generally 
 spoken of as astorvirki, a, great act. Thus in Njiila, when Klosi was preparing 
 to attack the sons of Njall with fire and sword, ho concealed his purpose from his 
 father-in-law Hallr, because he thought Ilahr would letia allra storvirkia, 
 prevent all murder. Morgum \i6tti jjat st6rvirki, niorgum fiAtti hann 
 harm-dauKi, itseemed to many a great act, to many his seemed a death to he 
 regretted, are the strongest expressions of disapprobation commonly used on 
 Buch occasions. 
 
 It is worth noticmg that, in the last example, harm-dauoi is an adjectire 
 agreeing with tlie subject of tl-e phrase. 
 
Lect. VI. ENL-VEGEITENT OF TOCABTTLAKT 265 
 
 in schools where only French and Latin were grammatically 
 tanght, had already become weary of reading even the master- 
 r»ieces of Continental genius in a foreign garb, and the trans- 
 ation of French poems into the native speech of England, 
 their naturalization as English possessions, was the first move- 
 ment in the manifestation of a new literary life. 
 
 The want of a sufiScient nomenclature and the convenience 
 of rhyme and metre, as is very clearly seen in all the older 
 English versions, naturally led to the employment of many 
 French words in the translations ; and in an age when Latin 
 and French, or at least the latter, were quite as familiar to 
 every educated man as English, a considerable proportion of 
 French words might, in Englishing French poems, be intro- 
 duced almost unconsciously to the translator, and without 
 exciting much. notice on the part of a reader. The circulation 
 of translated works was no longer confined to the higher classes, 
 who hitherto had alone enjoyed any opportunities for literary 
 culture. About the middle of the fourteenth century, schools 
 were established in which English was both taught as itself 
 an object of study, and employed as a vehicle of instruction 
 in other languages and disciplines. "VMiatever existed in the 
 English tongue, whether by translation or by original compo- 
 sition, now became a part of the general patrimony of the 
 English people, and there, as everywhere else, the learning, the 
 poetry, the philosophy, which had been slowly gathered on the 
 summits of social life, and had been the peculiar nutriment of 
 favoured classes, now flowed down to a lower level, and re- 
 freshed, as with the waters of a fountain of youth, the humbler 
 rants of the English people. Native poets, composing original 
 works in their own tongue, would naturally use the poetic 
 diction in which the productions of French literature had been 
 clothed in assuming an English dress ; for these were their only 
 vernacular models. But English rhymers were still generally 
 acquainted with French, and that language, as we have seen, 
 had already attained a culture which eminently fitted it for 
 
266 ENLAKGEMENT OF TOCABFLART Lect. VI. 
 
 literary purposes, and made it, as the Latin has always been, a 
 storehouse of poetic wealth in words as well as in thought, and 
 a convenient resource to versifiers who were in vain struggling 
 to find adequate expression in the vocabulary of Saxon-English. 
 The English middle classes, who were now, for the first time, 
 admitted to the enjoyment of literary pleasures, accepted, as a 
 consecrated speech, the dialect employed liy their authors and 
 translators, without inquiry into the etymology of its consti- 
 tuents, and thus, in the course of one generation, a greater 
 number of French words were introduced into English verse, 
 and initiated as lawful members of the poetical guild, than in 
 the nearly three centuries which had elapsed since the Norman 
 Conquest. The foreign matter became thoroughly assimilated 
 nutriment to the speech, the mind and the heart of the frag- 
 mentary peoples who had now combined in an entire organized 
 commonwealth, and though the newly adopted Romance words 
 were not indigenous, yet they were acknowledged and felt to be 
 as genuine English, as those whose descent from the Gothic 
 stock was most unequivocal. 
 
 Epictetus observes, that the sheep, though it eats grass, pro- 
 duces not hay but wool. So English writers of the fourteenth 
 century, though they derived their chief intellectual food from 
 the fields of Romance literature, conceived, nevertheless, original 
 thoughts, imposed new shades and distinctions of meaning on 
 the words they borrowed, coloured with new hues the images 
 drawn from nature and the reflections prompted by the special 
 forms and conditions of English life, and thus created a new 
 literary substance, which soon became a distinct and indepen- 
 dent individuality in the world of letters. 
 
 It is a great, but very widely spread error, to suppose that 
 the influx of French words in the fourteenth century was diie 
 alone to poetry and other branches of pure literature. The 
 law, which now first became organized into a science, introduced 
 very many terms borrowed from the nomenclature of Latin and 
 French jurisprudence ; the glass- worker, the enameller, the archi- 
 
Lkct. VI. TOCABULAET OF PEOSE 267 
 
 tect, the brass-founder, the Flemish clothier, and the other handi- 
 craftsmen, whom Norman taste and luxury invited, or domestic 
 oppression expelled from the Continent, brought with them the 
 vocabularies of their respective arts ; and Mediterranean com- 
 merce — which was stimulated by the demand for English wool, 
 then the finest in Europe — imported, from the harbours of a 
 sea where French was the predominant language, both new 
 articles of merchandize and the French designations of them. 
 
 The sciences too, medicine, physics, geogTaphy, alchemy, 
 astrology, all of which became known to England chiefly through 
 French channels, added numerous specific terms to the existing 
 vocabulary, and very many of the words, first employed in 
 English writings as a part of the technical phraseology of these 
 various arts and knowledges, soon passed into the domain of 
 common life, in modified or untechnical senses, and thus 
 became incorporated into the general tongue of society and 
 of books. 
 
 The poets, so far from corrupting English by a too large 
 infusion of French words, were in truth reserved in the em- 
 ployment of such, and, when not constrained by the necessities 
 of rhyme, evidently preferred, if not a strictly Anglo-Saxon 
 diction, at least a dialect composed of words which use had 
 already familiarized to the English people. 
 
 The truth of this position, which has been overlooked in the 
 great mass of uncritical animadversion on the English language 
 of the fourteenth century, will be at once made apparent by 
 an examination of the dialect of the prose writers of that era, 
 and of those poems which are addressed to the least refined 
 classes, and employ the least ornate and most simple and intel- 
 ligible diction. 
 
 As this is an unfamiliar view of the subject, and as it is a 
 point of interest and importance in the history of English 
 philology, it may be worth while to devote a little time and 
 space to the special consideration of it. Sir John Mandeville 
 is generally considered the earliest prose writer of the second 
 
268 SIK JOHN MANDEVILLE Lect. VI. 
 
 period of English literature and philology. Mandeville left Eng- 
 land in the year 1322, and spent many years in travel, principally 
 in Oriental countries. After his return to his native land, he 
 drew up, in the year 1356, an account of his observations, in 
 Latin, and, to use his own words, ' put this boke out of Latyn 
 into Frensche, and translated it agen out of Frensche into 
 Englyssche, that every man of my Nacioun may under- 
 stande it.' * 
 
 The manuscripts of Mandeville, in the three languages in 
 which his travels appeared, are so numerous that Halliwell 
 says : ' I will undertake to say that, of no book, with the excep- 
 tion of the Scriptures, can more manuscripts be found, of the 
 end of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth centuries,' 
 and there are no less than nineteen copies in the British 
 Museum alone. Six of these are in English, and there are few 
 great public or private libraries in England which do not con- 
 tain one or more manuscripts of this author, in the vernacular 
 tongue. This fact proves a very wide circulation of the book, 
 and of course that its dialect was readily intelligible to the great 
 mass of English-speaking people. Although the style and 
 grammatical structure of Mandeville are idiomatic, yet the pro- 
 portion of words of Latin and French origin employed by him, 
 in his straightforward, unpoetical, and unadorned narrative, is 
 
 * Careless readers of Mandeville have often understood him as representing 
 that he sgent the interval between 1322 and 1356 abroad. But this he does not 
 say. After stating, p. 315 of the reprint of 1839, that he 'departed from oure 
 Contrees and passed the See, the Zeer of Grace 1322,' he adds, 'now I am 
 comen horn (mawgree my self) to reste ; for Gowtes, Artefykes, that me distrey- 
 nen, tho diffynen the ende of my labour, azenst my wille (God knowethe). And 
 thus takyngi^ Solace in my wrecched reste, recordynge the tyme passed, I have 
 fulfilled tlieise thinges and putte hem wryten in this boke, as it wolde come in to 
 my mynde, the Zeer of Grace 1366 in the 34 Zeer that I departede from cure 
 Contrees.' 
 
 If Mandeville had not spent a considerable time in England after his retiirn, 
 and before -svriting his travels, it is quite impossible that his English should Lava 
 been so idiomatic. An absence of thirty-four years, at a period when the English 
 language was in so unstable a state, would have left him far behind the actual 
 condition of the speech at his return. 
 
Lect. VI. SIK JOHN MANDETILLE 269 
 
 greater than that found in the works of Langlande, Chaucer, 
 Gower, or any other English poet of that century. In the 
 Prologue, which, hesides proper names and Latin quotations, 
 contains something less than twelve hundred words, more than 
 one hundred and thirty, or eleven per cent., are of Latin or 
 French origin, and of these, the following thirty are new to 
 English, or at least not found in the printed literature 
 of the preceding century: — assembly, because, comprehend, 
 conquer, certain, environ, excellent, former (noun), frailty, 
 glorious, glory, inflame, inumber (inumbrate), moisten, nation, 
 people, philosopher, plainly, proclaim, promise, pronounce, 
 province, publish, reconcile, redress, subject, temporal, translate, 
 trespasser, visit. The new words are relatively more numerous 
 in the Prologue than in the rest of the work, but the Latin and 
 Romance are not in larger proportion than in the narrative 
 generally. I find, however, in chapters i., ii., iii., xxi., xxii., 
 the following words of that character, which are not in 
 Coleridge's Grlossarial Index : — abstain, abundant, ambassador, 
 anoint, apparel, appear, appraize, array, attendance, benefice, 
 benignly, bestial, calculation, cause, chaplet, cherish, circum- 
 cision, claim, clarte (light), command (verb), comparison, con- 
 tinually, contrarious, contrary, convenient, convert, corner, 
 cover (in the present sense), cruelty, cubit, curiously, date, 
 defend (forbid), degree, deny, deprive, desert (waste), devoutly, 
 diaper, discordant, discover, disfigured, dispend, dissever, diver- 
 sity, duchy, enemy, enforce, engender, estate, estimation, ex- 
 amine, faithfully, fertre (a litter, Lat. feretrum), fiercely, 
 fornication, foundation, generation, governance, gum, idol, 
 immortal, imprint, incline, inspiration, join, joncs (rushes), 
 letters (alphabetic characters), lineage, marquis, menace, 
 minstrelsy, money, monster, mortal, multitude, necessary, 
 obedient, obeissant, obstacle, ofiicer, opinion, ordinance, ordi- 
 nately, orient, ostrich, outrageously, paper, pasture, pearl, perch 
 (a pole), perfectly, profitable, promise (noun), proper (own), 
 province, purple, quantity, rebellion, receive, region, relation. 
 
270 SIR JOHN MAKDETILLB Lect. Vt 
 
 religious, return, reverend, royally, royalty, rudely, sacrament, 
 science, search, scripture, servitor, signification, simony, soldier, 
 solemn, specialty, spiritual, stranger, subjection, superscription, 
 table, temporal, testament, throne (verb), tissue, title (in- 
 scription), title (right), unction, usury, value, vary, vaulted, 
 vessel, vicar, victory, vulture ; one hundred and forty-four in all. 
 We iind, then, in the Prologue and these five chapters, which, 
 make about an eighth of the volume, one hundred and seventy- 
 four Latin and Eomance words, not met with in the printed 
 literature of the thirteenth century. If we suppose the re- 
 mainder of the book to contain as m?iny in proportion, we 
 should have, in a single work of one writer, an addition of 
 about fourteen hundred words of the Latin stock to the voca- 
 bulary of the previous century. It is indeed probable that the 
 unexamined chapters of Mandeville might yield fewer new 
 words, but as other authors of the first half of the foru:teenth 
 century contain many vocables not found in that writer, we 
 are certainly safe in saying that between 1300 and 1350 as 
 many Latin and French words were introduced into the English 
 language as in the whole period of more than two centuries 
 which had elapsed between the Conquest and the beginning of 
 the fourteenth century. 
 
 It was, then, the common necessities of the people, the 
 essential deficiencies of the remnant of Anglo-Saxon, which 
 now constituted the vernacular of England — and which, in its 
 debased estate, had lost its character of a flexible, an expressive 
 and a multifarious speech — that occasioned the incorporation of 
 so many Eomance words into the English language ; and poetry 
 is guiltless of the charge of having corrupted the simplicity and 
 purity of the native tongue. 
 
 The English of Mandeville, with few exceptions, belongs to a 
 more advanced stage of progress than that of Eobert of Glou- 
 cester, and the proportion of Eomance words in the English 
 vocabulary seems to have been suddenly increased in our 
 author's time, and in all probability more by the popularity of 
 
Lect. VI. SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE 271 
 
 his works, than by the influence of any other writer of that 
 centu^3^ 
 
 Although the dialect of Mandeville exhibits the language, 
 upon the whole, in a more developed phase than the works of any 
 preceding aiithor, there is otherwise nothing in Ms volume 
 which marks him as an Englishman. It is purely a record of 
 observations, and a detail of information gathered from other 
 sources. It possesses no national tone of colouring, and the 
 Latin and French texts might equally well have been written 
 by a subject of the French or of the English crown. The 
 immense popularity of Mandeville, and the influence his 
 writings probably produced upon the language, justify me in 
 giving fuller extracts from his travels than can be afforded for 
 authors whose philological importance is less, though their 
 literary merits m.ay be greater. 
 
 THE PE0L0GT7E. 
 
 For als moche as the Loud bezonde the See, that is to seye, the 
 Holy Lond, that Men callen the Lond of Promyssioun, or of Belieste, 
 passynge alle othere Londes, is the most worthi Lond, most excellent, 
 and Lady and Sovereyn of alle othere Londes, and is blessed and hal- 
 ewed of the precyous Body and Blood of cure Lord Jesu Crist ; in the 
 whiclie Lond it Ijd^ede him to take Flesche and Blood of the Virgyne 
 Marie, to envyrone that holy Lond with his blessede Feet ; and there 
 he wolde of his blessednesse enoumbre him in the seyd blessed and 
 gloriouse Virgine Marie, and become Man, and worche many Myracles, 
 and preche and teche the Feythe and the Lawe of Cristene Men unto 
 his Children ; and there it Ijkede him to sutFre many Eeprevinges and 
 Scornes for us ; and he that was Kyng of Hevene, of Eyr, of Ei'the, of 
 See and of alle thinges that ben conteyned in hem, wolde alle only ben 
 cleped Kyng of that Lond, whan he seyde, Eex sum Jndeorum, that is 
 to seyne, lain Kyng of Jewes; and that Lond he chees before alle other 
 Londes, as the beste and most worthi Lond, and the most vertuouse 
 Lond of alle the World : For it is the Ilerte and the myddes of all the 
 World; wytnessynge the Philosophere, that scythe thus; Virtus rei-um 
 in medio consistit: That is to seye, The Virtue oftldnfjes is in the myd- 
 des ; and in that Lond he wolde lede his Lyf, and sufTre Passioun and 
 
272 Sia JOHN MANDETILLE Lect. VT. 
 
 Detlie, of Jewes, for us ; for to bye and to dely vere us from Peynes of 
 Helle, and from Detlie witliouten ende ; the whiche was ordeyned for 
 us, for the Synne of oure formere Fader Adam, and for oure owne 
 Synnes also: For as for himself, he hadde non evylle deserved: For he 
 thoughte nevere evylle ne dyd evylle : And he that was Kyng of Glorie 
 and of Joye, myghten best in that Place sufFre Dethe ; because he ches 
 in that Lend, rathere than in ony othere, there to sutfre his Passioun 
 and his Dethe : For he that wil pupplische ony thing to make it openly 
 knowen, he wil make it to ben cryed and pronounced in the myddel 
 place of a Town ; so that the thing that is proclamed and pronounced, 
 may evenly strecche to alle Parties : Eighte so, he that was formyour 
 of alle the World, wolde suifre for us at Jerusalem ; that is the myddes 
 of the World ; to that ende and cntent, that his Passioun and his Dethe, 
 that was pupplischt there, myghte ben knowen evenly to alle the Parties 
 of the World. See now how dere he boughte Man, that he made after 
 his owne Ymage, and how dore he azen boghte us, for the grete Love 
 that he hadde to us, and we nevere deserved it to him. For more pre- 
 cyous Catelle ne grctter Ransoum, ne myghte he put for us, than his 
 blessede Body, his precyous Blood, and his holy Lyf, that he thralled 
 for us ; and alle he offred for us, that nevere did Synne. A dere God, 
 what Love hadde he to us his Subjettes, whan he that nevere trespaoed, 
 wolde for Trespassours sufTre Delhe ! Kighte wel oughte us for to love 
 and worsohipe, to drede and serven suche a Lord ; and to worschipe 
 and preyse suclie an holy Lond, that broughte forthe suche Fruyt, 
 thorghe the whiche every Man is saved, but it be his owne defaute. 
 Wel may that Lond be called dely table and a fructuous Lond, that was 
 bebledd and moysted wi th the precyouse Blode of oure Lord Jesu Crist ; 
 the whiche is the same Lond, that oure Lord behighten us in Heritage. 
 And in that Lond he wolde dye, as seised, for to leve it to us his Child- 
 ren. Wherfore every gode Cristene Man, that is of Powere, and hathe 
 whereof, scholde peynen him with all his Strengthe for to conquere 
 oure righte Heritage, and chacon oitt alle the mysbeleevynge Men. For 
 ■wee ben clept Cristene Men, aftre Crist our Fadre. And zif wee ben 
 righte Children of Crist, we oughte for to chalenge the Heritage, that 
 oure Fadre lafte us, and do it out of helhene Mennes hondes. But 
 nowe Pryde, Covetysc and Envye han so enflawmed the Hertes of 
 Lordes of the World, that thei are more besy for to disherite here 
 Neyghbores, more than lor to chalenge or to conquere here righte He- 
 ritage before seyd. And the comoun Peple, that wolde putte here 
 Bodyes and here Catelle, for to conquere oure Heritage, thei may not 
 don it withouten the Lordes. Far a semblee of Peple withouten a 
 
LeCT. VI. SIK JOHN MA^'DETILLE 273 
 
 Cheventeyn, or a chief Lord, is as a Flock of Scheep -withotiten a Scliep- 
 perde ; the which departeth aud desparpleth, and wyten never whidre 
 to go. But wolde God, that the temporel Lordes and alle worldly 
 Lordes wevon at gode accord, and with the comen Peple woulden taken 
 this holy Viage over the See. Thanne I trowe wel, that within a lityl 
 tj'me, onre righte Heritage before sej'd scholde be reconsyled and put 
 in the Hondos of the righte Heires of Jesu Crist. 
 
 And for als moche as it is longe tyme passed, that ther was no gene- 
 ralle Passage ne Vyage over the See ; and many Men desiren for to 
 here speke of the holy Lond, and han thereof gret Solace and Comfort ; 
 I John Maundevylle, Knyght, alle be it I be not worthi, that was bom 
 in Englond, in the Town of Seynt Albones, passed the See, in the Zeer 
 of our Lord Jesu Crist MCCCXXII, in the Day of Seynt Michelle ; 
 and hidre to have ben longe time over the See, and have seyn and gon 
 thorghe manye dyverse Londes, and many Provynces and Kyngdomes 
 and lies, and have passed thorghe Tartarye, Percye, Ermonye the lit- 
 ylle and the grete; thorghe Lybye, Caldee and a gret partie of Ethiope; 
 thorghe Amazoyne, Inde the lasse and the more, a gret partie ; and 
 thorghe out many othere lies, that ben abouten Inde ; where dwellen 
 many dyverse Folkes, and of dyverse Maneres and Lawes, and of dyverse 
 Sohappes of Men. Of whiche Londes and lies, I schalle speke more 
 pleynly hereaftre. And I schalle devise zou sum partie of ihinges that 
 there ben, whan time schalle ben, aftre it may best come to my mynde; 
 and specyally for hem, that wylle and are in purpos for to visite the 
 Holy Citee of Jerusalem, and the holy Places that are theroaboute. 
 And I schalle telle the Weye, that thei schulle holden tliidre. For I 
 have often tymes passed and ryden the way, with gode Companye of 
 many Lordes : God be thonked. 
 
 And zee schulle undirstonde, that I have put this Boke out of Latyn 
 into Frensche, and translated it azen out of Frensche into Englyssche, 
 that every Man of my Xacioun may undirstonde it. But Lordes and 
 Knyghtes and othere noble and worthi Men, that conne Latyn but 
 litylle, and han ben. bezonde the See, knowen and undivstonden, zif I 
 erre in devisynge, for forzetynge, or elles ; that thei mowe redresse it 
 and amende it. For thinges passed out of longe tyme from a Mannes 
 mynde or from his syght, turnen sone into forzetynge : Because that 
 Mynde of Man ne may not ben comprehended ne witheholden, for the 
 Freeltee of Mankynde. 
 
 From pp. 137-139. 
 
 And therfore I schalle telle zou, what the Sou Ian tolde me upon a 
 day, in his Chambre. He leet voyden out of his Chambre alle maner 
 
274 SIE JOHN MANDETILLB Lect. VI. 
 
 of men, Lordes and othere: for he wolde speke witli me in Conseille. 
 And there he askede me, how the Cristene men governed hem in cure 
 Contree. And I seji-de him, Eighte wel : thonked be God. And he 
 seyde me, Trenlyche, nay : for zee Cristene men ne recthen righte 
 noghte how untrewly to serve God. Ze soholde zeven ensample to the 
 lewed peple, for to do wel; and zee zeven hem ensample to don evylle. 
 For the Comownes, upon festyfiille dayes, whan thei scholden gon to 
 Chirche to serve God, than gon thei to Tavernes, and ben there in glo- 
 tony, alle the day and alle nyghte, and eten and drynken, as Bestes 
 that have no resoun, and wite not whan thei have y now. And also 
 the Cristene men enforoen hem, in alle maneres that thei mowen, for to 
 fighte, and for to desceyven that on that other. And there with alle 
 thei ben so proude, that thei knowen not how to ben clothed; now 
 long, now schort, now streyt, now large, now swerded, now daggered, 
 and in alle manere gyses. Thei scholden ben symple, meke and trewe, 
 and fuUe of Almos dede, as Jhesu was, in whom thei trowe : but thei 
 ben alle the contrarie, and evere enclyned to the Evylle, and to don 
 evylle. And thei ben so coveytous, that for a lytylle Sylver, thei sel- 
 len here Doughtres, here Sustres and here owne Wyfes, to putten hem 
 to Leccherie. And on with drawelhe the Wif of another : and non of 
 hem holdethe Feythe to another : but thei defoulen here Lawe, that 
 Jliesu Crist betook hem to kepe, for here Salvacioun. And thus for 
 \here Synnes, han thei lost alle this Lond, that wee holden. For, for 
 hire Synnes here God hathe taken hem in to oure Hondes, noghte only 
 be Strengthe of our self, but for here Synnes. For wee knowen wel in 
 verry sothe, that whan zee serve God, God wil helpe zou : and whan 
 he is with zou, no man may be azenst you. And that knowe we wel, 
 be oure Prophecyes, that Cristene men schuUe wynnen azen this Lond 
 out of oure Hondes, whan thei serven God more devoutly. But als 
 longe als thei ben of foule and of unclene Lyvynge, (as thei ben now) 
 wee have no drede of hem, in no kynde : for here God wil not helpen 
 hem in no wise. And than I asked him, how he knew the State of 
 Cristene men. And he answerde me, that he knew alle the state of the 
 Comounes also, be his Messangeres, that he sente to alle Londes, in 
 inanere as thei weren Marchauntes of precyous Stones, of Clothes of 
 Gold and of othere thinges; for to knowen the manere of every Contree 
 amonges Cristene men. And than he leet clepe in alle the Lordes, that 
 he made voyden first out of his Chambre ; and there he schewed me 4, 
 that weren grete Lordes in the Contree, that tolden me of my Contree, 
 and of many othere Cristene Contrees, als wel as thei had ben of the 
 eame Contree : and thei spak Frcnsche risrhte wel : and fhp. Sowdaa 
 
Lect. VL political condition of ENGLAND 275 
 
 also, where of I had gret IMnrvaylle. Alias ! that it is gret sclaundre to 
 cure Feythe and to oure Lawe, whan folk that ben with otUen Lawe, 
 schulle repreven us and undernemen us of oure Synnes. And thei that 
 scholden ben converted to Crist and to the Lawe of Jhesu, be oure gods 
 Ensamples and be oure acceptable Lif to God, and so converted to the 
 Lawe of Jhesu Crist, ben thorghe oure Wykkednesse and evylle lyvynge, 
 fer fro us and Strauugeres fro the holy and verry Beleeve, schulle thus 
 appelen us and holden us for wykkede Lyveres and cursed. And treuly 
 thei sey sothe. For the Sarazines ben gode and feythfulle. For thei 
 kepen entierly the Comaundement of the Holy Book Alkaron, that God 
 seute hem be his Messager Machonret ; to the whiche, as thei seyne, 
 seynt Gabrielle the Aungel often tyme tolde the wille of God. 
 
 Although the diction of Mandeville shows that the English 
 language had made a rapid advance within a few years, and had 
 acquired great compass and flexibility of expression, the hour 
 for a truly national literature had not yet struck. But it was 
 nigh at hand, and the blind struggles of the yet unconscious 
 English intellect, and the material and social wants of the 
 English people, were preparing a fitter medium to embody it, 
 whenever English genius should be ready to incarnate itself in 
 a new and original form. The slow and hard-won concessions, 
 which now the nobles, now the burgesses or civic populations, 
 and now, to some extent, the rustic classes, had extorted from a 
 succession of despotic kings, and the gradual amalgamation of 
 the indigenous and the foreign element, had at length created a 
 people, by which terra is meant, in modern political language, 
 an independent body of freemen, born, every man, to the en- 
 joyment of life, personal liberty, the ownership of self, and the 
 iise, control, and disposal of the fruits of his own labour.* The 
 
 * I am aware that serfdom or villerage existed in England to a considerably 
 later period than the fourteenth century ; but the villeins apparently did not form 
 a great proportion of the population. The nation was not divided, as in some 
 European states, into nobles, burgesses, and serfs, but there was a very numerous 
 class of rural tillers of the soil, and even of gentry, who were, to all intents and 
 purposes, personally as free as tlie commonalty of England is at this day. The 
 rural commoners and the burgesses far outnumbered all other ranks, and con- 
 stituted the real people of England. 
 
276 OLD POETICAL FORMS Lect. VI. 
 
 union of such a people with the governing dynasty or class, 
 whether hereditary or elective, constitutes a nation; and any 
 aggregation of masters and serfs, any political society without a 
 general community of rights and interests, under whatever form 
 of governmental organization, composes a horde of brutal lords 
 and brutified thralls, not a civilized commonwealth, a people or 
 a nation. 
 
 To this condition of political and social progress England had 
 now arrived. It was a new society, with a new language, a new 
 character, new wants, tastes and sentiments, and was, therefore, 
 Justin the position to receive and to inspire a new literature, as 
 the expression of a new and vigorous national life. 
 
 'But although, from this moment, the productions of native 
 genius are marked by peculiarities never before manifested on 
 English soil, and which have since continued to characterize all 
 succeeding English literature, yet the old forms of composition, 
 the conventional laws and restraints under which alone poetry 
 had hitherto existed, were not at once (some of them never have 
 been) discarded. The vocabulary, indeed, had become strongly 
 tinged with an infusion of Eomance words, but, though the 
 process of appropriation and assimilation of this foreign material 
 was still going on, there were symptoms of a reaction in fa- 
 vour of obsolete or at least obsolescent Saxon philological and 
 poetical canons. Early English poetry divided itself into two 
 schools, both employing the same vocabulary but in different 
 forms of composition. The one followed Continental models in 
 literature, the other sought to recommend itself to the taste 
 and character of the more numerous part of the population, by 
 reviving the laws of Saxon verse, some remains of which still 
 lingered in the memory of the common people. 
 
 The Saxon alliterative and rhythmical verse was especially 
 suited to a language abounding in monosyllables, with few 
 prefixes, and with a principal accent on the first syllable, which 
 w«s also usually the radical. Rhyme and metre are adapted 
 to tongues with longer words, and with an accentiin.1 system 
 
Lect. VI. L-VWEENCE MINOT 277 
 
 which throws the stress of voice towards the end, rather than 
 the beginning, of the word. The system of versification, be- 
 longing to the language which furnished the words expressive 
 of the new ideas and new conditions that formed the dis- 
 tiuguishing element of the new nationality, could not but finally 
 prevail; and, after a short struggle, Anglo-Saxon versification 
 yielded to the superior fitness of Eomance metres for the pre- 
 sent tendencies of English genius, just as the character and 
 institutions of the Anglo-Saxon people had yielded to the more 
 energetic life and higher culture of the Norman. 
 
 The poems of Laurence Minot, which date a little after the 
 middle of the fourteenth century, are interesting as an attempt 
 to unite the Saxon characteristic of alliteration, not merely 
 Tzith rhyme, but with poetic measures both of verse and stanza 
 • hich properly belonged to Eomance literature. It was, in- 
 aeed, not the first experiment of the kind, but in almost all 
 previous essays the versification was so imperfect, that even 
 when they imitate the longer French verses, and, of course, 
 contain more syllables in the measure than was usual with the 
 Anglo-Saxon poets, they are rather rhythmical than metrical. 
 
 The works of Minot exist only in a single manuscript, of a 
 date somewhat later than his own, written in a strongly marked 
 border dialect which may almost be called Scotch ; and, there- 
 fore, they are not to be relied upon as evidence of the gram- 
 matical progress of the English language. They have much 
 the air of a literary exercitation ; for the eleven short poems of 
 which the collection consists exhibit specimens of ten different 
 metres and stanzas. These poems are of interest on account 
 of their versification, and especially because they are the earliest 
 political verses known to have been composed in this period 
 of English literature, or, indeed, after the accession of Ed- 
 ward III. to the throne. The following two will suffice to give 
 an idea of Minot's diction and merits as a poet : — 
 
278 lAWEENCE MINOT Lect. VL 
 
 How Edward the Icing come in Brdbatid, 
 And toke homage of all the land. 
 
 God, that schope both se and sand, 
 Save Edward king of Ingland, 
 Both body, saul, and life, 
 And grante him joy withowtcn strif I 
 For mani men to him er wroth, 
 In Fraunce and in Flandres both ; 
 For he defendes fast his right, 
 And tharto Jhesu grante him might, 
 And so to do both night and day, 
 ThMt yt may be to Goddes pay. 
 
 Oure king was cumen, trely to tell, 
 Into Brabant for to dwell ; 
 The kayser Lowis of Bavere, 
 That in that land than had no pere. 
 He, and als his sons two. 
 And other princes many mo, 
 Bissohoppes and prelates war thare fele, 
 That had ful mekil werldly wele, 
 Princes and pople, aid and gong, 
 Al that spac with Duche tung. 
 All thai come with grete honowre 
 Sir Edward to save and socoure. 
 And proferd him, with all thayre rede, 
 For to hald the kinges stede. 
 
 The duke of Braband, first of all. 
 Swore, for thing that might bifall, 
 That he suld both day and night 
 Help sir Edward in his right. 
 In toun, in feld, in frith and fen. 
 This swore the duke and all his men, 
 And al the lordes that with him lend, 
 And tharto held thai up thaire hend. 
 Than king Edward toke his rest 
 At Andwerp, whare him liked best ; 
 And thare he made his mone playne, 
 That no man suld say thare ogayne. 
 His mone, that was gude and lele. 
 Left in Braband ful meldll dele : 
 
Lect. VL iawkence minot 279 
 
 And all tliat land, tmtill tliis day, 
 Pars the better for that jornay. 
 
 When Philip the Valas herd of this, 
 Tharat he was ful wroth iwis ; 
 He gert assemble his barounes, 
 Princes and lordes of many tonnes, 
 At Pariss toke thai thaire counsaiie, 
 "Whilk pointes might tham most availe ; 
 And in all wise thai tham bithought 
 To stroy Ingland and bring to nought. 
 
 Schipmen sone war efter sent, 
 To here the kinges cumandment ; 
 And the galaies men also, 
 That wist both of wele and wo. 
 Pic cumand than that men suld fare 
 Till Ingland, and for no thing spare, 
 Bot brin and sla both man and wife. 
 And childe, that none suld pas with lj*e. 
 
 The galay men held up thaire hand"a, 
 And thanked God for thir tithandes. 
 
 At Hamton, als I understand, 
 Come the gaylayes unto land. 
 And fill fast thai slogh and brend, 
 Bot noght so makill als sum men wend. 
 For or thai wened war thai mett 
 With men that sone thaire laykes lett. 
 Sum was knokked on the hevyd, 
 That the body thare bilevid ; 
 Sum lay stareand on the sternes ; 
 And sum lay knoked out their hemes, 
 Than with tham was non other gle, 
 Bot ful fain war thai that might fle. 
 The galay men, the suth to say. 
 Most nedes turn another way ; 
 Thai soght the stremis fer and wide, 
 In Plandi'es and in Seland syde. 
 
 Than saw thai whare Cristofer stod^ 
 At Armouth, opon the flude. 
 Than wen[t] thai theder all bidene. 
 The galayes men, with hertes kene, 
 Viij. and xl. galays, and mo, 
 
 Anrl -uritli ill am sils Txrav fjlTpttpq tWOb 
 
280 LAWEENCE MINOT LecT Vt 
 
 And otlier many galiotes, 
 
 With grete noumber of sinale botes ; 
 
 All thai hoved on the flode 
 
 To stele sir Edward mens gode. 
 
 Edward mire king than was noght there^ 
 But sone, when it come to his ere, 
 He sembled all his men full still, 
 And said to tham what was his will. 
 Ilk man made him redy then, 
 So went the king and all his men 
 Unto thaire schippes ful hastily, 
 Als men that war in dede doghty. 
 
 Thai fand the galay men grete wane, 
 A hunderetli ever ogaynes ane ; 
 The Inglis men put tham to were 
 Ful baldly, with bow and spere ; 
 Thai slogh thare of the galaies men 
 Ever sexty ogaynes ten ; 
 That sum liggea jit in that mire 
 All hevidles, withowten hire. 
 
 The Inglis men war armed wele, 
 Both in yren and in stele ; 
 Thai faght ful fast, both day and night, 
 Als long as tham lasted might. 
 Bot galay men war so many. 
 That Inglis men wex all wery ; 
 Help thai soght, bot thare come nana, 
 Than unto God thai made thaire mane. 
 Bot sen the time that God was born, 
 Ne a hundreth jere biforn, 
 Was never men better in fight 
 Than Ingliss men, whil thai had myght. 
 Bot sone all maistri gan thai mis ; 
 God bring thaire saules untill his blis 1 
 And God assoyl tham of thaire sin. 
 For the gude will that thai war in 1 Amen* 
 
 Listens now, and leves me. 
 Who so lifes thai sail se 
 That it mun be ful dere boght 
 That thir galay men have wroght. 
 
Ikct. VL LAWRENCE MINOT 281 
 
 Thai hoved still opon the flode, 
 
 And reved pover men thaire gude ; 
 
 Thai robbed, and did niekill schame, 
 
 And aye bare Inglis men the blame. 
 
 Now Jhesu save all Ingland, 
 
 And blis it with his holy hand I Amen. 
 
 How Edward, ah the Romance sais^ 
 Held his sege bifor Calais. 
 
 Calais men, now may ye care, 
 
 And miu-ning mun ge have to mede ; 
 Mirth on mold get je no mare, 
 
 Sir Edward sail ken jow jowre crede. 
 
 W hilnm war ,ie wight in wede, 
 To robbing rathly for to ren ; 
 
 Men jow sone of jowre misdede, 
 jowre care es cumen, will je it ken. 
 
 Kend it es how ge war kene 
 
 Al Inglis men with dole to dere ; 
 Thaire gudes toke je al bidene, 
 
 No man born wald je forbere ; 
 
 je spared noght with swerd ne spere 
 To stik tham, and thaire gudes to stele. 
 
 With wapin and with ded of were 
 Thus have 50 wonnen wcrldes wele. 
 
 Weleful men war je iwis ; 
 
 Bot fer on fold sail je noght fare. 
 A bare sal now abate jowre blis, 
 
 And wirk 50 w bale on bankes bare. 
 
 He sail 50W hunt, als hund dose hare, 
 That in no hole sail ge 50W hide. 
 
 For all jowre speche will he noght spare, 
 Bot bigges him right by jowre side. 
 
 Biside jow here the bare bigins 
 To big his boure in winter tyde ; 
 
 And all bityme takes he his ines. 
 With semly se[r]gantes him biside. 
 
282 LAWRENCE MINOT LkcT. VL 
 
 Tte word of him walkes ful wide, 
 Jesu, save him fro mischance ! 
 
 In bataill dar he wele habide 
 Sir Philip and sir John of Prance. 
 
 The Franche men er fers and fell, 
 
 And mase grete dray when thai er dight ; 
 Of tham men herd slike tales tell, 
 
 With Edward think thai for to fight, 
 
 Him for to hald out of his right. 
 And do him treson with thaire tales. 
 
 That was thaire purpos, day and night, 
 Bi counsail of the cardinales. 
 
 Cardinales, with hattes rede. 
 
 War fro Calays wele thre myle ; 
 Thai toke thaire counsail in that stede 
 
 How thai might sir Edward bigile. 
 
 Thai lended thare hot litill while. 
 Til Franche men to grante thaire grace. 
 
 Sir Philip was funden a file. 
 He fled, and faght noght in that place. 
 
 In that place the bare was blith. 
 
 For all was funden that he soght ; 
 Philip the Valas fled ful swith. 
 
 With the batail that he had bi'oght. 
 
 For to have Calays had he thoght, 
 All at his ledeing loud or still ; 
 
 Bot all thaire wiles war for noght, 
 Edward wan it at hia will. 
 
 Lystens now, and je may lere, 
 
 Als men the suth may understand ; 
 The knightes that in Calais were 
 
 Come to sir Edward sare wepeand, 
 
 In kirtell one, and swerd in hand. 
 And cried, ' Sir Edward, thine [wej are; 
 
 Do now, lord, bi law of land, 
 Thi will with us for evermare.' 
 
Lbct. VI. LAWEENCE MINOT 283 
 
 The nobill burgase and the best 
 
 Come unto him to have ihaire hire ; 
 The comun pnple war ful prest 
 
 Eapes to bring obout thaire swire. 
 
 Thai said all, ' Sir Philijj, oure syi-e, 
 And his sun, sir John of France, 
 
 Has left us ligand in the mire, 
 And broght us till this doleful dance. 
 
 ' Oure horses, that war faire and fat, 
 
 Er etin up ilkone bidene ; 
 Have we nowther conig ne cat, 
 
 That thai ne er etin, and hundes kene, 
 
 All er etin up ful clene, 
 Es nowther levid biche ne whelp ; 
 
 That es wele on oure sembland sene ; 
 And thai er fled that suld us help.' 
 
 A knight that was of grete renowne. 
 
 Sir John de Viene was his name. 
 He was wardaine of the toiine, 
 
 And had done Ingland mekill schame. 
 
 For all thaire boste thai er to blame, 
 Ful stiilworthly thare have thai strevyn. 
 
 A bare es cumen to mak tham tame ; 
 Kayes of the toun to him er gifen. 
 
 The kaies er golden him of the gate, 
 
 Lat him now kepe tham if he kim ; 
 To Calais cum thai all to late, 
 
 Sir Philip and Sir John his sun. 
 
 Al war ful ferd that thare ware fun, 
 Thaire leders may thai barely ban. 
 
 All on this wise was Calais won ; 
 God save tham that it so gat wan. 
 
 The attempts of Minot, and of other later as well as con- 
 temporaneous rhymers, to reconcile the Gothic and Eomance 
 systems of verse — like many suggestions of compromise on 
 more important subjects — satisfied the partisans of neither 
 
284 ANOLO-SAXON TEESE Lect. VI. 
 
 mode of composition, and his example was followed by no great 
 writer. Langlande and his school adhered strictly to the Saxon 
 canons. Grower and Chaucer, and the great body of English 
 poets, preferred Eomance metres. Half-way measures failed 
 altogether. Alliteration, it is true, was occasionally employed 
 as a casual ornament, but the works of Langlande and his im- 
 mediate followers were the last, of any merit, which regularly 
 conformed to the canons of Anglo-Saxon verse, and the struggle 
 ended with the final triumph of Romance forms. 
 
 The works of the English poets who followed Anglo-Saxon 
 models, in the latter part of the fourteenth century, are among 
 the most interesting and important literary productions of that 
 age ; and hence it becomes necessary to devote a moment to the 
 metrical or rather rhythmical system of the ancient Anglian 
 people, which, with one important difference, corresponds to 
 that of the Scandinavian and some of the G-ermanic races. 
 Ancient versification is founded on temporal quantity, modem 
 on accentuation ; but modern Romance verse agrees with the 
 classical metres in requiring a certain number of syllables to 
 each measure, and the accented syllables are, in number and 
 position, subject to the same laws of regularity and sequence 
 as the temporally long syllables in the classic metres. But in 
 the primitive rhythmical poetry of the Scandinavians and the 
 Anglo-Saxons, the number of unaccented syllables and the 
 position of the accented ones, were variable, so that nothing 
 was constant but the number of these latter. In the im- 
 passioned, emphatic recitative of ruder ages, this numerical 
 regularity might be a sufficient formal distinction between 
 poetry and prose ; but when the lay of the bard was written, 
 down, and read, not chanted or declaimed, it was soon per- 
 ceived that something more was required to enable verse to 
 produce an agreeable sensuous effect upon the ear. This was 
 first obtained by the simple expedient of alliteration ; but as the 
 poetic ear became more cultivated, and, of course, more fas- 
 tidious and more exacting, other, coincidences of sound were 
 
Lect. VL ANGLO-S.VXON TEKSE — ASSONANCE 285 
 
 introduced. The Scandinavians employed liae-rhyme both as 
 half and as perfect rhyme, that is, syllables which agreed in the 
 consonants, but dififered in the vowels, as land, lend, fear, fire, 
 and syllables which agreed in all the vocal elements, or ordi- 
 nary rhymes. In their poetry, these corresponding syllables 
 . occiuTed not at the ends of the lines, but in pairs in the same 
 line, though, in the later stages of Icelandic literature, end- 
 rhyme was employed also. This latter form of consonance was 
 sometimes used by the Anglo-Saxons, — probably from an ac- 
 quaintance with Continental rhymes which the Scandinavians 
 did not possess, — but neither half-rhyme nor any form of line- 
 rhjone seems ever to have been designedly introduced, though 
 the Danish and Norwegian bards who frequented the courts of 
 the Saxon king-s must have made that form of versification 
 known in England. 
 
 I do not find any satisfactory evidence that assonance, or 
 the employment of the same vowel with difierent consonants, 
 which characterizes the ballad poetry of Spain, was resorted to 
 in the classic Anglo-Saxon period ; but in the semi-Saxon of 
 Layamon, as we have already seen, it is of frequent occurrence, 
 and I have no doubt it was intentionally introduced. Critics, 
 however, do not appear to have always recognized this coin- 
 cidence of sound in Layamon as true assonance, and they have 
 sometimes endeavoured to explain it by the gratuitous assump- 
 tion, that syllables spelled with very different consonants were 
 pronounced alike, so as to make perfect rhymes of pairs of 
 words which are apparently assonant merely. This resem- 
 blance of vowel alone proved too monotonous for the Northern 
 ear, which was trained by its habitual system of strong inflec- 
 tion to demand contrast as well as coincidence of syllable, and 
 the innovation of Layamon found no imitators. 
 
 During the era of transition from the Anglo-Saxon to the 
 English nationality and speech, the native bards were imitators 
 of Norman-French poetry, and the Saxon versification fell into 
 almost total disuse, while nearly every variety of Eomance versa 
 
286 EABLT ENGLISH TEKSE Lect. VL 
 
 was freely employed. But when the English people had under- 
 gone the last of theii metamorphoses, and appeared as a new 
 estate upon the stage of human affairs, there was naturally a 
 hesitation, a vacillation, with regard to the forms in which the 
 nascent literature should clothe itself, and there were still con- 
 flicting tendencies and partialities to be reconciled. 
 
 While, therefore, the first great English poets were as 
 thoroughly and unmistakeably national, in matter and in 
 spirit, as the most marked of their successors, we find in 
 Chaucer only Eomance forms of composition; but in Langlande, 
 the author of Piers Ploughman, and his followers, purely 
 English thoughts, and a well assimilated composite diction, with 
 the rhythmic and alliterative structure which characterizes 
 Anglo-Saxon verse. It is remarkable, as I have elsewhere ob- 
 served, that in this attempt to revive those obsolete measures, 
 Langlande adhered more closely to the normal forms, and 
 allowed himself fewer licenses, than did the Anglo-Saxons 
 themselves; and his poems accordingly exhibit more truly 
 the essential characteristics of alliterative and rhythmical verse 
 than any of the works of the masters he copied. 
 
 Hence, though highly original, thoroughly genial, and fully 
 imbued with the spirit of the age and of the commonwealth 
 of which he was the first-born intellectual son, yet, in his 
 versification, he was little better than a servile imitator. This 
 is by no means a singular instance of the constraint which 
 the employment of ancient instrumentalities imposes upon a 
 modern author. No scholar of our day, writing in Latin prose, 
 would think himself safe in joining together any two words, 
 for the combination of which he could not adduce the authority 
 of a classic example, nor, in hexameters, or the lyric metres, 
 would he venture a succession of syllables for which he could 
 not find a precedent in the Gradus ad Parnassum. 
 
 The strife between the Romance and the Saxon forms of 
 verse was not of long duration. Besides the reasons I have 
 already given for the triumnh of the former, there was the 
 
Lect. VI. ROMAKTIC POETRY 287 
 
 fact that Anglo-Saxon poetry was obsolete, unintelligible, dead 
 and forgotten, while Norman-French literatm-e was still a living, 
 a luxuriant and a fragrant vine. Langlande was the last of 
 the old school in form, the first of the new in genius and 
 spirit The authors of Piers Ploughman and of the Canterbury 
 Tales are both intensely English ; but as two sons of the same 
 parentage, while closely resembling each other, often reproduce, 
 the one, the mother's traits, the other, the lineaments of the 
 father, so Langlande most prominently exhibits the Anglo-Saxon, 
 Chaucer the Norman-French, complexion and features of the 
 composite race, which they so well represent and adorn. 
 
 There is not much literary matter of special interest or 
 importance, which can be positively assigned to the period 
 between Minot and Langlande ; but there are numerous versi- 
 fied romances, chiefly translations from the French, which 
 were executed, or at least transcribed, in the course of the 
 fourteenth century. ]\Iost of these, as I have before remarked, 
 are carelessly copied, and they are often stamped with dialectic 
 peculiarities which certainly belong to no era of the -jommon 
 literary dialect of England. They could, therefore, even if 
 possessed of conspicuous literary merit, not well be employed as 
 illustrations of sketches which aim to give an outline of the 
 progress, not of the aberrations, of the English language. But 
 they are, in general, so worthless in themselves, that they 
 would not repay an analysis, and I prefer to limit myse'f to 
 productions which were either efficient causes, or normal results 
 and exemplifications, of the march of English genius and the 
 English speech. 
 
 The following poem, written on a very important occasion — 
 the death of Edward III., in 1377 — is smooth in versification, 
 and is a not unfavourable specimen of the power of expression 
 to which the language had attained at that period : — 
 
288 POEM ON THE DEATH OF EDWAED III. Lect. VL 
 
 ON THE DEATH OE EDWAED III.— 1377. 
 
 A I dere God, what may this be, 
 
 That alle thing weres and wasteth away? 
 Frendschyp is but a vanyt^, 
 
 Unnetlie hit dures al a day. 
 
 Thei beo so olipor at assay, 
 So leof to han, and loth to lete, 
 
 And so fikel in heore fay, 
 That selden iseije is sone Ibrsete. 
 
 I sei hit not withouten a cause. 
 
 And therefore takes riht god hede ; 
 For 5if ye construwe this clause, 
 
 I puit gou holly out of drede. 
 
 That puire schame jor hert wold blede, 
 And je this matere wysly trete. 
 
 He that was ur most spede 
 Is selden seye and sone forgete. 
 
 Sum tyme an Englis schip we had, 
 
 Nobel hit was, and heih of tour ; 
 Thorw al Christendam hit was drad. 
 
 And stif wold stonde in uch a stour, 
 
 And best dorst byde a scharp schour, 
 And other stormes smale and grete ; 
 
 Nou is that schip, that bar the flour, 
 Selden seige and sone forgete. 
 
 Into that schip ther longeth a roothtir, 
 
 That steered the schip, and governed hit ; 
 In al this world nis such anothur. 
 
 As me thenlceth in my wit. 
 
 Whil schip and rothur togeder was knit, 
 Thei dredde nother tempest, dru3'ge, nor wete; 
 
 Nou be thei bothe in synder flit ; 
 That selden seige is sone Ibrgete. 
 
 Scharpe wawes that schip has sayled, 
 
 And sayed all sees at aventur ; 
 For wynt ne wederes never hit faylej, 
 
 Wil the I aothur miht eudiiir. 
 
LtCT. VL POEM ON THE DEATH OF EDWAED HI. 289 
 
 Tliouj tlie see were rouj, or elles dimiiuir, 
 Gode havenes that seliip wold geete. 
 
 Nou is that schip, I am wel suir, 
 Selde iseye and sone forjete. 
 
 This good schip I may remene 
 
 To tlie chiTalr}'e of this londe ; 
 Sum tyme thei counted noujt a bene 
 
 Beo al Fraunce, ich understonde. 
 
 Thei toke and sloug hem with her wonde, 
 The power of Fraimce, bethe smale and grete ; 
 
 And broujt tlie kyng hider to byde her bonde ; 
 And nou riht sone hit is forsete. 
 
 That schip hadde a ful siker mast, 
 
 And a sayl strong and large, 
 That make the gode scliip never agast 
 
 To undertake a thingc of charge. 
 
 And to that schip ther longed a barge, 
 Of al Fraunce jaf nou^t a cleete. 
 
 To us hit was a siker targe ; 
 And now riht clene hit is forgete, 
 
 The rother was nouther ok ne elm, 
 
 Hit was Edward the thridde the noble kniht; 
 The prince his sone bar up his helm, 
 
 That never scoumfited was in fiht. 
 
 The kyng him rod and rouwed ariht. 
 The prince dredde nouther stok nor streete. 
 
 Nou of hem we lete fill liht ; 
 That sdden is seije is sone forjete. 
 
 The swifte barge was duk Henri, 
 
 That noble kniht, and wel assayed ; 
 And in his leggaunce worthily 
 
 He abod mony a bitter brayd. 
 
 jif that his enemys oujt outrayed, 
 To chasteis hem wolde he not lete. 
 
 Nou is that lord ful lowe ileyd ; 
 That selde is seige is sone forsete. 
 u 
 
290 POEM ON THE DEATH OF EDWAED III. I«CT. VI. 
 
 This gode comiines, ti the rode, 
 
 I likne hem to the schipes mast ; 
 That with heore catel and with heore goode 
 
 Mayntened the werre both flirst and last. 
 
 The wynd that bleug the schip with blast, 
 Hit was gode prejeres, I sey hit atrete ; 
 
 Nou is devoutnes out icast, 
 And mony gode dedes ben clene forjete. 
 
 Thus ben this lordes ileid fill lowe ; 
 
 The stok is of the same rote; 
 And ympe biginnes for to growe, 
 
 And 5it I hope schal ben ur bote^ 
 
 To wolde his fomen underfote, 
 And as a lord be set in sete. 
 
 Crist, lene that he so mote, 
 That selden iseije be not forgete. 
 
 Weor that impe ffuUy growe. 
 
 That he had sarri, sap, and pith, 
 I hope he schulde be kud and knowe 
 
 For conquerour of moni a kith. 
 
 He is ful livelioh in lyme and lith 
 In armes to travayle and to swete. 
 
 Crist, live we so fare him with, 
 That selden sei^e be never forgete. 
 
 And therefore holliche I ou rede, 
 
 Til that this ympe beo fuUi growe, 
 That uch a mon up with the hede, 
 
 And mayntene him bothe heije and lowe. 
 
 The Frensche men cunne bothe host and blowe. 
 And with heore scornes us to-threte ; 
 
 And we beoth bothe unkuynde and slowe, 
 That selden seije is sone foi^ete. 
 
 And therfore, gode sires, taketh reward 
 
 Of 5or douhti kyng that deyjede in age, 
 And to his sone prince Edward 
 
 That welle was of alle^oorage. 
 
Lect. VL the boke of cuetaste 291 
 
 Such two loides of lieije parage 
 Is not in eortlie whom we schal gete. 
 
 And nou heore los beginneth to swage, 
 That selde iseige is sone forjete. 
 
 Anotlier poem which is not without some philological im- 
 portance, and which is of interest for the light it throws on the 
 manners of the higher classes of society in the fourteenth cen- 
 tury, and their prohahle mode of education, is the Boke of 
 Curtasye, an edition of which has heen published by the Camden 
 Society. This is a species of School of good Manners, for pages 
 who were themselves of gentle birth. It discloses a coarseness 
 of habits in the more elevated classes, strangely contrasting 
 with the material luxury which seems, from other evidence, to 
 have prevailed at that period in royal and noble circles. The 
 Forme of Cury — which is stated to have been ' compiled of the 
 chef Maister Cokes of kyng Richard the Secunde kyng of 
 Englond after the Conquest,' and which exists in a manuscript 
 certainly nearly as old as the beginning of the fifteenth century — 
 shows that the kitchens of its time were, in variety and sensual 
 piquancy, little inferior to those of LucuUus and Apicius. But 
 English luxury, in the fourteenth century, was confined chiefly 
 to the gratification of the grosser appetites ; and costly and 
 diversified indulgence of these by no means implies refinement 
 and elegance of manners and sentiment, but, on the contrary, 
 rather supposes a sensuality of constitution, which easily degene- 
 rates into a clownish disregard of the graceful conventionalities, 
 and even of the decencies, of civilized life. 
 
 The Boke of Curtasye is contained in the same manuscript 
 with the Liber Cocorum, a cookery-book of the fourteenth cen- 
 tury, the publication of which, as well as of others of the same 
 class, Wright suggests as a desideratum. The vocabulary of 
 books on these and kindred unfamiliar subjects is rich in terms 
 rarely elsewhere met with, and they furnish much information 
 both on the tastes and habits of medijeval Europe, particularly 
 
292 THE BOKE OF CUKTASTB LeCT. VI, 
 
 on a topic whicli, though of profound interest, has engaged the 
 attention of competent scholars less than almost any other 
 branch of modern history — the commercial relations between 
 the different European states and between Europe and the East. 
 The trade of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was con- 
 ducted on a larger scale, and a more extensively ramified and 
 more cunningly organized system, than is usually suspected by 
 persons not familiar with the chronicles, and more especially 
 the non-literary records of the Middle Ages. The questions : • 
 what were the articles which the great merchants of the Medi- 
 terranean countries imported from the East, at different periods 
 between the downfall of Eome and the discovery of the Cape of 
 Good Hope ; by what mode of exchange and by what routes of 
 transport did they obtain them ; and, above all, where and by 
 what instrumentalities these articles were distributed — have 
 been as yet but imperfectly answered. Eesearches in that 
 direction — which the throwing open of secret archives is so 
 rapidly facilitating — will furnish elucidations of many obscure 
 passages in early literature, and, especially, advance our know- 
 ledge of historical etymology, for which, linguistic conjecture is, 
 in very many departments of philology, a very poor substitute. 
 Much of the Boke of Curtasye is too repulsive for quotation. 
 The following passage seems to show that pages did not receive 
 a great amount of literary instruction, but it gives a more 
 favourable impression of their moral training than the lives of 
 their lords would authorise us to expect. 
 
 Yff that thou be a Jong enfaimt, 
 And thcnke tho scoles for to haunt, 
 This lessoun schulle thy maister the merke, 
 Cros Crist the spede in alle thi werke ; 
 Sytthen thy Pater Noster he wille the teche, 
 As Cristes owne postles con preche ; 
 After thy Ave Maria and thi Crede, 
 That shalle the save at dome of drede ; 
 Thenne aftur to blesse the with the Trinity, 
 In nomine Patris teche Jie wille the : 
 
Lect. VI, THE BOKE OF CtJKTASTE 293 
 
 Then witli Marke, Matliew, Luke, and Jon, 
 
 With the pro cruce and the hegh name ; 
 
 To sliryve the in general thon shalle lere, 
 
 Thy confiteor and misereatur in fere ; 
 
 To seche the kyngdam of God, my chylde, 
 
 Thereto j rede thou be not wylde. 
 
 Therefore worschip God', bothe olde and Jong, 
 
 To be in body and soide y-liche strong. 
 
 When thou comes to the churche dore, 
 
 Take th« haly water stondand on flora ; 
 
 Eede or synge or byd prayeris 
 
 To Crist, for alle thy Crysten ferys ; 
 
 Be curtayse to God, and knele doun 
 
 On bothe knees with grete devocioun. 
 
 To mon thou shalle knele opon the toun, 
 
 The tother to thyself thou halde alone. 
 
 When thou ministers at the hegh autere, 
 
 With bothe hondes thou serve tho prest in fere, 
 
 The ton to stabuUe the tother. 
 
 Lest thou fayle, my dere brother. 
 
 Another curtasye y wylle the teche, 
 
 Thy fadur and modur, with mylde speche, 
 
 Thou worschip and serve with alle thy myjt, 
 
 That thou dwelle the lengur in erthely lyjt. 
 
 To another man do no more amys, 
 
 Then thou woldys be done of hym and hya, 
 
 So Crist thou pleses, and gets the love 
 
 Of menne and God that syttes above. 
 
 Be not to meke, but in mene the holde, 
 
 fFor ellis a fole thou wylle be tolde. 
 
 He that to ryjtwysnes wylle enclyne, 
 
 As holy wryjt says us wele and fyne, 
 
 His sede schalle never go seche nor brede, 
 
 Ne suiFur of mon no shames dede. 
 
 To forgyf thou shalle the hast. 
 
 To venjaunce loke thou come on last ; 
 
 Draw the to pese with alle thy strengthe, 
 
 ffro stryf and bate draw the on lengthe. 
 
 Tf mon aske the good for Goddys sake, 
 
 And the wont thyng wherof to take, 
 
294 THE BOKE OF CURTASrE LbCT. Vt 
 
 Gyf hym bone wordys on fayre manere, 
 
 "Witli glad semblaint and pure good cher. 
 
 Also of service thou shalle be ire 
 
 To every mon in hys degre. 
 
 Thou schalle never lose for to be kynde^ 
 
 That on forgets another hase in mynde. 
 
 Yf any man have part with the in gyftj 
 
 With hym thou make an even skyft ; 
 
 Let hit not henge in honde for glose, 
 
 Thou art uncurtayse yf thou hyt dose. 
 
 To sayntes yf thou thy gate hase hyjt, 
 
 Thou schalle fulfyUe hit vs^ith alle thy mygt^ 
 
 Lest God the stryk with grete venjaunce, 
 
 And pyt the into sore penaunce. 
 
 Leve not alle men that speke the fayre, 
 
 Whether that hit ben comyns, burges, or mayr ; 
 
 In swete wordis the nedder was closet, 
 
 Disseyvaunt ever and mysloset ; 
 
 Therfore thou art of Adams blode, 
 
 With wordis be ware, but thou be wode ; 
 
 A short worde is comynly sothe, 
 
 That first slydes fro monnes tothe. 
 
 Loke ly5er never that thou become, 
 
 Kepe thys worde for alle and somme. 
 
 Lawge not to of [t] for no solace, 
 
 ffor no kyn myrth that any man mase ; 
 
 Who lawes all that men may se, 
 
 A schrew or a fole hym semes to be. 
 
LECTUEE Vn. 
 
 THE AUTHOR OF PIERS PLOUGHMAN AITO HIS IMITATORS. 
 
 The precise date of the poem called the Vision of Piers 
 Ploughman is unknown, hut there is little doubt that it was 
 given to the world between the years 1360 and 1370. The 
 authorship of the work is also matter of uncertainty, and the 
 tradition which ascribes it to Langlande, an English monk, is 
 not supported by conclusive testimony. But a perhaps imaginary 
 Langlande has long enjoyed the credit of the composition, and 
 until evidence shall be adduced to invalidate his possessory 
 claim and establish an adverse title, there can be no danger of 
 doing injustice to the real author by availing ourselves of that 
 name as a convenient impersonation of an unknown writer. 
 
 The familiarity which the poet displays with ecclesiastical 
 literature could, in that age, hardly have been attained by any 
 but a member of the clerical profession, and therefore the pre- 
 sumption is strong that he was a churchman. His zeal and his 
 conviction did not carry him to such perilous lengths as were 
 hazarded by Wycliffe and his school, but he was a forerunner in 
 the same path, and though we know nothing of his subsequent 
 history, it is not improbable that he ultimately arrived at the 
 same results. 
 
 The author of Piers Ploughman was evidently well acquainted 
 with the Latin poems ascribed to Walter de Mapes, written 
 chiefly in the previous century, and of which I have been unable 
 to take notice in this succinct view of early English literature, 
 because, having been composed in Latin, they cannot properly 
 
296 PIEES PLOUGHMAN Lect. VII. 
 
 be included in a historical sketch of English philology. But 
 though there are passages in Piers Ploughman, which, if they 
 stood alone, might be considered as directly borrowed from 
 Mapes, yet the general treatment of the subject by Langlande 
 is so peculiar, that the whole work must be pronounced eminently 
 original, in the sense in which that epithet is usually and pro- 
 perly applied, in literary criticism, to discursive and imaginative 
 productions. 
 
 Every great popular writer is, in a certj^in sense, a product of 
 his country and his age, a reflection of the intellect, the moral 
 sentiment and the prevailing social opinions of his time. The 
 author of Piers Ploughman, no doubt, embodied in a poetic 
 dress just what millions felt, and perhaps hundreds had uttered 
 in one fragmentary form or another. His poem as truly ex- 
 pressed the popular sentiment, on the subjects it discussed, as 
 did the American Declaration of Independence the national 
 thought and feeling on the relations between the Colonies and 
 Great Britain. That remarkable document disclosed no pre- 
 viously unknown facts, advanced no new political opinions, pro- 
 claimed no sentiment not warranted by previous manifestations 
 of popular doctrine and the popular will, employed perhaps 
 even no new combination of words, in incorporating into one 
 proclamation the general results to which the American head 
 and heart had arrived. Nevertheless, Jefferson, who drafted it, 
 is as much entitled to the credit of originality, as he who has 
 best expressed the passions and emotions of men in the shifting 
 scenes of the drama or of song. 
 
 The Vision of Piers Ploughman thus derives its interest, not 
 from the absolute novelty of its revelations, but partly from its 
 literary form, partly from the moral and social bearings of its 
 subject — the corruptions of the nobility and of the several de- 
 partments of the government, the vices of the clergy and the 
 abuses of the church — in short, from its connection with the 
 actual life and opinion of its time, into which it gives us a clearer 
 ^nsight than many a laboured history. Its dialect, its tone, and 
 
Lect. VII. PIERS PLOtJGHMAN 297 
 
 its poetic dress alike conspired to secure to the Vision a wide 
 circulatioa among the commonalty of the realm, and, by formu- 
 lating — to use a favourite word of the day — sentiments almost 
 universally felt, though but dimly apprehended, it brought them 
 into distinct consciousness, and thus prepared the English people 
 for tlie reception of the seed, which the labours of Wycliffe and 
 his associates were already sowing among them. 
 
 The number of early manuscripts of this work which still sur- 
 vive proves its general diffusion ; and the wide variations which 
 exist between the copies show that they had excited interest 
 enough to be thought worthy of careful revision by the original 
 author, or, as is more probable, of important modification by 
 the numerous editors and transcribers under whose recension 
 they subsequently passed. This,, indeed, was the custom of the 
 time ; but in most cases, copyists only accommodated the dia- 
 lect of the author to that of their own age or district, or, at 
 most, added here and there an explanatory gloss, whereas in 
 some of the later manuscripts of Piers Ploughman, a very dif- 
 ferent tone of sentiment prevails from that which marks what 
 is believed to be the original text of the work. It had become 
 eminently a popular possession, a didactic catechism. This fact 
 and its anonymous character would be thought to justify licenses 
 in copyists, whereas the works of Grower and Chaucer came in a 
 purely literary form, and with an authority derived from the 
 social position of the writers, which secured them from being 
 so freely tampered with by later editors ; and consequently the 
 differences between different manuscripts of those authors are 
 generally grammatical or orthographical merely. 
 
 The querulous tone of Piers Ploughman is another circum- 
 stance which gave it special favour in the eyes of the populace, 
 or rather of the middle classes, which had acquired a certain 
 degTee of opulence and culture, but yet not strength enough to 
 be able to protect themselves effectually against the rapacity of 
 their spiritual and temporal lords. 
 
 The people, under all governments — at least under all those 
 
298 PIERS PLOUGHMAN L*CT. XU. 
 
 whose subjects enjoy any acknowledged positive rights as against 
 the sovereign power — are habitually disposed to complaint. 
 This is especially true of the English, who, with a government 
 almost uniformly better, in its internal administration, than 
 those of any of their Continental neighbours, have always been. 
 a nation of good-natured grumblers. Political satires, com- 
 plaints with a strong spice of humour and a liberal share of per- 
 sonality, are particularly acceptable to that people, and frequency 
 and freedom of such criticism on governmental action has, 
 under most reigns, been a characteristic of the public life of 
 England. The extortion of Magna Charta was a manifestation 
 of English character, and the spirit of that instrument, which 
 was broader than its letter, has fostered the inclination, and 
 secured the right, of the subject to sit in judgment on his ruler. 
 
 If we compare the earliest writings which are distinctively 
 English in temper and language, including Piers Ploughman as 
 their best and truest representative, with those of the Anglo- 
 Saxons, we shall find that certain salient traits which mark the 
 English are almost wholly wanting in Saxon. The element of 
 humour, though in a very different sense from that in which the 
 /word is used in the dialect of G-erman criticism*, is, and from 
 jthe fourteenth century has been, eminently characteristic of 
 English literature. This trait does not exist in the extant re- 
 mains of Anglo-Saxon poetry or prose, nor does it appear to 
 have formed ah ingredient in the character of that people. 
 
 The quality of humour is everywhere, in some measure, the 
 fruit of culture. Not only savages, but all rude races who have 
 to struggle against an ungenial climate, and a soil which yields 
 no spontaneous fruits, are grave. Wit and humour are products 
 of that stage of civilization, which belongs to such a develop- 
 
 * English humour is often at once pathetic and laughter-moving; German 
 f humour is, not unfrequently, very dreary, without being either. In this censure, 
 I do not, certainly, include the tales of Musaeus, still less the wonderful works of 
 Jean Paul, the prince of genuine humourists. Some of Tieck's stories are full of 
 this quality, and I thiuk there are, in modern literature, few more humorous 
 tales than his autobiography of the tailor-pmoeror. TouellL in thfl ninth yolumo 
 of his collected works. 
 
Lkct. yii. -wit asd humouk 299 
 
 inent of the material resources of a country as leaves to its more 
 prosperous inhabitants some leisure for other occupations than 
 the serious toils and hazards of war, or the lonely and silent 
 and weary pursuits of the chase — for to those who live by wood- 
 craft, hunting is a solitary labour, not a social recreation. 
 
 The degree of artificial culture which is required for the 
 generation of sxich products will be very different under different 
 climates and other natural conditions. In the frozen North, 
 and on the infertile sands of a tropical desert, where constant 
 effort is required to supply the physical wants of life, these 
 sparJding traits of thought will not manifest themselves, except 
 under the influence of letters. But under more genial skies, 
 where Earth almost spontaneously feeds her children, the poetic 
 impulses and aspect's of Nature herself supply a culture, which 
 seems in some degree to reader the artificial training of schools 
 and of books superfluous, and to endow the most untaught with 
 a quickness of apprehension, and a keenness of perception of 
 less obvious analogies, which, in less favoured climes, are almost 
 always acquired, not self-developed, faculties. Besides this, in 
 those countries which were the seats of ancient civilization, a 
 traditional culture has survived the revolutions of many centu- 
 ries and still pervades the lowest strata of society.* The remains 
 
 * The traditions of Italy have kept alive, in tlie memory of the people, not 
 only numerous fragments of ancient history, but many of the romantic dreams and 
 visions of the Middle Ages. The progress of knowledge in the Northern states 
 of Italy has, within a few years, diffused a taste for reading among classes, which, 
 less than a generation since, never looked upon a printed page. The subjects 
 selected naturally connect themselves with the traditions I have spoken of, and 
 at this moment, in Piedmont and Lombardy, the favourite books, among the 
 least-instructed ranks who read at all, are the old romances of chivalry. Of 
 these, the Eeaii di Feancia nei quali si contiene la generazione degli Impcratori, 
 Ee, Duchi, Principi, Baroni e Paladini di Francia, cominciando da Costantino 
 Emperatore sino ad Orlando, Conte d' Anglante, and, Gueeino detto el Meschino, 
 storia deUe grandi imprese « vittorie da lui riportate contro i Turchi, are the 
 most popular. Cheap editions of these are multiplied and sold in great numbers, 
 and they are read by thousands of persons in conditions of life in which, in 
 England and America, nothing is ever heard of the ' dowzepers ' of him, who 
 
 With all his peerage feli 
 At Fontarabia. 
 
300 WIT ASJD HUMOUR Lbct. VII. 
 
 of classic art, and the vague memories of by-gone national 
 power and splendour, contribute also to educate and refine classes 
 ■which, in younger races and more recently subdued regions, 
 fall below the reach of all elevating influences. 
 
 Hence while the Grothic tribes, though profound and strong 
 in intellect, are obtuse till artificially quickened by education, 
 the Romance nations are rapid and precocious in the operations 
 of the intellect, sensible to artistic beauty, alive to the charms 
 of nature, and ever awake to the sense of the ludicrous. The 
 populace of Europe who laugh the most, and have the most 
 luirth-inspiring dialect and habits, are the Neapolitan plebeians; 
 but a Styrian or a Carinthian peasant, with the same amount 
 of positive attainment which the humble Italian possesses, is as 
 solemn not to say as stupid as the cattle he drives. 
 
 The distinction between wit and humour is not very easily 
 expressed or apprehendetl, as is abundantly shown by the 
 thousand abortive attempts to discriminate between them ; and 
 it is as difficult to define either as to describe the smile they 
 kindle. 
 
 Wit has been said to consist in the perception of obscure re- 
 lations, and this half-truth explains how it is that men of mul- 
 tifarious reading — whose knowledge, of course, reveals to them 
 analogies not obvious to less instructed minds — are never with- 
 out wit. 
 
 I shall no^ttempt what none has yet satisfactorily accom- 
 plished, the description and limitation of wit and humour, nor is 
 any discussion of the special character of the former essential 
 to our present purpose ; but we may say, in a general way, that 
 while true wit is as universal as social culture, humour is local- 
 ized and national, and the distinctive forms in which different 
 peoples clothe the ludicrous conceptions peculiar to themselves 
 and almost inappreciable by strangers, constitute iheir national 
 humour. 
 
 English humour, then, is Anglicized wit. It is a spark thrown 
 out whenever the positive and neggitive elegjjfflcjties of the French 
 
Lect. VII- PIERS PLOUGHMAN 301 
 
 and Saxon constituents of the English intellect are passing into 
 equilibrium, and no great English writer has ever been able 
 wholly to suppress it. Piers Ploughman is pervaded with 
 humour, and this quality undoubtedly contributed, in a great 
 degree, to its general popularity. 
 
 The familiarity of even the labouring classes with this work, 
 and the strong hold it soon acquired on the popular mind, are 
 well illustrated in the curious letter addressed to the commons 
 of Essex by the enlightened, brave, and patriotic John Ball, 
 who is conspicuous as o'ne of the few clerical advocates of the 
 rights of man, in the Middle Ages.* In this letter, the 
 reformer introduces the names of John Schep or Shepherd — 
 borrowed probably, as Wright suggests, from the opening lines 
 . f the poem : 
 
 I shoop me into shroudea 
 As I a sheep weere, — 
 
 and that of Piers Ploughman, as personages familiar to those 
 whom he was addressing ; and in another part of the letter, he 
 quotes, in an emphatic way, the phrases * do well ' and ' do 
 better,' which are of very frequent occurrence in the Vision as 
 
 * I take the text of this letter from the Introduction to Wright's edition of 
 Piers Ploughman : 
 
 ' John Schep, sometime Seint Mary priest of Yorlce, and no-w of Colchester, 
 graeteth -well John Namelesse, and John the Miller, and John Carter, and liiddeth 
 them that they beware of guyle in borough, and stand together in Gods name, 
 and biddeth Fiers Plowcman goe to his wcrke, and chastise -well Hob the robber, 
 and take with you John Trewman, and all his fellows, and no moe John the 
 MiUer hath y-ground smal, small, small. The kings sonne of heaven shall pay for 
 aU. Beware or ye be woe, know your frende fro your foe, have ynough, and 
 Bay hoe : And do wd and better, and flee sinne, and seeke peace and holde you 
 therin, and so biddeth John Trewman and all his fellowes.' 
 
 The orthography Schp suggests the probability that the form sheep, in the 
 couplet quoted above, is erroneous, and undoubtedly the word, when used for 
 shepherd, had a different pronunciation from that given to it when it was simply 
 the name of the quadruped. 
 
 The letter is interesting, not only from its connection with the poem, Piers 
 Ploughman, but as a specimen of an argot, or conventional dialect ; for there can 
 be no doubt that such phrases as ' guyle in borough ' ' do wel and better,' and 
 the like, had some other than their apparent and literal meaning, 
 
302 PIEES PLOUGHMAN LeCT. VII. 
 
 the designations of two of the allegorical dramatis personse of 
 the poem. It is probable that in this case John Schep and 
 Piers Ploughman, as well as the other proper names used in 
 the letter, were appellations assumed as a disguise by real per- 
 sons, though the people of Essex doubtless well knew who were 
 meant by them. 
 
 But whether we suppose these names to be here used as in- 
 dicating a class, or as the norfis de guerre of individuals, the 
 fact of their employment for the one purpose, or their assump- 
 tion for the other, proves that their poetical and political signi- 
 ficance, and of course the general scope of the poem, were well 
 understood by the humblest class of English citizens who were 
 open to any form of literary influence. 
 
 As I have already remarked, a circumstance which gives im- 
 portance to Piers Ploughman and its imitations is, the form of 
 poetical composition in which they are dressed. The verse is 
 neither metrical nor rhymed ; but it is characterized by rhythm 
 and alliteration, according to the Anglo-Saxon models of versi- 
 fication, and, as was observed in the last lecture, it conforms 
 more closely to the conventional rules of Anglo-Saxon poetical 
 composition than any of the existing remains of the poetry of 
 that literature. This fact has been partly explained by the cir- 
 cumstance that it was an imitation of an extinct poetical form ; 
 but it is also an evidence that the influence of the Danish in- 
 vaders — whose bards employed rhythm and alliteration with 
 greater strictness than the Anglo-Saxons had ever done — had 
 some weight in reviving the taste for a form of verse which had 
 become obsolete in the indigenous literature of England. On 
 the other hand, it suggests the probability that rhythm and re- 
 gular alliteration, though they had nearly disappeared from 
 written native poetry, may have been kept alive' in popular 
 ballads, existing in oral tradition to a greater extent than written 
 records now remaining would authorize us to infer.* 
 
 * For an account of Anglo-Saxon and old English alliterative measures, see 
 First Series, Lecture XXV. It has been coniectured that there was, ia this 
 
Lect. VII. PIERS PLOUGHMAN 303 
 
 The Vision of the Ploughman furnishes abundant evidence of 
 the familiarity of its author with the Latin Scriptures, the 
 writings of the fathers, and the commentarits of Eomish expo- 
 sitors, but exhibits very few traces of a knowledge of Eomance 
 literature. Still the proportion of Norman-PVench words, or at 
 least of words which, though of Latin origin, are French in 
 form, is quite as great as in the works of Chaucer. The fami- 
 liar use of this mixed vocabulary, in a poem evidently intended 
 for the popular ear, and composed by a writer who gives no 
 other evidence of an acquaintance with the literature of France, 
 would, were other proof wanting, tend strongly to confirm the 
 opinion I have before advanced, that a large infusion of French 
 words had been, not merely introduced into the literature, but 
 already incorporated into the common language of England; 
 and that only a very small proportion of those employed by the 
 poets were first introduced by them. 
 
 The poem, if not altogether original in conception, is abun^ 
 dantly so in treatment. The spirit it breathes, its imagery, the 
 turn of thought, the style of illustration and argument it em- 
 ploys, are as remote as possible from the tone of Anglo-Saxon 
 poetry, but exhibit the characteristic moral and mental traits 
 of the Englishman, as clearly and unequivocally as the most 
 national portions of the works of Chaucer or of any other native 
 writer. 
 
 The Vision has little unity of plan, and indeed — considered 
 as a satire against many individual and not obviously connected 
 abuses in church and state — it needed none. But its aim and 
 purpose are one. It was not an expostulation with temporal 
 
 ancient verse, as well as in Greek and Latin classical poetry, some yet undis- 
 covered metrical element, the proper application of which rendered it more 
 melodious to the ear than our nigged accentuation makes it But the Anglo-Saxon 
 system was evidently identical with the Icelandic, except that it wanted half and 
 whole rhyme ; and Snorri Sturluson — whose very full and complete Icelandic Art 
 of Poetry, written about the middle of the thirteenth century, is still extant — 
 does not allude to any characteristic of verse but alliteration, whole and half, line 
 and terminal, rhyme, and accent, though he is very minute in his analysis of ali 
 the constituents of poetic form. 
 
304 PIEKS PLOUGHMAN Lbct. VII. 
 
 and spiritual rulers, not an attempt to awaken their consciences, 
 or excite their sympathies, and thus induce them to repent of 
 the sins and repair the wrongs they had committed ; nor was 
 it an attack upon the theology of the Church of Eome, or a 
 revolutionary appeal to the passions of the multitude. It was 
 a calm, allegorical exposition of the corruptions of the state, of 
 the church, and of social life, designed, not to rouse the people 
 to violent resistance or bloody vengeance, but to reveal to them 
 the true causes of the evils under which they were suffering, 
 and to secure the reformation of those grievous abuses, by a 
 united exertion of the moral influence which generally accom- 
 panies the possession of superior physical strength. 
 
 The allegory, and more especially the dream or vision, is, in 
 the simpler stages of society, and consequently in the early lite- 
 rature of most nations, a favourite euphemistic form for the 
 announcement of severe, or otherwise disagreeable truths. Its 
 capacity of double interpretation might serve as a retreat for 
 the dreamer in case of apprehended persecution, and when once 
 it had become a common mode of censuring social or political 
 grievances, it would continue to be employed by those who no 
 longer needed the disguise of equivocal language, merely be- 
 cause it was the usual form in which the inferior expressed 
 his dissatisfaction with the administration or the corruptions 
 of the superior power. 
 
 While, therefore, Wycliffe, at a somewhat later day, assumed 
 a posture of open hostility to the papal church, by attacking 
 some of the cardinal doctrines on which the supremacy of the 
 see of Kome is founded, the Vision of Piers Ploughman had not 
 taken so advanced a position. At the same time, it was ex- 
 tremely well calculated to suggest opinions which it did not 
 itself openly profess; and the readers, who recognized the truth 
 of the pictures of social and ecclesiastical depravity there pre- 
 sented, could hardly fail to suspect the necessity of adopting 
 some more energetic measures of reform than a mere resort to 
 moral suasion. Hence there is no doubt that the Vision, and, 
 
Lect. Vn. PIEKS PLOUGmiAN 305 
 
 afewyeaxs after, the Creed, of Piers Ploughman, — which latter 
 is more exclusively directed against the corruptions of the 
 Eomish Church, — powerfully aided in promoting the reception 
 of the doctrines of Wycliife, encouraged the circulation of ♦■he 
 new English versions of the Scriptures, and thus planted, deep 
 in the English mind, the germ of that religious revolution 
 which was so auspiciously begun and perfected in the sixteenth 
 century, as well as of the political reforms which followed, a 
 hundred years later. 
 
 I shall not go much into detail in giving a general view of 
 the structure of this interesting and remarkable poem. No 
 branch of criticism is less generally profitable or instructive 
 than that which discusses the plan of literary compositions, 
 except in reference to the drama, the special aim of which is the 
 exhibition of the entire moral character and internal life of in- 
 dividuals, considered as types of humanity, in its almost infi- 
 nitely varied phases. The exposition of the plan of a work of 
 imagination no more helps us to form a conception of the im- 
 pression we derive from the production itself, than a description 
 of a skeleton would aid us in constructing a visual image of the 
 person of a Washington. It is the muscular form, the circu- 
 lating fluids, the coloured integuments, that give life and indi- 
 vidxiality to organic objects and to the products of the organized 
 fancy; and the actual perusal of <a poem is as essential to an 
 idea of it as a whole, as the sight of a man to a clear notion of ; 
 his personality. Every primitive, incipient literature is spon- 
 taneous and unconscious, not premeditated and critical. In 
 this stage of art, or rather of impulsive composition, narrative 
 and discursive works of imagination are written without a plan. 
 The poem shapes and organizes itself as it grows; and it may 
 be remarked that in the majority of cases where authors have 
 themselves set forth the scheme and purport of their allegories, 
 it has been found difficult, if not impossible, to recognize the 
 professed plan in the finished work. 
 
 But to return. The dreamer of the Vision, ' weary, for- 
 
306 THE VISION OF PIEES PLOUGITMAII Lect. VII. 
 
 wandered,' falls asleep 'on a May morwenynge on Malveme 
 liilles,' the poet thus happily suggesting, at the commencement 
 of the poem, the cheerful images belonging to the return of 
 spring and the beautiful scenery for which that locality is still 
 famous. He sees the inhabitants of the earth gathered in a fair 
 meadow before him, and observes their various ranks and occu- 
 pations, devoting a large part of his description to an account 
 of the different orders of the monastic and secular clergy, re- 
 ligious mendicants and pilgrims, and depicting in strong 
 language their worldliness and depravity. 
 
 I fond there freres, 
 AUe the fom-e ordres, 
 Pi-echynge the peple 
 For profit of heiBselve ; 
 Glosed the gospel, 
 As hem good liked ; 
 For coveitise of copes, 
 Construwed it as tliei wolde. 
 
 This sketch, with the old fable of belling the cat, occupies the 
 introduction. In the first section, or Passus, as the writer 
 styles it, a heavenly messenger, the personification of 'holi 
 chirche,' appears to the dreamer, and bestows explanations, 
 warnino's and counsels upon him. In the second Passus, he 
 observes 'on his left half a woman, who is thus described: — 
 
 I loked on my left half, 
 As the lady me taughte. 
 And was war of a womman 
 "Worthiliche y-clothed, 
 Purfiled with pelure 
 The fyneste upon erthe, 
 Y-corouncd with a coroune 
 The kyng hath noon bettre 
 Fetisliche' hire fyngres 
 Were fretted with gold wyr, 
 
 • fttidiche, elegantly, Norman-French, faictissement, from Lat f&3er» 
 
Lkct. vii. the vision of piers ploughman 307 
 
 >ncl tlieron rede rubies 
 
 As rede as any gleede,' 
 
 And diamamides of derrest pris, 
 
 And double nianere sapliires, 
 
 Orientals ^ and ewages,* 
 
 Envenymes* to destroye. 
 
 Hire robe was fill ricbe, 
 Of mod scarlet engreyned, 
 Witb ribanes of reed gold 
 And of riclie stones. 
 Hire array me ravyssbed, 
 Swich richesse saugh I nevere ; 
 I hadde wonder what she was, 
 And wbos wif she were. 
 
 This lady, as Holy Chircbe informs him, is Mede, or what the 
 English Scriptures call lucre, and ' iu the popes paleis ' is as 
 familiar as Holi Chirche herself. His visitor now leaves him, 
 and in the remainder of the second, as well as in the third and 
 fourth sections, the dreamer observes how all, high and low, 
 rich and poor, lay and clergy, alike offer their homage to Mede 
 or Lucre, who contracts a legal marriage with Falsehood. In 
 the third Passus, Mede is taken into favour at court, and is much 
 caressed by the friars, though her intrigues are sometimes 
 thwarted by Conscience, who seems to have greater influence 
 with the king than with the priesthood. The king proposes a 
 new matrimonial alliance between Mede and Conscience, to 
 which proposal the latter replies : — 
 
 ' (/!ecde, burning or glowing coal. ' oriental, red sappiire. • ewage, defined by 
 Wright, with a query as to its source, ' a, kind of precious stone,' is the aqua- 
 nmrine, sea- water or green beryl. Eau, in old French, was spelled in a great 
 variety of ways, and, among others, eauwe, eawe, eaige, and hence ewage, as 
 also, notwithstanding its resemblance to the A.-S. huer or hwer, Icel. hverr, 
 ewer, a water-vessel. ' envenymes to destroye. The ruby, and many other 
 precious stones, were worn in the Middle Ages as amulets against poison ; and 
 they were believed by many medical men to exert a physical agency, as remedial 
 agents, in the healing of wounds, whether from poisoned or unpoisoned weapons. 
 Eecipes for the application of them may be found of as late date as tho seven- 
 teenth century. 
 
308 THE VISION OF PIEKS PLOUGHMAN Lect. VIL 
 
 Crist it me forbede ! 
 
 Er I wedde swiche a wif| 
 
 Wo me bitide ! 
 
 For she is frele of hire feith, 
 
 Fikel of bire speche, 
 
 And maketh men mysdo 
 
 Many score tymes ; 
 
 Trust of hire tresor 
 
 Bitrayeth ful manye. 
 
 He thus proceeds to state his objections to the match, at great 
 length, bringing out the abuses in Church and State, of which 
 Mede, or the love of lucre, is the cause, but finally proposes to 
 leave the question to the decision of Eeason. Peace now enters 
 upon the scene as a suitor to parliament for redress for griev- 
 ances inflicted upon him by Wrong, and Eeason and Conscience 
 prevail with the king, who announces his determination to 
 govern his realm according to the advice of Eeason. This 
 concludes the fourth section and the first vision. 
 
 The dreamer ' waked of his wynkyng ' and attempted to pro- 
 ceed on his pilgrimage, but 
 
 wo was withalle 
 That [he] ne hadde slept sadder, 
 And y-seighen moore. 
 
 Becoming fatigued, he, like many other good Christians before 
 and since his time, 
 
 sat softely a-doun, 
 And seide his bileve, 
 And so he bablede on his bedes, 
 Thei broughte him a-slepe. 
 
 He now has a second vision, in which he again 
 
 seigh the feld ful of folk, 
 
 and Eeason preaching repentance to different classes of ofiFenders, 
 each of which is personified by the name of the sin to which it 
 is addicted. One of the chief sinners is Coveitise, who, after a 
 
LecT. VII. THE VISION OF PIERS PLOUGHMAN 309 
 
 long and curious voluntary confession, is subjected to a cross- 
 examination by Eepentance. 
 The following is an extract : — 
 
 ' I have ben coveitoiis,' quod this caytif, 
 ' I bi-knowe ' it here, 
 For som tyme I served 
 Sy mme-atte- Style, 
 And was liis prentice y-plight 
 His profit to wayte. 
 
 ' First I lerned to lye, 
 A leef outher tweyne ; 
 "Wikkedly to weye 
 Was my firste lesson ; 
 To Wy and to Wynchestre 
 I wente to the feyre, 
 With many manere marchaimdise, 
 As my maister me highte. 
 Ne hadde the grace of gyle y-go 
 Amonges my chaffare, 
 It hadde ben unsold this seven yer, 
 So me God helpe ! 
 
 ' Thanne drough I me among drapiei% 
 My donet^ to lerne, 
 To drawe the liser^ along, 
 The lenger it semed ; 
 Among the riche rayes 
 I rendred a lesson, 
 To broche hem with a pak-nedle, 
 And playte hem togideres, 
 And putte hem in a presse. 
 And pyne hem therinne, 
 Til ten yerdes or twelve 
 Hadde tolled out thrittene. 
 
 ' My wif was a webbe, 
 And wollen cloth made ; 
 She spak to spynnesteres 
 
 ' bi-hwme, confess, Ger. bekennen. ' donet, a, name applied to grammars 
 fiom Donatus, the author of a celebrated Latin accidence and syntax, and, after- 
 wards, to any manual of instruction, or set of mles. • liser, selvage. 
 
310 THE VISION OF PIEKS PLOUGHMAH Lect. VIL 
 
 To spynnen it oute, 
 Ac the pound that she paied by 
 Peised a quatron moore 
 Than myn owene auncer,' 
 Who so weyed truthe. 
 
 ' I boughte hire barly-malt, 
 She brew it to selle, 
 Peny ale and puddyng ale 
 She poured togideres, 
 For laborers and for lowe folk 
 That lay by hymselve. 
 
 ' The beste ale lay in my bollT, 
 Or in my bed-chambre ; 
 And who so bummed thero^ 
 Boughte it therafter, 
 A galon for a grote, 
 God woot, no lesse ! 
 And yet it cam in cuppe-mele, 
 This craft my wif used. 
 Eose the Eegrater 
 Was hire righte name; 
 She hath holden hukkerye 
 Al hire lif tyme. 
 Ac I swere now, so thee ik I 
 That synne wol I lete, 
 And nevere wikkedly weye, 
 Ne wildie chaifare use ; 
 But wenden to Walsyngham, 
 And my wif als, 
 
 And bidde the Roode of Bromholm 
 Brynge me out of dette.' 
 
 ' Eepentedestow evere? ' quod Eepentaunce, 
 
 • Or restitucion madest.' 
 
 * Yis 2, ones 1 was y-herberwed,' quod he, 
 ' With an heep of chapmen, 
 
 I roos whan thei were a-reste 
 And rifiede hire males.' 
 
 ' auncer, here probably the howl of a steelyard, or of a pair of scales ; gene- 
 rally, a cup. ' yis. This particle, heing an answer to a question framed affirm- 
 atively, is wrongly used for yea. See First Series, Lecture XXVI., pp. £79, 683. 
 
Lect. VII. THE TISION OF PIEKS PLOUGHMAN 311 
 
 ' That was no restitucion,' quod Eepentaunce, 
 ' But a robberis thefte ; 
 Tliow haddest be the bettre worthi 
 Ben hanged therfore, 
 Than for al that 
 That thow hast here shewed.' 
 
 ' I wende riflynge were restitucion,' quod he^ 
 ' For I lerned nevere rede on boke ; 
 And I Ivan no Frensshe, in feith, 
 But of the fertheste ende of Northfolk.' 
 
 ' Usedestow evere usurie ? ' quod Eepentaunce, 
 
 ♦ In al thi lif tynie.' 
 
 'Nay sothly,' he seide, 
 
 * Save in my yoiithe 
 
 I lerned among Lumbardes 
 
 And Jewes a lesson, 
 
 To weye pens with a peis,' 
 
 And pare the hevyeste. 
 
 And lene it for love of the croB, 
 
 To legge a wed^ and lese it. 
 
 Swiche dedes I dide write, 
 
 If he his day breke, 
 
 I have mo manoii's thorugh rerages. 
 
 Than thorugh miseretur et commodaU 
 
 ' I have lent lordes 
 And ladies xaj chaffare. 
 And ben hire brocour after. 
 And bought it myselve; 
 Eschaunges and chevysauncea 
 With swich chaiFare I dele. 
 And lene folk that lese wole 
 A lippe at every noble, 
 And with Lumbardes lettres* 
 I ladde gold to Rome, 
 And took it by tale here, 
 And tolde hem there lasse.' 
 
 • peig, Fr. poids, weigBt. ' wed, pledgp. ' I/umlardes lettret, tflh 
 
 of exchange. There are some passages in this extract •which I do not understand. 
 I hope my readers may be more fortunate. 
 
312 THE TISION OF PIEKS PLOUGHMAH Lect. VU. 
 
 ' Lentestow evere lordes, 
 For love of hire niayntenaunce 7 ' 
 * Ye, I have lent to lordes, 
 Loved me nevere after, 
 And have y-maad many a knyght 
 Bothe mercer and draper, 
 That payed nevere for his prentishode 
 Noght a peire gloves." 
 
 ' Hastow pit^ on povere men, 
 That mote nedes borwe ? ' 
 
 ' I have as muche pite of povere men, 
 As pedlere hath of cattes, 
 
 That wolde kille hem, if he cacche hem myghtCi 
 For coveitise of hir skynnes.' 
 
 ' Artow manlich among thi negheborea 
 Of thi mete and drynke ? ' 
 
 ' I am holden,' quod he, ' as hende 
 As hound is in kichene, 
 Amonges my neghebores, namely, 
 Swiche a name ich have.' 
 
 The multitude of repentant hearers set out on a pilgrimage 
 to Truth, under the leadership of a pilgrim who is thus 
 described : — 
 
 Ac there was wight noon so wys 
 The wey thider kouthe, 
 But blustreden forth as beestea 
 Over bankes and hilles ; 
 Til late was and lonare 
 That thei a leode ' mette, 
 Apparailled as a paynym 
 In pilgrymes wise. 
 He bar a burdonn^ y-boundo 
 With a brood liste, 
 In a witbwynde wise 
 Y-wounden aboute ; 
 A boUe and a bagga 
 He bar by his syde, 
 
 ' leodej man. peraon. • burdoun, staff 
 
Lect. vil the vision of piees plotjshman 313' 
 
 And hundred cf ampuUes' 
 
 On bi^ hat sefen, 
 
 Signes of Synay, 
 
 And shelles of Galice, 
 
 And many a crouche^ on his cloke, 
 
 And kejes of Rome, 
 
 And the vernycle bl-fore, 
 
 For men sholde knowe 
 
 And se bi hise signes 
 
 Whom he sought hadde. 
 
 It may be worth remarking, in connection with this descrip- 
 tion, which would in many particulars apply to the religious 
 mendicants of the East at the present day, whether Moslem or 
 Christian, that the different tokens enumerated indicated the 
 different shrines or other sacred localities which the pilgrim had 
 visited or professed to have visited. The ' shelle of Galice,' or 
 cockle-shell, was the proper cognizance of those who had paid 
 their vows at the shriue of St. James, at Compostella in Galicia, 
 on the coast of which province the cockle-shell abounded; the 
 palm and the cross were worn by those who had worshipped at 
 the Holy Sepulchre; the keys of Peter, and the vernycle, or 
 painting of the handkerchief of St. Veronica, on which the Sa- 
 viour impressed his likeness, when he wiped the sweat from his 
 brow with it on his way to Calvary, by those who had been at 
 Eome. 
 
 The pilgrim, notwithstanding his experience as a traveller, 
 and the sanctity with which his visits to so many sacred localities 
 had invested him, proved a blind guide, and the wanderers put 
 themselves under the direction of Piers the Ploughman, who 
 now, for the first time, appears in the poem. The new guide 
 employs them in productive labour, but they become seditious, 
 and are at last reduced by the aid of Hunger, who subdues 
 Waste, the leader of the revolt, and humbles his followers. 
 
 ' ampuUes, generally, small phials ; here it seems to mean tokens. * crowht, 
 cross : the modem crutch takes its name from its cross-like fonn. 
 
314 THE VISION OF PIEES PLOUGHMAN Lect. VII. 
 
 The poet here alludes to the effects of a recent famine and 
 plague, and sharply satirizes the luxury and extravagance of the 
 ■wealthier classes. The ' pardons ' or indulgences of the Pope 
 are contemptuously treated, and the pilgrim goes in search of 
 'Do-well,' a personification of good works, the true nature of 
 which is treated as a difficult question. Wit appears to him and 
 describes the residence of Do-well, Do-better, and Do-best, de- 
 livering, at the same time, a rambling moral and religious lec- 
 ture.! For this he is reproved by his wife, Studie, evidently a 
 strong-minded dame. 
 
 That lene was of lere, / 
 And of liche bothe,' 
 
 who takes the words out of his mouth, and, after a long dis- 
 course, during which her husband. Wit, 
 
 bicom KG confus 
 He kouthe noght loke, 
 And as doumb as detlie. 
 And drough him arere, 
 
 she recommends the Ploughman to her cousin Clergie, for further 
 instruction. Clergie gives his pupil a dissertation, in which 
 occurs what has been called a prophecy of the dissolution of the' 
 monasteries by Henry VIII. : — 
 
 And thanne shal the abbot of Abyngdone, 
 And al his issue for evere, 
 Have a knok of a kyng, 
 And incurable the wounde. 
 
 When Clergie concludes, the pilgrim exclaims : — 
 
 This is a long lesson, 
 And litel am I the wiser, 
 
 ' Lene of lere and of liche, meagre in doctrine and in person. Tliis is • 
 sarcasm against scholastic theology, ' sciejice falsely so called,' as opposed to 
 practical, living Christianity. 
 
Xect. VII. THE VISION OF PIEES PLOUGHMAM 315 
 
 proceeds to reply, at great length, and receives a reproof from 
 Scripture, for his indocile temper. Then follows another vision, 
 in which the dreamer is exposed to the temptations of fortune 
 and sensual pleasm-e, is rescued by Old Age, and falls into a 
 meditation on the covetousness of the friars, the doctrine of 
 predestination and other religious topics. Nature now carries 
 him to a mountain, and shows him how all living creatures, man 
 alone excepted, are obedient to the dictates of Eeason, after 
 which follows an exhortation from Imaginative, concerning the 
 divine punishments, the duties of charity and mercy, and the 
 greater responsibilities of the learned and the rich. 
 
 Several sections of similar general character follow, in which 
 new personifications of virtues, vices, and moral and intellectual 
 qualities are introduced. In the eighteenth section, the cha- 
 racter of Piers Ploughman is identified with that of the Saviour, 
 and the remainder of this section is principally occupied with 
 Christ's Passion, his descent into Hell, the rescue of the patri- 
 archs and prophets, his resurrection and his final triumph over 
 the infernal spirits. We have then the foundation of the visible 
 Church, the opposition of worldly men and princes, and an attack 
 of Antichrist on the Church. Afterwards, the Castle of Unity, 
 the strong-hold of the Church, is assailed by an army of priests 
 and monks, and Conscience, the governor of the castle, is driven 
 out, and goes in quest of the Ploughman, when the dreamer 
 awakes. 
 
 The movement of the poem is, to a considerable extent, dia- 
 logistic, and in these portions the dialect is evidently colloquial, 
 though the characters are not sufficiently individualized to give 
 the performance much of dramatic effect; but it seems ex- 
 tremely well calculated to influence the class for whose use it 
 was chiefly intended, and the success it met with sufficiently 
 proves that, in spite of its Latin quotations, it was, in the main, 
 well suited to their comprehension. 
 
 Although, as I have before remarked, the proportion of words 
 of foreign origin in the vocabulary of Piers Ploughman is as 
 
316 THE VISION OF PIEKS PLOUGHMAN Lect. VII. 
 
 great as in Chaucer, yet the structure of the dialect is more 
 archaic, and there are many words which are now obsolete, as 
 well as a considerable number the meaning of which is alto- 
 gether unknown. But there is no such difference in the stock 
 of words, or in the syntactical combinations of the two authors, 
 as to create a marked dialectic distinction between them, and 
 they are hardly more unlike than the style and diction of two 
 English writers of the present day, who should treat themes 
 and address audiences so different as those of Chaucer and 
 Langlande. 
 
 The moods and tenses of the verb had acquired very nearly 
 their present force, and the past and future auxiliaries were 
 used substantially as in modern English. I mention this point 
 particularly, because it has been said that the curious and intri- 
 cate distinction we now make between the two auxOiaries, 
 shall and will, is of recent origin. Cases may indeed be found 
 in Piers Ploughman, where shall is used in a connection that 
 would, in modern usage, require will, but these are few, and 
 some of them doubtful ; and I have observed no case where 
 will is put for the modern shall. 
 
 The verbs are inflected much according to the Anglo-Saxon 
 fashion, the ending th characterizing not only the third person 
 singular, present indicative, but all the persons of the plural of 
 that mood and tense, as well as the imperative. The infinitive 
 generally ends in en, as does also the plural of the past tense, 
 and both the weak and strong form of conjugation are employed. 
 To all these rules there are exceptions, and the poet seems to 
 have been influenced much by rhythm in the conjugation of his 
 verbs. 
 
 The noims, with few exceptions, form the plural in s, and the 
 adjective plural usually terminates in e, but the declension of 
 this part of speech is irregular. 
 
 The return to the Saxon conjugation of the verbs, which, as 
 we have seen, had been much disturbed, is curious, as an 
 exemplification of the reactionary tendency I have mentioned; 
 
Lkct. Vir. THE YISION OF PIERS PLOUGHMAN 317 
 
 and the influence of Piers Plovigliman, or of the spirit by which 
 that work was animated, was strong enough to keep this revived 
 inflection current until after thQ,time of Chaucer. 
 
 There is, in general, much care and precision in the use of 
 words, which seem often to be employed with an intelligent re- 
 ference to their derivative histo];y, and, in some instances, they 
 are explained by a direct statement of their descent. The ety- 
 mology of the word heathen from heath, as implying the rude 
 and uncivilized inhabitants of wild and unreclaimed territory, is 
 curious, and it has appeared as original in more than one later 
 linguistic work. The whole passage is as follows : — 
 
 ' Clooth that Cometh fro the wevyng 
 Is noght comly to were, 
 Til it be flailed under foot 
 Or in fullyng stokkes, 
 "Wasshen wel with water, 
 And ■with taseles cracched, 
 T-touked' and y-teynted,' 
 And under taillonrs hande ; 
 Eight so it fareth by a bam, 
 That bom is of a wombe. 
 Til it be cristned in Cristes name, 
 And confermed of the bisshope. 
 
 It is hethene as to hevene-ward, , 
 
 And help-lees to the soule. • 
 
 Hethen is to mene after heeth 
 And untiled erthe, 
 As in wilde wildemesse, 
 Wexeth wilde beestes, 
 Eude and unresonable, 
 Eennynge withouten cropiers.' 
 
 Piers Ploughman, although allegorical in its plan, and di- 
 dactic in its aims, gives us more minute and intimate views of 
 the material and social life of that age, than almost any poetical 
 
 ' y-Umked, dyed. • y-teynted, stretched on tenters. 
 
318 THE TISION OF PIEES PLOTTGHMAH Lect. VII. 
 
 work in early English literature. We have glimpses at the con- 
 dition, and even the dress and nutriment, of the labouring 
 classes, the processes of the arts, the frauds of artisans and 
 dealers, the corruptions in the administration of justice, the rela- 
 tions between the clergy and the people, and, in short, at all those 
 circumstances which made up the actualities of English life in 
 the fourteenth century; and hence, though it deals with no 
 questions of chi-onology, this poem is a contribution of some 
 value to the domestic history of the English nation. 
 
 The following passages are of the character just indicated: — 
 
 quod Hunger, 
 ' Heimes ne wole I wende, 
 Til I have dyned bi this day, 
 And y-dronke bothe.' 
 
 ' I have no peny,' quod Piers, 
 ' Pulettes to bugge,! 
 Ne neither gees ne grys,^ 
 But two grene cheses, 
 A fewe cruddes and creme, 
 And an haver ' cake, 
 And two loves of benes and bran, 
 Y-bake for my fauntes;* 
 And yet I seye, by my soule I 
 I have no salt bacon, 
 Ne no cokeney, ^ by Crist ! 
 Coloppes for to maken. 
 
 ' Ac I have percile and porettes, 
 And manye cole plauntes, 
 And ek a cow and a calf. 
 And a cart mare ■ 
 To drawe a-feld my donge, 
 The while the droghte lasteth ; 
 And by this liflode we mote lyre 
 Til Lammesse tyme. 
 And by that, I hope to have 
 Harvest in my crofle, 
 
 • hugge, buy. ^ grys, pigs. ' haver, oatmeaL * fauntet, servantaL 
 
 f cokeney, Wright thinks, a lean fowL 
 
Lect. ^1L the vision of pieus plofghmau 319 
 
 And thanne may I dighte tlii dyner, 
 As nie deere liketli.' 
 
 Al the povere peple tho 
 Pescoddes fetten, 
 Benes and baken apples 
 Thei broghte in hir lappes, 
 Chibolles and cLervelles, 
 And ripe cliiries manye, 
 And profi'cde Piers this present 
 To plese with Hunger. 
 
 Al Hunger eet in haste, 
 And axed after moore. 
 Thanne povei-e folk, for fere, 
 Fedden Hunger yerne, 
 With grene porret and pesen 
 To poisone hym thei thoghte. 
 By that it neghed neer hervest, 
 And newe corn cam to chepyng;' 
 Thanne was folk fayn, 
 And fedde Hunger with the beste, 
 With goode ale, as Gloton taghte. 
 And garte Hunger go slepe. 
 
 And tho wolde Wastour noght wercha, 
 But wanJren aboute, 
 Ne no beggere ete breed 
 That benes inne were, 
 But of coket and cler-matyn,* 
 Or ellis of clene whete ; 
 Ne noon halfpeny ale 
 In none wise drynke. 
 But of the beste and of the brunneste • 
 That in burghe is to selle. 
 
 Laborers that have no land 
 To IjYe on but hire handes, 
 Deyned noght to dyue a day 
 Nyght-olde wortes ; 
 May no peny ale hem paye, 
 Ne no pcce of bacone, 
 
 chept/ng, market. ' coket and cler-matyn, finer kinds of bread. • ifiM* 
 ntMte, brownest, richest with malt. 
 
3?*!* THE TISION OF PIEES PLOUGHMAN IeCT. VH 
 
 But if it be ftesshe flessh outher fisshe, 
 Fryed outher y-bake, 
 And that chaud and plus chaud, 
 For chillynge of hir mawe. 
 
 Verses 4357—4424. 
 
 Nought to fare as a fithelere or a frere, 
 
 For to seke festes 
 
 Homliohe at otbere mennes houses, 
 
 And hatien hir owene. 
 
 Elenge ' is the halle 
 
 Ech day in the wike, 
 
 Ther the lord ne the lady 
 
 Liketh noght to sitte. 
 
 Now hath ech riche a rule 
 
 To eten by hymselve 
 
 In a pryvee parlour, 
 
 For povere mennes sake, 
 
 Or in a chambre with a chymenee, 
 
 And leve the chief halle 
 
 That was maad for meles, 
 
 Men to eten inne. 
 
 And al to spare to spende 
 
 That spille shal another. 
 
 Verses 5791—5808. 
 
 Thanne Pacience perceyred 
 Of pointes of this cote. 
 That were colomy^ thorugh coveitise 
 And unkynde desiryng ; 
 Moore to good than to God 
 The gome ' his love caste, 
 And ymagynede how 
 He it myghte have 
 With false mesures and met,* 
 And with fals witnesse ; 
 Lened^ for love of the wed,* 
 And looth to do truthe ; 
 
 , ' (Amge, sad, melaDcHoly, modern ailing. " colomy, meaning onkixcnnk 
 
 f gome, man. * met, measuring. • lened, lent. " viei. pledge. 
 
'Ebct. VIL the vision of pieks ploughmam 321 
 
 And awaited thorugh which 
 
 Wey to bigile, 
 
 And menged i his marchatmdise, 
 
 And made a good moustre ; * 
 
 ' The Avorste mthinne was, 
 
 A greet wit I let it, 
 
 And if my neghebore hadde any hjne,^ 
 
 Or any beest ellis, 
 
 Moore profitable than myn, 
 
 Manye sleiglites I made 
 
 How I myghte have it, 
 
 Al my wit I caste. 
 
 And but I it hadde by oother wey, 
 
 At the laste I stale it ; 
 
 Or priveliche his purs shook, 
 
 And impikede hise lokes ; 
 
 Or by nyghte or by dayQ 
 
 Aboute was ich evere, 
 
 Thorugh gile to gaderen 
 
 The good that ich have. 
 
 ' K I yede to the plowgh, 
 I pynched so narwe. 
 That a foot lond or a forow 
 Fecchen I wolde 
 Of my nexte neghebore, 
 And nymen of his erthe. 
 And if I repe, over-reche, 
 Of yaf hem reed* that ropen' 
 To seise to me with hir sikel 
 That I ne sew^ nevere. 
 
 ' And who so borwed of mej 
 A-boiighte the tyme 
 With presentes prively, 
 Or paide som certeyn; 
 So he wolde or noght wolde, 
 Wynnen I wolde, 
 And bothe to kith and to kyn 
 Unkynde of that ich hadde. 
 
 ' menged, mixed, bad with good. ' moustre, sample, or perhaps show, enn- 
 ning anangement so as to hide defects. ' hi/ne, servant. ♦ reed, directioiia« 
 ' ro^en, reaped. ' sew, sowed. 
 
 T 
 
323 THE VISION OF PIEES PLOtTGHMAK Lect. VII. 
 
 ' And wlio so cheped my cliaffare^ 
 Chiden I wolde, 
 But lie profrede to paie 
 A peny or tweyne 
 Moore than it was worth; 
 And yet wolde I swere 
 That it coste me muche moore, 
 And so swoor manye othes.' 
 
 Verses 8737—8795. 
 
 Barons and burgeises, 
 And bonde-men als, 
 I seigh in this assembles, 
 As ye shul here after : 
 Baksteres and brewesterea, 
 And bochiers manye ; 
 WoUen webbSsters, 
 And weveres of lynnen, 
 TaiUours and tynkers, 
 And tollers in markettes, 
 Masons and mynours, 
 And many othere craftes. 
 Of aUe kynne lybbynge laborers 
 Lopen' forth somme, 
 As dikeres and delveres, 
 That doon hire dedes ille, 
 That diyveth forth the longe day 
 With Dieu save dame Emme, 
 
 Cokes and hire knaves 
 Cryden ' Hote pies, hote I 
 Goode gees and grys I 
 Gowe, dyne, gowe ! ' 
 
 Taverners until hem 
 Trewely tolden the same, 
 Whit wyn of Oseye, 
 And reed wyn of Gascoigne, 
 Of the Eyn and of the Ilochel, 
 The roost to defie." 
 
 Verses 430—457. 
 
 ♦ lopen, ran. • defie, digest 
 
Lect. VII. THE VISION OF PIEES PLOUGHMAN 323 
 
 Langlande seems to have shared in the popular prejudice 
 under which the profession of law has always laboured. He 
 thus satirizes the bar : — 
 
 Yet hovedi ther an hundred 
 
 In howves^ of selk, 
 
 Sergeantz it bi-semed 
 
 That serveden at the barre, 
 
 Pleteden for penyes 
 
 And poundes the lawe ; 
 
 And noght for love of our Lord 
 
 Unlose hire lippes ones. 
 
 Thow myghtest bettre meete myst 
 
 On Malvern e hilles, 
 
 Than gete a mom of hire mouth, 
 
 Til moneie be shewed. 
 
 Verses 418 — 429. 
 
 In the third passus, Mede's confessor proposes to her to secure 
 her salvation by giving his church a painted window, to which 
 she assents : — 
 
 Thanne he assoiled hire scone, 
 And sithen he seide : 
 
 * We have a wyndow in werchyngo 
 Wole sitten us ful hye, 
 "Woldestow glaze that gable 
 
 And grave therinne thy name, 
 Syker sholde thi soule be 
 Hevene to have.' 
 
 Verses 1449—1456. 
 
 * Have mercy,' quod Mede, 
 
 * Of men that it haunteth, 
 And I shal covere youre kirk, 
 Toure cloistre do maken, 
 Wowes' do whiten, 
 
 And wyndowes glazen, 
 
 • ioved, waited. * howves, hoods or caps. • Wowei, waHa. 
 
324 THE TISION OF PIEES PLOtJGtHMAN Iect. VIL 
 
 Do peynten and portraye, 
 And paie for the makynge, 
 That every segge' shal seye 
 I am suster of yours house.* 
 
 Upon this the Pilgrim observes : — 
 
 Ac God to alle good folk 
 
 Swich gravynge defendeth, 
 
 To ■writen in wyndowes 
 
 Of hir wel dedes. 
 
 ii * * 
 
 Lat noght thi left half 
 
 Late ne rathe 
 
 Wite what thow werohest 
 
 With thi right syde ; 
 
 "For thus by the gospel 
 
 Groode men doon hir almesse. 
 
 Verses 1483— 1507. 
 
 The author exhibits a liberality towards the Jews rarely me^ 
 with in that age : — 
 
 Sholde no cristene creature 
 
 Cryen at the yate, 
 
 Ne faille payn ne potage, 
 
 And prelates dide as thei sholden. 
 
 A Jew wolde noght se a Jew 
 
 Go janglyng for defaute, 
 
 For alle the mebles on this moolde, 
 
 And he amende it myghte. 
 
 AUas! that a cristene creature 
 
 Shal be unkynde til another ; 
 
 Syn Jewes, that we jugge 
 
 Judas felawes, 
 
 Eyther of hem helpetb oother 
 
 Of that that hem nedeth. 
 
 Whi nel we cristene 
 
 Of Cristes good be as kynde 
 
 As Jewes, that ben oure lores-men. 
 
 Verses 5818—5337. 
 
 ^ seffge, man. 
 
Lbot. VII. THE VISION OF PIERS PLOTTGHMAN 326 
 
 The following passage on the degeneracy of bcth nature and 
 man is striking : — 
 
 ' And so it fareth by som folk now, 
 Thei haa a fair speche, 
 Crowne and cristendom, 
 The kynges mark of hevene ; 
 Ac the metal, that is mannes soiile, 
 With synne is fonle alayed. 
 Bothe lettred and lewed 
 Beth alayed now with synne, 
 That no Uf loveth oother 
 Ne oure Lord, as it semeth. 
 For thorugh werre and wikkede werke% 
 And wederes unresonable, 
 Weder-wise shipmen, 
 And witty clerkes also, 
 Han no bileve to the lifte, • 
 Ne to the loore of phUosofres. 
 
 ' Astronomiens al day 
 In hir art faillen, 
 That whUom warned bifore 
 What sholde falle after. 
 
 ' Shipmen and shepherdes, 
 That with ship and sheep wenten, 
 Wisten by the walkne^ 
 What sholde bitide, 
 As of wedres and wyndes 
 Thei warned men ofte. 
 
 ' TUieris, that tiled the erth^ 
 Tolden hir maistres, 
 By the seed that thei sewe, 
 What diei seUe myghte, 
 And what to lene, and what to lyve by, 
 The lond was so trewe. 
 
 ' Now faileih the folk of the flood, 
 And of the lond bothe, 
 Shepherdes and shipmen, 
 And so do thise tiheris, 
 
 • lifte, s^, signs of weather. • wdhne, douds, ivelMn, 
 
326 THE TISION OF -PIEKS PLOUGHMAH LecT. VII. 
 
 Neither tiei konneth ne knoweth 
 Oon cours bifore another. 
 
 ' Astronomyens also 
 Aren at hir wittes ende, 
 Of that was calculed of the element 
 The contrarie tliei fynde ; 
 Grammer, the gi-ound of al, 
 Bigileth now children, 
 For is noon of this newe clerkes, 
 Who so nymeth hede, 
 Naught oon among an hundred 
 That an auctour kan construwe, 
 Ne rede a lettre in any langage 
 But in Latin or in Englissh.' 
 
 Verses 10,326—10,375. 
 ~^^' Also the following : — 
 
 For Sarzens han somwhat 
 Semynge to oure bileve ; 
 For thei love and bileve 
 In o persone almyghty ; 
 And we, lered and lewed, 
 In oon God almyghty ; 
 And oon Makometh, a man, 
 In mysbileve broughte 
 Sarzens of Surree, 
 And see in what manere. 
 
 ' This Makometh was a cristene 
 And for he moste noght ben a pope 
 Into Surrie he soughte, 
 And thorugh hise sotile wittea 
 He daunted ' a dowve, 
 And day and nyght hire fedde, » 
 The com that she croppede 
 He caste it in his ere ; 
 And if he among the peple preched^ 
 Or in places come, 
 Thanne wolde the colvere^ come 
 To the clerkes ere 
 
 ' daunted, tamed. — * eolvere, ion. 
 
Iject. VU. the vision of piers ploughman 327 
 
 Menynge as after mete, — 
 
 Thus Makometh hire enchaimtede ; 
 
 And dide folk thanne falle on knees, 
 
 For he swoor in his prechj-ng 
 
 That the colvere that com so, 
 
 Com from God of hevene. 
 
 As messager to Makometh, 
 
 Men for to teche. 
 
 And thus thorugh wiles of his wit^ 
 
 And a whit do^we, 
 
 Makometh in mysbileve 
 
 Men and wommen broughte ; 
 
 That lyved tho there and lyve yit 
 
 Leaven • on hise lawes. 
 
 ' And siththe our Saveour suffred. 
 The Sarzens so bigiled 
 Thorugh a cristene clerk, 
 Acorsed in his soule ! 
 For drede of the deeth 
 I dare noght telle truthe, 
 How Englisshe clerkes a colvere fade 
 That coveitise highta, 
 And ben manered after Makometh, 
 That no man useth trouthe.' 
 
 Verses 10,408—10,453. 
 
 I liave dwelt the longer upon the Vision of Piers Ploughman, 
 because I think justice has never been done to its great merits 
 — which can be appreciated only by careful study — and to its 
 importance in the literary history of England. Although Wright 
 has rendered an excellent service by making this poem accessible, 
 and in the main intelligible, to common readers, much labour 
 ought still to be bestowed upon it. A scrupulously literal re- 
 production of the best manuscripts, with various readings from 
 all the copies, is needed ; and few old English authors better 
 deserve, or will better repay the careful attention of English 
 scholarship. 
 
 The Creed of Piers Ploughman, which appeared, as is supposed, 
 
 ' leeven, believe. 
 
328 ' THE CKEED OF PIERS PLOUGHMAN Lect. VII.; 
 
 twenty or thirty years after the Vision, may or may not he a 
 ■work of the same author. The style and diction are much the 
 same, but the later work is more exclusively theological, and 
 graver in tone, and it shows an advance upon the opinions of 
 the earlier poem, harmonizing more unequivocally with the 
 views of Wycliffe and the Eeformers of his school, hut it does 
 not seem to have ever obtained the wide currency and influence 
 of its predecessor. 
 
 The general character of this work will sufficiently appear 
 from these psissages : — 
 
 Than thought I to frayne* the first 
 Of this foure ordres ; 
 And presed to the Prechoures, 
 To proven her wille. 
 loh highed to her house, 
 To herken of more ; 
 And when I came to that court^ 
 I gaped aboute, 
 Swich a bild^ bold 
 Y-buld upon erthe heighto 
 Say I nought in certeyn 
 Syththe a long tyme. 
 I semed opon that hous, 
 And yerne theron loked, 
 Whow the pileres weren y-paintj 
 And pulchud' ftd clene, 
 And queyntly y-corven 
 With curious knottes ; 
 "With wyndowes wel y-wrought, 
 Wyde up a-Iofte, 
 And thanne I entred in, 
 And even forth wente ; 
 And al was walled that wone, 
 Though it wild were, 
 With posternes in privity 
 To pasen when hem lists ; 
 Orcheyardes and erberea 
 
 J Jrayne, inquire of. ' Uld, building. • jfvlehvtd, poHshei 
 
liBCT. VIL THE CEEED OF PIEKS PLOUGHMAN 329 
 
 Evesed' wel clene. 
 
 And a curious cros 
 
 Craftly entayled, 
 
 With tabernacles y-tight* 
 
 To toten^ al abouten. 
 
 The pris of a plough-lond 
 
 Of penies so rounde 
 
 To aparaile that pyler 
 
 Were pure litel. 
 
 Than I munte'' me forth 
 
 The mynstre to knowen, 
 
 And awaytede a woon* 
 
 Wonderly wel y-bild, 
 
 With arches on everiche hal^ 
 
 And bellyche y-corven, 
 
 With crochetes on comeres, 
 
 With knottes of gold, 
 
 Wyde wyndowes y-wrought, 
 
 T-wryten fui thikke, 
 
 Shynen with shapen sheldes, 
 
 To shewen aboute, 
 
 With merkes of merchauntea 
 
 T-medeled betwene, 
 
 Mo than twentie and two 
 
 Twyse y-noumbbred. 
 
 Ther is non heraud that hath 
 
 Half swich a rolJe, 
 
 Eight as a rageman 
 
 Hath rekned hem news. 
 
 Tombes upon tabemaclea 
 
 Tylde opon lofte, 
 
 Housed in homes, 
 
 Harde set abouten, 
 
 Of armede alabaustro 
 
 Clad for the nones, 
 
 ' eveacd, should mean provided with eave-tronghs, perhaps, here, sheltered witli 
 arhonrs, roofs, or awnings. ^ y-tight, furnished. ' tabernacles .... to- 
 ten ; toten is to look, and the phrase means belvederes, look-out towers. * munte, 
 £rom minnen, to be ndnded, to incline. ' awaytede a woon, observed a dwelling 
 .or house. 
 
330 THE CKEED OF PIEBS PLOUGHMAM I.F.CT. VIL 
 
 Maad opon marbel 
 
 In many manner wyse, 
 
 Knyghtes in ther conisanto 
 
 Clad for the nones ; 
 
 Alle it semed seyntea 
 
 Y-saored opon erthe ; 
 
 And lovely ladies y- wrought 
 
 Leyen by her sydes 
 
 In manye gay garnemens, 
 
 That weren gold beten. 
 
 Though the tax of ten yere 
 
 Were trewely y-gadered, 
 
 Nolde it nought maken that hons 
 
 Half, as I trowe. 
 
 Than cam I to that cloystre, 
 
 And gaped abouten, 
 
 Whough it was pilered and peynt, 
 
 And portreyed wel clene, 
 
 Al y-hyled with leed 
 
 Lowe to the stones, 
 
 And y-paved with poynttyl 
 
 Ich point after other ; 
 
 With cundites of clene tyn 
 
 Closed al aboute. 
 
 With lavoTires of latun 
 
 Loveliche y-greithed. 
 
 I trowe the gaynage of the ground 
 
 In a gret shyre 
 
 Nold aparaile that place 
 
 Oo poynt tyl other ende. 
 
 Thanne was that chapitre house 
 
 Wrought as a greet chirche, 
 
 Corven and covered. 
 
 And queyntelyche entayled, 
 
 With semliche selui'e ' 
 
 Y-seet on lofte, 
 
 As a parlement-hous 
 
 Y-peynted aboute. 
 
 Thanne ferd I into fraytour^ 
 
 * idure, ceilingi 
 
Lect. VII. THE CREED OF HERS PLOUGHMAN 331 
 
 And fond there another, 
 An halle for an hygh kjrnge 
 An houshold to holden, 
 With brode hordes abouten 
 Y-benched wel clene, - 
 
 With wyndowes of glaas 
 Wrought as a chirche 
 Than walkede I ferrer, 
 And went al abouten, 
 And seigh halles full heygh. 
 And houses ful noble, 
 Chambres with chymeneys, 
 And chapeles gaye, 
 And kychenes for an high kyngB 
 In casteles to holden ; 
 And her dortoure y-dight 
 With dores ful stronge ; 
 Fermerye and fraitur, ' 
 With fele mo houses. 
 And al strong ston wal 
 Sterne upon heithe. 
 With gaye gai;ites2 and grete. 
 And iche hole y-glased, 
 And other houses y-nowe 
 To herberwe the queene. 
 And yet thise bilderes wiln beggen 
 A bagge iul of whete 
 Of a pure pore man, 
 That may onethe paye 
 Half his rent in a yere, 
 And half ben byhynde. 
 Than turned I ayen. 
 Whan I hadde all y-toted. 
 And fond in a freitoure 
 A frere on a benche, 
 A greet chorl and a giym, 
 Growen as a tonne, 
 With a face so fat 
 
 ' fraitur, refeetoiy. * garites, perhaps garrets, but I think more probably 
 turrets, or pinnacles. 
 
332' THE CEEED OF PIEKS PLOUGHMAN Lect. VII.. 
 
 As a ftil bleddere 
 
 Blowen bretful of breth, 
 
 And as a bagge lionged 
 
 On bothen his ohekes, and his chyn 
 
 With a chol lollede 
 
 So gi-eet a3 a gos ey, 
 
 Growen al of grece ; 
 
 That al wagged his fleish 
 
 As a quick myre. 
 
 His cope, that bi-clypped hym, 
 
 Wei clene was it folden, 
 
 Of double worstede y-dyght 
 
 Doun to the hele. 
 
 His kyrtel of clene whiit, 
 
 Clenlyche y-sewed, 
 
 Hit was gbod y-now of ground 
 
 Greyn for to beren. 
 
 I haylsede^ that hirdman, 
 
 And hendlich I sayde, 
 
 ' Gode sire, for Godes love I 
 
 Canstou me graith tellen 
 
 To any worthely wiight 
 
 That wissen me couthe, 
 
 Whow I shulde conne my Grade, 
 
 Christ for to folwe, 
 
 That levede^ lelliche^ hymselfe 
 
 And lyvede therafter, 
 
 That feynede no falshede, 
 
 But fully Christ suwede ? 
 
 For sich a certeyn man 
 
 Syker wold I trosten, 
 
 That he wolde telle me the trewthe^ 
 
 And turne to non other. 
 
 And an Austyn* this ender day 
 
 Egged me faste ; 
 
 That he wolde techen we wel, 
 
 He plyght me his treuthe, 
 
 And seyde me ' certeyn, 
 
 > hayhede, saluted. ' kvede, belieTed. • lelliche, loyally, la^rfaUy. 
 
 * Attstyn, Augustine friar. 
 
LeCT. VII. THE CEEED OF PIEES PLOUGHMAN 333 
 
 Syglithen Clu'ist dejed 
 Oure ordre ^v;ls euelles 
 And erst j-founde.' 
 
 ' First, felawe,' quath he, 
 * Fy on his pilche ! ^ 
 He is but abortiif, 
 Eked Tvith cloutes, 
 He holdeth his ordynaunce 
 With hores and theves, 
 And purchaseth hem pryvyleges 
 With penyes so rounde. 
 It is a pur pardoners craft, 
 Prove and asay ; 
 For have they thy money, 
 A monetli therafter 
 Certes, theigh thou come agen, 
 He wil the nought knowen. 
 But, felawe, oure foundement 
 Was first of the othere, 
 And ^ye ben founded fulliche 
 Withouten fayntise. 
 And we ben clorkes y-cnowen, 
 Cunnyng in schole, 
 Proved in processyon 
 By processe of hiwe. 
 Of cure order ther beth 
 Bichopes ivel manye, 
 Seyntes on sundri stedes 
 That suifreden harde ; 
 And T\-e ben proved the priis 
 Of popes at Eome, 
 And of grettest degrd 
 As godspelles telleth.' 
 
 Lines 303 — 512. 
 
 The Pilgrim, who had already consulted a Minorite, visits, in 
 turn, the two remaining orders : the Austyns or Augustins and 
 the Carmelites, who abuse the ' Prechours ' and the ' Minours ' 
 as heartily as they had been censured by them. He then falls 
 
 ■ pUche, fur, or long napped cloth, eloak. 
 
334 POEM ON EICHABD 11. Lect. VIL 
 
 in -with Piers Ploughman, who exposes the corruptions of mon- 
 astic life, and dismisses the Pilgrim after having taught him a 
 Creed substantially conforming to that called ' the Apostles'.' 
 
 Another poem of similar metrical structure, but of exclusively 
 political character, is the alliterative allegory on the abuses of 
 the reign of Eichard II., and his intended deposition. This is 
 an imitation of the style and manner of Piers Ploughman, and 
 is not without point and spirit. The dialect remains the same, 
 substantially, though, while the vocabulary is more modern, the 
 grammar is, in some respects, more archaic. It is a matter of 
 some interest to observe that it contains many nautical phrases, 
 used with a familiarity quite new to English literature, and 
 which shows that the increasing navigation and foreign com- 
 merce of England were beginning to exert an appreciable 
 influence on the dialect of books as well as of ordinary speech. 
 
 The passage into which most of these phrases are introduced 
 is, for the period, almost unique in its character, and as several 
 of the technical terms employed in it here occur, for the first 
 time, in EngHsh, it may be worth citing, though perhaps not 
 clearly intelligible to mere landsmen : — * 
 
 and somme were so ffers 
 at the fFrist come, 
 that they bente on a bonet, 
 and bare a topte saile 
 alFor the wynde fFresshely, 
 
 * In the Glossarial Eemarks and Emendations, Layamon III. 476, Sir F. 
 Madden quotes these lines from a manuscript whioh has never been printed : — 
 Then he tron on the trees, and thay her tramme reechen ; 
 Cachen vp the crossayl, cables thay casten ; 
 Wijt at the wyndas weren her aukres, 
 Sprude spak to the sprete, the spare bawe-lyne ; 
 Gederen to the gyde-ropes, the grete cloth falles ; 
 Thay layden in on ladde horde, and the lofe Wynnes; 
 The blythe brethe at her bak, the bosura he fyndes ; 
 He swenges me thys swete schip swefte fro the hauen. 
 
 Is laMe horde the primitive form of larboard J If so, it is a step towards tlie 
 etymology of that obscure word. ' 
 
Iect. VIL the complaint of the PLorGHMAH 335 
 
 to make a good flfare. 
 
 Than lay the lordis alee 
 
 "with laste and with charge, 
 
 and bare aboujte the bai-ge, 
 
 and blamed the maister, 
 
 that knewe not the kynde coura 
 
 that to the crafte longid, 
 
 and warned him Avisely 
 
 of the wedir side. 
 
 Thanne the niaste in the myddis, 
 
 at the monthe ende, 
 
 bowid ffor brestynge, 
 
 and broujte hem to lond ; 
 
 ffor ne had thei striked a strake, 
 
 and sterid hem the better, 
 
 and abated a bonet, 
 
 or the blast come, 
 
 they had be throwe overe the borde, 
 
 backewarde ichonne. 
 
 The volume of Political Poems and Songs from which the 
 above lines are taken contains an irregularly alliterative poem, 
 in eight-lined stanzEis, called the Complaint of the Ploughman. 
 This was formerly ascribed to Chaucer, and exists in no earlier 
 form than in printed editions of the fifteenth century, althoui>-h 
 it probably belongs, as originally written, to the reign of 
 Eichard II. It is a satire on the abuses of Church and State, 
 but is worthy neither of the name it claims nor of the author 
 to whom it has been attributed. 
 
 I am not acquainted with auy poem resembling Piers Plough- 
 man in poetic form, of later date than the fourteenth century, 
 which is worthy of notice, though there were several attempts 
 at imitation of this rhythm and metre in subsequent ages. 
 
 I have already adverted to the remarkable circumstance, that, 
 though many political songs and satires of the preceding cen- 
 tury, of a popular cast, were in English, a large proportion of 
 the most important poems of this class in the reign of Edward 
 III. were in French or in Latin. 
 
336 POLITICAL POETRY LeCT. VII, 
 
 This may probably be explained by the fact, that many of 
 them relate to events or measures of policy, the connection of 
 which with the material well-being of the commonalty was not 
 very obvious, and which therefore did not much excite the 
 interest of the English-speaking people, but appealed rather to 
 the passions, the opinions, the principles of the governing 
 classes, who were generally, no doubt, better instructed in 
 written French and Latin than in the native tongue. 
 
 These classes, indeed, at the period we are now treating of, 
 certainly spolce English habitually, but they had not cultivated 
 it as a governmental or official organ of communication, and it 
 was therefore essentially unfit for the discussion of political 
 subjects. Such topics found much better vehicles in Latin and 
 in French, which latter tongue, as we have seen, had gradually 
 been trained up to a power of expression that had enabled it t6 
 compete with Latin as a learned and universal speech. 
 
 Froissart, in describing his presentation of a volume of his 
 poems to Eichai'd II., observes, as a noteworthy circumstance, 
 that the King 'loked in it and reed yt in many places, for he 
 coulde speke and rede French very well ; ' and in the same 
 paragraph he mentions Henry Castyde, an English squire, as an 
 ' honest man and a wyse, and coud well speke Frenche.' * But 
 the same chronicler informs us that the negotiations for the 
 peace of 1393 were conducted in French, and that the English 
 commissioners were much embarrassed by their want of a know- 
 ledge of the niceties and subtleties of that language. 
 
 * ' Than the kynge desyred to se my booke that I had brought for hym; so ho 
 sawe it in his ehambre, for I had layde it there redy on his bedde. Whanne the 
 kynge opened it, it pleased hym well, for it was fajTe enlumyned and written, and 
 couered with crymson veluet, with ten botons of sylner and gylte, and roses of 
 golde in the myddes, wjth two great elapses gylte, rychely wroughte. Than the 
 kyng demannded me whereof it treated, and I shewed hym how it treated maters 
 of loue ; wherof the kynge was gladde and loked in it, and reed yt in many places, 
 for he coulde speke and rede French very well ; and he tooke yt to a knyght of hys 
 ehambre, named Syr Eichardi Creadon, to beare it into hys secrete ehambre.' — 
 Lord Berners's Froissart, chap, cxcviii Eeprint of 1812, vol. n., chap. cciL 
 p. 619. 
 
Lect. VII. USE OF FREXCn IN ENGLAND 337 
 
 ' The englyssliemon,' says lio, ' had moche payne to here and to 
 viiderstande the frcRchemen, wlio \\ere full ol' subtyle wordes, and 
 cloked perswaoions and double of vndcrsfandynge, the whiche the 
 frenchemen \volde toiirne as they Ivst to their proiyte and adnauntage, 
 whiche englysshemen vse nat in their langage, for their speche and 
 entent is playne ; and also the englisshnien were enfotirmed that the 
 Frenchemen had nat ahvayes Tpholden tlie artycles, promyses and con- 
 dycyons, rat}-fied in the artycles of peace; yet the frenchmen wolde 
 ever fynde one pojaite or other in their writynges, by some subtyle 
 cloked worde, affermynge that the englysshemen had broken the peace, 
 and nat they ; whorfore whan the englysshemen sawe or herde in the 
 frencheniens writ3rnges any darke or cloked worde, they made it to be 
 exaniATied by such as were profoundly lerned in the lawe, and if they 
 founde it amysse, they ciiused it to be canselled and amended, to the 
 entent they wolde leaue notliynge in trouble ; and the englysshmen, to 
 excuse tiiemseli'e, wblde say, tl^at IVenchemen lernyngo such subtylties 
 in their youth muste nedes be more subtyle than they.'* 
 
 The poems which we have now been considering, and others 
 of minor importance, thoiigh of kindred spirit, contributed their 
 share to the extension of the English vocabulary, to the flexi- 
 bility of the syntax, and to the various culture of the English 
 people, and thus prepared the speech and the nation for the re- 
 ception of the controversial writings and the scriptiu-al versions 
 of the WycIifEte school, the influence of which on the language 
 and literature of England will be examined in the next lec- 
 ture. 
 
 NOTE ON THE ITALIAN DIALECTS. 
 
 It is difficult for Englishmen and Anglo-Americans, who habitually 
 speak much as they "ttrite, and write much as they speak, to conceive 
 of the co-existence of two dialects in a people, one almost uniformly 
 employed in conversation, the other almost as exclusively in writing. 
 Yet such was the state of things in England, fi-om the Conquest at 
 least to the middle of the fourteenth centur}-, and such is the case in 
 a large part of Europe at this day. In Italy, for instance, there is 
 almost everywhere a popular speech, commonly employed by all classes 
 
 * Lord Berners's Froissart, chap, cxcv., reprint of 1812, vol. ii. pp. 599, 600. 
 See note on Italian dialects at the end of this lecture. . 
 
 Z 
 
338 ITALUi' DIALECTS Lect. VII. 
 
 in familiar oral intercourse, and so far cultivated that it can be, though it 
 rarely is, written, while, at the same time, the lingua comune d'lta- 
 lia, or, as it is often called, the Tuscan dialect, is known to all, as the 
 language of books, of journals, and of correspondence, and is also em- 
 ployed as the medium of religious and scholastic instruction. But this 
 literary tongue, at least in thos3 parts of Italy where dialects widely 
 different from it are habitually spoken, always remains to the Italians 
 themselves essentially a foreign language. This fact Biondelli states in 
 stronger terms than a prudent stranger would venture to do upon the 
 testimony of his own observation. ' Tanto e vero che, per parlare e 
 scrivere italianamente, dobbiamo imparare questa nostra lingua con 
 lunghi e laboriosi studj, poco meno che se apprendessimo la latina o la 
 francese ; e a malgrado dell' alEnita sua coi nostri dialetti e del con- 
 tinue leggere, scrivere e parlare 1' italiano, ben pochi giungono a trattarlo 
 come conviensi, e grandi e frequenti sono le difficulta che incontriamo 
 ogniqualvolta vogliamo esporre con chiarezza e proprieta le nostre idee, 
 poiche veramente dobbiamo tradurre il nostro dialetto in altra lingua, 
 vale a dire, rappresentare sotto diversa forma i nostri pensieri.' — Bion- 
 delli, Saggio sui Dialetti Gallo—Italici, x. 
 
 There is a similar discrepancy between the written and spoken lan- 
 guage in many parts of Germany, though the diffusion of literary cul- 
 ture in that country has made the dialect of books more universally 
 familiar than in most European nations. The traveller Seetzen, whose 
 journals have lately been published, sometimes makes entries in them 
 in the Platt-Deutsch of his native province, and states expressly that 
 he uses that dialect in order that those passages may not be understood 
 by strangers into whose hands his papers might chance to fall. 
 
LECTUEE Vm. 
 
 (VYCLIFFE AND HIS SCHOOL. 
 
 "We comt aow ki a period when far other necessities than those 
 of imaginative literature, of mechanical or decorative art, or of 
 any interest of material life, demanded the formation of a new 
 special nomenclature — a nomenclature and a phraseology, which, 
 though first employed in a limited range of themes and dis- 
 cussions, yet, from the intimate relation of those themes to all 
 the higher aspirations of humanity, gradually acquired more 
 extended significance and more varied applications, and finally 
 became, in great part, incorporated into the general speech as 
 a new enlivening and informing element, 
 
 I refer to the theological vocabulary of Wycliffe and his dis- 
 ciples, which, in a considerable proportion indeed, was composed 
 of words already familiar to the clergy and the better instructed 
 laity, but which those reformers popularized, and at the same 
 time enlarged and modified, by new terms coined or borrowed 
 for use in their translations of the Scriptures, and by imposing 
 on already known words new, or at least special acceptations. 
 
 The Anglo-Saxons possessed a vernacular translation of the 
 Gospels, and of some other parts of the Bible ; and several 
 more .or less complete versions of the Scriptures existed in 
 French as early as the twelfth century. But there is no reason 
 to believe that any considerable portion of the Bible, except the 
 Psalter, had ever been rendered into English, until the trans- 
 lation ot the whole volume was undertaken, at the suggestion 
 of Wycliffe, and in part by his own efforts, a little before the 
 
 z 2 
 
340 ENGLAND INDEPENDENT OF EOME Lect. VIIl, 
 
 beginning of the last quarter of the fourteenth century. English 
 preachers, it is true, had always freely introduced into their 
 sermons quotations from the vulgate, translated for the occasion 
 by themselves, and thus the people had already become somewhat 
 familiarized with the contents of the Old and New Testament ; 
 but these sermons were rarely copied for circulation, or probably 
 even written down at all, and therefore no opportunity existed 
 for the study or consultation of the Bible as an English book.* 
 The English nation, for reasons stated in a former lecture, 
 had always been practically more independent of the papacy 
 than the Continental states. The schism in the church, with 
 the long struggle between the claimants to the chair of Peter — 
 each of whom denounced his rival as an anti-pope, and excom- 
 municated his followers as heretics — naturally much weakened 
 the authority of both the contending parties. Men were not 
 only at liberty, but found themselves compelled, to inquire which 
 was the true head of the church, and they could not investigate 
 the title of the respective claimants to ecclesiastical supre- 
 macy, without being very naturally led to doubt whether either 
 
 * The translations of the texts cited by Wycliffe himself, in the controversial 
 ■works most confidently ascribed to him, by no means agree literally with the 
 version of the New Testament, and of a part of the Old, which he is believed to 
 have execnted. See Introduction to Madden and Forshall's edition of the 
 'Wycliffi'te Translations. Comparisons of this sort have often been appealed to as a 
 test of the authenticity oi writings attributed to his pen. But they seem to me 
 to be entitled to very little weight. Wycliffe wrote much before he made his 
 translation, and his later works must often have been written wlicn he conld not 
 have had that translation with him. The ' pore caityf,' as he humbly calk himself, 
 certainly did not regard his own version with the reverence with which we view 
 it ; and a good biblical scholar like him, finding a Latin scriptural text in an 
 author he was refuting, or having occasion to use one which occurred to him, 
 would, in the fervour of composition, write down the translation which, at the 
 moment, presented itself, and which the argument in hand suggested as the truest 
 expression of the meaning. 
 
 Few authors are vain enough to be disposed to quote or repeat their own words, 
 or even the words of another which they have m.itie tlicir own by translation, and 
 I think a writer of tlic present day would sooner re- translate a passage from an 
 ancient autlior he wished to quote, than unshelf a volume, and copy a citation 
 which he had translated on a former occasion. A discrepancy, therefore, between 
 a text quoted by WycliiTc and his own formal translation of it elsewhere, affbi^ 
 no presumption against the authenticity of a manu.script attributed to him. 
 
Lect. VIII. POPE AND ANTI-POPE 341 
 
 of them was better than a usurper. The decision of the im- 
 mediate question between the rival pontiffs turned, in the end, 
 mora on political than on canonical grounds*; but while it 
 was under discussion, the whole doctrine of papal supremacy 
 underwent a sifting, that revealed to thousands the sandy nature 
 of the foundation on which it rested. A result more important 
 than the particular conclusions arrived at, as between the claims 
 of Urban and Clement, was, that the controversy taught and 
 habituated thinking ecclesiastics, and, by their examjDle, the 
 laity, to exercise their reason upon topics which had before 
 been generally considered as points which it was blasphemous 
 even to debate. 
 
 The habit of unquestioning submission to the decrees of a 
 church which arrogated to itself infallibility of opinion, and 
 binding authority of judgment, upon religious questions whose 
 
 * Capgrave gives us a specimen of the arguments — rationes regum, or rather, 
 ad rcges — employed by Pope and Anti-Pope mth the sovereigns of their respective 
 parties. 
 
 'Also he notified onto the Kyng [Eichardll.], that the Antipope and the Kyng 
 of Fraims be thus accordid, that the seid Kj'ng of Frauns, with help of the duke 
 of Burgony, and othir, schul set the Antipope in the sete at Kome ; and the same 
 Antipope schal make the Kyng of Frauns emperoure, and othir dukes he schal 
 endewe in the lordcliippis of ItaUe. Also, he enformed the King what perel 
 Bchuld faUe if the Antipope and the Kyng were thus acorded, and the Kyng of 
 Frauns emperoure, — he schuld be that wey chalenge the dominion of Ynglond. 
 Therefor the Pope counceleth the King, that he schal make no pes with the 
 Kyng of Frauns but on this condicion, that the King of Framis schal favoure the 
 ■opinion of the trewe Pope, and suffir non of his puple to fite ageyn him.' — 
 Capgrave, a.d. 1390, pp. 255, 256. 
 
 It should be added that, on the same occasion, the Pope asked in vain for the 
 repeal of the famous statutes, Quare impcdit and Premuniri facias, so important 
 to the liberties of England. 
 
 ' The Pope merveyled mech of certeyn statutes which were mad in this lond 
 ageyn the liberte of the cherch ; and for the Pope supposed that it was not the 
 Kyngis wil, therefor he sent his messagere to stere the Kyng that sweeh statiites 
 schuld be abrogat whech be ageyn the liberte of Holy Cherch, specially these 
 two, " Quare impedit " and " Prcmunire facias." ' 
 
 The moment was ill chosen for asking a. concession, which, under almost any 
 circumstances, would have been too much for the sturdy independence of Eng- 
 land; and though the request was enforced by the hint above mentioned, the 
 chronicler informs us that, ' as for promociones of hem that dwelled at Eome, it 
 wold not be graucted; but, for favoure Of the Pope, tliei gi'aunted him his pro- 
 ■jysiones til the nexte Farlemtnt.' — Capgrave, ubi supra. 
 
342 PRINCIPLE OF AUTirOEITT Lect. Vlir. 
 
 comprehension demands the exercise of man's highest faculties, 
 had naturally begotten a spirit of deference to the dicta of 
 great names in secular learning also. This deference character- 
 ized the mass of the original literature of the Continent through 
 the Middle Ages ; and in discussions upon questions of natural 
 knowledge, of history, of criticism, the opinions of eminent 
 writers were commonly cited, not as arguments, or even as the 
 testimony of competent witnesses to facts of observation, but as 
 binding conclusions, scarcely less irrefragable or less sacred than 
 the inspired infallibility of a pontiff. Habitual submission to 
 the jurisdiction of secular names, as, for example, to the opi- 
 nions of Aristotle in physics and metaphysics, was politicly 
 encouraged and inculcated by the church, not merely because 
 particular metaphysico-theological dogmas of Eome found sup- 
 port in the Aristotelian philosophy, but because such submission 
 was a practical recognition of the principle of authority in all 
 moral and intellectual things. Just so, in the public policy of 
 our times, the governing classes, in some states liberal in their 
 own domestic administration, sustain the usurped dominion of 
 certain dynasties over foreign territory, not because they believe 
 the right or approve the oppressions of those dynasties, but 
 because their rule is an embodiment of the aristocratic prin- 
 ciple in government, and is therefore the representative and ally 
 of aristocracy everywhere. 
 
 The shock given to the dominion of the papal see, by the 
 schism and the discussions occasioned by that event, did much 
 to weaken the authority of human names in letters and in 
 philosophy; and it happened at a very favourable juncture for 
 English literature, which thus, at its very birth, acquired an 
 independence, and consequently an originality, that a half- 
 century earlier or later it would not have attained. 
 
 The literature which belongs to the civilization of modern 
 Europe is essentially Protestant, because it almost uniformly 
 originated, if not in a formal revolt against the power of physi- 
 cal coercion exerted by the church, at least in a protest against 
 the morally binding obligation of her decrees, and its earliest 
 
LeCT. VIIl. WrCLIFFITE TEANSLATIONS 343 
 
 espreEsion was a denunciation of those abuses which had con- 
 verted her, from a nursing mother of the best and holiest 
 affections of the heart, inio a worldly, ambitious, self-seeking, 
 rapacious, and oppressive organization. It is only when men 
 are emancipated from humiliating spiritual servitude, that the 
 intellect can be set free; and the training, which the unobstructed 
 investigation and discussion of theological doctrine involves, is 
 the most powerful of all methods of intellectual culture. 
 
 The Wycliffite translations were made from the Latin of the 
 vulg-ate.* There is not much reason to suppose that any of the 
 persons engaged in this work knew enough of Greek, still less 
 of Hebrew, to translate directly from those languages; and 
 consequently the new syntactical combinations they introduced 
 are all according to the Latin idiom, except in so far as the 
 dialect of the vulgate itself had been modified by the influence 
 of the Greek and Hebrew texts on which it was founded. But 
 the translators often resorted to commentators for explanation, 
 and thus sometimes became acquainted with Hebraisms at 
 second hand; and the latest revision of the version, that of 
 Purvey, is by no means a slavish copy of the literal sense of the 
 vulgate, while it weeded out, without scruple, a large proportion 
 of the Latinisma which the first translators had introduced into 
 their renderings from an anxious desire for strict conformity to 
 a text recognized by the church as of equal authority with the 
 sacred original itself. 
 
 I cannot go into a history of these versions on the present 
 occasion, or examine the evidence on the question : how far 
 John WyclifFe was personally concerned in the execution of 
 them. It must suffice to say that in the only entirely trustworthy 
 edition we possess of any of them — the liber vere aureus, 
 
 * By vulgate, I here mean the Latin translation adopted by the church and 
 ascribed to Jerome, so far as the manuscripts then in circulation could be identified 
 with it. But the copies of the Scriptures, as of secular works, were often widely 
 discrepant, even when professedly transcribed from the same original — a cir» 
 cumstance which explains how the ' symple creature,' mentioned in a passage 
 quoted at length in a subsequent part of this lecture, ' hadde myche trauaile ' 
 ' to make oo Lafyn bible sumdel trewe.' 
 
344 PEOTESTANT LITEKATUEB I-ECT. VIII. 
 
 the golden book, of Old-English philology — that, namely, 
 published at Oxford in 1850, in four quarto volumes, under the 
 editorship of Forshall and Madden, the older text, from Genesis 
 to Baruch iii. 20, is believed to be the work of Hereford, an 
 English ecclesiastic;* the remainder of the Old Testament 
 and Apocrypha is supposed, and the whole of the New Testament 
 almost certainly known, to have been translated by Wycliffe; 
 while the later text of the entire Bible is ascribed to Purvey. 
 The precise periods of the beginning and ending of a work, 
 which must have occupied many years in its execution, have 
 not been ascertained, but we have reason to think that the older 
 text was completed about 1380, the revision by Purvey some 
 eight or ten years later, or a little before 1390. 
 
 These translations must, in spite of the great cost of copying 
 them, have been very widely circulated ; for old manuscripts of 
 them are still very numerous, although we know that, for a cen- 
 tury and a half after the work was done, unwearied pains were 
 taken by the Romish ecclesiastical authorities to secure the de- 
 struction of every trace of this heretical version. 
 
 It is a noteworthy circumstance in the history of the literature 
 of Protestant countries, that, in every one of them, the creation 
 or revival of a national literature has commenced with, or at 
 least been announced by, a translation of the Scriptures into 
 the vernacular, which has been remarkable both as an accurate 
 representative of the original text, and as an exhibition of the 
 best power of expression possessed by the language at that stage 
 of its development. Hence, in all those countries, these ver- 
 sions have had a very great influence, not only upon religious 
 opinion and moral training, but upon literary effort in other 
 
 * Hereford's portion, the original raanuseript of which is still extant, ends ahrnptly 
 ■with the second word of the chapter and Tcrse ahoyc mentioned : ' The jonge.' 
 
 I make the statement in the text in deference to the authority of the editors of 
 the "WyclifRte translations ; but I think the internal evidence is against the sup- 
 position that the older version, from Genesis to Baruch, was the work of one man. 
 There are important grammatical differences between the historical books, down 
 to Paralipomena inclnsi\'e, and the remainder of that version. For instance, in 
 the former, the active participle generally ends in yvgc ; in the latter, it usually 
 terminates ia ende. 
 
IiEOT. VIII. PKOTESTANT BIBLES 345 
 
 fields, and indeed upon the whole philological history of the 
 nation. Thus the English translations of the WyclifFite school, 
 the Danish version of 1550, and the German of Luther, are, 
 linguistically considered, among the very best examples of the 
 most cultivated phase, and most perfected form, of their re- 
 spective languages at the times when they appeared. The 
 Grerman and the Danish Bibles have, indeed, exerted a much 
 more important literary influence than the WycUffite. But 
 this is due, not more to superior excellence, than to the fact 
 that the former translations appeared after the invention 
 of printing, and were consequently easily and cheaply multi- 
 plied and distributed; and farther that their circulation was 
 encouraged and promoted by both the temporal and the eccle- 
 siastical authorities of the countries where they were published. 
 The Wycliffite versions, on the other hand, existed only in 
 manuscript during a period of between four and five centuries, 
 and, for a hundred and fifty j'ears, could be copied and circu- 
 lated only at great hazard to both transcriber and reader. 
 
 The excellence of translation, which was a necessary condition 
 of the literary influence of all these versions, is to be ascribed 
 to two principal causes. The first is the obvious one, that the 
 translators, as well as the public, were in a state of great reli- 
 gious sensibility, and inspired by the feeling of intellectual 
 exaltation and expansion, which always accompanies the eman- 
 cipation of the mind and conscience from the galling shafckles 
 of spiritual despotism. The other is the less familiar fact, that 
 the three languages were then marked by a simplicity of voca- 
 bulary and of verbal combination, which more nearly agreed 
 with the phraseology of the original Scriptures than does the 
 artificial and complicated diction of later ages ; and of course 
 they exhibit a closer resemblance to the Hebrew and Greek 
 texts than would be practicable with a more modern style of 
 expreEsion, and with a greater number of words more specific 
 in meaning and less capable of varied application.* 
 
 * See First Series, Lecture XXVIII., p. 635. 
 
346 WTCLIFFITE TBANSLATIONS Xect. VIII. 
 
 I have already occupied so large a portion of this course in 
 treating of the earlier forms of the English language and lite- 
 rature, that I cannot go much into detail with regard to the 
 peculiarities of the diction of the Wycliffite Scriptures; but the 
 most important of them will appear from an examination of 
 Wycliffe's and Purvey's versions of a chapter from the Grospels, 
 and a comparison of them with other translations. 
 
 I select the eighth chapter of Matthew for this purpose, and 
 for the convenience of comparison I give : 1. The Anglo-Saxon 
 version, from the Gospel of Matthew printed at the University 
 Press at Cambridge, in 1858 ; — 2. a word-for-word English trans- 
 lation of the Anglo-Saxon text ; — 3. Wycliffe's translation ; — ■ 
 4. Purvey's revision; — and 5. the Latin of the Vulgate, from 
 Stier and Theile, 1854. I add, by way of further illustration, at 
 the end of this lecture, the Moeso-Gothic of Ulfilas, and the 
 original Greek. Tyndale's and Cheke's translations of the same 
 chapter will be found at the end of Lecture XI. 
 
 THE EIGHTH CHAPTEE OF MATTHEW. 
 I. 
 
 1. SotSHce ])a se Hselend of fam munte nySer-astah, fa 
 
 2. (For-)sootli when the Savioiu- fi-om the mount came-down, there 
 
 3. Forsothe when Jhesns hadde comen doun fro the hil, 
 
 4. But whanne Jhesus was come doun fro the hil, 
 
 5. Cum autem descendisset de monte, 
 
 1. fjligdon him mycle msnio. 
 
 2. followed him great multitudes. 
 
 3. many cumpanyes fole widen hym. 
 
 4. mych puple suede hym. 
 5. seoutiE sunt eum turbas multse. 
 
 II. 
 
 1. Pa genealjehte dn hreofla to him and hine to him 
 
 2. Then nighed a leper to him and him(-self ) to him 
 
 3. And loo ! a leprouse man cummynge worshipide 
 
 4. And loo ! a leprouse man cam and worschipide 
 
 5. Et ecce I leprosus veniens adorabat 
 
I.EOT. viir. 
 
 WYCLIFFITE TRANSLATIONS 
 
 347 
 
 1. ge-ea^raedde, and fus cwceS ; 
 
 2. humbled, and thus spake ; 
 
 3. hyr 
 
 4. 
 5. 
 
 hym, 
 eum. 
 
 fu 
 
 thou 
 
 1. -wylt, 
 
 2. wilt, 
 
 3. wolt, thou 
 
 4. wolt, thou 
 
 saymge ; 
 
 and seide 
 
 dicens ; 
 
 milit 
 
 canst 
 maist 
 maist 
 
 Drihten, 
 Lord, 
 Lord, 
 Lord, 
 
 Domine, 
 
 gyf fu 
 if thou 
 jif thou 
 if thou 
 ei 
 
 5. vis, 
 
 potes 
 
 me gecltensian. 
 
 me cleanse. 
 make me clene. 
 make me clene. 
 
 me mimdaxe. 
 
 IIL 
 
 1. 
 
 2. 
 3. 
 4. 
 
 5. 
 
 1. 
 2. 
 3. 
 4. 
 5. 
 
 1. 
 2. 
 3. 
 4. 
 5. 
 
 Da astrehte se Htelend hys hand, and hrepode hyne 
 Then outstretched the Saviour his hand, and touched him 
 And Jhesus holdynge forthe the hond, touchide hym 
 
 And Jhesus helde forth the hoond, and touchide hym, 
 
 Et extendens Jesus manum, tetiffit eum 
 
 and J)us cwasS, Ic wylle ; 
 and thus spake, I will ; 
 
 sayinge, I wole ; 
 
 and seide, Y wole ; 
 
 dicens, Volo ; 
 
 hreofla wass hrjedlice 
 leprosy was immediately 
 the lepre of hym was 
 the lepre of him was 
 mundata est lepra 
 
 beo geclsensod. 
 
 be cleansed. 
 
 be thou maad clene. 
 
 be thou maad cleene. 
 
 mundare, 
 
 geclEensod. 
 cleansed^ 
 5 clensid. 
 clensid. 
 ejus. 
 
 hys 
 his 
 
 And 
 And 
 And anoon 
 And anoon 
 
 £t confestim 
 
 IV. 
 
 1. Da cw£e3 se Hselend to him, 
 
 2. Then said the Saviour to him, 
 
 3. And Jhesus saith to hym ; 
 
 4. And Jhesus seide to hym ; 
 5. Et ait illi Jesus; 
 
 1. hyt nsenegum men ne secge ; 
 
 2. it (to) no man tell ; 
 
 3. to no man; 
 
 4. to no man; 
 5. diseris ; 
 
 Wama ]>e ]>tBt ])u 
 
 See that thou 
 
 See, say thou 
 
 Se, seie thou 
 
 Vide, nemini 
 
 ac gang, seteowde 
 but go, show 
 
 but go, shewe 
 
 but go, shewe 
 
 Bed vade, ostende 
 
348 
 
 WYCLIFFITE TRANSLATIONS 
 
 Lect. VIII. 
 
 1. ]>e fam sacerde, and bring hym fa lac fe Moysea 
 
 2. tliee (to) the priest, and bring bim the gift that Moses 
 
 3. thee to prestis, and ofire that jifte that Moyses 
 
 4. thee to the prestis, and offre the gift that Moyses 
 5. te sacerdoti, et ofFer munus quod 
 
 1. bebead, on hyra gecySnesse. 
 
 2. bad, for their information. 
 
 3. comaundide, into witnessing to hem- 
 
 4. comaundide, in witnessyng to hem. 
 5. prsecepit Moyses, in testimonium illis. 
 
 SoSlice fa se Htelond ineode on Capharnaum, 
 
 (For-)sooth when the Saviour went-in to Capernaum, 
 
 Sothely when he hadde entride in to Capharnaum, 
 
 And whanne he haddo entrid in to Cafarnaum, 
 
 Cum autcm introisset Capharnaum, 
 
 1. fa geneatehte hym an himdrcdes ealdor, hyne 
 
 2. there nighed (to) him a hundred's captain, him 
 
 3. centurio neiiide to hym 
 
 4. the centm-ien neijede to him 
 5. accessit ad eum centurio 
 
 1. biddende, 
 
 2. praying, 
 
 3. preyinge hym, 
 
 4. and preiede him, 
 5. rogans eum, 
 
 VI. 
 
 1. And fus cweSende, Drihten, min cnapa W on mtnum 
 
 2. And thus saying, Lord, my knave lieth in my 
 Lord, 
 Lord, 
 
 Domine, 
 
 3. And 
 
 4. And 
 5. et 
 
 1. 
 2. 
 
 huse 
 house 
 
 said, 
 seide, 
 dicens, 
 
 lama, 
 I:inie, 
 
 my child lyeth in 
 my childe lijth in 
 puer meus jacet in 
 
 the 
 the 
 
 and mid yfle gefread. 
 and with evil afflicted. 
 
 3. hous sike on the palsie, andj is yuel tourmontid. 
 
 4. hous sijk on the palesie, and is yuel tui-mentid. 
 6. domo paralyticus, et male torquetur. 
 
lect. vnr. 
 
 •WTCLIFFITE TEANSLATIONS 
 
 349 
 
 VII. 
 
 1. Da cvseS se Hfelend to liim, Ic cnme and bine gehsele. 
 
 2. Then said the Saviour to ]iim, I come and him heal. 
 
 3. And Jhesus saith to hym, I shal cume, and shal hele hym. 
 
 4. And Jhesus seide to him, Y schal come,andschalheele him. 
 5. Et ait illi Jesus, Ego veniam, et curabo eum. 
 
 ])us cwseS, 
 thus said, 
 
 hym, 
 hym, 
 
 ait, 
 
 feet 
 that 
 that 
 that 
 ut 
 
 an 
 
 one 
 
 bi 
 
 ]>u 
 thou 
 thou 
 tliou 
 intres 
 
 word, 
 word, 
 word, 
 
 mgange 
 in-go 
 entre 
 entre 
 
 under 
 under 
 vndir 
 vndur 
 sub 
 
 VIII. 
 
 1. Da andswarode se hundredes ealdor and 
 
 2. Then answered the hundred's captain and 
 
 3. And centurio answerynge faith to 
 
 4. And the centiirien answei-ide, and seide to 
 5. Et respondens 
 
 1. Drihten, ne eom ic 
 
 2. Lord, not am I 
 
 3. Lord, I am not 
 
 4. Lord, Y am not 
 5. Domine, non suna 
 
 1. mine fecene ; 
 
 2. my roof; 
 
 3. my roof; 
 
 4. my roof ; 
 5. tectum meum ; 
 
 1. bits gehaeled. 
 
 2. will-be healed. 
 
 3. shall be helid. 
 
 4. shal be heelid. 
 
 5. sanabitur puer meus, 
 
 IX. 
 
 1. SoSlice ic eom man under anwealde gesett, and ic 
 
 2. (For-)sooth I am (a) man under authority set, and I 
 
 3. For whi and I am a man ordeynd vnder power, 
 
 4. For whi Y am a man ordeyned vndur power, 
 5. Nam et ego homo sum sub potestate constitutus, 
 
 hfebbe fegnas under me ; and ic cwseSe to Jjysum, Gang, 
 
 centm-io 
 
 wyrSe 
 worthy 
 worthi, 
 worthi, 
 dignus, 
 
 ac cwsbS ]>m 
 
 but speak thy 
 
 but oonly say 
 
 but oonli seie thou bi word, 
 
 sed tantum die verbo, 
 
 and min cnapa 
 and my knave 
 and my child 
 and my childe 
 et 
 
 1. 
 2. 
 3. 
 
 have soldiers under me ; and I say 
 
 hauynge vndir mo knijtis ; and I say 
 
 4" and haue knyjtis vndir me ; and Y seie 
 5. habens sub me milites ; et dico 
 
 to this. Go, 
 
 to this, Go, 
 
 to this, Go, 
 
 huic : Vade, 
 
350 WTCLIFFITE TRANSLATIONS Lkct. VIIT. 
 
 1. and lie gseS ; and ic cweSe to ofmm, Cum, and lie cymS ; 
 
 2. and lie goeth; and I say to (an-)other, Come, and he cometh ; 
 
 3. and he gotli ; and to an other, Cometh oil, and he cometh; 
 
 4. and he goith; and to another, Come, andhecometh; 
 5. et vadit ; et alii, Veni, et venit; 
 
 1. to minum peowe, Wyrc ])is, and he wyrcS. 
 
 2. to my servant. Do this, and he doeth. 
 
 3. and to my seruaunt, Do thou this thing, and he doth. 
 
 4. and to my seruaunt. Do this and he doith it. 
 5. et servo meo, Fao hoc, et facit. 
 
 X. 
 
 1. Witodlice fa se Hselend fis gehp-de, pa wundrode he, 
 
 2. Now when the Saviour this heard, then wondered he, 
 
 3. Sothely Jhesus, heerynge these thingis, wondride, 
 4:. And Jhesus herde these thingis, and wondride, 
 
 5. Audiens autem Jesus miratus est, 
 
 1. and cwsS to pam pe him fyligdon : SoB ic secge eow ne 
 
 2. and said to them that him followed : Sooth I say(to) you not 
 
 3. and saide^o men suynge hym : Trewly I saye to 50U 
 
 4. and seide to men that sueden him : Treuli I seie to jou 
 5. et sequentibus se dixit : Amen dico Tobis 
 
 1. gemette ic swa mycelne geleafan on Israhel. 
 
 2. met I so much belief in Israel. 
 
 3. I fond nat so grete feith in Yrael. 
 
 4. Y foond not so greete feith in Israel. 
 5. non inveni tantam fidem in Israel. 
 
 XI. 
 
 1. To soSum ic secge eow, Da3t manige cumaS iram 
 
 2. In sooth I say (to) you. That many (shall) come from 
 
 3. Sothely Y say to 50U, that manye shulen come fro 
 4. And Y seie to jou, that many schulen come fro 
 
 5. Dico autem vobis, quod multi ab Oriente et 
 
 1. east-dsele and west-dosle, and wuniaS mid Abrahams 
 
 2. (the) east-deal and (the) west-deal, and dwell with Abraham 
 
 3. the est and west, and shulen rest with Abraham 
 
 4. the eest and the west, and schulen reste with Abraham 
 5. Occidente venient et recumbent cum Abraham 
 
Lect. VIII. WTCLIFFITE TKANSLATIONS 351 
 
 1. and Isaace aiid Jacobe, on heofcna rice; 
 
 2. and Isaac and Jacob in heavens' realm; 
 
 3. and Ysaac and Jacob in the kyngdam of heiienes; 
 
 4. and Ysaac and Jacob in the kj'ngdom of heuenes; 
 5. et Isaac et Jacob in regno coelorum ; 
 
 XII. 
 
 1. Witodlice fises rices beam beoiS aworpene on fa yte- 
 
 2. Verily this realm's childi-en (shall) be out-cast in(to) the outei- 
 
 3. forsothe the sonys of the rewme shulen be cast out into vttre- 
 
 4. but the sones of the rewme schulen be cast out in to vtmer 
 5. filii autem regni ejicientur in tenebras 
 
 1. mestan fystro : ])a;r biS wop, and tofa gristbitung. 
 
 2. most darkness : there (shall) be weeping, and (of) teeth grinding. 
 
 3. mest derknessis; there shal be weepynge, and beetynge togidre of teeth. 
 
 4. derknessis ; there schal be wepj'ng, and grynting of teeth. 
 5. exteriores; ibi erit fletus et stridor dentium. 
 
 xin. 
 
 1. And se Ha^lend cwseS to fam hundrydes ealdre, 
 
 2. And the Saviour said to the hundred's elder, 
 
 3. And Jhesus saide to centurio, 
 
 4. And Jhesus seide to the centurioun, 
 
 5. Et dixit Jesus centurioni, 
 
 1. Ga ; and gewurSe J)6 swa swa ]'u gelyfdest. And se 
 
 2. Go; and be (it) (to) thee so as thou believedst. And the 
 
 3. Go ; and as thou hast bileeued be it don to thee. And the 
 
 4. Go ; and as thou hast bileuyd be it doon to thee. And the 
 5. Vade ; et sicut credidisti fiat tibi. Et 
 
 1. cnapa wses gehteled on I'asre tide. 
 
 2. knave was healed in that hour. 
 
 3. child was helid fro that houre. 
 
 4. child was heelid fro that hour. 
 5. sanatus est puer in ilia hora. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 1. Da se Hjelend com on Petrea liuse, 
 
 2. When the Saviour came in(to) Peter's house, 
 
 3. And when Jhesus hadde comen in to the housof Symond Petre, 
 
 4. And whanne Jhesus was comun in to the hous of Symount Petre, 
 5. Et cum venis.set Jesus in domum Petri, 
 
352 
 
 WrCLIFFITE TRANSLATIONS 
 
 Lect. VIII. 
 
 1. fa geseali he hys swegre licgende, and 
 
 2. then saw he his mother-in-law lying, and 
 
 3. he say his wyuea moder liggynge, and 
 
 4. he say his wyues modir liggynge, and 
 5. -vidit socrum ejus jacentem et 
 
 1. hriSgende. 
 
 2. feverish. 
 
 3. shakun with feueris. 
 
 4. shakun with feueris. 
 5. febricitantem. 
 
 XV. 
 
 hyre hand, and 
 her hand, and 
 hir hond, and 
 hir hoond, and 
 manum ejus, et 
 
 Sa aras heo, and fenode him. 
 then arose she, and sei-ved them, 
 and she roose, and seruyde hem. 
 4. and she rocs, and seruede hem. 
 5. et surrexit, et ministrabat eis. 
 
 1. And he a;thran 
 
 2. And he touched 
 
 3. And he touchide 
 
 4. And he touchide 
 5. Et 
 
 1. 
 2. 
 3. 
 
 tetigit 
 
 1. 
 2. 
 3. 
 
 4. 
 5. 
 
 1. manege deofol-seoce : 
 
 2. many devil-sick : 
 
 3. many hauynge deuelys : 
 
 4. manye that hadden deuelis : 
 5. multos dfemonia habentes : 
 
 1. unclsenan gastas mid hys worde, 
 
 2. unclean ghosts with his word, 
 
 3. spiritis by word, 
 
 4. spiritis bi word, 
 6. spiritus verbo, 
 
 se fefor hig fortlet ! 
 the fever her left : 
 the feuer lefte hir : 
 the feuer lefte hir : 
 dimisit earn febria : 
 
 XVI. 
 
 SoSlice fa hyt sefen wses, 
 Soothly when it evening was, 
 Sothely whan the euenyng was maad. 
 And whanne it was euen, 
 Vespere autem facto, 
 
 and 
 and 
 and 
 and 
 et 
 
 hig brohton him 
 
 they brought (to) him 
 thei broujte to hym 
 thei brougten to^ hym 
 obtulerunt ei 
 
 he ut-adreede fa 
 he out-drave tlie 
 he castide out 
 he castide out 
 ejiciebat 
 
 and he ealle 
 and he all 
 and helide alle 
 and heelide alle 
 et omnes 
 
Lect. viir. 
 
 WTCLIFFITE TEANSLATIONS 
 
 353 
 
 1. gehselde pa yfel-hrebbendan ; 
 
 2. healed tlie evil-having ; 
 
 3. hauynge yiiel; 
 
 4. that weren jnael at ese ; 
 5. male habentes curavit ; 
 
 1. Daet 
 
 2. That 
 
 ■wasre gefylled 
 micrht-be fulfilled 
 
 3. 
 
 4. 
 
 5. 
 
 1. 
 
 2. 
 3. 
 4. 
 
 5. 
 
 1. 
 2. 
 3. 
 4. 
 5. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 I set gecweden is Imrh Esaiam 
 what spoken is through Esaias 
 
 that it slinlde be fulfillid, that thing that was said by Ysaie, 
 that it wei-e fulfillid, that was seid by Ysaie, 
 
 ut adimpleretur, quod dictum est per Isaiam 
 
 cweSende, He 
 
 Jjone 
 the 
 the 
 the 
 
 witegan, 
 
 prophet, 
 
 prophete, 
 
 profete, 
 
 prophetam, 
 
 and 
 
 Sus 
 thus 
 
 saymge, 
 
 geiynge, 
 
 dicentem, 
 
 nessa, and he abaer ure 
 
 ities, and he bai-e our 
 
 tees, and here cure sykenessis. 
 
 tees, and bar oure siknessis. 
 
 accepit, et segrotationes nostras portavit. 
 
 xvni. 
 
 He 
 He 
 He 
 
 Ipse 
 adla. 
 ails. 
 
 ontcng m-e untrum- 
 
 took our infirm- 
 
 toke oiu'e infirmy- 
 
 took oxxre infirmy- 
 
 infirmitates nostras 
 
 1. Da geseah se Halend mycle menigeo ymbutan 
 
 2. When saw the Saviour much people about 
 
 3. Sothely Jhesus seeynge many cumpanyes about 
 
 4. -And Jhesus say myche puple aboute 
 5. Videns autem Jesus turbas midtas circiun 
 
 1 hyne, fa het he hig faran ofer fone muSan. 
 
 2. him, then bade he them (to) fare over the water. 
 
 3. hym, bad his discipUs go ouer the water. 
 
 4. him, and bade hise disciplis go ouer the watir. 
 
 5. se, 
 
 jussit 
 
 ire trans fretum. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 1. Da genealffihte him &a. bocere, and cwceS, 
 
 2. Then nighed (to) him a scribe, and said, 
 
 3. And oo scribe, or a man of lawe, commynge to, saide to hym, 
 
 4. And a scribe neijede, and seide to hym, 
 6. £t accedens unus scriba ait illi, 
 
 A A 
 
354 
 
 WTCLIFFITE TEANSLATIONS 
 
 Lect. VIII. 
 
 1. 
 
 Lareow, 
 
 ic 
 
 fylige 
 
 Tpe 
 
 2. 
 
 Teacher, 
 
 I 
 
 follow 
 
 thee 
 
 3. 
 
 Maistre, 
 
 I 
 
 shal sue 
 
 thee 
 
 4. 
 
 Maistir, 
 
 T 
 
 slial sue 
 
 thee 
 
 6. 
 
 Magister, 
 
 
 sequar 
 
 te 
 
 1. 
 
 ferst. 
 
 
 
 
 2. 
 
 farest. 
 
 
 
 
 3. 
 
 shalt go. 
 
 
 
 
 4. 
 
 schalt go. 
 
 
 
 
 5. 
 
 ieris. 
 
 
 
 
 Bwa hwseder swa ])U 
 
 whither-so-evei- thou 
 
 ■whidir euer thou 
 
 whidir euer thou 
 
 quocumque 
 
 XX. 
 
 1. Da cwajS se Hselend 
 
 2. Then said the Saviour 
 
 3. And Jheaus said 
 
 4. And Jhesus seide 
 5. Et dicit ei 
 
 1. liolu, and heofenan fuglas nest ; so^lice mannes sunu 
 
 2. holes, and heavens' fowls nests ; soothly man's son 
 
 3. dichis,or&orot«zs,andbriddisoftheeir Aan nestis; but mannes sone 
 
 4. dennes andbriddisofheuene/iaranestis; but mannus sone 
 5. habent, et voluores coeli nidos ; filiusaiitemhominia 
 
 to 
 
 him, 
 
 Foxas 
 
 hahba?? 
 
 to 
 
 him, 
 
 Foxes 
 
 have 
 
 to 
 
 hym, 
 
 Foxis 
 
 han 
 
 to 
 
 hym. 
 
 Foxis 
 
 han 
 
 
 Jesus, 
 
 Vulpes 
 
 foveas 
 
 1. nsefS hwEcr 
 
 2. has-not where 
 
 3. hath nat wher 
 
 4. hath not where 
 5. non habet ubi 
 
 he hys heafod ahylde. 
 
 he his head may-lay. 
 
 he reste his heued. 
 
 he schal reste his heed. 
 
 caput reclinet. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 1. Da cwsjS to him oper of hys 
 
 2. Then said to him (an)other of his 
 
 3. Sotheli an other of his disciplis saide to 
 
 4. Anothir of his disciplis seide to 
 5. Alius autem de discipulis ejus ait 
 
 1. Drihten, 
 
 2. Lord, 
 
 3. Lord, 
 
 4. Lord, 
 
 alyfe me serest 
 let me first 
 suffre me go first 
 Ruflfre me to go first 
 
 to 
 
 farenne 
 fare 
 
 5. Domine, permitte me primum ire 
 
 leoming-cnihtum, 
 disciples, 
 
 hym, 
 
 him, 
 iUi, 
 
 and bebyrigfian 
 
 and bury 
 
 and birye 
 
 and birie 
 
 et sepelire 
 
Lect. VIII. 
 
 ■WrCLIFFITE TEANSLATIONS 
 
 S55 
 
 1. minne feder. 
 
 2. my father. 
 
 3. niy fadir. 
 
 4. my fader. 
 5. patrem meum. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 1. 
 2. 
 3. 
 4. 
 
 5. 
 
 1. 
 
 2. 
 
 Da cwaeS se Hselend 
 Then said tlie Saviour 
 Forsotlie Jhesus saide 
 
 But Jhesus seide 
 
 Jesus autem ait 
 
 deade 
 
 (the) dead 
 3, dede men 
 4 
 5. 
 
 bury 
 birye 
 deed men hirie 
 mortuos sepelire 
 
 to him, Fylig me, 
 to him, Follow me, 
 to hym. Sue thou me, 
 to hym. Sue thSu me, 
 illi, Sequere me 
 
 bebyrigan hyra deadan. 
 
 and 
 
 Iset 
 
 and 
 
 let 
 
 and 
 
 late 
 
 and 
 
 lete 
 
 et 
 
 dunitte 
 
 their dead, 
 her dead men. 
 her deede men. 
 mortuos suos. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 1. 
 2. 
 3. 
 4. 
 
 5. 
 
 1. 
 2. 
 3. 
 4. 
 5. 
 
 1. 
 2. 
 3. 
 4. 
 
 5. 
 
 1. 
 2. 
 3. 
 4. 
 5. 
 
 And he astah on scyp 
 
 And he entered in(to) (a) ship and his 
 And Jhesu steyinge vp in to a litel ship, his 
 And whanne he was goon vp in to a litil schip, his 
 Et ascendente eo in naviculam, 
 
 hym fyligdon. 
 him followed. 
 sueden him. 
 sueden hym. 
 discipuli ejus. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 and hys leorning-cnyhtaa 
 
 disciples 
 
 disciplis 
 
 disciphs 
 
 secuti sunt eum 
 
 Da wearS mycel styrung geworden 
 Then was (a) gi-eat stir 
 And loo ! a grete steryng 
 And loo ! a greet stiring 
 
 £t ecce ! 
 
 was made 
 was maad 
 factus est 
 
 mid 
 
 motus magnus 
 
 •^ scyp wearS ofergoten ^ 
 
 the ship was over-poured with waves 
 the litil ship was hilid 
 the schip was hilid 
 
 navicula operiretur 
 
 ySum ; 
 
 with wawis 
 
 with wawes; 
 
 fluotibus ; 
 
 f ajre SEe, swa "p 
 
 the sea, so that 
 
 the see, so that 
 
 the see, so that 
 
 mari, ita ut 
 
 witodlice he slep. 
 verily he slept, 
 but he slepte. 
 but he slepte. 
 ipse vero dormiebat. 
 
 Aik. 2 
 
356 
 
 WTCLIFFITE TRANSLATIONS 
 
 Lect. VIII. 
 
 1. 
 
 2. 
 3. 
 
 4. 
 5. 
 
 1. 
 2. 
 3. 
 
 1. 
 
 2. 
 3. 
 
 4. 
 5. 
 
 1. 
 2. 
 3. 
 
 4. 
 5. 
 
 1. 
 2. 
 3. 
 
 1. 
 
 2. 
 3. 
 4. 
 5. 
 1. 
 2. 
 3. 
 4. 
 5. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 And hig genea]a?hton, and hf awdhton hyne, 
 
 And they nighed, and they awaked him, 
 
 And his disciplis camen nij to hym, and raysiden hym, 
 Andhisediscipliscamen to hym, and rej'siden hym, 
 Et accesserunt ad eum discipuli ejus, et snscitaverunt emn, 
 cwefSende, Drihten, hajle us : we moton forwurSan. 
 
 fus 
 thus 
 
 saying, Lord, 
 sayinge. Lord, 
 and seiden. Lord, 
 dicentes, Domine, 
 
 save us : we must perish, 
 saue vs: we perishen. 
 saue vs : we perischen. 
 salva nos: perimus. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 Da cwteS he to him, To liwi syntge forhte, ge lytles 
 Then said he to them. For why are ye affrighted ye(of)little 
 And Jhesus seith to hem, Wliat ben jpe of litil feith agast ? 
 And Jhesus seide to hem, "What ben je of litil feith agaste ? 
 Et dicit eis Jesus, Quid timidi estis, modicas fidei ? 
 
 geleafan. Da aras he and bebead fam winde and fsere 
 faith? Then arose he and bade the wind and the 
 Thanne he rysynge comaundide to the wyndis and the 
 Thanneheroosandcomaundidetothe wyndis and the 
 Tunc surgens imperavit ventis et 
 
 sffi, and fser wearS geworden mycel smyltness. 
 sea, and there was (a) great calm. 
 
 see, and a grete pesiblenesse is niaad. 
 see, and a greet pesibilnesse was maad. 
 mari, et facta est tranquillitas magna. 
 
 XXVIL 
 
 Gewisslice fa men 
 
 Verily then men 
 
 Eorsothe 
 
 And 
 
 Porro 
 
 is 
 
 is 
 
 wundrodun, 
 
 wondered, 
 
 men wondreden, 
 
 men wondriden, 
 
 homines mirati sunt, 
 
 ])es "p windas 
 
 this that winds 
 
 manere man is he this, for the wyndis 
 maner man is he this, for the wyndis 
 est hie, quia venti 
 
 and J)us cwsedon: Hwset 
 and thus spake : What 
 sayinge : What 
 
 and seiden : What 
 
 dicentes : Qualia 
 
 and sse him hyrsumiaS. 
 and sea him obey? 
 and the see obeishen to hym. 
 and the see obeischen to him. 
 et mare obediunt ei? 
 
I.ECT. VIIL 
 
 WTCLIFFITB TRANSLATIONS 
 
 357 
 
 1. 
 
 2. 
 3. 
 4, 
 
 2. 
 
 1. 
 2. 
 3. 
 
 4. 
 
 5. 
 
 1. 
 2. 
 3. 
 4. 
 
 5. 
 
 1. 
 
 2. 
 3. 
 4. 
 
 5. 
 
 1. 
 2. 
 3. 
 4. 
 5. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 Da se Hselend com oferfonemuSan on Geraseniscra 
 
 When the Saviour came over the water in(to) (the) Gergesenea 
 
 And whan Jhesus hadde comen ouer the water in to the craitre 
 
 And whanne Jhesus was comun ouer the watir in to the cuntre 
 
 Et cum venisset trans fretum in regionem 
 
 rice, fa umon him togenes twegen ]>& haafdon 
 coimtiy there ran him towards twain that had 
 of men of Genazereth twey men haujaige deuehs 
 
 of men of Gerasa 
 Gerasenorum, 
 
 deofol-seocnesse, of 
 
 devil-sickness, 
 
 to hym, 
 
 deuelis, 
 
 deemonia, 
 
 switSe reSe, swi 
 
 veiy ^"fierce, so 
 
 fill feerse, or wickid, so 
 
 fulwoode, so 
 
 sa3vi nimis, ita 
 
 ))urh ])one 
 
 through that 
 
 by that 
 
 bi that 
 
 per viam 
 
 twey men metten hym that hadden 
 occurrerunt ei duo habentes 
 
 byrgenum litgangende, fa wseron 
 from (the) tombs out-going, that were 
 goynge out fro birielis, 
 and camen out of graues, 
 de monumentis exeuntes, 
 
 f 
 
 that 
 that 
 that 
 ut 
 
 nan 
 no 
 no 
 
 noo 
 
 man 
 man 
 man 
 man 
 
 mihte faran 
 might fare 
 miste passe 
 myjte go 
 posset transire 
 
 weg. 
 
 way. 
 
 wey. 
 
 weie. 
 
 iham. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 1. And hig hrymdon, and cwasdon, 
 
 2. And they cried, and said, 
 
 3. And loo! thei crieden, sayinge, 
 
 4. And lo ! thei crieden, and seiden, 
 
 5. Et ecce ! clamaverunt dicentes. 
 
 La Hffilend Godes 
 
 O Saviour God's 
 
 What to vs and 
 
 What to vs and 
 
 Quid nobis et 
 
 1. sunu, hwast ys fe and us gemfene? come fu hider 
 
 2. son, what is (to) thee and us common? comest thou hither 
 
 3. to thee, Jhesu the sons of God? hast thou comen 
 
 4. to thee, Jhesu the sone of God ? art thou comun 
 
 5. tibi, Jesu, fill Dei ? Venisti hue 
 
358 
 
 WTCLIFFITK TKANSLATIONS 
 
 Lect. Vlll. 
 
 1. ser tide us to freagenne? 
 
 2. ere (the) time us to torment? 
 
 3. hidir before the tyme for to tourmente vs ? 
 
 4. hidir bifore the tyme to turmente vs ? 
 
 5. ante tempus torquere nos? 
 
 1. 
 2. 
 3. 
 4. 
 
 5. 
 
 1. 
 2. 
 3. 
 4. 
 5. 
 
 1. 
 2. 
 3. 
 
 4. 
 5. 
 
 1. 
 2. 
 3. 
 4. 
 5. 
 
 Dser w£es sotSlice 
 There was verily 
 
 Sothely a fioc, or droue, 
 And not fer fro hem 
 
 Erat autem non longe a 
 
 XXX. 
 
 unfeorr an S'wyna Leord 
 
 unfar an (of) swine herd 
 of many hoggis lesewynge 
 
 was a floclce of many swyne 
 illis grex mxiltorum porcorum' 
 
 manegra manna, la3swiende. 
 (of) many men, feeding, 
 was nat fer from hem. 
 
 lesewynge. 
 pasoens. 
 XXXI. 
 
 Da deofla soSlice hyne btedon, ]>ms cweSende, Gyf 
 
 The devils verily him begged, thus saying, If 
 
 But the deuelis preyeden him, seyinge, gif 
 
 And the deuelis preyeden tym, and seiden, If 
 
 Dsemones autem rogabant eum, dicentes. Si 
 
 ]>u us ut-adrifst, asendeus on fas swine heorde. 
 
 thou us out-drivest, send us in(to) this (of) swine herd. 
 
 thou castist out vs hennes, sende vs in to the droue of hoggis. 
 
 thou castist out vs fro hennes, sende vs in to the droue of swyne. 
 
 ejicis nos hinc, mittenosin gregem porcorum. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 1. Da cwse'S he to him, FaraS. And hig ]>a, 
 
 2. Then said he to them, Fare. And they then 
 
 3. And ho saith to hem, Go gee. And thei goynge 
 
 4. And he seide to hem. Go je. And thei jeden 
 5. Et ait illis, Ite. At illi exeuntea 
 
 1. utgangende ferdon 
 
 2. out-going fared 
 
 3. out wente 
 
 4. out and wenten 
 6. abierunt 
 
 on Jia swm ; 
 
 in(to) the swine ; 
 
 in to the hoggis ; 
 
 in to the swyne ; 
 
 in porcos j 
 
 and foBrrihte 
 
 and forthwith 
 and loo ! in a 
 and loo ! in a 
 et ecce 1 
 
Lect. VIIL 
 
 WTCLIFFITE TRANSLATIONS 
 
 359 
 
 1. ferde eall seo heord myclum onrsese 
 
 2. fared all the herd (with) a great rush 
 
 3. greet hire al the droue wente hecdlj'nge 
 
 4. greet hire al tlie droue wente heedl3'ng 
 
 5. impetu abiit totus grex per praaoeps 
 
 1. and hig wurdon deade on 
 
 2. and they were dead in 
 
 3. and thai ben dead in 
 
 4. and thei weren deed in 
 
 5. et mortui sunt in 
 
 niwel on ])a S£e, 
 down in (to) the sea, 
 in to the see, 
 in to the see, 
 . in mare, 
 
 fam wa;tere. 
 the water. 
 
 watris. 
 
 the watris. 
 
 aquis. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 1. Da hyrdas witodhce flugon, and comun on fa 
 
 2. The herdsmen verily fled, and came in(to) the 
 
 3. Forsothe the hirdes fledden awey, and cummynge in to the 
 
 4. And the hirdis fledden awey, and camen in to the 
 5. Pastores autem fugerunt, et venientes in 
 
 1. ceastre, and cyddon ealle fas fing; and be ]iam 
 
 2. city, and (made) known all these things; and about them 
 
 3. citee, tolden alle these thingis; and of hem 
 
 4. citee and telden aUe these thingis; and of hem 
 
 5. civitatem nuntiaverunt omnia ; et de lis 
 
 1. fe fa deoful-seocnyssa hsefdon. 
 
 2. that the devil-sickness had. 
 
 3. that hadden the fendis. 
 
 4. that hadden the feendis. 
 
 5. qui dajmonia habuerant. 
 
 1. 
 
 2. 
 3. 
 4. 
 
 5. 
 
 Da code 
 Then went 
 And loo ! 
 And lo! 
 
 Et ecce ! 
 
 eall 
 all 
 al 
 al 
 
 tota 
 
 seo 
 the 
 the 
 the 
 
 xxxrv. 
 
 ceaster-wani 
 citizens 
 citee 
 citee 
 civitas 
 
 togeanea fam 
 towards the 
 wente ajeinis 
 wente out ajens 
 exiit obviam 
 
 Hselende, 
 
 Saviour, 
 
 Jhesu, 
 
 Jhesu, 
 
 Jesu, 
 
 1. and fa fa hig hyne gesawun, Sa bffidon hig hyne 
 
 2. and when that they him saw, then bade they him 
 
 3. metynge hym ; and hym seen, thei preiden hym, 
 
 4. and whanne thei hadden seyn hym, thei preieden 
 
 5. et Tiso eo rogabant 
 
360 eeeefokd's teakslation Lect. VlIL 
 
 1. f he ferde fram heora gemjerum. 
 
 2. that he (would) fai-e from their borders. 
 S. that he shulde pass fi-o her coostis. 
 4. that he wolde passe fro her coostis, 
 
 5. ut transiret a finibus eorum. 
 
 The earlier Wycliffite text of the first part of the Old Testa- 
 ment, or that ascribed to Hereford, is remarkable both for the 
 resuscitation of obsolete Anglo-Saxon forms, and for the intro- 
 duction of Latinisms resulting from an attempt at a literal close- 
 ness of rendering.* 
 
 Both these circumstances give some cotmtenance to the SHp- 
 position, that Hereford's work is only a recension of an English 
 prose translation belonging to a considerably earlier philological 
 period ; but there is no evidence whatever of the existence of 
 any such, and it is not impossible that Hereford's vocabulary 
 and accidence were influenced by a familiarity with the Anglo- 
 Saxon version of the New Testament, and of parts of the Old. 
 
 Among the Saxonisms, I may mention the use of the gerun- 
 dial instead of the passive. The Saxon gerundial ended in 
 enne, and was used with the prefix to, like our modern infinitive. 
 'Ihus, he is to lufigenne signified, both, he is about to love, and, 
 more frequently, he is to be loved. This form Hereford employs, 
 substituting the termination iyige for enne, as, al that is to wer- 
 chynge, meaning, all that is to be wrought ; the kid is to seeth- 
 inge, the kid is to be sodden, or boiled. 
 
 He omits the possessive sign in s, saying dow^ir husbonde, 
 unJcil dowjfir, husbonde fadir, for daughter's husband, uncle's 
 daughter, husband's father.f 
 
 He uses the verb be as a future, as, they ben to seyn, for, they 
 will say. 
 
 * In Lecture V., I accompanied tlie 102ncl Psalm, from the Surtees Psalter, vdth 
 Hereford's translation. I add to this lecture, Longer Notes and Illustrations, IL, 
 Purvey's translation of the same psalm, for the sake of comparison. 
 
 t Examples of this omission of the modern possessive sign are found in wiiten 
 of the earlj part of the sixteenth cent'iry. 
 
Lect. VIII. ■WTCLIFFE AND rUEVEY 361 
 
 He employs oure and youre as genitives plural, not as pos- 
 sessive pronouns, as, oure dreed, the dread of us ; youre feer, 
 the fear of you. 
 
 He uses the Anglo-Sitson feminine ending in ster, as daun- 
 ster, a female dancer, sleester or slayster, a murderess, syngster, 
 a songstress. 
 
 But the most remarkable peculiarities of his style are the 
 Latinisms. 
 
 Thus he renders the ablative absolute literally, as, for ex- 
 ample, the viso somnio of the vulgate, not, as at present, 
 ' a vision having been seen,' or ' having seen a vision,' but 
 directly, a seen s^ceven* The Latin impersonal videbatur, it 
 seemed, he renders it was seen, and he constantly uses the 
 accusative before the infinitive. Thus, instead of ' I dreamed 
 that ive loere binding sheaves,'' he has ' I dreamed us to binden 
 sheaves;' but this, though most probably a mere transference of 
 a Latin form, is possibly a native idiom, for it is of frequent 
 occurrence in Icelandic. 
 
 In Wycliffe's and Purvey's texts, these un-English expres- 
 sions disappear, and are superseded by more modern etymolo- 
 gical and syntactical forms. The feminine ending ster, for 
 example, is superseded by the French esse; and this ending is 
 employed much more freely than at present, and is applied 
 indiscriminately to Saxon and Romance roots. Thus we have 
 daunseresse, disciplesse, dwelleresse, devouresse, servauntesse, 
 sleeresse, thrallesse, waileresse, and the like. 
 
 The syntax of these latter translators is by no means free 
 from either Latin or French constructions, but it is, neverthe- 
 less, much more idiomatic than that of Hereford. The gram- 
 matical change, by which the active or present participle in 
 -ende assumed the form of the verbal noun in -ing, and which 
 I have discussed in my Fii'st Series, Lecture XXIX., became 
 
 * This Latinism, it will have been seen, occurs also in Wjcliflfe, though rarely. 
 Thus, in the 34th verse of the eighth chapter of Matthew, abeady given, the et 
 riso eo of the vulgate is rendered and hym seen, without any regimen, the phrase 
 being taken absolutely, as in Latin. 
 
362 ■WTCLIFFE AND PUKTET Leci. VIII. 
 
 established while these translations were in process of execution. 
 The distinction between the participle and the noun was kept 
 up with considerable regularity until towards the end of the 
 fourteenth century, when it was lost sight of; the participial 
 termination in -and or -end became obsolete, and both participle 
 and verbal noun took the common ending -ing. The former 
 translator of the Apocrypha, the Psalms, Proverbs, and the 
 Prophets, used the two forms, and, with few exceptions, accu- 
 rately discriminated between them ; but when Wycliffe took up 
 the continuation of Hereford's work, the participle in -end had 
 gone so much out of use that he dropped it altogether, and 
 employed the termination -ing only, for both participle and 
 noun. Hence, in Baruch iii. 18, which belongs to Hereford, 
 we find, ' there is noon ende of the jpurcltasing of hem,' pur- 
 chasing being a verbal noun ; but as, in his translation, the 
 true participle almost always ends in -end or -ende, we have, 
 Baruch iii. 11, 'Thou art set with men goende down to helle.' 
 On the other hand, in verse 25 of the same chapter, in 
 Wycliffe's continuation, 'greet and not hauynge eende' occurs, 
 though hauynge is a true participle ; and this form is always 
 used afterwards. 
 
 Purvey's text of the New Testament is evidently founded on 
 Wycliffe's translation, as his Old Testament probably is on that 
 of Hereford. Purvey had thought much on the general prin- 
 ciples of translation, and especially on the rules to be adopted 
 in rendering Latin into a language of so diverse a grammatical 
 structure as English. The prologue to his recension, which fills 
 sixty large quarto pages in Madden and Forshall's edition of 
 the Wycliffite versions, is extremely interesting. I insert; from 
 the concluding part of it, a couple of extracts which will give 
 the reader some idea both of his style and of his theory of 
 translation. 
 
 For these resons and othere, with comime cliarite to saue alle 
 men in cure rewme, whiohe God wole haue sauid, a symple creature 
 hath translatid the bible out of Latyn into English. First, this sympl^ 
 
Lect. VIII. PTJETET ON TRANSLATION 363 
 
 creature hadde myclie trauaile, with diuerse felawis and helperis, to 
 gedere manie elde biblis, and othere doctouris, and coraime glosis, and 
 to make oo Latjn bible sumdel trewe; and thanne to studie it of the 
 newe, the text with the glose, and othere doctouris, as he mijte gete, 
 and special! Lire on tlie elde testament, that hclpide fill nyche in this 
 werk ; the ttrTdde tyme to counseile witli elde gramariens, and elde 
 dyuynis, of liarde wordis, and harde sentencis, hon tlio mijten best be 
 vndurstonden and translatid ; the iiij. tynie to translate as cleerli as he 
 coude to the sentence, and to haue manie gode felawis and kunnynge at 
 the correcting of the translacioun. First it is to knowe, that the best 
 translating is out of Latyn into English, to translate aftir the sentence, 
 and not oneli aftir the wordis, so that the sentence be as opin, either 
 openere, in English as in Latyn, and go not fer fro the lettre ; and if 
 the lettre mai not be suid in the translating, let the sentence euere be 
 hool and open, for tlie wordis owen to serue to the entent and sentence, 
 and ellis the wordis ben superflu either false. In tTanslating into 
 English, manie resolucions moun make the sentence open, as an ablatif 
 case absolute may be resoluid into these thre wordis with couenable 
 verbe, the while, for, if, as gramariens seyn ; as thus, the maistir 
 redinge, I stonde, mai be resoluid thus, while the maistir redith, I 
 stonde, either if the maistir redith, etc. either /or the maistir, etc. ; and 
 sumtyme it wolde acorde wel with the sentence to be resoluid into 
 whanne, either into aflirivard, thus, whanne the maistir red, I stood, 
 either aftir the maistir red, I stood; and sumtyme it mai wel be 
 resoluid into a verbe of the same tens, as othere ben in the same 
 resoun, and into this word et, that is, and in English, as thus, arescen- 
 tibus hominibus prce timore, that is, and men shuten wexe drie for drede. 
 Also a participle of a present tens, either preterit, of actif vois, eithir 
 passif, may be resoluid into a verbe of the same tens, and a coniunc- 
 cioun copulatif, as thus, dicens, that is, seiynye, mai be resoluid thus, 
 and seith eithir that seith ; and this wole, in manie placis, make the 
 sentence open, where to Englisshe it aftir the word, wolde be derk and 
 douteful. Also a relatif, which mai be resoluid into his antecedent 
 with a coniunccioun copulatif, as thus, which renneth, and he renneth. 
 Also whanne oo word is oonis set in a reesoun, it mai be set forth as 
 ofte as it is vndurstonden, either as ofte as reesoun and nede axen ; and 
 this word autem, either vero, mai stonde tor forsothe, either for but, and 
 thus I vse comounli ; and sumtyme it mai stonde for and, as elde 
 gramariens seyn. Also whanne rijtful constmccioun is lettid bi rela- 
 cion, I resolue it openli, thus, where this reesoun, Dominum formida- 
 lunt adversary ejus, shulde be Englisshid thus bi the lettre, the Lord 
 
364 PUEVEY ON TRANSLATION I-ECT. VIII. 
 
 hise aduerearies shulen drede, I Englishe it thus bi resolucioun, the 
 aduersaries of the Lord shulen drede him ; and so of othere resons that 
 ben like. 
 
 Sithen at the bigynnyng of felth so manie men translatiden into 
 Latyn, and to greet profy t of Latyn men, lat oo symple creature of God 
 translate into English, for profyt of English men ; for if worldli clerkis 
 loken vrel here croniolis and bokis, thei shulden fynde, that Bede trans- 
 latide the bible, and expounide myche in Saxon, that was English, 
 either comoun langage of this lond, in his tyme ; and not oneli Bede, 
 but also king Alured, that foundide Oxenford, translatide in hise laste 
 dales the bigynning of the Sauter into Saxon, and wolde more if he 
 hadde lyued lengere. Also Frenshe men, Beemers and Britons han the 
 bible, and othere bokis of deuocioim and of exposicioun, translatid in 
 here modir langage; whi shulden not English men haue the same in 
 here modir langage, I can not wite, no but for falsnesse and necgligence 
 of clerkis, either for oure puple is notworthi to haue so greet grace and 
 jifte of God, in peyne of here olde S5'nnes. God for his raerci amende 
 these euele causis, and make oure piiple to haue, and kunne, and kepe 
 truli holi writ, to lijf and deth! But in translating of wordis equiuok, 
 that is, that halh manie significacions vndur oo lettre, mai '\ipM be 
 pereil, for Austyn seith in the ij. book of Cristene Teching, that if 
 equiuok wordis be not translatid into the sense, either vndurstonding, 
 of the autour, it is eiTour; as in that place of the Salrae, the feet of 
 hem hen swifte to shede out Mood, the Greek word is equiuok to sharp 
 and swift, and he that translatide sharpe feet, erride, and a book that 
 hath sharpe feet, is fals, and mut be amendid ; as that sentence 
 vnhynde %onge trees shulen not -ifiue deep rootis, owith to be thus, 
 2>laiinti)igis of anoutrie shulen not y^iie depe rootis. Austyn seith this 
 there. Therfore a translatour hath greet nede to studie wel the sentence, 
 both bifore and aftir, and loke that suche equiuok wordis acorde with 
 the sentence, and he hath nede to lyue a clene lif, and bo ful deuout in 
 preiers, and haue not his wit ocupied about worldli thingis. that the 
 Holi Spiryt, autour of wisdom, and kuunyjig, and truthe, dresse him 
 in his werk, and sufTre him not for to erre. Also this word ex signifieth 
 sumtyme of, and sumtyme it signifieth hi, as Jerom seith; and this 
 word enim signifieth comynVi forsothe, and, as Jerom seith, it signifieth 
 cause thus, forwhi ; and this word secundum is taken for aftir, as manie 
 men seyn, and comynli, but it signifieth wel bi, eithir vp, thus bi ^oure 
 word, either I'p y)ure word. Manie such aduerbis, couiuncciouns, and 
 pre^osiciouns ben tet ofte oon for a nother, and at fre chois of autouri* 
 
Lhjt. viii. the sacred dialect 365 
 
 Biuntyme ; and now tho shnlen be taken as it acordith best to the sen- 
 tence. Bi this maner, with good lyuyng and greet traiiel, men moun 
 come to trewe and cleer translating, and trewe vndurstonding of holi 
 ■writ, seme it neuere so hai'd at the bigynning. God graunte to us alle 
 gi-ace to kunne wel, and kepe wel holi writ, and suiFre ioiefulli sum 
 peyne for it at the laste ! Amen. 
 
 One of the most important effects produced by the Wycliffite 
 versions on the English language is, as I have intimated, the 
 establishment of what is called the sacred or religious dialect, 
 •which was first fixed in those versions, and has, with little 
 variation, continued to be the language of devotion and of 
 scriptural translation to the present day. 
 
 This is most obvious in the verbal forms. Chaucer, and 
 other secular writers contemporary with Wycliffe, very generally 
 use the Anglo-Saxon th as tlie ending of the third person 
 singular present indicative of the verb, and frequently, though' 
 not constantly, in all the persons of the plural and in the im- 
 perative, and they also very often employ the plural pronoun 
 you, in addressing a single person. Wycliffe constantly, I 
 believe, confines the tk to the singular verb, and never employs 
 it for the imperative ; he makes the plural ending in en ; and 
 never employs ye or you in the singular number.* All this is 
 modern usage, except that en as the plural sign of the verb has 
 been dropped. In short, the conjugation of Wycliffe's verbs 
 corresponds in all points very nearly to our own, with this dif- 
 ference, that in modern times the strong verbs are constantly 
 inclining more and more to the weak conjugation.f 
 
 It is curious, that the language of the original works ascribed 
 to Wycliffe is much less uniform and systematic than that of 
 
 * Hereford's general use of the verb and pronoun is the same as Wycliffe's, but 
 he makes the imperative plural in th. Thus, in Barueh ii. 21 — the last passage 
 of Hereford's translation, in which the imperative plural occurs — we find : Thus 
 Beith the Lord, Bowiih doun youre shuldris, where Purvey has : Bowc ye youre 
 Bchuldur. In Wycliffe's continuation, the first imp. pL is in Barueh iv. 9, and the 
 th is dropped: zee ni; coosHs of Syon, heere! 
 
 t See Illustration III., at the end of this lecture. 
 
366 WYCLIFFE'S COMMENTAUT Lect. VIIL 
 
 his translation of the New Testament, the grammar of which, 
 instead of varying and fluctuating according to the confused 
 usage of most authors of that time, appears to conform to a 
 standard deliberately adopted and very regularly followed. 
 
 There is a good deal of difficulty in identifying any extant 
 manuscript as, certainly, the work of Wycliffe, but there are 
 several which are ascribed to him with every appearance of 
 probability. The following extracts are taken from the pro- 
 logue to Luke, in a commentary upon the Gospels, believed to 
 have been composed by him. I print them from the preface 
 to Madden and Forshall's edition of the ' Wycliffite Versions,' 
 p. ix. 
 
 Herfore [a pore] caityf, lettid fro prechyng for a tyme for causes 
 knowun of God, writith the gospel of Luk in Englysh, with a short 
 .exposicioun of olde and holy doctouris, to the poi-e men of his nacioun 
 whiche kunnen litil Latyn ether noon, and ben pore of wit and of 
 worldli catel, and netheles riche of good will to please God. Firste 
 this pore caitif settith a ful sentence of the text togidre, that it may 
 wel be knowun fro the exposicioun ; aftirward he settith a sentence of 
 a doctour declarynge the text ; and in the ende of the sentence he 
 settith the doctouris name, that mm mowen knowe verili hou fer his 
 sentence goith. Oneli the text of holi writ, and sentence of olde doc- 
 touris and appreuyd, ben set in this exposicioun. 
 
 If eny lernyd man se this exposicioun and suppose eny errour 
 tlierynne, for Goddis loue loke he wel his originals, and sette ynne the 
 treue sentence of these doctouris ; for men desiren no thing in this ex- 
 posicioun, no but profitable treuthe for cristen soulis. Y sette shortly 
 and pleynly, as Y may and kan, the sentence of these doctouris, and 
 not barely her wordis, in as myche as thei declaren the text, and seyen 
 treuthe groundid on holi Scripture ether quyk resoun, and accordynge 
 with the blessid lijf of Crist and his apostlis; desirynge that no man 
 triste more than thus to her sentence, nether to eny mannys seying, in 
 what euer staat he be in erthe. Thus with Goddis grace pore cristen 
 men mown sumdel knowe the text of the Gospel, with the comyn 
 sentence of olde holy doctouris, and theiynne knowe the meke and 
 pore and charitable lyuyng of Grist and his apostlis, to sue hem in 
 vertues and blys ; and also knowe the proude and coueitouse and 
 veniable lyuyng of Antecrist and his fautouris, to fle hem and her 
 
Lect. VIII. wtcliffe's apology 367 
 
 cursid dedis, and peynes of helle. For no doute as cure Lord Jhesu 
 Crist and his apostlis profesien pleynli, Antecrist and his cursid 
 disciplis shulen come, and dissej'uo n)any men by ypocrisie and 
 tyraiintrie ; and the beste arnieer of cristen men a;5ens this cursid 
 cheuenteyn witli his cost, is the text of holy writ, and namely the 
 gospel, and veri and opyn ensaumple of Cristis lijf and his apostlis-, 
 and good lyuyng of men ; for thanne thei shulen knowe wel Antecrist 
 and his meynee bi her opyn dedis conti-aiie to Cristis techyng and 
 lyuyng. Crist Jhesu, for thyn endeles power, mercy and charitie, 
 make thi blessid lawe knowun and kept of thi puple, and make knowun 
 the ypocrisie and tirauntrie and cursiduosse of Antecrist and his 
 meynee, that dii puple be not disseyued bi hem. Amen, gode Lord 
 Jhesu. 
 
 I add chapters v. and xvi. from the ' Apology for the Lol- 
 lards,' ascribed, upon probable grounds, to Wycliffe, and pub- 
 lished by the Camden Society. These chapters ai'e fair spe- 
 cimens of Wycliffe's argumentation, but by no means of his 
 declamation, and of his invective, which he carries to lengths 
 of great severity, exposing with an unsparing hand the eccle- 
 siastical abuses of his time. 
 
 An ofer is J)is fat is put and askid, fat ilk prest may vse ]>e key in to 
 ilk man. To fis, me finkif, I may wel sey Jjus, syn al power is of God, 
 and, as |>e gospel sei]?, fer is no power but of God, ne man may do no 
 fing, but if he geue him ]>e mijt ; as Crist seif, %e may wif out me do 
 no fing, fat onely a man vse his power in to ilk f ing, as God werkif bi 
 him, and lefif him to vse it vnblamfully, and no ibr])er, and fro fat may 
 no man lette him. And fis is fat we sey, fat we may of rijt so, if fer 
 be ani vsing of poAver, or callid power, fat is not bi Crist, fat is no 
 power, but tkls pride, and presumid, and onli in name, and as to ^end 
 and effect is nowgt. Neuerf eles, a, man is seid to haue power, and leue 
 to vse power, in many wyse, as sum bi lawe and ordre of kynd, sum bi 
 lawe and ordre of grace, and some bi lawe and ordre made and writun. 
 And so it is seid bi lawe fat is mad of f e kirk, fat illi prest haf f e 
 same power to vse fe key in to ani man in fo poynt of def, as fe 
 pope; but not ellia, not but autorite in special be jeuun to him of fe 
 kiik fer to. But if it be askid, if ilk prest mai vse fe key in to ilk 
 man, fat is to sey, to assoile him, or ellis to bind him fro grace, it semif 
 opunly fat ilk prest may not asoile ilk to bring him to heuyn ; for f e 
 gospel self, fat Crist in a coost of f e Jewis rni^t not do ari vertu fer, 
 
368 wtcliffe's apoloot Lect, Vlll, 
 
 for pe vntrouf , not but lielid a few seek, f e handus leyd vjjon, and he 
 maruelid for per vntrowf ; fan, wan Crist, ])at is God Almijty, and of 
 his absolut power may al Jiing, and no fing is vnpossible to him, nor no 
 fing aiiay a5en stond him, and jet may not of his ordinat power jele pe 
 folk for ficr ontrowp, and vndisposicoun, and vnabiKte to reseyue, mich 
 more ani of er benej) may aiot help, but after J>e disposicoun of him fat 
 receyuif. Al so it semif bi fia, fat f e pope may not bring in to grace, 
 ne bles, him fat lastif in vntrowf , and in f er synnis ; os it semif bi 
 Jewes and Saracenis and ofer swilk, os is witnessid, and of feifful 
 "witnes. Also God jaue him no fiirrer power, not but asoyl hem fat 
 ■wil leue f er synne, or to bynd hem and curse fat wil dure f er inne. 
 And bi so fe same resoun none ofer prest may not excede. And if it 
 be axid wef er ilk prest haf as mykil power as f e pope, as a nenist God, 
 it semif to me fat is foly to a fermo in fis case oif er jie or nay, be for 
 fat it mai be schewid out of Holi Writte. And so it semif al so to nie 
 it is foly ani prest to presume him to haue euyn power wif ilk ofer, be 
 for fat he may gi'ound him in f e feif ; and foli it were to deme to ani 
 man any power fat God haf jeuun to him, or fe vsyng fer of; for 
 certeyn I am, how euer ani man tak power to him, or vse power, it 
 profif not, but in as myche as God geiiip it, and wirkif wif it, and con- 
 fermif it ; and certayn I am, fat f e power fat God jaue Petre, he jaue 
 it not to him alone, ne for him alone, but he jaue it to fe kirk, and for 
 f kirk, and to edifying of al f e kirk ; os he jeuif f e sijt of f e ee, or 
 f e act of ani menibre of f e body, for help and edifying of al fe body. 
 And Sent Jerom seif. Sum tyme f e prest was J'at ilk fat ]ie bischop. 
 And bi for fat bats were made in religioun bi stinging of f e fend, and 
 ■was seid in f e peple, I am of Petre, I of Poule, I' of Apollo, I of 
 Cephas, f e kirkis were gouernid bi fe comyn of prestis coimseil. But 
 after fat ilk man callid him fat he baptijid his, and not Grists, fan was 
 in al f e world wordoynid fat on of f e prestis sohuld be made oheie, 
 and f e seedis of scysmis sclrald be tan a wey. fer as prestis wit hem to 
 be to fer souereynis sogets be custum of fis kii-k, so kuaw bischopis 
 hem to be more of custum fan of dispensacoun of Goddis trowf , to fer 
 sogets, f e more fer souerej-ns, and in comyn f ei owe to gouern f e kirk. 
 Lo I sey bisohops present, and fat f ei stondun nere him, prests mai in 
 f e autere mak f e sacrament. But for it is writun, Prestis fat prestun 
 wel bi fei worfi had dowble honor, most fat f ei trauel in word and 
 teching : it semif hem to preche, it is profit to bles, it is congrew to 
 sacre, it cordif to hem to jeue comyn, it is necesari to hem to visit f e 
 eek, to pray for f e vnniijti, and to fele of f e sacraments of God. per- 
 for non of f e bischopis, enblawen wif enuy of f e fendis temptacoun, 
 
Lect. Vlir. •wtcliffe's apologt 369 
 
 wra)), if prestis onerwile exort or monest ]>e peple, if f ei prcche in 
 kiric, if fey blesse ]>e floe, for I schal sey ])us to hym fat wernij) me 
 f eis fings, he fat wil not prestiis do fing fat f ei are bidun of God, spy 
 he wat is more fan Crist? or wat may be put beforn his flesch and blode? 
 And if ])e prest sacre Crist wan he blessif f e sacrament of God in f e 
 auter, awif he not to blessif f e peple, fat di-edi]) not to sacre Crist ? A 
 je vniust prestis f orow 5or bidding ])e prest of God stintif fe office of 
 blessing, a bowt lewid men and women ; he stintif f e wark of tong, he 
 haf no tryst of preching, he is dockid on ilk part, he haf only fe name 
 of prest, but he holdif not fe plente ne fe perfeccoun fat fallif to his 
 eonsecracoun. I pray jow prestis wat honor is f is to jow, fat je bring 
 in f e damage of alle f e folke ? for wan worf i diligence is taken a wey fro 
 prestis bi power, sum smiting of mischef rysif in f e flok ; and je gey t 
 harme of f e Lordis patrimoyn, til je alon wil be potentats in f e kirk. 
 And for f i seyn of er men f us, if a bischop in conferming ])at he appro- 
 prif to him silf wif out ground of f e Scripter, jeuif grace, whi not a 
 simple prest fat in merit is more at God, of mor merit, gefe mor worf i 
 sacraments? Sum tyme was no resoun, wan fe same was bischop and 
 prest. And bi forn fat presthed was hied, or veriliar filyd cursidly bi 
 fe world, ilk prest of Crist was callid indifferently prest and bischop, 
 as it semif be f e wordis of Jerom. — [Chnp. V.] 
 
 An of er poynt fat is putt is f is, fat f er is no pope ne Cristis vicar, 
 but an holy man. pis may f us be prouid ; for him be howuif to be 
 halowid wif fe saciament of baptem, and of presthed, and of dignite. 
 And oft is bidim to prestis in f e lawe to be holy and halow of er ; and 
 for hoj'le of halowing of f e Lord is vp on hem. Also fus prayif Crist 
 for alle his, Fader, halow hem in trowf , fi word is trowf , as fu hast 
 send [me] in to f e world, so haue I send hem in f e world, and for hem 
 I halow myself, fat f ei be halowid in trowf. And fus is hadde in 
 decreis ; Lo it aperif how f ei schal schap f e perel of f e charge, fat fey 
 be f olid to minister prestly of er sacraments, for fey are remeuid fro f is 
 not only for heresy, or of er ilk gretter syn, but also ibr negligens. In 
 wilk fin^is bysily it is to not, fat f e sacrament of piesthed befor of er, 
 more worf ily, and wif cure, is to be jeuen and tane ; for but if it be 
 so 5euen and tane, it schal fuyle to be rate or ferme, os it is not perfitly 
 done. Of er sacramentis are 5euen to ilk man for himsilf, and silk fey 
 are to ilk man as f ei are tane wi]) hart and concience ; but f is is not 
 only jeuen for hem silf but for ofer, and ferfor is nede it be tane wif 
 verrey hart and clene concience for him self, and as to ojier, not only 
 wif out ilk synne, but also wif out ilk name of i'ame, for sell under of 
 brej-er, to was profit presthed is jeuen, not only fat men prest, or be 
 
 BB 
 
370 wtcliffe's INFLTIENCB Iect. VIIT. 
 
 boim, but fat pey prophet, pis ]>e decre. Lo it semij? Jjat he is not 
 lijtly nor profi^tly Grists pope ne his vicar but if he be holi, ellis whi 
 is he callid holiest fadir ? Jerom seip, pei fat ordeyn of f er assessoiy 
 in to prestis, and putten hem fer lif in to sclaundre of pe peple, fei 
 are gilty of f e vnfei))fuhies of hem pat are sclaundred. For sop pei are 
 chosun to pis to be prestis to pe peple, as pei ordeynid befor to dignite, 
 so pey haujt to sohine be for in holinos, ellis whi are pei preferrid to 
 oper pat passun in grace of meritis. And perfor seip pe pope Symachus, 
 He is to be countid most vile, pat is befor in dignite, but if he precelle 
 in sciens and hohnes. pe Lord seip bi pe prophet, for pu hast putt a 
 wey sciens, I schal put pe a wey pat pu vse not presthed to me. pe 
 dede of pe bischop houwip to passo a boue pe lif of pe peple, as pe hf 
 of pe jerd transcendip pe lif of pe schep, as Gregori seip. And Bernard 
 seip to pope Eugeni, pi felawis bischops lere pei at pe to haue not wip 
 hem childer so curhid, nor jeng men kembid or compert ; certeyn it 
 semip not chapletid men to ren among pe mytrid vncorteysly ; pof pu 
 desire to be prest, or be befor to hem pat pu coueitist not to profijt to, 
 ouer proudly in coueiting subieccoun of hem, of pe wUk pu hemist 
 not pere jele. — [Chap. XVI.] 
 
 The uniformity of diction and grammar in Wycliflfe's New 
 Testament gave that work a weight, as a model of devotional 
 composition s.nd scriptural phraseology, which secured its ge- 
 neral adoption ; and not only the special forms I have men- 
 tioned, but many other archaisms of the standard translation, 
 both in vocabulary and in syntax, were adopted by Purvey and 
 Tyndale from Wycliffe, and by the revisors of 1611 from 
 Tyndale, and have thus remained almost without change for 
 500 years. In fact, so much of the WyclifSte sacred dialect is 
 retained in the standard version, that though a modern reader 
 may occasionally be embarrassed by an obsolete word, idiom, or 
 spelling, which occurs in Wycliffe's translation, yet if the great 
 reformer himself were now to be restored to life, he would 
 probably be able to read our common Bible from beginning to 
 end, without having to ask the explanation of a single passage. 
 
 The works of Langlande and of Wycliffe, especially the 
 latter, introduced into English a considerable number of words 
 directly or indirectly derived from the Latin. They produced 
 
tECT. VIII. LANGLANDE AND WTCLIFFE 371 
 
 a still greater effect on the common speech of the land, by 
 popularizing very many Latin and Eomance words, which 
 there is reason to think, had never before acquired a familiar 
 currency, but had been confined to the dialect of books, or at 
 least to the conversation of the regularly educated classes. 
 
 The circulation of Piers Plousrhman amonff these classes was 
 obstructed by its poetic form, which — though a recommenda- 
 tion in the eyes of the masses who know poetry only as an oral 
 chant — was fatal to its success in literary circles ; for the de- 
 liberate opinion and taste of the educated public had con- 
 demned alliterative and rhythmic verse as a barbarous relic of 
 an age of inferior culture. 
 
 Wycliffe, too, was, in a great measure, excluded from the 
 same circles, by the combined authority of the State and the 
 Church, which had denounced the reformer, his opinions, and 
 his translations, as heretical, and therefore as treasonable.* 
 Hence they were circulated and read chiefly by persons whose 
 humble station enabled them to enjoy a privacy in their studies, 
 which the conspicuous position of men of higher rank in the 
 social hierarchy put quite out of their reach.. Still, the con- 
 troversial writings and the translations of the early reformers 
 very sensibly affected the theological and ethical nomenclatures 
 of the English language in all succeeding time ; and many of 
 the very best features of our modern version of the Scriptures 
 are due to their labours. They also, no doubt, contributed 
 indirectly to the copiousness and force of literary diction ; but 
 this effect was produced, not because they were regarded as 
 authorities in language, and studied as models of composition 
 
 * ' In this Sere,' says Capgrave, 'the Pope wrote speciali to the Kyng for 
 these Lolardis, tntouris to God and to the Kyng. In his letteris he prayed the 
 Kyng that he schuld be redy to punche al thoo whom the bischoppis declared for 
 heretikes.' — Chronicle, a.b. 1394, p. 261, 262. 
 
 While the king was resisting the pope's wishes for the repeal of the obnoxious 
 statutes, he was willing enough to accept the support of the Lollards ; but, that 
 question settled, he was as ' redy to punche ' them as bloody Queen Mary h«<r- 
 self a htndred and fifty years later. 
 
 BB 2 
 
872 LANSLANDE AND WTCLIFFB Lect. VIll, 
 
 or as repositories of an enlarged vocabulary, but because they 
 had enriched the every-day speech of the people, and thus 
 increased the affluence of that fountain which is the true source 
 whence all great national poets draw their stock of living and 
 breathing words. 
 
 Although Langlande and the school of Wycliffe are not to be 
 looked upon as great immediate agencies in the general im- 
 provement of written English, or as standards of the literary 
 dialect in their own age, there can be little doubt that they did 
 exercise a direct influence upon the diction of Chaucer, and, 
 though him, on the whole literature of the nation. 
 
 It is well known that the political party to whose fortunes 
 Chaucer was attached, and of which he was a conspicuous 
 member, was inclined to favour and protect Wycliffe and his 
 followers ; and it must, of course, have sympathized, so far as a 
 mediseval aristocracy could do so, with the popular body which 
 constituted the real public both of the theologian and of Piers 
 Ploughman. Hence it is not possible that Chaucer should 
 have been unacquainted with the writings of the poet, or of the 
 religious reformers; nor could a scholar of his acute philo- 
 logical sensibility have perused those remarkable works, with- 
 out at once perceiving that they contained a mine of verbal 
 wealth, a vast amount of the richest crude material for poetical 
 elaboration. 
 
 Of such resources a genius like Chaucer could not fail to 
 avail himself, and I have no doubt that the great superiority of 
 his style over that of his contemporaries, and the more ad- 
 vanced character of his diction, are to be ascribed in some 
 degree to his use of these means of improvement, — means 
 which the more fastidious taste, or the religious and political 
 prejudices, of other poets of the age prevented them from re- 
 sorting to. 
 
Lect. VIIL MCESO-GOTniC TEXT 373 
 
 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 MffiSO-GOTHIC TEXT OF THE EIGHTH CHAPTER OF MATTHEW. 
 
 1. Dalaf pan atgaggandin imma af fairgunja, laist.idedun afar imma 
 ituujons managos. 
 
 2. Jah sai, manna fi-utsfiU habands durinnands invait ina qifands : 
 fi-auja, jabai vileis, magt mik gahrainjan. 
 
 3. Jah ufi-akjands bandu attaitok imma qifands: viljau, vairj) brains! 
 jah suns brain var)> fata frutsfiU is. 
 
 4. Jah qaf imma lesus : saivv, ei mann ni qipais, ak gagg, Jjuk silban 
 ataugei gudjin jah atbair giba, foei anabauj) Moses du veitvodipai im. 
 
 5. Afaruh fan fata innatgaggandin imma in Kafarnaum, duatiddja 
 imma hundafafs bidjands ina 
 
 6. jah qifands: frauja, fiumagus meins ligif in garda usUfa, 
 hardnba balvifs. 
 
 7. Jah qaf du imma lesus : ik qimands gahailja ina. 
 
 8. Jah andhafiands sa hundafaf s qaf : frauja, ni im Tairf s, ei uf 
 hrot mein inngaggais, ak f atainei qif vaurda jah gahailnif sa fiumagua 
 meins. 
 
 9. Jah auk ik manna im habands uf valdufhja meinamma gadi-auhtins, 
 jah qifa du famma: gagg, jah gaggif; jah anfaramma: qim jah qimif; 
 jah du skalka meinamma : tavei fata, jah taujif . 
 
 10. Gahausjands fan lesus sildaleikida jah qaf du faim afarlaistjan- 
 dam : amen, qif a izvia, ni in Israela svalauda galaubein bigat. 
 
 11. Affan qi]'a izvis, fatei managai fiam urrunsa jah saggqa qimand 
 jah anakumbjand mif Abrahama jah Isaka jah lakoba in f iudangardjai 
 himine ; 
 
 12. if f ai sunjus fiudangardjos, usvaii-panda in riqis fata hindumisto; 
 jainar vairf if grets jah krusts tunf ive. 
 
 13. Jah qaf lesus famma hundafada: gagg j;ih svasve galaubides, 
 vairfai fus. Jah galiailnoda sa fiumagus is in jainai weilai. 
 
 14. Jah qimands lesus in garda Paitraus jah gasaw svaihron ia 
 ligandein in heiton. 
 
 15. Jah attaitok handau izos jah aflailot ija so heito ; jah iirrais jah 
 aadbahtida imma. 
 
374 M(ESO-GOTHIC TEXT Lect. VIII^ 
 
 16. At andanalitja fan vanrfanamma, atbermi du imma daimonarjans 
 managans jah usvarp Jians ahmans vaurda jali allans fans ubil habandans 
 gahailida, 
 
 17. ei usfulbiodedi fata gamelido f airb Esaian praufetu qifandan: 
 sa unmahtins unsaros usnam jah sauhtins usbar. 
 
 18. Gasaiwanda fan lesus managans hinbmans bi sik, Laihait 
 galeifan siponjans hindar marein. 
 
 19. Jah duatgaggands ains bokareis qaf du imma: laisari, laistja 
 fuk, fiswaduh fadei gaggis. 
 
 20. Jah qaf du imma lesus : fauhons grobos aigun jab fuglos 
 himinis sitlaus, if sunus mans ni habaif , war haubif sein anahnaivjai. 
 
 21. Anfaruh fan siponje is qaf du imma: frauja uslaubei mis 
 fi'umist galeipan jah gafilhan attan meinana. 
 
 22. If lesus qaf du imma : laistei afar mis jah let fans daufans 
 filhan seinans daufans. 
 
 23. Jah inatgaggandin imma in skip, afariddjedun imma siponjos is. 
 
 24. Jah sai, vegs mikils varf in marein, svasve fata skip gahulif 
 vairf an fram vegim ; if is saislep. 
 
 25. Jah duatgaggandans siponjos is ui-raisidedun ina qifandans: 
 frauja, nasei unsis, ii-aqistnam. 
 
 26. Jah qaf du im lesus: wa faurhteif, leitil galaubjandansi 
 panuh urreisands gasok vindam jah marein, jah varf vis mikil. 
 
 27. If fai mans sildaleikidedun qifandans: wileiks ist sa, ei jah 
 vindos jah niarei ufhausjand imma ? 
 
 ^ 28. Jah qimandiu imma hindar marein in gauja Gairgaisaine, gamo- 
 tidedun imma tvai daimonarjos us hlaivasnom rinnandans, sleidjai filu, 
 Bvasve ni mahta manna usleijian f airh f ana vig jainana. 
 
 29. Jah sai, hropidedun qifandans: wa uns jah fus, lesu, sunau 
 guf s ? qamt her faur mel balvjan unsis ? 
 
 30. Vasuh fan fairra im hairda sveine managaize haldana. 
 
 31. If fo skohsla bedun ina qifandans: jabai usvairpis uns, uslau- 
 bei uns galeifan in f o hairda sveine. 
 
 32. Jah qaf du im : gaggif ! If eis usgaggandans galif un in hairda 
 sveme;_jah sai, run gavaurhtedun sis aUa so hairda and driuson in 
 marein jah gadauf nodedun in vatnam. 
 
 33. If fai haldandans gaflauhun jah galeif andans gataihun in baurg 
 all bi fans daimonarjans. 
 
 34. Jah sai, alia so baurgs usiddja vifra lesu jah gasaiwandans ina 
 bedun, ei uslijn hindar markos ize. 
 
Lect. VIII. aHEEK TEXT 375 
 
 GKEEK TEXT OF EIGHTH CHAPTER OF MATTHEW. 
 
 • Karti/juiTt c£ nvrip cnru tov ofiovQ ^co\ou0i)(rai' a'vT<3 cl^Xot 7roX\o(" 
 * cal ISuv Xf jTpoc irpnaEXOioy vpotTEKVvci avra Kiyu)v Kvptt, iav BiXijg, 
 Cvvairai /xe icadapiaai. ^ icai EKTiii'aQ ri)*' X''P" 'i^"""" oirou \f ywc 
 Ge'Xw, KaOapicrdi^Tt. Kai f iflt'ujc k^aQapiadi) avTov i] \iirpa. * Kat Xtyti 
 aurw o I»)(7oOc "Ofia /.ii/^ei'i e'ijr);C) ciXXa uira-yE atavruv SeiJoi' tw (£p£7, 
 cat Trpo(Tei'EykOv to 8wfjoi' 8 Trpoiriralcv Mwuir/js;, tie jjapTvpwv avTo'is. 
 
 * EifTEXOdiTi 2c aiirw tie Kaoapj'aovfj, irpoariKdev a'ur^ eicarocrapxoc 
 jrapokaXftii' airoy ^(.-at Xt'ywr Kup(E, o irate jjov jpi(i\r)Tai Iv rij vii;lif 
 vupaXvTiKog, Suywg ftnaait^o/jEyoc, ' Xtyet aura! 'Eyw iXOwi' dtpaTctixtio 
 avTOv. ' *,at airvKpiOeiQ 6 Ikurdrrap^oe fV'' J^"p'*) "i/K tiyui ik-nvoc iVa 
 fiov bird Tiiy iTTtyrjv etai\6qi ' aWa. fiovov tnrk Xdyw, Kat laOi'iaiTai o 
 Traic /tou. ' tai yup tyw ai'flpwTroe £(/tt wiro i^ovaiaj', k'^w utt' e/iuvrov 
 (TrpaTtuTaQ, Kai Xiyut toOtu) Hupcvdr]Ti, /cat iroptxitTai, Kat (IXXy "Epi^oi;, /cat 
 ep^fat* KQi riJ ^ovXm^ow noij/iroirouro, icat Troift. '" di,ou(rac Seo lij(7oSc 
 idavfiaatv Kai EiTTEirotc acoXouSouCTii' 'Afi^v \iyo) vjiiv, trap' oviivi Toaav- 
 Tr\v TTiVrtv Ev Tto 'lo-paqX liipov. " XEyo) Je iijutc on ttoXXoi djro dyaroXwc 
 Kai iva/jLuiv ij^ovaiv kuX avaKXidfjaovTai fitra 'Afipaa/Jt Kai '\(raai: Kat 
 'IaKbi/3 iv TTJ jjaaiXei^ tUv ovpavwi'' '* ot he v'loi rqe PaaiXciag £/./jA»/9//- 
 aovrai Etc ''O okotoq to ii,i>T£pov' ekiI. Eorai 6 i:\avdfwe Kat 6 fipvyfiOQ 
 Tuiv oBoyTiiiv. '^Kai eittev 6 'I//(tou£ rw £Karoi'rdpx'/"Y7rayE, tie EirioTEV- 
 vag yEvri6r)Tu aoi. kui ladq b iraTc auroS h' ttj £ip^ ekeiVi;. 
 
 '* Kai IXBiir 6 'IrjTovg tie tS]V oiKiav IlE'rpou Et^Er riji' wEvdcpav avTOV 
 jGe/jXti^e'i'i/i' eat irvpiaaovirav. ^^ Kai iitliaro Tf\Q yeipoe aiirrig, Kai a<j>ij- 
 KEv avTrii' 6 TTvpETOc, Kui ^yipdr), Kai Bitikovei aiirji. '^ di//('ae Se yEvo- 
 fiEvrjQ irpotrrivfyKav aiiTw oainoytl^OfxEvovQ ttoWovq, Kai i^ifiaXEv ro 
 TTi'Eu/nora Xo'yw, Kai Trai-rac Tuve KciKuJe E^oirae iQEpcnrEvuEV, " ciVwe ttX/j- 
 pwOnTO prjOiv Sid Haaiov tov Trpocpi'iTov kiyovTOg Avtoq Tag airOEvEiae Sjfiwy 
 i\a)3Ey, Kai Tag vumve ijiaa-aaEV. '"'J^oo' ds 6 'I?;(ro5c ttoXXouc 0)(Xoue 
 iTEoi avToy EKiXEuaEy aTrtXQtly Etc rd iripav. '^ Kai 7rpoff£X9wr Etc ypafx- 
 aaTEvg EiwEy ai™ AtSdfTKaXE, aKo\ovdi)iTu) aoi owov idv inrip-jQ. ^^ Koi 
 XsyEt airw d lijffoSc At aXtiTTEKEC ^wXeowc eyouci'', Kai ra xErEii'ti row 
 ovpayou KaraiTKT/i'iiiTEtf, d Se i/idc roi) ayOpwirov ovk iyEi irov ttju ke^oXiji' 
 icKiyv. *' ETEpog Se tiDv fiaHr]Tiav avTOv ElwEy aiirui KuptE, ETriTpe^oy fioi 
 irpdroy aireKdElv Kai Ba\j/ai Toy iraTEpa fiov. ^^ 6 Se 'Ii](tovq Xiyei ai/ru 
 'AKoXoiSet fjoi, Kai a^EC rove ''EKpouc 8a\l/ai towc Etiurwr vtKpovg. 
 
 ^^ Kai ifipayTi avTiJ Etc tXoToi' y'lKoXovdjjtrav airw oi /taS/jrat avTov. 
 ** Kat t2ou aEKTfide fiEyag kyivETO ev rp daXaatrrj, witte to ■jrXo'ioy KaXv- 
 irreaOai viro taiy KVfic'iTiDy' avroQ Se EKd^Ei/SEJ'. ^5 ^^j irpouEXOdiTEe ot 
 ua^qrai jjyEipay avToy XiyvvTeg Kvpic aiiaoy, airoXXifiEda, ^^ Kai Xiyei 
 
376 PUBVEl'S REVISION htXT. YIII. 
 
 ttlrn-iQ li hiXol lare dXiyomtrrot ; rirt lye{,ee)e [^trlf,r,irey roTc &rlfiotg 
 K«! rp da\A,7,Ty, ra! kyioero yaXhvr, lueyaKr,. ''■' ol Se fir^p.-Tro. eOav. 
 fxaadv Xiyoi'Tce noraTroe itrriv ovTos, iiri Kai ol avEfioi Kai fi OaXaaaa 
 viraKOvoviTiy avra ; 
 
 28 lieu i\BuvTi avTu tic TO Tvipav tiQ rfiv xcV"" rw" Tdjaprivwv, virt'iv- 
 Tnaav avTu liio taiuoviS^oatvoi £K Twv fivriiiHuiv Hepxofievoi, xa^t™' 
 Xi'ai', wirre /ji; Jirx""" '""■" ■^apcXdi'iv iia rij-: ccou^ £(.£(m)C. rat (Oow 
 
 si.'pa5«i' XEyovrec Ti iifilv Kai eroi, vif roO 0£oi; ; )lX6ee wSc irpo Kaipuv 
 (iaaaviaai >;juas ; ^°^i' Ve fxaKpav atr avTwv ayiXr) x"ip<^'' toWwi' /3o- 
 CTKO/ieVij ■ 3' o( Se SaifiovEg irapEKciKovv avTov XlyovTEQ El hpaWeigfiixac, 
 axutTTEiXov fifidg £ie r;)>' aylXriP twv X'-'P<^''- ^^ ™' '''^"' "•"'O'E "^^a- 
 7£rE. oi Se i^eXBoi'TEq avriXiiov fie rrlv ayiXrjv Tuv -^oipuV Kai \lov 
 HpfiricTEV wdaa r/ ciyiXr] twv xpipuiv koto, tov Kpr)fivov e'le Triv OaXaaaav, 
 KoX aviBavov Ev to'iq vlaaiv. '' Ol U [iorTKOVTEt Ecjivyov, kuI a.7riX66vTEe 
 lie Ti]V woXiv a-a-riyyEiXav irajra, nal ra twv iatfioviiofiivwv. ^* Kai IBov 
 vdaa 1} TTfiXic EirjXiiEv tig avvavrrimv T^ 'Irjaov' Kat iSovTte aiiToy iraps- 
 KaXeaay oirwe [itTa/B^ avo twv bpiwv avTwv. 
 
 II. 
 
 PSALM CII. (cm.) FROM PDETET's HEVISION. 
 
 Mi soiile, blesse thou the Lord ; and alle thingis that ben with ynne 
 me, hlesse his hooli name. Mi soiile, blesse thou the Lord ; and nyle 
 thou forjete alle the seldyngis of him. Which doith merci to alle thi 
 ■wiolddnessis ; which heelith alle thi sijknessis. Which ajenbieth thi 
 lijf fro deth; which corowneth thee in merci and merciful doyngis. 
 Which fillith tlii dtsijr in goodis; thi jongthe schal be renulid as the 
 "^ongthe of an egle. The Lord doynge mercits; and doom to alle men 
 BufFringe wrong. He made hise weies knowun to Moises ; his willis to 
 the sones of Israel. The Lord is a merciful doer, and merciful in 
 willc; longe abidinge, and myche merciful. He schal not be wrooth 
 with outen ende ; and he schal not thretne with outen ende. He dide 
 not to vs aftir oiire synnes ; nether he jeldide to vs aftir oure wickid- 
 nessis. For bi the hijnesse of heuene fro erthe ; he made strong his 
 merci on men drudynge hym. As myche as the eest is fer fro the 
 west ; he made fer oure wickidnessis fro vs. As a fadir hath merci on 
 Bones, the Lord hadde merci on men dred3'nge him ; for he knewe cure 
 makyng. He bithoujte that we ben dust, a man is as hey; his dai 
 schal flowre out so as a flour of the feeld. For the spirit schal passe in 
 hym, and schal not abide ; and schal no more knowe his place. Bat 
 
I^CT. Vlir. KEGULAR AND ISEESULAK TEKBa 377 
 
 the mere! of the Lord is fro with out bigymiyng, and til in to with 
 outen ende; on men dredinge hym. And his ristfiilnesse is in to the 
 sones of sones; to hem that kepen his testament. And ben myndeful 
 of hise comaundementis ; to do tho. The Lord hath maad redi his 
 seete in heuene; and his rewme schal be lord of alle. Aungels of the 
 Lord, blesse je the Lord ; je my5ti in vertu, doynge his word, to here 
 the vois of his wordis. Alle vertues of the Lord, blesse je the Lord ; 
 ge mynystris of h3m that doen his wille. Alle werkis of the Lord, 
 blesse je the Lord, in ech place of his lordschipe ; my soule, blesse 
 thou the Lord. 
 
 m. 
 
 CHANGE OF IRRE6TJLAK INTO EEGTTLAE VERBS. 
 
 This is an instance of the same tendency to regularity of form which 
 was mentioned in a note on the Italian dialects, in a former lecture. 
 
 I think it much to be regretted that Englisli grammarians have so 
 generally adopted the designations tveak and strong, instead of the old 
 terms regular and irregular conjugation. I do not contend for the im- 
 portance of a descriptive nomenclature in any branch of science, and I 
 have given my opinions on the subject, at some length, in the ninth 
 lecture in my First Series. But scientific designations which assume to 
 be descriptive ought to be truly so, and this the terms regular and 
 irregular, as applied to the English verb, eminently are, while the 
 epithets weak and strong axe not so in any sense. That is regular 
 which conforms to the rule or type most generally adopted; or, if there 
 be several models or standards, of equal authority, then that is regular 
 which conforms to any of them. Now the only general rule for the 
 conjugation of modern English verbs is that the past tense and passive 
 participle are alike, and that both are formed by the addition of d or ed 
 to the stem. It is true that among the few English verbs which inflect 
 by letter-change, instead of by augmentation, small groups may be 
 formed which agiee in their mode of changing the stem ; and these are 
 often the modern forms of verbs which once were numerous enough to 
 constitute an entire conjugation, sufficiently regular to be referred to a 
 fixed type. But, in most cases, so large a proportion of the verbs 
 composing these conjugations have been lost, and those remaining have 
 been so much varied in inflection, that the ancient regularity is gone, 
 and they can no longer be divided into normal classes. Goold Brown, 
 in his very valuable ' Grammar of Grammars,' states the number of 
 
378 EEGULAR AND IRREaULAE VERBS I-ECr. VIII. 
 
 ' irregular ' verbs in English at ' about one hundred and ten ; ' but as, 
 though he introduces keep into his list, he omits creep, it is probable 
 that he has overlooked others, and the real number is, no doubt, con- 
 siderably larger. Of these strong or irregular verbs, not more than 
 five agree in any one mode of inflection ; in most cases but two or 
 three are conjugated alike, and in very many the verb has no parallel 
 at all. It is further to be observed, that in several instances these 
 pairs or triplets of verbs, though now conjugated alike, were not so 
 originally, and therefore they are doubly irregular, as conforming 
 neither to the most frequent present mode of conjugation, nor to their 
 own primitive type. For example, creep, keep, and sleep form the past 
 tense and passive participle alike — crept, kept, slept : but the Anglo- 
 Saxon creopan made past creap, plural crupoir; cepan, cepte; 
 and slApan, slep, participle sidpen. Keep, then, is the only one of 
 the three which conforms to ancient precedent. It should however be 
 noted that in Matthew viii. 24, the Lindisfarne text has geslepde, 
 the Eushworth slepte, and both Wycliffe and Purvey slepte, for the 
 regular Anglo-Saxon slep. 
 
 It is objected to the term regular, that the forms it designates are 
 more modem than the inflections by letter-change, which, it is 
 insisted, are remains of primitive modes of regular conjugation ; but 
 this objection has no force, because we may admit a form to be regular, 
 without insisting that it is primitive ; and what are called the strong 
 verbs in English are most truly described as irregular, because they do 
 not agree in conjugation, either with each other, or with the Saxon 
 verbs from which they are descended. For all the purposes of English 
 grammar, regular and irregular are the best inflectional designations 
 that have been proposed ; and though, in the nomenclature of compara- 
 tive philology, terms are wanted which shall distinguish augmentative 
 inflections from those by letter-change, it is better to employ, in teach- 
 ing English, the old phraseology, until some more appropriate, or at 
 least less misleading, terms than weak and strong, shall be suggested. 
 
LECTUEE IX. 
 
 CHAUCER AJSTD GOWER 
 
 Before entering upon the special subject of the present lecture 
 - — the literary and philological merits of Chaucer and of Gower 
 — it will he well to take a retrospective view of the condition of 
 the English language at the period of Chaucer's birth, to glance 
 summarily at the causes of the revolution it soon after under- 
 went, and to consider the mode in which great authors influence 
 the development of their native tongue in primitive eras of lite- 
 rature. 
 
 The controlling power and wealth of a nobility, French in 
 parentage or descent, and the consequent adoption of the Anglo- 
 Norman as the dialect of the court, of parliament, of the judicial 
 tribunals, and of such of the foreign clergy as resided upon 
 their ecclesiastical benefices in England, had, at the end of the 
 thirteenth century, reduced English to little more than a lingua 
 rustica, which was thought hardly worthy, or even capable, of 
 literary culture; and the slender merits of Robert of Gloucester 
 and Eobert of Brunne were little calculated to raise tbe vulgar 
 patois in the estimation of educated men. 
 
 Had the British crown won the permanent and established 
 extension of its territorial possessions on the Continent, which 
 the splendid series of victories that marked the best years of 
 the reign of Edward III. seemed to promise, the relative im- 
 portance and more advanced refinement and civilization of the 
 Anglo-French provinces — which embraced the whole extent of 
 
380 ENGLISH OF rOUETEENTH CENTURY Li!CT. IX. 
 
 the Atlantic coast of France — would have given them a weight 
 and a predominance in the social and political life of the king- 
 dom, that could not have failed to be fatal to the national spirit 
 and the national language of the English people. The reverses 
 of the latter years of Edward's reign compelled the government 
 to renounce, for a time, its ambitious dreams of conquest and 
 annexation, and to strengthen itself in the affections of its 
 English-born subjects, by thoroughly Anglicizing itself, and 
 making England not merely the royal residence, but a chief 
 object of its fostering care, as the real home of the throne, the 
 domestic hearth of a united people. 
 
 But still literary culture and even rudimentary education 
 were attainable only through the medium of foreign tongues. 
 English was not taught in the schools, but PVench only, until 
 after the accession of Richard II., or possibly the latter years of 
 Edward III., and Latin was always studied through the French. 
 Up to this period, then, as there were no standards of literary 
 authority, and probably no written collections of established 
 forms, or other grammatical essays, the language had no fixed- 
 ness or uniformity, and hardly deserved to be called a written 
 speech. 
 
 There had been some writers, indeed — such, for example, as 
 the author of the Ormulum — whose syntax and orthography were 
 so uniform that a consistent accidence might be constructed for 
 them ; but the grammatical system of no one would answer for 
 any other, and the orthography varied so much, not only in 
 different copies of the same author, but even in copies which 
 are the work of one scribe, that we cannot doubt that there was 
 extreme irregularity, both in the modes of spelling and in the 
 articulation and the inflectional forms of the same words. 
 
 I have hence found it impossible to give a detailed view of 
 the inflectional or syntactical history of this period of English 
 — an era of confusion and transition, when no recognized 
 standard of accidence or of grammatical combination existed — 
 and I have only illustrated, ia a general way, the few leading 
 
Lect. IX. COEXISTENCE OF ENGLISH AND FRENCH 381 
 
 characteristics of form which were common to all, or at least to 
 most of those who attempted to compose in the vernacular 
 dialect. 
 
 From this Babylonish confusion of speech, the influence and 
 example of Chancer did more to rescue his native tongue than 
 any other single cause ; and if we compare his dialect with that 
 of any writer of an earlier date, we shall find that in compass, 
 flexibility, expressiveness, grace, and all the higher qualities of 
 poetical diction, he gave it at once the utmost perfection which 
 the materials at his hand would admit of 
 
 The English writers of the fourteenth century had an advan- 
 tage which was altogether peculiar to their age and country. 
 At all previous periods, the two languages had co-existed, in a 
 great degree independently of each other, with little tendency 
 to intermix ; but in the earlier part of that century, they began 
 to coalesce, and this process was going on with a rapidity that 
 threatened a predominance of the French, if not a total ex- 
 tinction of the Saxon element. The poUtical causes to which 
 I have alluded arrested this tendency ; and when the national 
 spirit was aroused, and impelled to the creation of a national 
 literature, the poet or prose writer, in selecting his diction, had 
 almost two whole vocabularies before him. That the syntax 
 should be English, national feeling demanded ; but French was 
 so familiar and habitual to all who were able to read, that pro- 
 bably the scholarship of the day would scarcely have been able 
 to determine, with respect to a large proportion of the words in 
 common use, from which of the two great wells of speech they 
 had proceeded. 
 
 Happily, a great arbiter arose at the critical moment of 
 Beverance of the two peoples and dialects, to preside over the 
 division of the common property, and to determine what share 
 of the contributions of France should be permanently annexed 
 to the linguistic inheritance of Englishmen. 
 
 Chaucer did not introduce into the English language words 
 which it had rejected as aliens before, but out of those which 
 
382 DICTION or chattceb Lect ix. 
 
 had been already received, he invested the better portion with 
 the rights of citizenship, and stannped them with the mint-mark 
 of English coinage. In this way, he formed a vocabulary, 
 which, with few exceptions, the taste and opinion of succeeding 
 generations has approved ; and a literary diction was thus esta- 
 blished, which, in all the qualities required for the poetic art, 
 had at that time no superior in the languages of modern 
 Europe. 
 
 The soundness of Chaucer's judgment, the nicety of his philo- 
 logical appreciation, and the delicacy of his sense of adaptation 
 to the actual wants of the English people, are sufficiently proved 
 by the fact that, of the Eomance words found in his -writingg; 
 not much above one hundred have been suffered to become ob- 
 solete, while a much larger number of Anglo-Saxon words em- 
 ployed by him have passed altogether out of use.* 
 
 It is an error to suppose that those writers who do most for 
 the improvement of their own language, effect this by coining 
 and importing new words, or by introducing new syntactical 
 forms. The great improvers of language in all literatures have 
 been eclectic. They do not invent new inflections, forge new 
 terms, or establish new syntactical relations ; but from existing 
 words, discordant accidences, conflicting modes of grammatical 
 aggregation, they cull the vocabulary, the mode of conjugation 
 and declension, and the general syntax, best calculated to 
 harmonize the diversities of dialects, and to give a unity and 
 consistence to the general speech. 
 
 If the first great writer be a poet, his selection will, of course, 
 
 * In this number of obsolete words I include terms of general application only, 
 and not the technicalities of alchemy, astrology, and the like, which have been 
 forgotten with the arts to which they belonged, nor those words peculiar to the 
 religious observances of the Eomish Church, which are not now understood or 
 freely employed in England, because the English people is no longer familiar 
 with the ritual of that religion. I should further remark that many Romance as 
 well as Saxon words used by Chaucer are now so changed in form and orthography 
 that they are not readily identified with their originals by persons not familiar with 
 etymological deduction. 
 
LecT. IX. DICTION OF GEEAT WEITEKS 383 
 
 be in some degree controlled by the material conditions of his 
 art ; but as the poetic form embodies the highest expression of 
 the human intellect, his diction will be in general of an elevated 
 character, and, for aesthetic reasons, the most melodious and 
 graceful words will be chosen, while the necessities of metre 
 will compel the adoption of a variety of inflectional forms, when- 
 ever the accidence of the language admits of different modes 
 of declension and conjugation. 
 
 The real benefit which great authors in general confer on 
 their native tongue, consists, first, in the selection and autho- 
 rization of truly idiomatic, forcible, and expressive terms and 
 phrases from the existing stock; and, secondly, in the embodying 
 of universal, and of distinctively national, ideas and sentiments, 
 in new and happy combinations of words themselves already 
 individually familiar. Hence it will often happen that the first 
 great writers in any language employ, not a strange or an 
 extensive vocabulary, but, on the contrary, a common and 
 a restricted one ; and the merit of their style will be found to 
 depend, not upon the number of the words they use, but upon 
 a peculiar force of expression derived from an accurate percep- 
 tion of the laws by which words enlarge, limit, or modify the 
 meaning of each other, and a consequent felicity in the mutual 
 adaptation of the elements of discourse, and their arrangement 
 in periods. 
 
 In connection with this point, I may, without departing too 
 far from our subject, notice a widely diffused error which it 
 may be hoped the lexicographical criticism of the present day 
 may dispel. I refer to the opinion that words, individually, and 
 irrespectively of syntactical relations and of phraseological com- 
 bination, have one or more inherent, fixed, and limited meanings 
 which are capable of logical definition, and of expression in 
 other descriptive terms of the same language. This may be 
 true of artificial words — that is, words invented for, or conven- 
 tionally appropriated to, the expression of arbitrary distinctions 
 and technical notions in science or its practical applications — 
 
384 SIGNIFICANCE OF WORDS Lf.cT. IX. 
 
 and also of the names of material objects and of the sensuous 
 qualities of things ; but of the vocabulary of the passions and 
 the affections, which grows up and is informed with living 
 meaning by the natural, involuntary processes to which all 
 language but that of art owes its being, it is wholly untrue. 
 Such words live and breathe only in mutual combination and 
 interdependence with other words. They change their force with 
 every new relation into which they enter ; . and consequently 
 their meanings are as various and as exhaustless as the permu- 
 tations and combinations of the digits of the arithmetical 
 notation. To teach, therefore, the meaning of a great propor- 
 tion of the words which compose the vocabulary of every living 
 speech, by formal definition, is as impossible as to convey by 
 description a notion of the shifting hues of the pigeon's neck. 
 
 This may be readily seen by the examination of any respect- 
 able work on synonyms. The authors of these treatises, it is 
 true, usually attempt discriminating description of the senses of 
 the words they compare and distinguish ; but their definitions 
 have almost always reference to the exemplifications they intro- 
 duce of the actual use of the words discussed ; and it is from 
 the context of the passages cited, not from the formal defini- 
 tions, that the student learns the true analogies and true 
 differences between words thus brought together. In short, 
 without the exemplifications, the definitions would be imintel- 
 ligible, while with them they are almost superfluous.* 
 
 The power of selecting and combining words in such a way 
 that each shall not only help, but compel, its fellow to give out 
 the best meaning it is capable of expressing, is that which con- 
 stitutes excellence in style, command of language, or, in other 
 words, the art of best saying what we have to say. No such 
 merit is possible in the early stages of any language. The 
 words are too few, the recorded combinations not sufficiently 
 multifarious, to have tested and brought out the various mean- 
 
 • See Illustration I. at the eud of this lecture. 
 
Lect. IX. TOCAEULAEY OF FOUETEENTH CENTTJET 383 
 
 ings and applications of which words are susceptible; and 
 culture is not yet far enough advanced for the existence and 
 conscious recognition of a range and variety of ideas, imageSj 
 and sentiments, wide enough to have demanded any great 
 multiplicity of expression. 
 
 But in the period of English literature upon which we 
 have now entered, these necessary conditions were approxi- 
 mately satisfied. A sufficient variety of subjects had been dis- 
 cussed to create a necessity for an extensive vocabulary, and 
 to requu'e a great range of sjmtactical and logical combination. 
 The want of words had been supplied from Latin or Romance 
 sources, and flexibility of structure had been acquired by the 
 translation and accommodation of foreign phraseological com- 
 binations, by the resuscitation of obsolete Anglo-Saxon con- 
 structions, and by hazarding new verbal alliances. Nothing was 
 now wanting but the presence of a great genius to avail himself 
 of these new-born facilities of utterance, or some special occasion 
 which should prompt talent of a less original cast to employ them. 
 
 In all great conjunctures, political or literary, the hour and 
 the man come together. When the harvest is prepared. Provi- 
 dence sends forth the reapeis to gather it. Langlande and other 
 less important labourers, including, doubtless, many now for- 
 gotten, had striven to cull, out of the chaos of Saxon, French, 
 and Latin words which confusedly buzzed around them, a 
 vocabulary suited to the expression of English ideas, images, 
 sentiments; and they had somewhat blindly groped after the 
 fittest association of these words in phraseological combinations. 
 
 At this crisis there appeared one of the greatest masters of 
 speech that have illustrated the literature of modern Europe — 
 a genius gifted with the keenest sensibility to those latent 
 affinities between particular words, upon which their most 
 felicitous combinations depend, with the soundest judgment in 
 the appreciation of the power of individual terms, and with the 
 most exquisite taste in the selection and arrangement of them. 
 
 The stock of words, the raw material which had already been 
 
 c c 
 
386 OBSOLETE SAXON WORDS Lect. [X. 
 
 accumulated for literary construction, was, as we have seen 
 already, large — so large, in fact, that no great additions were 
 required in order to furnish a complete supply for all the 
 demands of the poetic art. But there were still some defi- 
 ciencies in the vocabulary : first, a want of words suited to the 
 exigencies of the Eomance canons of verse, which not Chaucer 
 alone, but the taste and judgment of the English people, had 
 decided to adopt as the laws of poetical composition ; and, 
 secondly, a great imperfection in the dialect of morals and of 
 philosophy. 
 
 After what I have observed, in a former lecture, upon the 
 great expressiveness of Anglo-Saxon in matters of ethical and 
 intellectual concern, and the richness of its vocabulary in the 
 nomenclature of the passions and the afiections, it may seem 
 almost a contradiction to affirm that this is the very point in 
 which early Saxon-English was most deficient. But the fact is 
 so, and it was precisely this class of native words which had, in 
 the largest proportion, become obsolete. The Anglo-Saxons 
 had their own translations of the Gospels, the Psalms, and 
 some other portions of Scripture. They had a theological and 
 an ethical literature, and there is good reason to believe that, 
 in spite of the influence of a Eomanized priesthood, the native 
 language was more habitually employed for ecclesiastical and 
 religious purposes than any of the Eomance dialects ever had 
 been. The obvious reason for this is found in the fact that 
 Anglo-Saxon and Latin were not cognate languages, while the 
 Eomance tongues were, if not descended from the Latin, at least 
 nearly related dialects, and still retained a great resemblance to 
 it. Hence, while a French or an Italian ecclesiastic could easily 
 acquire a competent knowledge of the language with which his 
 own vernacular was most nearly allied, and while some tradi- 
 tional familiarity with its written forms was, and in fact still is, 
 preserved among even the unlettered populace of Italy and 
 France, the speech of Eome, the consecrated dialect of the 
 Church, was wholly strange to the Anglo-.Saxon people. The 
 
Lect. IX. ANGLO-SAXON MOBAL DIALECT 387 
 
 native clergy could acquire it only by long- yet.rs of painful 
 labour, and even its technical phrases could only mth great 
 difiSculty be made familiar to the mind and ear, or articulated 
 by the tongue, of the Anglo-Saxon. There was, therefore, an 
 absolute necessity for the employment of the native speech in 
 religious and moral discussion ; and so long as England was 
 independent of the Continent, there existed a full religious and 
 ethical nomenclature. But early in the eleventh century, in 
 consequence of matrimonial and political alliances with French 
 princes, Norman influence began to make itself felt in England, 
 and the Conquest, in the year 1066, gave the finishing stroke 
 to Anglo-Saxon nationality, and introduced not only a new 
 royal dynasty, but an army of foreign priests and teachers, who 
 naturally insisted on employing the language of Rome in all 
 matters pertaining to the discharge of their functions. Anglo- 
 Saxon, consequently, went very soon, at least partially, out of 
 use as a medium of religious instruction, oral or written, and 
 of moral discussion. When sermons and homilies were less 
 frequently delivered in Anglo-Saxon, when that language was 
 no longer employed by the learned in the treatment of themes 
 connected with ethics, philosophy, and the social duties, it was 
 very natural that the words belonging to those departments of 
 thought should be forgotten, though the nomenclature of the 
 various branches of material life still remained familiar and 
 vernacular. We find, accordingly, that in the three centuries ^ 
 which elapsed between the Conquest and the noon-tide of 
 Chaucer's life, a large proportion of the Anglo-Saxon dialect of 
 religion, of moral and intellectual discourse, and of taste, had 
 become utterly obsolete and unknown.* 
 
 The place of the lost words had been partly supplied by the 
 importation of Continental terms ; but the new words came 
 without the organic power of composition and derivation which 
 belonged to those they had supplanted. Consequently, they 
 
 * See longer Notes and Illustrations II. at the end of tliis lecture. See also 
 Jjecture III., Illustration IV. 
 
 C C 2 
 
388 DICTION OF CHAUCEK Lect. IXi 
 
 were incapable of ttose modifications of form and extensions of 
 meaning which the Anglo-Saxon roots could so easily assume, 
 and which fitted them for the expression of the new shades of 
 thought and of sentiment born of every hour in a mind and an 
 age like those of Chaucer. 
 
 The poet, therefore, must sometimes have found himself in 
 want of language suited to the largeness and brilliancy of the 
 new conceptions, the hitherto unfelt sentiments and unrevealed 
 images, the strange ' thick-coming fancies,' which were crowd- 
 ing upon him and struggling for utterance. Where should he find 
 words for the expression of this world of thought ? where metal 
 to be stamped with this new coinage of the brain ? Should he 
 resort to the sepulchre of the Saxon race, and seek to reanimate 
 a nomenclature which had died with the last of the native kings ? 
 Or should he turn to the living speech of a cultivated nation, 
 whose blood was already so largely infused into the veins of the 
 English people, and whose tongue was almost as familiar to 
 them as the indigenous words of their own ? Had Chaucer, 
 under such circumstances, attempted the revival of the forgotten 
 moral phraseology of Saxondom — which could now be found 
 only in the mouldering parchments of obscure conventual 
 libraries, and was probably intelligible to scarcely a living 
 Englishman — he would have failed to restore the departed 
 nomenclature to its original significance, and would have only 
 insured the swift oblivion of the writings which served as a 
 medium for the experiment. On the contrary, by employing 
 the few unfamiliar French words he needed, he fell in with the 
 tendencies of his time, and availed himself of a vocabulary 
 every word of which, if not at first sight intelligible to the 
 English reader, found a ready interpreter in the person of 
 every man of liberal culture. 
 
 Langlande was the Pipin, Chaucer the Charlemagne, of the 
 new intellectual dynasty of England. The one established the 
 independence and the sovereignty of his house ; the other, by 
 a wise policy and by extended conquests, carried its dominioa 
 
Sect. IX. FEENCH WOEDS IN CHATICEK 389 
 
 to a pitch of unprecedented prosperity and splendour. Chaucer 
 was a prince whose fitness for the sceptre gave him a right to 
 wield it, and the golden words he impressed with his own image, 
 and scattered among his countrymen, were the medals of his 
 coronation. , 
 
 Of the two causes which conspired to favour the introduction 
 of French words into EngHsh verse — the poverty of the native 
 vocabulary and the necessities of rhyme and metre — the 
 .^atter is much the most easily detected and traced; and we 
 observe that a very large proportion of the French words 
 employed by Chaucer and Grower are those which contain the 
 rhyming syllables at the end of the lines.* 
 
 I have before alluded to the necessary connection between 
 the Romance system of versification and a stock of words ac- 
 cented according to the French orthoepy. This, in Chaucer's 
 time, tended, as can easily be shown, in a more marked way 
 than at present, to throw the stress of voice upon the final 
 eyllable f, contrary to the Saxon articidation, which, like that 
 of the other Grothic languages, inclined to accent the initial 
 syllable. In comparing Chaucer's versions with the originals, 
 as, for example, in the Eomaunt of the Eose, we not unfre- 
 quentlyfind that he has transferred, not translated, the rhymes; 
 but it will be seen that a very large share of the French words 
 so employed by him were such as, from their moral uses and 
 eignificance, were inseparably connected with Christian doctrine 
 and ethical teaching, and had therefore become already known, 
 through the medium of ecclesiastical Latin, to even those of 
 the English people who were not familiar with the com-tly and 
 cultivated French. 
 
 Notwithstanding the necessity thus imposed upon Chaucer, 
 as the translator of highly imaginative poems into a tongue 
 hitherto without literary culture, and possessed of no special 
 
 • See First Series, Lect. XXIV. p. 538, note. 
 t See First Series, Lect. XXIV. pp. 627, 528. 
 
390 FRENCH 'WOEDS IN CHAUCER Lect. IX. 
 
 vocabulary conventionally dedicated to poetical use, he was very 
 sparing in the employment of French words not belonging to 
 the class which I have just referred to ; and he shows exquisite 
 taste and judgment in his selection from the vocabulary of both 
 languages, whenever the constraint of metre and rhyme left 
 him free to choose. Hence, though the Eomaunt of the Eose, 
 and his other works of similar chai'acter, are admirably faithful 
 as translations, their diction, which is an anthology of the best 
 words and forms of both languages, is more truly poetical than 
 that of the originals. In the hands of Chaucer, the English 
 language advanced, at one bound, to that superiority over the 
 French which it has ever since maintained, as a medium of the 
 expression of poetical imagery and thought. 
 
 The actual number of Eomance words introduced by Chaucer 
 is very much less than has been usually supposed. His rare 
 felicity of selection is not less apparent in his choice of native 
 than of foreign terms. English he employed from principle 
 and predilection, French from necessity, and his departures 
 from the genuine idiom of the now common speech of England 
 are few. 
 
 The general truth of these observations will be made ap- 
 parent by a few numerical facts. The translation of the first 
 part of the Eoman de la Eose, or that which belongs to 
 Gruillaume de Lorris, including the few original interpolations 
 by Chaucer, contains something more than foi"ty-four hundred 
 lines, or twenty-two hundred pairs of rhymes. Of these pairs, 
 between one hundred and twenty and one hundred and thirty, or 
 rather less than six per cent., are transferred, with little change 
 of form, from the French text, instead of being represented by 
 equivalent words of Anglo-Saxon origin. The convenience of 
 employing rhymes ready matched to his hands was, no doubt, 
 one reason why the poet availed himself of them, or, to express 
 the same thought in another way, why he introduced into 
 his verses the two hundred and fifty French words of which 
 these rhymes consist. 
 
LiXT. IX. FEESCn WORDS IN CHAUCER 391 
 
 The translation of the first part of the Eoman de la Eose 
 contains about thirty thousand words, and consequently the 
 number of French words employed in the transferred rhymes 
 is considerably less than one in a hundred of the whole number 
 which make up the poem. Now, when we consider the com- 
 parative poverty of native English, stripped, as we have seen 
 it had been, of almost its whole Anglo-Saxon moral and in- 
 tellectual nomenclature, as well as of its inflectional rhyming 
 endings, when we remember that French was the only medium 
 of literary culture, and was almost as well known as English to 
 those for whom Chaucer wrote, it would seem that such a pro- 
 portion of French words — less than one per cent. — was not 
 extravagantly large to employ in rhyming a translation of a 
 French poem, even supposing that they were now used for the 
 first time in an English book. But, in point of fact, they were 
 by no means all now first introduced to the English public ; for 
 if we compare these words with the vocabularies of earlier and 
 contemporaneous English authors, we shall find that very many 
 of them had been already long in use, and were as well known 
 to Englishmen as any words of Latin or French extraction. 
 Several of the remaining words are not employed by Chaucer 
 himself in his other works, and they never appear again in 
 English literature. He availed himself of the license of a 
 translator for a special purpose, and when that purpose was 
 answered, the new words thus used were dismissed from further 
 service, and heard of no more. Hence the charge, that Chaucer's 
 poems, and especially his translations, have corrupted his native 
 speech by a large and unnecessary admixture of a foreign verbal 
 element, is wholly without foundation.* 
 
 • Of the two 'Hundred ^iid lifty French words which mate np the pairs of 
 rhymes transferred by Chaucer from his origir.al, the following are wanting in 
 Coleridge's Glossarial Index w the Literature of the Thirteenth Century : — Ada- 
 mant, address (dress), advantage, allegement and allegiance in the sense of alle- 
 riation, amorous, amoret, anoint, apparent, attentive (ententive), avarice, brief, 
 chevisance, coasting, colour, complain, conduit, confound, coviue, curious, discom- 
 llture, disease, disperance, displease, divine, embattled, endure, ensign, feble, fined« 
 
392 MIXED CHAEJ.CTEE OF ENGLISH Lect. IX. 
 
 The essential character of English, as a mixed and com- 
 posite language, was indelibly stamped upon it before the time 
 of Chaucer. As compared with Anglo-Saxon, it may pro- 
 perly be styled a new speech, new in syntax, and renewed and 
 enriched in vocabulary ; yet, in spite of the influx of foreign 
 words in the course of the fourteenth century, it was no more a 
 new language than the English nation was a new people ; and 
 it remained always a fit and appropriate medium for the ex- 
 pression of English thought and English feeling, changing only 
 as the new nationality advanced and grew to the fulness of its 
 manhood. 
 
 It is not easy to make an intelligible, specific comparison be- 
 tween the dialect of Chaucer and that of earlier writers, because 
 there is perhaps no one of them whose subjects agree so nearly 
 with those treated by him, that their diction would be presumed 
 to correspond as closely as the idioms of their respective periods 
 would allow. The style of his prose works, whether translated 
 or original — if, indeed, any of them are original — does not, 
 
 floTvret, fluter, foundation (foundement), garment, glory, habit in sense of inhabit, 
 hardiment, illuminated (enlumined), ,iaundice, lace in the sense of net or snare, 
 languor, lineage, losenger, meagre, mention, misericorde, moison, mnsard, muse, 
 verb, noblesse, ounce, weight, person, pleasant, prise in the sense of praise, present 
 (in present), ragonee (should be jagonce, hyacinth), reasonable, record, recreantise, 
 refrain, religion, remember, remembrance, renown, request, return, scutcheon, size, 
 suckeny, table, towel, vain, victory, vermeil. Also the following, of which the 
 stem is found in Coleridge : — AecordasiCf, acquaintaSfc, delitows, despitows, enyiovs, 
 outrageotis, paintwcc, pleader, portraitwrfs, repentance, savort-t^, savorozw; and 
 these, of which derivatives or allied forms occur in Coleridge : — Courage (coura- 
 geous. Cole.), garden (gardener. Cole.), glutton (gloterie. Cole.), measure (measur- 
 able, Cole.), moneste ( amonestment. Cole.), trcssour (tressed, tressure. Cole.). The 
 very rapid increase of the French element in the English vocabulary, between the 
 beginning and the middle of the fourteenth century, renders it highly probable 
 that many of these ninety words had already been introduced by other writers 
 - during that interval. Some of them, cevtainly, .snch as relic/ion (which occm'S in 
 the Semi-Saxon of the Ancreu Kiwle, though, sti'angely enough, not in the litera/- 
 ture of the thirteenth century), were naturalized a hundred and fifty years before 
 Chaucer's career as an author began. When the character and value of these 
 words are considered, I believe few scholars would convict Chaucer of the crime of 
 corrupting his native tongue, even upon proof that he was the first English 
 writer who had ever ventured to use any of them. 
 
Lec'r IX. chaucek's woeks kot histoeical S93 
 
 60 fax as the stock of words is concerned, differ very essentially 
 from that of the original writings ascribed to Wycliffe, which 
 discuss similar subjects; but they are marked by more of artis- 
 tic skill in composition, and by greater flexibility and grace of 
 periodic structure. 
 
 It is remarkable that Chaucer, eminently national as, in spite 
 of the extent of his indebtedness to foreign sources, he certainly 
 is, should yet never have thought of taking the subject of his 
 inspiration from the recent or contemporaneous history of his 
 own country. In the case of a poet who did not concern him- 
 self with the realities of material life, but was devoted to didactic 
 or speculative views, or even to depicting the higher workings 
 of passion, this omission would not seem strange. But Chaucer 
 lived among "the flesh-and-blood humanity of his time, and 
 deeply sympathized with it. He was a contemporary of the Black 
 Prince, and, as a true Englishman, he could not but have been 
 profoundly interested in the campaigns of that heroic soldier, 
 and proud of the trophies of Creci and Poitiers. But the glories 
 of English and French chivalry, which shed such a golden glow 
 on the canvas of his contemporary, the chronicler Froissart, are 
 nowhere reflected from the pages of Chaucer. On the contrary, 
 he seems studiously to avoid allusion to the history and political 
 concerns of his own country, even when they lie most obviously 
 in his path. The character of the Knight, in the Prologue to 
 the Canterbury Tales, afforded him an opportunity of enlivening 
 his verse with some flush of national exultation, but in his enu- 
 meration of the Knight's campaigns, he mentions none of the 
 scenes where English valour had been pitted agaiast the chivaliy 
 of France ; and yet he tells us of this warrior, that — 
 
 AJ>. 1365. At Alisandre he was whan it was wonne. 
 Ful ofte tyme he hadde the bord bygonne 
 Aboven alle naciouns in Pruce. 
 In Lettowe liadde reyced and in Ruce, 
 No cristen man so ofte of his degre. 
 In Gsmade atte siege hadde he be 
 
S94 CHAUCER AND FE0IS3AKT IecT. IX. 
 
 A.D. 1344. Of Algesir, and riden in Belmarie. 
 
 A.D. 1367. At Lieys was he, and at Satalie, 
 
 A.D. 1352. Wlian they were wonne ; and in the Greete see 
 
 At many a noble arive hadde he be. 
 
 At mortal batailles hadde he ben iiftene, 
 
 And foughten for our feith at Tramassene 
 
 In lystes thries, and ay slayn his foo. 
 
 This ilke worthi knight hadde ben also 
 
 Somtynie with the lord of Palatye, 
 
 Ageyn another hethene in Turkye, &o. 
 
 The events here referred to extend from about the date of 
 the battle of Creci to that of the campaign of the Black Prince 
 in Spain, but the Knight participates in no English battle ; and 
 though, when the poet speaks of the martial prowess of the 
 Squire, his son, he mentions that 
 
 He hadde ben somtyme in chivachie, 
 
 In Flaundres, in Artoys, and in Picardie, 
 
 he does not take occasion for any expression of patriotic senti- 
 ment, or even intimate that the young soldier had there been 
 engaged in the national service, or in anything more than pri- 
 vate raids or the petty warfares of feudal barons, in which the 
 honour and interest of England had no stake. 
 
 The silence of Chaucer on these subjects appears still more 
 Cfxtraordinary, from the fact that he must have personally known 
 the chronicler Froissart, who was long in the service of Philippa 
 of Hainaut, the wife of Edward III., and who, after an absence 
 of seven-and-twenty years, returned to England in the reign of 
 Eichard II., ' to iustifye the hysterics and maters that he hadde 
 written,' and to present to the king the ' fayre boke' I have men- 
 tioned, ' well enlumyned, couered with veluet,' and * garnysshed 
 with elapses of syluer and gylte,' in which were engrossed ' all 
 the matters of amours and moralytees, that in four and twentie 
 yeres before he hadde made and compyled.' • 
 
 * Fioissart, chap, cc, reprint of 1812, ii. p. 609. 
 
Lect. IX. chaucek's oblioations to fbench poets 395 
 
 Froissart, as appears from his own statements, neglected no 
 opportunity of making the acquaintance of persons intelligent in 
 political and military affairs ; and his character of a ' maker of 
 hystories' was as well known both in France and in England as 
 was that of Thucydides in Grreece, while he was composing his 
 immortal history of the Pelopoanesian war. His reputation as a 
 poet, too, learned in criticism and the history of French litera- 
 ture, would naturally have attracted Chaucer to him. Chaucer's 
 Complaint of the Black Knight, and Froissart's Dit du Cheva- 
 lier Bleu, are the same poem, in an English and a P'rench dress, 
 and there are some remarkable resemblances of thought and 
 expression between Chaucer's Book of the Duchess and Frois- 
 sart's Paradise of Love. In these cases, though it may be 
 impossible to say which was the original, the coincidence provea 
 that the works, and in all probability the person, of the one 
 author were known to the other. 
 
 Under these circumstances, we should suppose that the his- 
 torical zeal and abi'ity of Froissart would have inspired the 
 English poet with the desire to celebrate the same events in a 
 poetic form. But Froissart himself did not treat historical sub- 
 jects in verse, and poetry seems to have been considered a fit 
 vehicle only for themes of a more imaginative character than 
 the hard realities of contemporaneous martial and political life. 
 
 Chaucer borrowed much from French authors — more even 
 than has been until recently supposed — and the influence of 
 French literature is constantly seen in his works, even where 
 they are not translations ; but there is every reason to suppose 
 that those from whom his tales were directly taken had, in gene- 
 ral, as little claim to originality as himself. Continued research 
 is constantly carrying further back the invention of the fables 
 which we habitually ascribe to the Middle Ages, and there are 
 but few of them whioh can, with any confidence, be affirmed to 
 belong to the period in which they are first known to us as 
 existing in a written form. 
 
 Few things in literature are more surprising than the antiquity 
 
396 LITBEART PEOPEETT Lect. IX. 
 
 and universality of popular fables. Many of these, considered 
 as natural personifications or exemplifications of universal 
 passions and moral qualities, may be supposed to have arisen 
 independently of each other, as the forms in which, in rude ages, 
 Certain primary ideas and opinions spontaneously clothe them- 
 selves. But there are others, so artificial in their conception 
 and treatment, and so marked and peculiar in the selection and 
 character of their personages, that it seems quite impossible that 
 they could have possessed so close a similarity, if they had been 
 origiDal products of different ages and countries ; and yet they 
 are found among peoples between whom no intercourse can have 
 existed since the commencement of the historic period. Every 
 reader of Grrimm and Firmenich will remember the diverting 
 Low-German story of the race between the hedgehog and the 
 hare, which indeed cannot, in its present form, be of great an- 
 tiquity ; but it is affirmed to exist in some of the North-American 
 Indian tribes, who certainly neither derived it from nor commu- 
 nicated it to the whites. 
 
 In Chaucer's time, whatever had been given to the world 
 was regarded as common property. Most works of the Middle 
 Ages were anonymous, and authors seldom made any scruple 
 in employing inventions or poetical embellishments which 
 suited their purpose, without acknowledgment, and evidently 
 without consciousness of wrong. Our modern notions of the 
 sacredness of literary property, of the perpetual title of an 
 author to the coinage of his own brain, axe, in part at least, the 
 fruit of circumstances dependent on the mechanical conditions 
 of the art of printing. So long as books were multiplied only 
 by the slow and costly process of manual copying, the additional 
 burden of a compensation to the author, in the shape of a copy- 
 right, would have effectually prevented the circulation of most 
 ■works ; and writers who toiled for present fame or future im- 
 mortality would have defeated their own purpose by imposing 
 conditions upon the copying of their works, which would, in 
 most cases, have prevented the multiplication of them altogether. 
 
tECT. IX. LITEEAET PROPERTY 397 
 
 But when, by the invention of printing, book-making became 
 a manufacture, the relations between the producer and the con- 
 sumer- were changed. It is true, that when once the mechani- 
 cal facilities were provided, an edition could be published at 
 what had been the cost of a single copy ; but for this purpose, 
 the arts of type-founding and type-setting must first be acquired 
 by a long apprenticeship, and a large capital must be invested 
 in types and presses. This capital and this industry could be 
 secured from a dangerous competition, only by protective laws. 
 The protection originally designed for the benefit of the capitalist, 
 the printer, yielded returns, which, first the editors of classical 
 works, and finally authors of original compositions, were allowed 
 to share iu about that small proportion which, in ordinary cases, 
 the profits of the writer still bear to those of the publisher ; and 
 hence the notion of a right in literary property. This has given 
 birth to a new feature, if not a new estate, in modern society — 
 a class of men who live by literary production, a body of pro- 
 fessional writers, whose motive for authorship consists mainly in 
 the pecuniary rewards it yields, rewards which can be secured 
 to them only by the authority of laws recognizing the right of 
 property in literary wares, and punishing the infraction of that 
 right as in other cases of invasion of property. The authority 
 of law, in all well-ordered governments, carries with it a moral 
 sanction, and the code, which establishes the legal right of an 
 author to the exclusive use and benefit of his intellectual labours, 
 has created a respect for those rights, that extends even beyond 
 the limits marked out by the law. 
 
 That the legal title of the author is an important ingredient 
 in the respect felt for his professional property is proved by the 
 fact, that in cases which the law does not reach — as in regard 
 to the works of ancient or foreign writers unprotected by an 
 international copyright -^ the odium attached to plagiarism is 
 less strongly felt ; and the commercial spirit of our age, in this 
 as well as in other things, is much less tender of the reputation 
 than of the purse. 
 
398 INVENTION IN LITEEATTTEB Lect. IX, 
 
 Van Lennep, the most eminent living writer of Holland, in 
 some remarks at a congress of authors and publishers held at 
 Brussels, not long since, to consider the general question of 
 literary property, said : ' For nearly forty years I have lived 
 principally by robbery and theft;' and he justified his practice 
 by the example of Virgil, Dante, Tasso, Milton, Moliere, Eacine, 
 Voltaire, Schiller, Vondel, and Bilderdijk, all of whom he de- 
 clared to be as unscrupulous plunderers as himself. 
 
 MTien, then, Chaucer and Gower appropriated and . national- 
 ized the tales versified by French poets, or by classic authors, they 
 felt that they were only taking up waifs, or estrays, which had 
 been left by the original owners free to chance occupancy, and 
 which the Norman or Eoman bard had himself probably come 
 into possession of ' by finding,' as the lawyers phrase it. It is 
 an etymological remark worth making, now that we are upon 
 the subject, that the very word invention, commonly used of 
 the origination of a poem or a machine, radically means, not 
 creation of that which is new, but accidentally coming upon, or 
 finding, that which is old. 
 
 And, in fact, how much is there either historically or psycho- 
 logically new in what the dialect of criticism calls invention ? 
 Shakespeare, the most original of writers, invented nothing, or 
 next to nothing, in the way of plot or incident ; and if you strip 
 his dramas of their artistic dress and moral element, the events 
 are just what do or may happen a hundred times within the 
 observation of every man of experience in the world's affairs. 
 For invention, in the way of creation of plot, for novel and 
 startling situations and combinations, you must go, not to 
 Shakespeare, but to what are called 'sensation' novels. There 
 you will find abundance of incident, that not only never did, 
 but, without an inversion of the laws of humanity, never could 
 happen ; while in all genial literature, the mere events of the 
 story can at any time be matched in the first newspaper you take 
 up. Just in proportion as the words or the works of the per- 
 sonages of the dialogue or the narrative are new to human nature 
 
Lkct. IX INVE>'TIOS m LITERATURE 399 
 
 tinder the conditions supposed, just in proportion as they startle 
 or surprise the reader or the spectator, they are false and vicious ; 
 and the necessary and consciously felt truth of them, as logical 
 results of the character and circumstances of the person depicted, 
 is the test of the genius of the writer. 
 
 The ingenious gentleman who manufactured a stupendous 
 marine reptile out of the bones of whales was certainly a great 
 inventor ; but the judicious do not rank him higher than the 
 learned comparative anatomist who demonstrated that the 
 hydrarchus was an imposture, or than the renowned naturalist 
 whose free choice has authorized America to claim him as her 
 own, by a better title than the accident of birth, and who is 
 content to accept the works of God, even as they come from the 
 hands of their Creator. 
 
 So far as Chaucer was avowedly, or at least undisguisedly, a 
 translator, there is of course no question of originality; but even 
 in this capacity he shows great power of language, and the 
 three or four hundred lines, which he has here and there inter- 
 polated into his otherwise close translation of the work of De 
 Lorris, will be at once recognized as among the passages of the 
 poem finest in sentiment and most beautiful in imagery and 
 expression.* 
 
 • Cliaueer's atility as a translator was known, and highly appreciated, by his 
 literary contemporaries in France. Wright, in his curious collection, the Anecdota 
 Literajia, publishes the following complimentary stanzas addressed to Chaucer by 
 Eustache Descliamps, a French poet of his own time: — 
 
 ptTT.ADP. A GEOFFEOI CHAUCER, PAB ETJSTACHE DESCHAMPS. 
 
 [From the Bibliotheque Eoyale, MS. 7219, fol 62, ro.] 
 
 Socrates, plains de philosophic, 
 
 Scneque en meurs et angles en pratique, 
 
 Ovides grans en ta poeterie, 
 
 Brife en parler, saiges en rethorique, 
 
 Aigles tres haultz, qui par ta theorique 
 
 Enlumines le regne d'Eneas, 
 
 L'isle aux geans, ceulx de Bruth, et qui as 
 
 Semo les fleurs et plante le rosier 
 
 Aux ignorans de la langue Panclras ; 
 
 Grant translateur, noble GeiR'oy Chancier. 
 
400 CHArCEK AND THE ITALIAN POETS Lect, IX. 
 
 It has been thought strange that Chaucer, who borrowed so 
 freely from French literature, should have taken so little from 
 Italian sources. He is supposed to have been twice in Italy ; he 
 ■professes to have learned the story of patient Griselda, or the 
 Gierke's Tale, from Petrarch, at Padua ; and he speaks of Dante- 
 with reverence, and paraphrases from the Inferno of that poet 
 the inscription over the gates of the infernal regions. But his 
 writings do not show much evidence of a familiarity with Italian 
 literature, nor does he appear to be indebted to it for anything 
 more than the story of Troilus and Creseide — which is a trans- 
 lation, or rather a paraphrase, of the Filostrato of Boccaccio— 
 and that of Palamon and Arcite, which is taken from the 
 
 Tu es d'amours mondains dieux, en Albie, 
 Et de la rose, en la terre angeliqiie, 
 Qui d' Angels Saxonne est puis fleurie ; 
 Angleterre d'elle ce nom s'applique, 
 Le derrenier en I'ethimologique, 
 En bon AngUs le liTre translatas : 
 Et un vergier ou du plant demandaa 
 Do eeuls qui font pour eulx auctorissr, 
 N'a pas long temps que tu edifias, 
 Grant translateur, noble GefFroy Chandas 
 
 A toy pour ce, de la fontaine Helye 
 Eequier avoir un ouTrage autentiqne, 
 Dont la doys est du tout en ta baiUie, 
 Pour refrener d'elle nia soif ethique: 
 Qu'en ma Gaule serai paralitique 
 Jusques a ce que tu m'abuveras. 
 Eustace sui, qui de mon plans aras ; 
 Mais prens en gre les euvres d'eseoliep 
 Que, par Clifford, de moy avoir pourras, 
 Grant translateur, noble Giefiroi Chaucier. 
 
 L'Envof/. 
 
 Poete lianlt, loenge destinye, 
 En ton jardin ne seroie qu'ortio ; 
 Considere ce que j'ay dit premier, 
 Ton noble plan, ta douce melodie ; 
 Mais pour scavoir, de rescrire te prie, 
 Grant translateur, noble Geffroy Chaucier. 
 
Lect. K. Chaucer's liteeakt cHRONOLoaT 401 
 
 Teseide of the same author. Chaucer's recension of this latter 
 tale differs much in plan, arrangement, and incident from the 
 Teseide, to which, as we shall see, it is greatly superior in 
 imagery and sentiment, though, perhaps, not in the conduct 
 of the narrative. 
 
 Dante was too severe, Petrarch too sentimental, for the cheer- 
 ful and buoyant spirit of Chaucer, and it is therefore not sur- 
 prising that he should have copied or imitated the lively 
 Boccaccio rather than the greater but more unreal creations 
 of those authors. 
 
 Chaucer, in fine, was a genuine product of the union of 
 Saxon and Norman genius, and the first well-characterized 
 specimen of the intellectual results of a combination, which 
 has given to the world a literature so splendid, and a history so 
 noble. 
 
 The English is the only Gothic tribe ever thoroughly imbued 
 with the Romance culture, and at the same time interfused with 
 southern blood, and consequently it is the only common repre- 
 sentative of the two races. The civilization and letters of Grer- 
 many and Scandinavia are either wholly dissimilar to those of 
 Southern Europe, or they are close imitations. On the other hand, 
 the social institutions and the poetry of the Romance nations 
 are self-developed, and but slightly modified by Gothic influ- 
 ences. In England alone have the best social, moral, and intel- 
 lectual energies of both families been brought to coincide in 
 direction ; and in English character and English literature we 
 find, if not all the special excellences which distinguish each 
 constituent of the English nationality, yet a resultant of the two 
 forces superior in power to either. 
 
 We are not well acquainted with Chaucer's literary chronology, 
 but there is good reason to believe that his translation of the 
 Roman de la Rose was his first important work, and the Canter- 
 bury Tales his last, as it is unquestionably his greatest. 
 
 The Roman de la Rose is in two parts — the commencement, 
 written by Guillaume de Lorris about the year 1250, containing 
 
 D h 
 
402 CHAtTCER's ACCIDENCE ' Lect. IX.' 
 
 not far from forty-one hundred verses, and the sequel or con- 
 tinuation written by Jean de Meung, half a century later, and 
 extending to about nineteen thousand verses. Criticism upon 
 the literary merits of works not belonging to English literature 
 would here be out of place; and in our examination of Chaucer's 
 Eomaunt of the Eose, we must confine ourselves chiefly to his 
 abiUty as a translator, though some of his embellishments and 
 improvements of the original will be found to deserve more 
 special attention. 
 
 The work of De Lorris is translated entire. The continuation 
 by De Meung is much abridged, but I believe not otherwise 
 essentially changed. The generally close correspondence be- 
 tween the first part of the Eomaunt of the Eose and the best 
 printed edition of the work of De Lorris — that of Meon — 
 affords a gratifying proof that the existing manuscripts of both 
 are, in the maiu, faithful transcripts of the respective authors' 
 copies; for if either had been much altered, the coincidence 
 between the two could not be so exact. We are, therefore, 
 warranted in believing that we have the Eomaunt of the Eose 
 very nearly as the translator left it, in all points except that of 
 grammatical inflection. 
 
 In this important particular there is much uncertainty and 
 confusion, with respect not only to the dialect of the Eomaunt, 
 but to that of all Chaucer's works. The manuscript copies of 
 his writings in the different public and private libraries of Eng- 
 land do not appear to have been collated by any competent 
 scholar, and none of the printed editions, except, perhaps, 
 "Wright's Canterbury Tales, are entitled to much confidence as 
 faithful reproductions of the codices. Caxton's second edition 
 has been supposed to be of high authority, because it professedly 
 conforms to a manuscript which he believed to be authentic ; 
 but this was a point on which Caxton was by no means quali- 
 fied to pronounce, and notwithstanding his professions of strict 
 adherence to his text, his avowed practice of reducing what he 
 calls tlie ' rude English ' of early authors, to an orthographical 
 
Lkct. IX. FEINTED TEXTS OF CHAUCER 403 
 
 and grammatical standard of his own, detracts much from the 
 value of all his editions of works of preceding centuries. 
 
 There are certain points of inflection in all the works of 
 Chaucer, on which we are much in the dark. The most im- 
 portant of these, both syntactically, and in reference to versifi- 
 cation, is the grammatical and prosodical value of the final e. 
 Most generally, it seems to have stood as the sign of the plural, 
 but sometimes, apparently, of case, and sometimes even of 
 gender, in nouns, and of the definite form in the adjective. 
 But the published texts are not uniform and harmonious enough 
 in the use of this letter to enable us to form a consistent theory 
 of its force, and to state the rules which governed its employ- 
 ment. There appears to be little doubt, however, that it occurs 
 more frequently in the manuscripts than in the printed editions 
 It was often obscurely written, or indicated by a mere mark, 
 which later transcribers and printers have overlooked, and the 
 restoration of it is, in many cases, absolutely necessary to the 
 metre of Unes which are found in the midst of passages generally 
 of exquisite versification.* 
 
 The printed copies are very inaccurate also in discriminating 
 between the regularly and the irregularly conjugated verbs. In 
 modern times, not only have many verbs originally irregular 
 become regular in conjugation, but the two systems are some- 
 times blended. Thus the Anglo-Saxon, creopan, to creep, 
 made the past tense singular, creap. But we say, crept, and 
 the like, the t final standing for ed, the usual ending of the 
 regular conjugation, which some grammatical improver sup- 
 posed to be a necessary sign of the past inflection. The best 
 manuscripts of Chaucer do not justify this corruption, though it 
 appears in all the old editions. 
 
 * My learned friend, Professor Child, of Harvard University, has kindly com- 
 municated to me many interesting ohservations on the e final in Chaucer, but, as 
 he is still continuing his researches, I will not anticipate his conclusions, which 
 trast will soon be given to the world by himself See Wright's Notes on the 
 Eeeve's Tale, An«cdota Literaria, p. 23 et seq. 
 
 D D 2 
 
404 THE EOMATJNT OF THE ROSE Lect. IX. 
 
 The translation of the Eoman de la Rose, in the form we 
 possess it, is not, then, a safe authority upon the accidence of 
 English at the commencement of Chaucer's literary career; 
 but, from its general fidelity to the original, it aifords a fair 
 opportunity for comparing the relative power of poetical ex- 
 pression, possessed, at that time, by the two languages, English 
 had not then attained to the full compass, flexibility, and grace, 
 with which Chaucer himself, in his later works, endowed it. 
 Still, I believe that no competent judge can examine the French 
 text and its English counterpart, without coming to the con- 
 clusion, that the language, which, a generation or two before, 
 had shown itself, in the hands of Eobert of Grloucester and his 
 follower De Brunne, poor, rude, and unpolished, had now, by 
 accretion and development, become so improved as to be in no 
 wise inferior to the original of the Eoman de la Eose, in any of 
 the special qualities that go to make up a perfect poetical 
 diction. 
 
 The metre is the same in the translation as in the original — 
 iambic, octosyllabic rhyme — ■ but as the e final was, except 
 when followed by a word beginning with h, or with a vowel, 
 generally pronounced in both languages, a majority of the 
 lines have a superfluous or ninth syllable in the terminal 
 rhyme, which thus becomes an amphibrach instead of an iambus. 
 In this respect, however, no rule of sequence or arrangement is 
 followed, the alternate succession of masculine and feminine, 
 or single and double rhymes, not having then become obligatory 
 in French, as it never did in English verse. 
 
 So far as, with our imperfect knowledge of the pronunciation 
 of English in Chaucer's time, we are able to judge, the versi- 
 fication of this translation, though in general flowing and cor- 
 rect, is less skilful than that of the poet's later works ; and he 
 exhibits less facility in rhyming in the Eomaunt than in his 
 Canterbury Tales. Thus, where a double rhymed ending occurs, 
 he, much more frequently than in his original compositions, 
 
Lect. IX. THE KOMAUNT OF THE KOSE 405 
 
 malces use of two words in one line as a consonance to a single 
 word in another. Thus : 
 
 1374. And many homely trees there were, 
 That peaches, coines, and apples here, 
 Medlers, plummes, peeres, chesteinis 
 Cherise, of whiche many one faine is. 
 
 So again : 
 
 1382. With cipres, and with oliveris, 
 
 Of which that nigh no plenty here is. 
 
 and 
 
 1577. Againe the Sunne an hundred hewis, 
 
 Blew, yellow, and red, that fresh and new is. 
 
 But these licenses are not common, and in general both rhyme 
 and metre are unexceptionable. 
 
 To give an extended comparison between the diction of the 
 French poet and his English translator is here impossible, and 
 I must content myself with a specimen or two, which will serve 
 to direct the attention of the reader to the mode in which 
 Chaucer has embellished and improved upon his original. This 
 he effects by the use of more expressive words, by the addition 
 of picturesque features to the imagery, and by the greater con- 
 densation of style which the structure of English sometimes 
 allows. 
 
 Verses 119 — 122 of the original run thus: — 
 
 Si vi tot covert et pave 
 Le fons de I'iave de gravele; 
 La praerie grant et bele 
 Tres au pie de I'iave batoit. 
 
 This Chaucer renders, in four and a half verses, thus : — 
 
 Tho' saw I wele 
 The hottome y-paved everidele 
 With gravel, full of stones shene; 
 The meadowes softe, sote and grene, 
 Beet right upon the water side. 
 
406 THE KOMAUNT OF THE EOSB LeOt. IX. 
 
 An explanatory remark is sometimes introduced by the 
 translator, as in the comparison of the song of the birds in the 
 rose-garden to the chant of the sirens. De Lorris has said, 
 
 672. Tant estoit oil chans dous et biaus, 
 
 Qu'il ne sembloit pas chans d'oisiaus, 
 
 Ains le peust I' en aesmer 
 
 A chant de seraines de mer, 
 
 Qui, par lor vols qu'eles ont saines 
 
 Et series,* ont non seraines. 
 
 In the translation thus : 
 
 Such swete song was hem emong, 
 That me thought it no birdes song, 
 But it was wonder like to bee 
 Song of meremaidens of the see, 
 That, for hir singen is so clere. 
 Though we meremaidens clepe hem here 
 In English, as is our usaunoe. 
 Men clepe hem sereins in France. 
 
 But Chaucer's amplifications of the text of De Lorris are not 
 numerous, nor, with a single exception, of much importance. 
 The addition, in the case I refer to, was noticed in Lecture XL 
 of my First Series, and I here recur to it, not only for its in- 
 herent interest, as the expression of a generous and truly English 
 sentiment, of which there is no trace in the original, but, more 
 especially, because, in a later work, the poet repeats, expands, 
 and enforces the sentiment, in a tone which plainly indicates that 
 he had been censured for expressing it, and was seizing an occasion 
 for a spirited defence of his principles. The connection between 
 the two passages renders it necessary to re-examine the first. 
 
 The word vilain denoted primarily a man of rustic and 
 plebeian birth, and afterwards, from the general disposition of 
 the high-born and the rich to ascribe base qualities to men of 
 humble origin, it came to signify, also, ignoble in spirit, mean 
 
 * Eoquefort explains tliia ■word: JoK, agriaWe, doux, milodieux, paisible, 
 moderi, tranquille, lent, grave, — rather a formidable list of meanings to be 
 deduced from the Latin adverb, sero, late, to wliicli lie refers serie. 
 
LeOT. IX. THE EOMAUNT OF THE ROSE 407 
 
 and vulgar. At a later period, the word acquired in English 
 even a more offensive moral meaning ; but in Chaucer's time, 
 though employed occasionally by the poet himself in the same 
 metaphorical way as in French, it was not habitually used in 
 any other than the feudal sense of a tenant, or a serf bound to 
 the soil he tilled, or in the more general acceptation of a plebeian, 
 low-born person.* De Lorris had introduced this word and its 
 derivative, vilonnie, into a passage, v. 2086, which Chaucer 
 translates thus :— 
 
 2175. ' Villanie at the beginning, 
 
 ' I woll,' sayd Love, ' over all thing 
 Thou leave, if thou wolt ne be 
 False, and trespace ayenst me : 
 I curse and blame generally 
 All hem that loven villany, 
 For villanie maketh villeine, 
 And by his deeds a clioile is seine. 
 These villaines ame without pitie, 
 Friendship, love, and all bountie. 
 I nill receive imto my servise 
 Hem that ben villaines of emprise.' 
 
 Villanie (vilonnie) as first used in this extract is employed in 
 a moral sense, but in the couplet: 
 
 For villanie maketh villeine. 
 And by his deeds a chorle is seine, 
 
 villeine, as plainly appears by the original, 
 
 Vilonnie fait li vilains, 
 
 * This latter was the common meaning long after Chaucer's time, and evon as 
 late as the beginning of the sixteenth century. Fisher thus uses it, in his memo- 
 rial sermon on the Countess of Eichmond and Derby, mother of Henry VII., 
 preached in 1509. Speaking of the prayer of Christ for the forgiveness of his 
 enemies, and his expected intercession for the departed countess, he says : — ' Yf 
 in this mortall Body he prayed and asked forgyveness for his Enemyes that eruci- 
 fyed hym » » * and yet nevertheless he opteyned his petycion for them ; moche 
 j'ather it is to suppose, that he shall opteyne his askynge for * * * this noble princes 
 than for his mortal Enemyes, which were many and but vijlai/n s.' Eosvile's 
 reprint, 1708, p. 24 : Here the word means persons of low condition, as eou- 
 tiasted with the rank of the deceased ' noble princess.' 
 
408 THE EOMAUNT OF THE EOSB Lect. TX. 
 
 is the nominative to inaJceth, and villanie is its objective.: 
 Hence the meaning is : villains, or persons of plebeian rank, 
 commit villany or base actions, or, in other words, those ■who 
 are villains in a legal sense are especially prone to be guilty of 
 the meannesses which were morally stigmatized as villany. 
 Against this opinion, Chaucer's noble spirit, though he was of 
 gentle birth, compelled him to protest, and he introduced into 
 his translation this disclaimer : 
 
 But understond in thine entent, 
 
 That this is not mine entendemeat, 
 
 To clepe no wight in no ages 
 
 Onely gentle for his linages : 
 
 But whoso is vertuous, 
 
 And in his port not outrageous, 
 
 When such one thou seest thee befome, 
 
 Though he be not gentle borne, 
 
 Than maiest well seine this in sooth, 
 
 That he is gentle, because he doth 
 
 As longeth to a gentleman : 
 
 Of hem none other deme I can, 
 
 For certainly withouten dreede 
 
 A chorle is demed by his deede, 
 
 Of hye or lowe, as ye may see. 
 
 Or of what kinred that he bee.* 
 
 Although the original harshness of the feudal relation be- 
 tween the Norman lord and the Saxon churl had been some- 
 what softened by three centuries of common interest and reci- 
 procal dependence and helpfulness, yet such sentiments as these 
 were of too dangerous a tendency to be well received by the 
 higher classes, in an age when so many popular apostles of 
 liberty, in France and in England, were preaching the natural 
 equality of man. Hence Chaucer was undoubtedly blamed for 
 unnecessarily proclaiming this disorganising doctrine, in the 
 translation of a work which professed no such social heresy. 
 
 But the poet did not shrink from the position he had taken, 
 
 * See Longer Notes aud Illustrations, III. at the end of tbis lecture. 
 
Lkct. IX. THE KOMATTNT OF THE EOSB 409 
 
 and in the Wife of Bath's Tale he again advanced and main- 
 tained the opinion, that the true test of gentility is nobleness 
 of life and courtesy of manner, and not ancestral rank. This 
 position is enforced at much length, the argument extending to 
 a hundred verses, and being conducted with a spirit which gives 
 it altogether the air of a reply to a personal attack. It is aa 
 follows: — 
 
 But for ye speken of swiche gentilesse, 
 As is descendit out of old richesse, 
 Therefor schuld ye ben bolden gentil men ; 
 Swiche arrogaunce is not worth an hen. 
 Lok who that Ls most vertuous alway, 
 Prive and pert, and most eutenditb ay 
 To do the gentil dedes that he can, 
 Tak him for the grettest gentil man. 
 Crist, wol we clayme of him our gentilesse, 
 Nought of oure eldres for hev olde richesse. 
 For though thay give us al her heritage. 
 For which we clayme to be of high parage, 
 Yit may thay not biquethe, for no thing, 
 To noon of us, so vertuous lyvyng, 
 That made hem gentil men y-calHd be. 
 And bad us folwe hem in si^ch degi-^. 
 Wei can the wyse poet of Florence, 
 That hatte Daunt, speke of this sentence ; 
 Lo, in such maner of rym Is Dauntes tale : • 
 
 • I have not been able to identify the precise passage in Dante referred to by 
 Chaucer, but the Italian poet expresses very similar sentiments in the Canzone 
 prefixed to the fourth Trattato in the Convito : — 
 
 E poiehj tempo mi par d' aspettare, 
 
 Diporro giu lo mio soave stile, 
 
 Ch' io ho tenuto nel trattar d' Amorey 
 
 E diro del valore 
 
 Per lo qnal veramente 6 1' uom gentile^ 
 
 Con rima aspra e sottile, 
 
 Eiprovando il giudicio falso e vile 
 
 Di que', che voglion che di gentilezzs 
 
 Sia principio riechezza: 
 
 • *««•• 
 
 £d h tanto d^rata 
 
410 THE EOMAUNT OF THE EOSE Lect. IX 
 
 Ful seeld uprisith by his braurichis small 
 
 Prowes of man, for God of his prowesse 
 
 Wol that we claime of him our gentilesse : 
 
 For of our auncestres we no thing clayme 
 
 But temporal thing, that men may hurt and mayme, 
 
 Ek every wight wot ihis as well as I, 
 
 If gentiles were plaunted naturelly 
 
 Unto a certayn lignage doun the line, 
 
 Prive ne apert, thay wolde never fine 
 
 To done of gentilesce the fair office, 
 
 They might nought doon no vileny or vice. 
 
 The poet manifestly holds that gentility is not a generic dis- 
 tinction, and at the same time tacitly gives in his adhesion to 
 the doctrine of the perpetuity of species, just now under dis- 
 cussion, in a class of philosophers who were not dreamed of by 
 Chaucer as likely to debate that question five centuries after his 
 age. He proceeds : — 
 
 La cosl falsa opinion tra nui, 
 Che r uom chiama colui 
 Uomo gentil, cbe puo dicere : I'fui 
 Nipote o figlio di cotal valente, 
 Bench^ sia da nicnte : 
 » * * # ♦ 
 
 Clife le divizie, siccome si crede, 
 Non posson gentilezza dar, nS torre; 
 Perocch^ viii son di lor natura. 
 ♦ * « * » 
 
 E gentilezza dovunque virtute, 
 
 Ma non virtute ov" ella ; 
 
 Siceome k cielo dovunque la Stella; 
 
 Ma cio non 4 converse. 
 
 » » * # » 
 
 Pero nessira si vanti, 
 
 Dieendo : per ischiatta io son eon lei, 
 
 Ch'elli son quasi Dei 
 
 Que' c' han tal grazia fiior di tutti rei; 
 
 Chi solo Iddio all' anima la dona, 
 
 Che vede in sua persona 
 
 Perfettamente star, siechi ad alquanti 
 
 Lo seme di felieita s' accosta, 
 
 Messo da Dio noil' anima ben postai 
 
liECT. 13L TRANSLATION 411 
 
 Tak fuyr and ber it in the derkest hous, 
 Bitwixe this and the mount Ciiukasous, 
 And let men shit the dores, and go thenne, 
 Yit wol the fuyr as fiur and lighte brenne 
 As twenty t]io\isiind men might it beholde; 
 His office naturel ay wol it holde, 
 Up peril on my lif, til that it dye. 
 Her may ye se wel, how that genterye 
 Is nought annexid to possessioun, 
 Sithins folk ne doon her operacioun 
 Alway, as doth the fuyr, lo, in his kynde. 
 For God it wot, men may ful often fynde 
 A lordes sone do schame and vilonye. 
 And he that wol have pris of his gentrie, 
 For he was boren of a gentil hous. 
 And had his eldres noble and vertuous, 
 And nyl himselve doo no gentU dedes, 
 Ne folw his gentil aunceter, that deed is, 
 He is nought gentil, be he duk or erl ; 
 For vileyn synful deedes maketh a cherl. 
 For gentilnesse nys bvit renome 
 Of thin auncestres, for her heigh bounty, 
 Which is a straunge thing to thy persona ; 
 Thy gentilesce comelh fro God alloone. 
 Than comth oiu-e verray gentilesse of grace, 
 It was no thing biquetho us with cure place. 
 Thinketh how nobil, as saith Valerius, 
 Was thiike Tullins Hostilius, 
 That out of povert ros to high noblesse. 
 Eedith Senek, and redith eek Boece, 
 Ther schuln ye se expresse, tliat no dred is, 
 That he is gentil that doth gentil dedis. 
 And therfor, lieve housbond, I conclude, 
 Al were it that myn auncetre'^ wer rude, 
 Tit may the highe God, and so hope I, 
 Graunte me grace to ly ve vertuously ; 
 Than am I gentil, whan that I bygynne 
 To lyve vertuously, and weyven synne. 
 
 The dialect of the translation of the Eoman de la Rose 
 is, in general, more archaic than that of Chaucer's later, and 
 
412 TRANSLATION Lect. IX. 
 
 especially his original works, and these latter, which reach the 
 highest excellence of expression in the Canterbury Tales, exhibit 
 a force and beauty of diction that few succeeding authors have 
 surpassed. 
 
 Chaucer's translation of the Eomaunt of the Eose, which 
 was a work of his earlier years, was perhaps consciously de- 
 signed as a preparation for original poetic effort. But whether 
 so designed or not, he could hardly have selected a better exer- 
 citation or school of practice, in the use of his mother tongue 
 as a medium of imaginative composition. 
 
 The French Roman de la Eose — or rather the first part of 
 the two poems which pass under that name, but which are by 
 different authors, and but slightly connected as commencement 
 and sequel — was in a style wholly new to English, and its dialect 
 was richest in many points, both of thought and of expression, 
 where the poverty of English was greatest. A translation of it, 
 therefore, was a work admirably suited, in the hands of a genial 
 artist, to the improvement of the practical diction of English, 
 in the points where it needed to be reformed before it could 
 become a fit vehicle for the conceptions of a truly original 
 poetic spirit. 
 
 Indeed it may be said, as a general truth, that one of the 
 very best methods of learning to express ourselves aptly in our 
 native language is to habituate ourselves to the utterance of 
 thoughts and the portrayal of images conceived by other minds, 
 and embodied in other tongues, and there is perhaps no practice, 
 by which we can so readily acquire the command of an extensive 
 vocabulary, or give to our personal dialect so great a compass, 
 flexibility and variety of expression, as by the translation of 
 authors whose thoughts run in channels not familiar to our 
 native literature. 
 
 Nor is it that, in translation, we borrow either the words, or 
 even the phraseological combinations of those from whom we 
 translate. This would be but a restamping of old coin without 
 effacing the foreign image and superscription, a slavish imita-: 
 
LSCT. IX. CnA0CEE's MINOR P0EM3 413 
 
 tion of the original, which a mail capable, or ambitious of be- 
 ■coming capable, of well using his own tongue, could not descend 
 to. But it is, that when we think another man's thoughts in 
 our own words, we are forced out of the familiar beats of our 
 own personal diction, and compelled sometimes to employ 
 vocables and verbal combinations, which, though they may be 
 perfectly idiomatic, we have not. before appropriated and made 
 our own by habitual use, sometimes to negotiate new alliances 
 between vernacular words, which, if they never have yet been 
 joined together, nevertheless lawfully and profitably may be.* 
 
 It is impossible here to go iiito a critical examination of the 
 numerous works of Chaucer, original and imitative, and the 
 space at our command will only enable us to take a cursory 
 view of some of the more important of his remaining poems. 
 Of the former class, one of the best known is the Troilus and 
 Creseide, which is founded on the Filostrato of Boccaccio, and 
 in part directly translated from that author. The additions to 
 the Italian are extensive, important, and probably mainly 
 origfinal, though certainly, in pai-t, derived from French writers. _ 
 Chaucer himself makes no mention of Boccaccio, but professes 
 to derive the incidents of the story from Lollius, a Latin author ; 
 but no Latin original is known, nor have the longer additions 
 been traced to any other source. It cannot be said that the 
 poem is essentially improved by the changes of the translator, 
 though, in some passages, great skill in the use of words is 
 exhibited, and the native humour of Chaucer pervades many 
 portions of the story, which, in the hands of Boccaccio, were 
 of a graver cast ; but, upon the whole, the merit of Chaucer's 
 
 * Maister Cheetes iudgement was great in translating out of one tongue into an 
 other, and better skill he had in our English speach to iudge of the Phrases and 
 propei-ties of wordes, and to diuide sentences, than any else had thHt I haue 
 knowne. And often he woulde englyshe his matters out of the Latine or Greeks 
 vpon the sodeyne, by looking of the booke onely without reading or construing at 
 all: An Tsage right worthie and yerie profitable for all men, as well for the vnder- 
 Btanding of the booke, as also for the aptnesse of framing the Authors meaning 
 and bettering thereby their iudgement, and therewithall perfiting their tongue and 
 Ttterance of speach. — Ejoisik to Wilson' s Translaiiun of Demosthenes. London: 1570. 
 
414 THE FLOWEE AND THE LEAP Lect. IX. 
 
 ■cohtributious to the original tale is not such as, in a brief and 
 general view of his poetical and philological character, to re- 
 pay an analysis. 
 
 The exquisite poem, the Flower and the Leaf, is, I am afraid, 
 better known by Dryden's modernization of it than by the origi- 
 nal text. It first appeared in 1597, and its authenticity has been 
 suspected, but the internal evidence is almost decisive in its 
 favour. Chaucer himself, in the Legend of Good Women, ex- 
 pressly alludes to the subject, as one on which he had written, and 
 there can be little doubt that the poem in question is his. Parts 
 of it have been shown to be imitations or translations from the 
 French, but these constitute an inconsiderable proportion of the 
 work, and it must be regarded as among the most truly original, 
 as it certainly is one of the finest, of Chaucer productions. Indeed 
 it may be said, with respect to many of the poet's alleged obli- 
 gations to Eomance .'luthors, the evidence of which has been 
 industriously collected by Sandras and others, that the passages 
 cited in proof of the theory that our author was little better than 
 a translator, are, for the most part, mere commonplaces, which 
 are found in all literatures, and the true origin of which dates 
 so far back that no Eomance author, ancient or modern, can 
 fairly be supposed to have first expressed them. 
 
 The general plan of the Flower and the Leaf is well enough, 
 though somewhat quaintly, stated by the first editor : 
 
 A gentlewoman, out of an arbour in a grove, seetli a gi-eat companie 
 of knights and ladies in a daunce upon the greene grasse : the which 
 being ended, they all kneele downe, and do honour to the daisie, some 
 to the flower, and some to the leafe. Afterward this gentlewoman 
 learneth by one of these ladies the meaning hereof, which is this : 
 They which honour the flower, a thing fading with every blast, are 
 Buch as looke after beautie and worldly pleasure. But they that 
 honour the leafe, which abideth with the root, notwithstanding the 
 frosts and winter stormes, are they which follow vertue and during 
 qualities, without regard of worldly respects. 
 
 One of the most striking characteristics of this poem is the 
 
Lect. IX. chatjcer's stjipatht with nattike 415 
 
 sympathy it manifests with nature. Some tokens of this feeling 
 are discoverable in Piers Ploughman, but it is first fully displayed 
 by Chaucer. The same sensibility to the charms of rural scenery 
 and landscape beauty is indeed shown elsewhere by our author, 
 but perhaps nowhere in so high a degree. This feature of the 
 poem renders it probable that it is one of Chaucer's later works ; 
 for the perception of landscape beauty depends upon a long 
 training of the eye, which is hardly perfected until a somewhat 
 advanced period of life. In the hey-day of youth, we do not 
 see Grod in his works, and the increased enjoyment of rural 
 scenery is one of the compensations reserved by Providence for 
 the sober age of those who have so familiarized themselves with 
 the ways of Nature as to understand some of the many voices in 
 which she speaks to her children.* 
 
 But the love of nature, as exhibited in this poem, is rather a 
 matter of feeling than of intelligent appreciation or of refined 
 taste ; for the description of the grove a.pplies to the clipped and 
 
 * I Tenture here to quote a passage from a discourse of my own, delivered and. 
 published in 1847 : — 
 
 • The age of thewise man has another compensation. It has been wisely ordered, 
 that the sense of material beauty in the myriad forms of spontaneous natiu-e and 
 formative art, is the last dcTcloped of all the powers of sensuous perception. It 
 cannot arrive at its full perfection imtil the abatement of the " natural force" 
 allows to the pure intelligence its due superiority over the physical energies, and 
 the sense to which the impressions of visible beauty are addressed has been refined 
 and spiritualized by long, an 1 perhaps unconscious, sesthetical cultivation. We say 
 unconscious cultivation, for in this school of life our great teacher often disguises 
 her lessons. Of all our organs, the eye is the most susceptible of culture, and it 
 is the one for whose involuntary training Nature has made the largest provision. 
 Untaught, newborn vi.^ion distinguishes but outline and colour, and it is long obser- 
 vation, alone, that gives the perception of the relief which springs from the dis- 
 tribution of light and shade, the notions of distance and relative position, and the 
 estimate of comparative mignitudes. Thus far. unreflecting experience carries 
 her pupil. But the ethereal perception of beauty is a product of the period when 
 strengthening intellect has acquired its full dominion over mortified passion, the 
 superadded fruit of moral culture, and it attains not its ripeness, save under the 
 rays of an autumnal sun. Nature has thus reserved for the sober eye of age tht. 
 most intelligent appreciation, and the most exqviisite enjoyment, of the choicest of 
 her sensuous gifts, and the evening of the scholar who has made his life a dis- 
 cipline is cheered by the most ennobling contemplations of the world of intellecli 
 and gilded with the most exalted pleasiu-es of the world of sense.' 
 
416 THE FLOWEK AND THE LEAF Lect. IX. 
 
 trimmed artificial plantation, and not to the wild and free luxu- 
 riance- of forest growth. Chaucer here unfortunately followed 
 his literary reminiscences, instead of trusting to his own instincts 
 and his taste ; for he is borrowing from a French poet when he 
 speaks of the ' okes great,' which grew ' streight as a line,' and 
 at equal distances from each other,* and of the ' hegge,' — 
 
 Wrethen in fere so well and cunningly, 
 
 That every branch and leafe grew by mesure, 
 
 Plaine as a bord, of an height by 'and hj. 
 
 But this description of the turf must have been original, for 
 it is in England that one oftenest finds : 
 
 The gi-ene gras 
 So small, so tliicke, so short, so fresh of hew, 
 That most like xmto green wool wot I it was. 
 
 I believe no old manuscript of the Flower and the Leaf is 
 known to be extant. This is much to be regretted, because 
 Speght's edition is evidently exceedingly corrupt, and the versi- 
 fication, which seems to have been very polished and mellifluous, 
 is much impaired by the inaccuracy of the text. 
 
 * Dans le Dit du Lyon (de G. Machault), les arbres de I'ile oi aborde le poJte, 
 Bont tous de meme hauteur, et plant^s a ^gale distance ; genre de paysage deja 
 d^crit par Gr, de Lorris et q^ui charmait les aneiens Bretons. 
 
 Li vergiers 6toit compassez, 
 Car d' arbres y avoit assez, 
 Mais de groissour et de hautesse 
 Furent pareil, et par noblesse 
 Plants si, que nulz ne saroit 
 Com plus de I'un a I'autre aroit. 
 
 Sandras, Etude tur Chaucer, p. 100. 
 
 In the translation of Owen, or the Lady of the Fountain, by Villemarqui, is 
 this passage: "Apr4s avoir err6 longtemps, j'ari-ivai dans la plus belle vallee du 
 monde; la s'ilevaient des arbres, tous de meme hauteur;" and in a note, two 
 similar passages from the Myvyrian and the Mabinogion are cited.— ViUemarqui, 
 Les Eomans de la Table Eonde, pp. 181, 228. This seems to indicate a taste 
 generated, or rather depraved, by a too artificial civilization, such as we can hardlj 
 suppose to have existed in any early Celtic nation. 
 
LSCT. IX. CANTERBURY TALES 417 
 
 Chaucer's greatest work, that on which his claim to be ranked 
 among the first ornaments of modern literature must principally 
 rest, is his Canterbury Tales. This is a collection of stories re- 
 lated by the members of a company of pilgrims as they rode 
 together to worship and pay their vows at the shrine of ' the 
 Loly blisful martir,' St. Thomas a Becket. 
 
 The host of an inn, the Tabard, at Southwark — where the 
 pilgrims, twenty-nine in number, accidentally meet on their 
 way to Canterbury, and pass the night — joins their company, 
 and acts as the presiding spirit of the party. It is agreed that 
 each pilgrim shall tell at least one tale — for there is some con- 
 fusion about the number — on the journey to Canterbury, and 
 another on the return ; but the whole number of stories is 
 twenty-four only, Chaucer having died before the work was 
 completed. After a brief introduction, filled with the most 
 cheerful images of spring, the season of the pilgrimage, the poet 
 commences the narrative with a description of the person and 
 the character of each member of the party. This description 
 extends to about seven hundred lines, and, of course, affords 
 space for a very spirited and graphic portrayal of the physical 
 aspect, and an outUne of the moral features, of each. This 
 latter part of the description is generally more rapidly 
 sketched, because it was a part of the author's plan to allow his 
 personages to bring out their special traits of character, and 
 thus to depict and individualize themselves, in the inter- 
 ludes between the tales. The selection of the pilgrims is evi- 
 dently made with reference to this object of developement in 
 action, and therefore constitutes an essential feature of the 
 plot. We have persons of all the ranks not too far removed 
 from each other by artificial distinctions, to be supposed 
 capable of associating upon that footing of temporary equality, 
 which is the law of good fellowship, among travellers bound on 
 the same journey and accidentally brought together. .All the 
 great classes of English humanity are thus represented, and 
 opportunity is given for the display of the harmonies and the 
 
 E £ 
 
418 CANTEEBtJET TALES Lect. IX. 
 
 jealousies which now united, now divided the interests of dif- 
 ferent orders and different vocations in the commonwealth. 
 The clerical pilgrims, it will be observed, are proportionately 
 very numerous. The exposure of the corruptions of the church 
 was doubtless a leading aim with the poet, and if the whole 
 series, which was designed to extend to at least fifty-eight tales, 
 had been completed, the criminations and recriminations of the 
 jealous ecclesiastics would have exhibited the whole profession 
 in an unenviable light. But Chaucer could be just as well as 
 severe. His portrait of the prioress, though it does not spare 
 the affectations of the lady, is complimentary ; and his ' good 
 man of religion,' the ' pore Persoun of a toun,' of whom it is 
 said that — 
 
 Cristes lore, and his apostles twelve, 
 
 He taught, and ferst he folwed it himselve, 
 
 ' has been hundreds of times quoted as one of the most beautiful 
 pictures of charity, humility, and generous, conscientious, intel- 
 ligent devotion to the duties of the clerical calling, which can 
 be found in the whole range of English literature. 
 
 None of these sketches, I believe, has ever been traced to a 
 foreign source, and they are so thoroughly national, that it is 
 hardly possible to suppose that any imagination but that of an 
 Englishman could have conceived th6m. In the first introduc- 
 tion of the individuals described in the prologues to the several 
 stories, and in the dialogues which occur at the pauses between 
 the tales, wherever, in short, the narrators appear in their own 
 persons, the characters are as well marked and discriminated, 
 and as harmonious and consistent in action, as in the best 
 comedies of modern times. Although, therefore, there is, in 
 the plan of the composition, nothing of technical dramatic form 
 or incident, yet the admirable conception of character, the con- 
 summate skill with which_each is sustained and developed, and 
 the nature, life, and spirit of the dialogue, abundantly prove, 
 that if the drama had been known in Chaucer's time as a 
 
Lect. IX. CANTEEBtJRT TALES 419 
 
 branch of living literature, he might have attained to as high 
 excellence in comedy as any English or Continental writer. 
 
 The story of a comedy is but a contrivance to bring the 
 characters into contact and relation with each other, and the 
 invention of a suitable plot is a matter altogether too simple to 
 have created the slightest difficulty to a mind like Chaucer's. 
 He is essentially a dramatist, and if his great work does not 
 appear in the conventional dramatic form, it is an accident of 
 the time, and by no means proves a want of power of original 
 conception or of artistic skill in the author. 
 
 This is a point of interest in the history of modern literature, 
 because it is probably the first instance of the exhibition of 
 unquestionable dramatic genius in either the Gothic or the 
 Romance languages. I do not mean that there had previously 
 existed, in modern Europe, nothing like histrionic representa- 
 tion of real or imaginary events ; but neither the Decameron of 
 Boccaccio, to which the Canterbury Tales have been compared, 
 nor any of the Mysteries and Moralities, or other imaginative 
 works of the Middle Ages, in which several personages are 
 introduced, show any such power of conceiving and sustaining 
 individual character, as to prove that its author could have fur- 
 nished the personnel of a respectable play. Chaucer, therefore, 
 may fairly be said to be not only the earliest dramatic genius of 
 modern Europe, but to have been a dramatist before that which 
 is technically known as the existing drama was invented.* 
 
 The tales related by the pilgrims are as various as the cha- 
 racters of the narrators, grave, gay, pathetic, humorous, moral, 
 licentious, chivalric and vulgar. Few of the stories — perhaps 
 none of them — are original in invention, and some are little 
 more than close translations froin the Latin or the French; 
 
 * The second Tolume of the Eeliquise AntiqniE of Wright and Halliwell contains 
 a sermon written in Chaucer's own time against ' Miracle Plays.' It is of con- 
 Bidsrable interest, both from its subject, and as a philological monument, and I 
 subjoin to this lecture copious extracts from it. See Longer Notes and Illustra- 
 tions, IV. 
 
 E E 2 
 
420 THE HONNE PEESTBS TALE LeCT. IX. 
 
 but most, especially those of a gayer cast, are thoroughly im- 
 bued with Chaucer's spirit and with English national humour ; 
 they have been animated with a new life, and all that constitutes 
 their real literary value is entirely the poet's own. 
 
 It is of course impossible to give an analysis of any number 
 of these tales, and nothing but the perusal of them can convey 
 to the student the least idea of their extraordinary merit. 
 
 Ther€ are, however, besides the general features to which I 
 have alluded, some traits which remarkably distinguish all the 
 tales — with the exception of two or three professedly didactic 
 in character — from most of Chaucer's imitative works. They 
 are pervaded with an eminently practical, life-like tone, and a 
 pithy sententiousness which, by the exceeding appositeness of 
 the sentiment to the circumstances detailed, is strikingly con- 
 trasted with the moral platitudes and exhausted commonplaces 
 of the French poets he so often copies, and still more strongly dis- 
 tinguished from the ethical lessons with which contemporaneous 
 writers so freely sprinkle their pages. English morality has 
 generally been ethics in action, not in theory or profession, and 
 Chaucer modified most of bis Canterbury Tales in accordance 
 with this trait of the national character. 
 
 The tale which is most unmistakably marked with the 
 peculiarities of Chaucer's genius, and is therefore the most 
 characteristic of the series, is the Nonne Prestes Tale. This is 
 a story of the carrying off of a cock by a fox, and the escape of 
 the fowl from the devourer through the folly of Eeynard in 
 opening his mouth to mock his pursuers, in compliance with the 
 advice of his prey. These mere incidents are certainly not of 
 Chaucer's invention, and the naked plan> of the tale has been 
 thought to be borrowed from a French fable of about forty 
 lines, found in the poems of Marie of France ; but Chaucer has 
 extended it to more than six hundred verses, the part thus 
 added consisting chiefly of a dialogue — for, ' at tbilke tyme,' 
 'Bestis and briddes could speke and synge' — on the warnings 
 conveyed by visions, between the cock, who had been terrified 
 
Lect. IX. THE NONNE PEESTES TALE 421 
 
 by a dream, and the pride of his harem, 'fayre damysel 
 Pertilote,' whom he had waked by snoring in the agonies of his 
 nightmare. In this discussion Partlet assails Chanticleer with 
 both ridicule and argument, trying half to shame and half to 
 reason him out of his unmanly fears : — 
 
 ' Away ! ' quod sche, ' fy on yow, herteles ! 
 
 Alias ! ' qiiod sche, ' for by that God above ! 
 
 Now have ye lost myn hert, and al my love ; 
 
 I can nought love a coward, by my feith. 
 
 For certis, what so eny womman seith, 
 
 We alle desiren, if it mighte be, 
 
 To have housbondes, hardy, riche, and fre, 
 
 And secre and no nygard, ne no fool, 
 
 Ne him that is agast of every tool, 
 
 Ne noon avatinter, by that God above ! 
 
 How dorst ye sayn, for schame ! unto your love, 
 
 That any thing might make yow afferd ? 
 
 Have ye no mannes hert, and ban a bard? ' 
 
 She ascribes his dream to ' replecciouns,' quotes ' Catoun, 
 which that was so wise a mau,' as saying, 'ne do no force of 
 dremes,' and recommends an energetic course of remedies : — 
 
 Of lauriol, century and fumytere, 
 
 Or elles of elder bery, that growith there, 
 
 Of catapus, or of gaytre beriis, 
 
 Of erbe yve that groweth in our yerd. 
 
 The cock, in his reply, questions the authority of Cato, and 
 shows much reading, quoting freely from legendary and classic 
 lore. He pities the womanly ignorance of his feathered spouse, 
 and, apropos of the legend of ' Seint Kenelm,' says : — 
 
 ' I hadde lever than my schert, 
 That ye had rad his legend, as have I, 
 Dame Pertelot, I say yow trewely, 
 Macrobius, that writ the avisioun 
 In Auffi-ik of the worthy Cipioun, 
 Affermeth dremes, and saith that thay been 
 Wamyng of thinges that men after seen. 
 
422 THE NONNE PEESTES TALE Lect. IX. 
 
 And forthermore, I pray yow loketh wel 
 
 In the Olde Testament, of Daniel, 
 
 If he huld dremes eny vanyte ; 
 
 Rede eek of Joseph, and ther schal ye see 
 
 Whethir dremes ben som tyme (I say nought alle) 
 
 "Warnyng of thinges that schul after falle. 
 
 Lok of Egipt the king, daun Pharao, 
 
 His baker and his botiler also, 
 
 Whethir thay felte noon effect in dremis.' 
 
 He now tries to recover the good graces of his favourite 
 sultana by a method familiar to henpecked husbands^ personal 
 flattery : — 
 
 ' Whan I se the beauts of your face, 
 Ye ben so scarlet hiew about your eyghen, 
 It makith al my drede for to deyghen.' 
 
 But, by way of quiet retaliation for Partlet's sarcasms, he cites a 
 Latin proverbial saying : Mulier est hoTpJnis confusio, which 
 he turns into a compliment by this translation: — 
 
 He now 
 
 ' Madame, the sentence of this Latyn is : 
 Womman is mannes joye and mannes blis.' 
 
 • fleigh doun fro the beem 
 
 For it was day, and eek his hennes alle. 
 « • « * 
 
 He lokith as it were a grim lioun ; 
 And on his toon he rometh up and doim 
 Him deyned not to set his foot to grounde. 
 He chukkitli, whan he hath a com i-founde, 
 And to him rennen than his wifes alle. 
 
 The fox seizes him while he is crowing, and the conclusion of 
 the tale is as follows : — 
 
 Now, goode men, I pray herkneth aUe ; 
 Lo, how fortune torneth sodeinly 
 The hope and pride eek of her enemy. 
 This cok that lay upon this foxes bak, 
 In al his drede, unto the fox he spak, 
 
Lect. IX. THE KNIGHTES TALB 423 
 
 And saide, ' sire, if that I were as ye, 
 
 Yet scliuld I sayn, (as wis God helpe me) ; 
 
 ' Tumetli agein, ye proude cherles alle ; 
 
 A verray pestilens upon yow falle. 
 
 Now am I come unto this woodes syde, 
 
 Maugre youre hede, the cok schal heer abyde ; 
 
 I wol him ete in faith, and tliat anoon.' 
 
 The fox answered, ' in faith, it schal be doon.' 
 
 And whU he spak that word, al sodeinly 
 
 This cok brak from his mouth delyverly, 
 
 And heigh upon a tree he fleigh anoon. 
 
 And whan the fox seigh that he was i-goon, 
 
 * Alias ! ' quod he, ' o Chaunteclere, aUas ! 
 
 I have to yow,' quod he, ' y-don trespas, 
 
 Inasmoche as I makid you aferd. 
 
 Whan I yow hent, and brought out of the yerd ; 
 
 But, sire, I dede it in no wicked entent ; 
 
 Com doun, and I schal telle yow what I ment. 
 
 I schal say soth to yow, God help me so.' 
 
 ' Nay than,' quod he, ' I schrew us bothe tuo. 
 
 And first I schrew myself, bothe blood and boones, 
 
 If thou bigile me any ofter than oones. 
 
 Thou schalt no more thurgh thy flaterye. 
 
 Do me to synge and wynke with myn ye. 
 
 For he that wynkith, whan he scholde see, 
 
 Al wilfully, God let him never the ! ' 
 
 ' Nay,' quod the fox, ' but God him give meschatmce, 
 
 That is so undiscret of govemaunce, 
 
 That jangleth, when he scholde holde his pees.' 
 
 Tlie Knightes Tale, or the Story of Palamon and Arcite, is a 
 favourable instance of Chaucer's manner of dealing -with the 
 fables he borrowed from Romance authors. The Knight's Tale 
 is an abridged translation of a part of Boccaccio's Teseide, but 
 ■with considerable changes in the plan, which is, perhaps, not 
 much improved, and with important additions in the descriptive 
 and the more imaginative portions of the story. These additions 
 are not inferior to the finest parts of Boccaccio's work, and one 
 of them, tlie description of the Temple of Mars, is particularly 
 interesting, as proving that Chaucer possessed a power of 
 
424 THE KNIGHTES TALE Lect. IX, 
 
 treating the grand and terrible, of which no modern poet but 
 Dante had yet given an example. The poet here intermixes 
 the comic with the tragic, as actual life, and life's great inter- 
 preter, Shakespeare, so often do. Nature smiles through her 
 tears. Isolated events, it is true, are frequently stamped with 
 unmitigated sadness, but human life, as a whole, whether 
 individual or general, is interspersed with ludicrous scenes. 
 
 There is some confusion between the description of the 
 edifice itself, and of the paintings upon the walls of it; but it 
 seems to have been a representation, at Thebes, of a temple 
 of Mars in Thrace, with its decorations. One feature of the 
 construction of the temple is very striking, as showing the 
 ghastly character of the light by which the darkness of its 
 interior was made visible : 
 
 The northen light in at the dore schon, 
 For wyndow in the walle ne was there noon, 
 Thorugh -which men might no light disceme. 
 
 I suppose the ' northern light' is the aurora borealis, but this 
 phenomenon is so rarely mentioned by mediaeval writers, that 
 it may be questioned whether Chaucer meant anything more 
 than the faint and cold illumination received by reflection 
 
 ^through the door of an apartment fronting the north. 
 
 The views which the poets of classic antiquity and those of the 
 middle ages took of nature, were modified and limited partly 
 by the character of their knowledge of physical law, and partly 
 by the actual connection between natural phenomena and the 
 practical interests of human life. Celestial and meteoric ap- 
 
 > pearances, which neither affected the temperature of the atmo- 
 sphere and the distribution of rain and snow, nor were regarded 
 as explicable by known law, or as possessing an astrological 
 significance capable of interpretation, appear to have attracted 
 very little attention. In like manner, terrestrial objects, which 
 were not sources of danger or of profit, which neither helped 
 nor hindered material interests, did not in general excite interest 
 enough to stimulate to the closeness of observation which is 
 
Lbct. IX. THE SQTJTEEES TAIB 425 
 
 necessary to bring oiit the latent poetry that lies hid under 
 Nature's rudest surfaces. Ignorance of geography and of his- 
 tory smothered the cosmopolite charity which ages of wider 
 instructioa and culture have shown, and it is not strange that 
 the Greeks, who regarded every foreigner as a harbarian, 
 entitled to none of the privileges of Hellenic humanity, should 
 have felt no sympathy with those humble creatures which men 
 too selfishly consider as at all times subject to their irrespon- 
 sible domiaion, and as without individual rights and interests 
 of their own. It is difficult to suppose such changes in physical 
 law as the non-appearance of the aurora borealis, during the 
 many centuries which have left no record of this striking 
 phenomenon, would imply; but when we remember that the 
 poetry of Grreece and of Eome contains only the fewest, faintest, 
 and most questionable allusions to the phosphoric sparkling of 
 the sea, we may well believe that those who had a hundred times 
 witnessed the coruscation of the northern lights, thought it a 
 meteor too um-elated to the life of man to be worthy of poetic 
 celebration. 
 
 Every student of Chaucer, in reading the Squyeres Tale, 
 ■will share the wish of Milton, that we could — 
 
 Call up Mm who left half told 
 
 The story of Cambuscan bold, 
 
 Of Camball, and of Algarsife, 
 
 And who had Canace to wife, 
 
 That o'lTn'd the virtuous ring of glass, 
 
 And of the wondrous horse of brass 
 
 On which the Tartar king did ride. 
 
 This most admirable tale, which is imfortunately unfinished, 
 is the wildest and the most romantic of Chaucer's works. The 
 origin of the fable has not been discovered, and it has been 
 argued that it must have been drawn from an Oriental source ; 
 not because any analogon to it is known to exist in Eastern 
 literature, but because it is too little in harmony with the 
 character of European invention to be supposed of Occidental 
 gro?rth. However this may be, the scene and accessories of the 
 
426 THE SQUTERES TALB , Lkct. IX. 
 
 story do not belong to the sphere of Oriental fiction, and the 
 following speculations of the bystanders on the mysterious pro- 
 perties of the brazen horse and the magic mirror, sword and 
 ring, can hardly be other than the work of Chaucer, if not in 
 substance, at least in form and tone : 
 
 Greet was the pres that swarmed to and fro 
 
 To gauren on this hors that stondeth so ; 
 
 For it so high was, and so bred and long, 
 
 So wel proporcioned to be strong, 
 
 Eight as it were a steed of Lumbardye ; 
 
 Therto so horsly, and so quyk of ye, 
 
 As if a geutil Poyleys courser were ; 
 
 For certes, fro his tayl imto his eere 
 
 Nature ne art ne couthe him nought amende 
 
 In no degre, as al the poepel wende. 
 
 But evermore her moste wonder was. 
 
 How that it couthe goon, and was of bras; 
 
 It was of fayry, as the poeple semed. 
 
 Diverse peple diversly they demed; 
 
 As many hedes, as many wittes been. 
 
 They murmured, as doth a swarm of been. 
 
 And made skiles after her fantasies, 
 
 Eehersyng of the olde poetries, 
 
 And seyden it was i-]ike the Pagas^, 
 
 The hors that hadde wynges for to fle. 
 
 Or elles it was the Grekissoh hors Synon, 
 
 That broughte Troye to destruccioun. 
 
 As men may in the olde gestes rede. 
 
 * Myn hert,' quod oon, ' is evermore in drede, 
 
 I trow som men of armes ben thcrinne, 
 
 That schapen hem this cit^ for to wynne ; 
 
 It were good that such thing were knowe.' 
 
 Another rowned to his felaw lowe. 
 
 And sayde: ' It lyth, for it is rather lik 
 
 An apparence maad by some magik, 
 
 As jogelours playen at this festes grete.' 
 
 Of sondry thoughtes thus they jangle and tretCi 
 
 As lowed peple demeth comunly 
 
 Of tliinges that ben maad more snbtily 
 
Lect. IX. THE SQTITEBES TALE 427 
 
 Than they can in her lewednes comprehende, 
 They deemen gladly to the badder ends. 
 And som of hem wondred on the mirroiir, 
 That born was up into the maitter tour, 
 How men might in it suche thinges se. 
 Another answerd, and sayd, it might wel bo 
 Naturelly by composiciouns 
 Of angels, and of heigh reflexiouns ; * 
 And isayde that in Rome was such oon. 
 They speeke of Alhazen and Vitilyon, 
 And Aristotle, that WTiten in her lyves 
 Of queynte myrrours and prospectyves. 
 As knowen they that han her botes herd. 
 And other folk have wondred on the swerd, 
 That wolde passe thoraghout everything ; 
 And fel in speche of Telophns the kyng, 
 And of Achilles for his queynte spere, 
 For he couthe with it bothe hele and dere. 
 Eight in such wise as men may with the swerd, 
 Of which right now ye have your selven herd. 
 They speeken of sondry hardyng of metal, 
 And speken of medicines therwithal, 
 And how and whan it schulde harded be, 
 Which is unknowe algat unto me. 
 Tho speeken they of Canacees ryng, 
 And seyden alle, that such a wonder thing 
 Of craft of rynges herd they never noon, 
 Sauf that he Moyses and kyng Salamon 
 
 • This reasoning reminds one of the popular explanation of tahle-turning and 
 other kindred mysteries. Persons who cannot detect the trick, and are afraid of 
 being suspected of a superstitious belief in the supernatural character of the 
 phenomenon, if they honestly confess their inability to solve the problem, 
 take refine in 'science,' and ascribe the alleged facts to electricity, though the 
 known powers of that agent are as inadequate to furnish a rationale of the extra- 
 ordinary gyrations and saltations which bewitched tables, chairs and other house- 
 hold gear are affirmed to execute, as are 
 
 ' composiciouns 
 Of angels [angles], and heigh reflexiouns,* 
 
 to explain the properties of the Tartar's magic mirror. 
 
 Men love to cheat themselves with hard words, and indolence often accepts th« 
 na^ae of a phenomenon as a substitute for the reason of it. 
 
428 CHAFCEE AND GOWEB Lect. IX. 
 
 Hadden a name of connyng in such art. 
 Thus seyen the peple, and drawen hem apart. 
 But natheles som seiden that it was 
 Wonder thing to make of feme aisschen glas, 
 And yit is glas nought like aisschen of feme, 
 But for they han i-knowen it so feme ; 
 Therfor cesseth her janglyng and her wonder. 
 As sore wondred som of cause of thonder, 
 On ebbe and flood, on gossomer, and on myst, 
 And on alle thing, til that the cause is wist. 
 Thus janglen they, and demen and devyse, 
 Til that the kyng gan fro his bord arise. 
 
 Two other tales are invested with a good deal of critical 
 interest, by the fact that they are generally supposed to have 
 been taken, though with important modifications, from Gower's 
 Confessio Amantis, which is believed to have been published 
 while Chaucer was engaged upon the Canterbury Tales. But 
 Grower appears to have invented nothing, and as not only the 
 incidents but the plots of both tales are found in more ancient 
 forms, it is more probable that the two poets borrowed them 
 from a common source than that one of them, even before the 
 days of copyright, should, without acknowledgement, have pla- 
 giarized from a friend and contemporary of his own nation. 
 Either would, no doubt, have made free use of foreign authors, 
 and of those popular legends which had for centuries floated 
 about the world, and were fairly to be regarded as nullius Jilii, 
 common property, to which possession was a sufficient title ; but 
 Chaucer cannot be convicted of ' conveying' anything that was 
 rightfully Gower's, without stronger evidence than the resem- 
 blance between these stories. Indeed there is, in Gower's dic- 
 tion, some internal evidence that the story of Constance is a 
 translation from the French, such, for example, as the use of 
 enviroune as an adverb, in the French sense of nearly, 
 about, as : 
 
 Within a ten mile enviroune, 
 
Lect. IX. CHAtrCKR AND GOWEK 429 
 
 ■within about ten miles.* Otter instances to the same purpose 
 might be cited ; but when we consider the intimate relations of 
 the two languages, and the uncertainty of the boundary between 
 them at that period, it must be admitted that such evidence is 
 worth little. 
 
 The leading incidents of the stories are the same in both 
 authors, but in Chaucer's version, have, in general, more minute- 
 ness of detail, though it is observable that where Gower is the 
 most circumstantial, Chaucer is the most concise; and in his 
 treatment of the tales there are many passages, where there is 
 an appearance of artificial condensation and abridgement of the 
 narrative as related by Grower, and a studied neglect of circum- 
 stances not wholly uninteresting in themselves, but, at the 
 same time, not essential to the conduct of the story. 
 
 Grower's work had been recently published, and was fresh in. 
 the memory of those for whom Chaucer was writing ; hence it 
 is highly probable that these variations were introduced for the 
 express purpose of giving a new tone and character to histories, 
 the leading circumstances of which were already famiUar. A 
 stanza in Chaucer's version of the ]Man of Lawes Tale, or the 
 History of Constance, is particularly curious, because, as some 
 of Chaucer's critics have suggested, it is evidently designed as a 
 criticism upon Gower's treatment of an incident in the story. 
 In both narratives, King Alia, a Saxon king, visiting Eome as 
 a pilgrim, invites the Emperor of Eome to dine with him. In 
 Gower, Morice, the son of King Alia, is sent to an imperial 
 country residence, to deliver the invitation. Gower thus ex- 
 presses this : — 
 
 This emperour out of the towns, 
 Within a ten mUe enviroune, 
 Where as it thought him for the beste 
 Hath sondry places for to reste, 
 
 • Enviroun is used in the same way in the Libel of English Policy, a poem of 
 the following century, which will be noticed hereafter, and by Lydgate, but I have 
 not observed it in any work of Gower's time. 
 
430 CHAUCER AND GOWER Leoi IX 
 
 And as fortune wolde it tho 
 He was dwellend at one of tho. 
 The King AUee forth with thassent 
 Of Custe his wife hath thider sent 
 Morice his sone, as he was taught, 
 To the emperour, and he goth straught 
 And in his fader halve he sought 
 As he, whiche his lordship sought, 
 That of his highe worthinesse 
 He wolde do so greet mekenesse, 
 His owne town to come and se, 
 And yive a time in the citee. 
 So that his fader might him gete. 
 That he wolde ones with him ete. 
 
 Tliis did uot suit Cliaucer's more courtly notions of the 
 respect and deference due from even a king to so exalted and 
 sacred a personage as the Emperor of Rome, and he makes King 
 Alia present the invitation in person, censuring at the same time 
 Gower's version of the story, thus : 
 
 Som men wold seye, how that his child Maurice 
 
 Doth his message unto the emperour: 
 
 But, as I gesse. Alia was nat so nyce, 
 
 To him that is so soverayn of honour. 
 
 As he that is of Cristes folk the flour, 
 
 Sent eny'oliild, but it is best to deeme 
 
 He went hlmsilf, and so it may wel seme. 
 
 There is, upon the whole, no doubt that Chaucer's is the later 
 production, and, though it is a more finished performance than 
 that of Gower, it is somewhat injured by the intentional omis^ 
 sion of circumstances which are used not without effect in 
 Gower's version, but which Chaucer dropped, in order that the 
 coincidence between the two might not be too close. 
 
 The other narrative which has been thought to be borrowed 
 from the Confessio Amantis, is the Wyf of Bathes Tale. The 
 dialect of this story, as given by Gower, varies considerably from 
 that of the rest of his poem, as it is older in structure, and con- 
 tains several obsolete words which Gower does not elsewhere 
 
Lect. IX. JOHN GOWEK 431 
 
 employ. It is therefore, in all probability, an adaptation of a 
 more ancient tale, in which the incidents, and in part the lan- 
 guage, are preserved. In Chaucer's version there is the same 
 manifest intention of departing from Gower as in the story of 
 Constance, and it is in this tale that he enforces, in the person of 
 the old dame, the opinions concerning the true test of gentle 
 rank, which he had formerly interpolated into his translation of 
 the Romaunt of the Rose. No such opinions are expressed by 
 G-ower, or, so far as I know, by any older English or French 
 author, and they are no doubt Chaucer's own.* 
 
 Grower was a contemporary of the author of Piers Ploughman, 
 and of Wycliffe as well as of Chaucer. He is known to English 
 readers by the long poem styled the Confessio Amantis, or 
 Lover's Confession. The reputation of Gower, which was, for a 
 long time, above his merits, seems to be in some measure due 
 to his connection with Chaucer, though he did not entertain 
 
 * A remarkable form of expression, which occurs in verse 3098 of the Eomaimt 
 of the Rose, and which I do not remember to hare observed elsewhere in Chaucer's 
 works, deserves special notice — 
 
 ' Say boldely thy will' (quod he) 
 
 ' I niU be wroth, if that I may, 
 
 For nought that thou shalt to me say.' 
 
 The meaning of the phrase, ' if that I may,' here is : if I can not-he wroth ; if I 
 can refrain from being wroth. I find an analogous phrase in Paul Louis Courier, 
 Pamphlets Politiques, Seconde Lettre Particulijre : ' Vous ne saurez rien cette 
 fois ; pas iin mot, nuUe nouvelle ; pour vous punir, jc veux ne vous Hen dire, « je 
 puis.' I will not-tell you anything, if 1 can.' 
 
 In both these passages, the determination, in the mind of the speaker, not-to-do 
 the thing in question, or to refrain from it, is conceived to be so strong, that it has 
 ceased to be a mere negation, and has assumed the form of a proposition logically 
 positive. 
 
 In Chaucer, the coalescent negative verb, nill, gives the expression a forca 
 which Courier could not attain to ; for in languages where a negative verbal form 
 exists, the negation is more energetic tlian when a separate particle is used. The 
 Latin nolo, the English / nill, are a species of affirmative, which means more 
 than nou toJo, / will not — the absence of a volition — and, on the contrary, 
 implies a strong volition in the opposite direction. Courier felt this, and there- 
 fore he does not use the negative verb, Je ne vaa, but he puts the expression of 
 will in an affirmative form: ye veux, and connects the negative with the act: 
 m-vous-rien-dire. 
 
432 OOWEK'S CONFESSIO AMANTrS Lect. IX. ' 
 
 the views of reform which Ohancer shared with the other great 
 writers of that century whom we have just named. His literary 
 inferiority is perhaps to be ascribed to the very fact that he 
 did not possess the manly independence and moral courage of 
 Wycliffe and of Chaucer, and was unable to shake off the 
 feeling of deference to traditional authority, which in all ages 
 has proved so generally fatal to originality in productive intel- 
 lectual effort. 
 
 Many of Grower's works are in Latin, and the only one which 
 is generally accessible is the Confessio Amantis, an English 
 poem, written, as the author declares, at the request of King 
 Eichard II. In a proem which was suppressed in the copies 
 issued after Eichard's deposition, he thus states the motive and 
 occasion of the composition of this work : 
 
 I thenlce and have it vinderstonde, 
 As it befell upon a tide, 
 As thing, -which shulde tho betide, 
 Under the town of newe Troy, 
 Which toke of Brute his firste joy, 
 In Themse, whan it was flowend, 
 As I by bote came rowend. 
 So as fortune her time sette, 
 My lege lord percliaunce I mette, 
 And so befell as I came nigh. 
 Out of my boote, whan he me sigh, 
 He bad me come into his barge. 
 And whan I was with him at large, 
 Amonges other thinges said. 
 He hath this charge upon me laid, 
 And bad me do my besinesse. 
 That to his highe worthynesse 
 Some newe thing I shulde boke, 
 That he himself it mighte loke 
 After the forme of my writing. 
 
 The language of this last couplet would seem to imply that, 
 though we have Froissart's testimony to the fact that the King 
 knew French, he was ignorant of Latin, and desired to have 
 
Lect. IX. gowee's confessio amantis 433 
 
 something from the pen of Grower, which he could read by 
 himself, without the aid of an interpreter. He resolved to 
 comply with the royal command, and, because 
 
 men sain, and sothe it is, 
 That who that al of wisdom writ, 
 It dulleth ofte a mannes wit, 
 To hem that shall it alday rede, 
 
 to produce something of a less grave and severe cast than his 
 former works ; to — 
 
 go the middel wey, 
 And write a boke betwene the twey, 
 
 Somewhat of lust, somewhat of lore. 
 
 « » * ♦ 
 
 And for that fewe men endite 
 In cure englisshe, I thenke make 
 A boke for King Eichardes sake. 
 
 » » * * 
 
 To make a boke after his heste. 
 And write in such a maner wise, 
 Which may be wisdome to the wise, 
 And play to hem that list to play. 
 
 The title of the poem. The Lover's Confession, indicates its 
 general subject, which is a consultation, in the form of a con- 
 fession, between an unsuccessful lover and an experienced 
 coimsellor. The prologue is devoted to an exposure of the 
 evils of the time, in which the schism in the church is alluded 
 to, as the cause of the social wrongs of the age, and of the cor- 
 ruptions of the clergy, including, of course. 
 
 This newe secte of lollardie. 
 
 The prologue is much superior to the rest of the work, though 
 certainly not very appropriate to the poem. The author seems 
 to have written it with the view of covertly giving the king 
 some useful suggestions, by pointing out existing abuses, and 
 hinting at the remedy. He speaks of himself and his general 
 purpose thus : 
 
 F B" 
 
434 qowek's confessio amantis Lect. ix. 
 
 I wLich am a borel clerke 
 Purpose for to write a boke 
 After the wor^de, that whilom toke 
 Long time in olde daies passed. 
 But for men sain it is now lassed 
 In worse plight than it was tho, 
 I thenke for to touche also 
 The world, which neweth every day, 
 So as I can, so as I may. 
 Though I sikenesse have upon honde 
 And longe have had, yet wol I fonde 
 To write and do my besinesse, 
 That in some part so as I gesse 
 The wise man may ben advised. 
 
 I'he following laudatio temporis adi is a fair specimen of 
 the general tone of the prologue : — 
 
 If I shall drawe into my minde 
 The time passed, than I iinde 
 The world stode in al his welthe, 
 Tho was the life of man in helthe, 
 Tho was plente, tho was richesse, 
 Tho was the fortune of prowesse, 
 Tho was knighthode in pris by name, 
 Wherof the wide worldes fame 
 Write in croniques is yet witholde. 
 Justice of lawe tho was holde. 
 The privelege of regalie 
 Was sauf, and all the baronie 
 Worshiped was in his estate. 
 The citees knewen no debate. 
 The people stode in obeisaunce 
 Under the reule of govemaunce, 
 And pees with rightwisnesse keste, 
 With charite tho stode in reste, 
 Of mannes herte the corage 
 Was shewed than in the visage. 
 The word was liche to the conceipte, 
 Without semblaunt of deceipte, 
 Tho was there unenvied love, 
 
JjicT. IX. gowek's confessio amantis 435 
 
 Tho was vertue set above, 
 And vice was put under fote. 
 Now stant the crope under the rotei 
 The worlde is chaunged overall, 
 And therof moste in speciall 
 That love is fiille into discorde. 
 And that I take to recorde 
 Of every lond for his partie 
 The comun vois, which may nought lie, 
 Nought upon one, but upon alle. 
 It is that men now clepe and calle 
 And sain, that regnes ben devided, 
 In stede of love is hate guided, 
 The werre wol no pees purchace, 
 And lawe hath take her double face, 
 So that justice out of the wey 
 "With rightwisnesse is gone awey. 
 And thus to loke on every halve, 
 Men sene the sore without salve, 
 Whiche al the worlde hath overtake. 
 Ther is no regne of alle out take, 
 For every climat hath his dele 
 After the torninge of the whele. 
 Which blinde fortune overthroweth, 
 Wherof the ceiiain no man knoweth, 
 The heven wot what is to done. 
 
 At the commencement of the action, the author, in the 
 character of a despairiag lover, wanders alone in a forest, and 
 offers a prayer to Venus, who makes her appearance and refers 
 the suppliant to her priest, for counsel and consolation. After 
 an exhortation from this father confessor, the penitent begins 
 his shrift, which is chiefly in the form of answers to questions, 
 Venus's priest being evidently partial to the Socratic method of 
 argument. The counsels and comforts of the confessor consist 
 principally of narratives, from ancient as well as mediaeval 
 legendary lore, which have generally little application to the 
 immediate subject. These are mainly, if not altogether, trans- 
 lations, or rather metrical paraphrases, from classical as well as 
 
 I W 2 
 
436 JOHN 60WER Lect. IX. 
 
 later Latin authors, and are executed with very moderate skill, 
 whether considered as versions or as adaptations. Of original 
 imaginative power, the poem shows not the slightest trace, and 
 its principal merit lies in the sententious passages, which are 
 here and there interspersed, and which, whether borrowed or 
 original, are often pithy and striking. In his earlier works, 
 Grower had employed Latin and French altogether. It is 
 generally supposed that he adopted English as the language of 
 the Confessio Amantis in consequence of the success of Chaucer's 
 poem in the vernacular ; but I think the lines I have already 
 quoted authorise us to believe that English was selected in com- 
 pliance with the wish of the monarch, at whose request the 
 work was undertaken. 
 
 Of Gj-ower's principal French work, the Speculum Medi- 
 tantis, no copy is known to be in existence, but there are 
 extant about fifty French amatory ballads composed by him in 
 imitation of Provenzal models, but which seem to exhibit no 
 special merit in invention or in style. 
 
 In one of these, he apologises for his want of command of 
 French, as an Englishman, and it is remarkable that, if he was 
 conscious of any deficiency in this respect, he should not have 
 resorted to English until a late period of his life.* It is not 
 improbable, as has been often suggested, that certain passages 
 in the prologue to Chaucer's prose Testament of Love, con- 
 demning the use of French by native English writers, may 
 have been aimed at Gower. ' There ben some,' says he, ' that 
 speke their poysy mater in Frenche, of whyche speche the 
 Frenche men have as good a fantasye, as we have in hearing of 
 Frenche mennes Englysshe.' 'Let then clerks endyten in 
 
 * Al universite de tout le monde 
 Johan Gower ceste balade enroie, 
 Etsi jeo nai de fran9oisla faconde, 
 Pardonetz moi qe jeo de ceo forsvoie. 
 Jeo sui Englois si quier par tiele voie 
 Eatre excuse mais quoique nulls endie, 
 Iiumour parfit en dieu se justifie. 
 
Lect. IX. go-wer's veesification 437 
 
 Latyn, for they have the propertye of science, and the knowinge 
 in that facultye ; and lette Frenchmen in theyr Frenche also 
 endyte theyr queynt termes, for it is kyndly to theyr mouthes ; 
 and let us shewe our fantasyes in suche wordes as we lerned of 
 our dames touge.'* 
 
 G-ower certainly survived Chaucer, but was probably born 
 before him. His English is philologically older, both in voca- 
 bulary and in grammatical structure, than that of Chaucer, 
 though younger in both respects than the dialect of Piers 
 Ploughman. Pauh ascribes his frequent use of French words 
 to his habit of composing in that language, but his vocabulary 
 does not differ essentially in this respect from those of Lang- 
 lande, Chaucer, and other authors of their time ; and I see no 
 reason for believing that his dialect was more affected by 
 Romance influences than the common written language of the 
 age in which he lived. 
 
 The metre of the Confessio Amantis is the octosyllabic, of 
 four iambuses, besides the superfluous syllable which often 
 makes what is called a feminine rhyme. In point of rhythm 
 and metre, Gower's versification is smooth, though less melo- 
 dious than that of Chaucer, and his rhymes are inartificial, the 
 same word, or the same entire syllable, being repeated for the 
 consonance, without scruple. This peculiarity is also observable 
 in his French ballads. The conjugation of the verb is varied 
 to suit the convenience of the poet, with little regard to the 
 Saxon distinction of strong and weak inflection, or to what 
 appears to have been the common usage of his age. He also 
 confounds the affirmative particles yea and yes, at least accord- 
 
 * This passage and that before referred to are not the only ones in which 
 Chaucer appears to censure his Ir jther poet ; for the condemnation he passes, in 
 the prologue to the Man of Lawes Tale, on the immorality of the stories of Canace 
 and of ApoOonius of Tyre, both of which are found in the Confessio Amantis, is 
 understood by Tyrwhitt and other critics to hare been designed to apply to Gower. 
 It is much to be lamented that Cliaucer himself should have polluted his own 
 greatest work with such shocking grossncss and licentiousness as many of his tales 
 exhibit. 
 
 t See First Series, Lecture I. p. 22. 
 
438 gowek's diction Lect. IX. 
 
 ing to Pauli's text ; but this may be the fault of editors and 
 printers, for in G-ower's time no English idiom was better esta- 
 blished than this distinction. In fact, though not without 
 power as a sententious thinker, Gower gives little eYidence of 
 artistic skill, or of the possession of any of the higher attributes 
 of the poet. 
 
 Philologically speaking, G-ower is, as I have already remarked, 
 older than Chaucer, though his first English work was not com- 
 posed until the reputation of Chaucer, as a great original and 
 national poet, was established. The difference, however, in 
 this respect, is in degree rather than in kind, and as it consists 
 more in the tone, and in a negative want of the life and fresh- 
 ness and accuracy of Chaucer's English, it is not easy to specify 
 its peculiarities. I may however mention, in addition to the 
 irregularity in verbal inflection already noticed, the more fre- 
 quent use of the participial termination in -end, which marks- 
 the true distinction between the present participle and the 
 verbal noun in -^/ng — a distinction, which, as was observed in a 
 former lecture, became obsolete in English in the latter part of 
 the fourteenth century, though kept up long afterwards in the 
 Scottish dialect. There are, so far as I have been able to 
 observe, no improvements of diction or style in G-ower, which 
 had not been as well, or better, exemplified by Chaucer ; and in 
 these particulars the latter must be considered the master of 
 the former. Skelton and those who have copied him are there- 
 fore in error in saying that — ' G-ower first garnished our 
 English rude,' for most of Chaucer's works are older than the 
 Confessio Amantis, and G-ower himself makes Venus style 
 Chaucer ' her poet,' and say that — 
 
 in the floures of his youth, 
 In sundry wise, as he weU couth, 
 Of dittees and of songes glade, 
 The which he for my sake made, 
 The lend fulfilled is over all. 
 
 This, of course, implies that Chaucer's poems had already 
 
Lect. IX. LITEEATURE OF FOURTEENTH CENTUKT 439 
 
 acquired a vdde circulation before Grower wrote in English 
 verse at all. 
 
 The Confessio Amantis, then, did not directly aid in enlarging 
 the vocabulary or improving the syntax of English ; and it did 
 not introduce new metrical forms or enrich the poetical diction. 
 But it was useful in diffusing a knowledge of the new literary 
 tongue, in familiarizing the English speech as a written lan- 
 guage to those whose proper heritage it was — but who had been 
 taught alien accents by a foreign nurse — thus giving to it its 
 just and lawful predominance in the land where it was cradled, 
 and had now grown to a strong and luxuriant adolescence. 
 
 Grower was rather an imitator of Chaucer than the creator of 
 bis own literary style ; but his works, as being of a higher moral 
 tone, or at least of higher moral pretensions, and at the same 
 time, of less artificial refinement, were calculated to reach and 
 influence a somewhat larger class than that which would be 
 attracted by the poems of Chaucer, and, consequently, they 
 seem to have had a wider circulation. The name of Chaucer 
 does not, I believe, occur in the works of Shakespeare ; but the 
 play of Pericles — which, though its authorship is disputed, was 
 published in Shakespeare's own time as a work of his compo- 
 sition — is avowedly formed on the story of Apollinus, Prince of 
 Tyre, in the Confessio Amantis ; and Grower himself is intro- 
 duced by name into the play, and performs the office of the 
 chorus of the ancient drama. There is no doubt that the poem 
 of Gower, however inferior to the works of his master, was much 
 esteemed in his lifetime, and still enjoyed a high reputation 
 in ages when Chaucer was almost forgotten. But posterity has 
 reversed the j udgement of its immediate predecessors, and though 
 Gower will long be read, he will never again dispute the palm 
 of excellence with the true father of English literature. 
 
 In taking leave of the great authors of the fourteenth century, 
 I ought perhaps to apologise for devoting so large a portion of 
 this brief course to the dialect and the literature of that period 
 But I am convinced that the importance of Langlande and 
 
440 - OKIGINAL MANUSCRIPTS Lect. IX. 
 
 Wycliffe and Chaucer to all subsequent English philology and 
 intellectual effort, though long vaguely recognised, is not yet 
 appreciated and understood. Nor shall we be able to estimate 
 their relative place and just significance in our literary history, 
 until still more of the forgotten authorship of that and the 
 preceding centuries shall be brought to light, and linguistic 
 science, as applied to the English tongue, be much further 
 advanced than it now is, or, without increased facilities of in- 
 vestigation, can be. 
 
 From the corruption of original texts through the ignorance 
 or arrogance of those who transcribed them, it is evident that 
 we can ascertain the grammatical system of particular writers 
 of the period we are discussing only by the examination of 
 authors' copies. This renders the publication of such, whenever 
 they can be discovered, a matter of great interest and importance. 
 If, indeed, the manuscript of the eai-liest version of the Old 
 Testament, which is ascribed to Hereford^ is really his own, 
 the value attached to such originals might well seem exag- 
 gerated, for it would be clear that one important authority 
 was not to be reconciled with itself. Not only does the latter 
 portion of that translation differ from the earlier in its inflec- 
 tional system, but in the books which come last in the manu- 
 script, the grammar is, in many points, more archaic than in 
 the books which precede them in the copy, and which therefore, 
 presumably, were first executed. Doubtless, the paleographical 
 evidence is decisive as to the identity of the handwriting in the 
 historical books and the Prophets. But it is a long step from 
 this question to that of the authorship of the manuscript, and 
 even the opinion of the very learned and conscientious editors 
 of the Wycliffite translations cannot outweigh the internal 
 evidence to the contrary, unless supported by strong external 
 testimony. Until such proof is adduced, we are at liberty to 
 believe that the manuscript ascribed to Hereford is not an 
 original, but a copy of a version by at least two different trans- 
 Ipitors, who adopted different systems of accidence. 
 
IiKCT. IX. LITER ATUEE OF FOUETEENTH CENTTOT 441 
 
 The original manuscript of a translation of Higden's Poly- 
 chronicon by Trevisa, a contemporary of Chaucer, is said, upon 
 I know not what authority, to be still extant, and is now in 
 course of publication. Trevisa is reported to have translated 
 the whole or a part of the Bible into English, and the publica- 
 tion of the chronicle may throw some light on his connection 
 with the Wycliffite versions, and thus contribute to elucidate 
 some very important questions in the history of the language 
 and history of England.* 
 
 The zeal and activity of British scholarship are fast rescuing 
 the remaining sibylline leaves of old English literature from 
 destruction, and a few years more will prepare the way for the 
 crowning labour in the early philology of England — a worthy 
 edition of the worthiest of her ancient poets, the immortal 
 Chaiicer. 
 
 In the meantime, though the texts of the authors upon whom 
 I have dwelt so long present many prosodical and grammatical 
 problems which cannot yet be solved, they are all perfectly 
 accessible, and, so far as the general purposes of literary calture 
 and literary criticism require, intelligible. By the help of the 
 notes and glossaries which accompany the recent editions of old 
 EngUsh writers, from Layamon and the Ormulum to Langlande, 
 Wyclifife, Chaucer and Grower, every one of them may be easily 
 read, without preparatory study, and a great familiarity with 
 their dialect may be acquired at less cost of time and labour 
 than are needed to learn to spell out, by help of dictionary and 
 grammar, a page of French or Grerman. 
 
 But, lilce the traveller, who, absorbed by the fair proportions 
 of a Grrecian portico and the living sculptures of its pediment, 
 forgets to explore the in^rior of the temple, I have lingered 
 too long about the vestibule, and must now hasten to pass 
 through the darkened corridors which lead to the still more 
 eacred portions of the magnificent structure. 
 
 • See Longer Notes and Illustrations, V. at the end of this lecturft 
 
442 SIGNIFICANCE OP WOKDS LecT. IX. 
 
 LONGER NOTES AND ILLUSTEATIONS. 
 
 SIGNIFICANCE OF INDIVIDUAL WORDS. 
 
 The shallowness of popular English and American criticism is no- 
 where more glaringly manifested than in the extravagant commendations 
 ■which have been bestowed on some modern dictionaiy -makers, as philo- 
 sophical expositors and discriminators of words. 
 
 Lexicographers are under a constant temptation to save themselves 
 labour by building on the foundation of their predecessors, and to 
 study dictionaries, not literature. They thus acquire the habit of re- 
 garding words as completely significant individuals, and they are prone 
 to multiply descriptions, to make distinctions where no diflFerence exists, 
 and especially to ascribe to single vocables meanings which belong, 
 either to entire phraseological combinations, grammatical agglutinations 
 so to speak, or to a diiferent member of the phrase from that to which 
 they assign them. Hence their definitions are too diifuse, and often so 
 much embarrassed by conditions and qualifications as to smother the 
 radical idea of the word altogether, or to confine it to a special sense 
 which it only accidentally possesses, instead of giving it a general 
 expression, which admits of the protean variety of shade and extension, 
 that, in cultivated languages, belongs to almost all words, except names 
 of visible objects, and mere terms of art whose signification is not 
 organically developed from the root, but arbitrarily and conventionally 
 imposed upon it. In studying the definitions of the dictionaries w^hich 
 pass for the best in this respect, we find that there was in the mind of 
 the lexicographer not a clearness of distinction, but a confusion of 
 thought arising from the habit of incessantly poring on word-lists, and 
 constantly contemplating individual terms isolated from those connec- 
 tions and relations which alone can breathe into them a living spirit, 
 and make them anything but unelastic and inert matter. 
 
 It is futile to attempt to make that aJiBolute which is, in its nature, 
 relative and conditional, to formulate that which in itself does not con- 
 stitute an individual and complete idea, to make technical definition a 
 mouthpiece for words which ought to be allowed to speak for them- 
 selves by exemplification, and to petrify them into a rigidity of form 
 irreconcilable with that play of feature which is so essential to life-like 
 expressiveness. Diotioaary-definitions, considered as a means of plulo- 
 
Lect. IX. OBSOLETE ANGLO-SAXON WORDS 443 
 
 logical instruction, are as inferior to miscellaneous reading as a hortus- 
 siccus to a botanic garden. Words, with the exception above stated, 
 exert their living powers, and give utterance to sentiment and meaning, 
 only in the organic combinations for which nature has adapted them, 
 and not in the alphabetic single-file in which lexicographers post and 
 drill them. The signification of the vocabulary belonging to the higher 
 workings of the mind and heart depends on the context, and therefore 
 these words have almost as many shades of meaning as they have pos- 
 sible combinations with other words in periods and phrases. These 
 shades can only be perceived and apprehended by a wide familiarity 
 with the literature which presents verbal combinations in all their 
 variety ; and all that a dictionary can do is to give the general meaning 
 of the vocable and illustrate its changeable hues by exempKfication of 
 its most important uses. There does not exist a dictionai-y of any lan- 
 guage, Kving or dead, whose definitions are to be considered evidence 
 as to the exact meaning of words. The best dictionary of any living 
 language yet executed is unquestionably that of the German by the 
 brothers Grimm, now in course of publication. These great philologists 
 do not attempt formal definition at all. They give the nearest corres- 
 ponding Latin equivalent, and a brief general indication of the meaning 
 of the word, but leave tlie student to gather the precise signification or 
 significations from the exemplifications. Richardson's valuable English 
 dictionary gives no definitions. A dictionary is but an index to the 
 literature of a given speech ; or rather it bears to language the relation 
 which a digest bears to a series of legal reports. Neither is an authority ; 
 and he is but a sorry lawyer who cites the one, an indifferent scholar 
 who quotes the other, as such. 
 
 n. 
 
 OBSOLETE ANGLO-SAXON WORDS. 
 
 In Illustration I. to Lecture IIL I have given a list of many Anglo- 
 Saxon words derived from the three roots, hyge or hige, mind or 
 thought; mod, mind, passion, irritability, wit, genius, intellect, sense; 
 and ge-thanc, mind, thought, opinion. Of these, hyge and its score 
 of derivations are all obsolete. Of the equally numerous progeny of 
 mod, there remain only mood, moodily, moodiness, moody, mad. Th'e 
 thirty Anglo-Saxon words derived from wit are reduced to less than 
 half a dozen, though we have formed several new compounds and 
 derivations from the same root. From ge-thanc, we have a larger 
 
444 OBSOLETE ANGLO-SAXON WOEDS Lect. IX. 
 
 number, but many of them are of modern formation, and most of the 
 Anglo-Saxon derivatives from tliis root are obsolete. The preface to 
 Alfred's Boethius cited in Illustration IV. Lecture III. contains, exclu- 
 sive of repetitions and various forms and inflections of the same vocable, 
 about seventy words. Of these, the folloiving important ones are obso- 
 lete: Eemetta, leisure (from the same root as the adjective empty), 
 andget or andgit, sense, meaning, and its derivative, andgitfulli- 
 cost; earfod, hard; biddan, thovigh extant with the meaning of to 
 command, has become obsolete in the religious sense of to pray, where 
 a Eomance word has supplanted it; gereccan, to express, render, or 
 tell; healsian, to beseech or implore, though still used as a salutation 
 in the religious and poetic dialect, and in the sense to call to, in that of 
 navigation; hwilum, dat.pl. of the noun hwil, sometimes, obsolete 
 in English, but, in the form whiles, extant in Scotch, and sometimes 
 used in English, jocosely, in the form whilom; our adverb while or 
 whilst is the same word with a different meaning; leden, speech, lan- 
 guage,-asei by Chaucer but now lost; lichoman, body; msed, measure, 
 obsolete as a noun, though mete, verb, is used in the solemn style, and 
 mete, adjective, may be allied, but this is doubtful; mod, mind, obsolete 
 in this sense; ongitan, to understand, cognate with andget; rice, 
 kingdom; the modem rich is fi-om the same root; rime, number, extant 
 only in rhyme, mistakenly supposed to be from the Greek. The coinci- 
 dence between rim and Greek aptdfiog is noticeable; mistlic, not 
 cognate with 7nix, but a compound of mis and lie, un-like, and hence 
 various; spell, language, obsolete in this and many other Anglo-Saxon 
 meanings; &weotol 2)lain, clear-. swi'Se, uen/; under f on, to uncZer- 
 take, assume, receive; wealhstod, translator; wen dan, the source of 
 our to wend, but obsolete in the sense to turn; witan, to blame, but 
 the verb to twit is from this root, and derived either from the compound 
 ffid witan, ed witan, set wit an, or possibly from the gerundial to 
 witenne, he is to witenne, he is to blame.* 
 
 It is true that some of the words I have mentioned were still in use 
 
 * The revisers of the English Bible of 1611 sacrificed a gpnuine Saxon-Euglish 
 idiom when, in Galatians ii. 11, they wrote : he was to be blamed, for : Ai; was to 
 blame. It is remarkable that even Tyndale did not dare to use this latter form, 
 which, in his ignorance of Anglo-Saxon, he probably took for a vulgar colloquial- 
 ism; but the truer philological instinct of Shakespeare did not scruple to 
 retain the phrase. 
 
 "We have ttiU several corresponding idioms. Franklin's 'hats to sell' is an 
 instance, and : ' it is to seek ' has not been long disused. This form occurs also 
 in Dutch, and it is curious that in the phrase : t e z o e k z i j n, io 4e wanting, to be 
 to seek, the verb tezoekeu has dropped the old ending en, as in English. 
 
LeCT. IX. BOMArNT OP THE KOSB 445 
 
 in Chaucer's time, but much the greater proportion of them had been 
 ah-eady irrecoverably lost, and hence, independently of the direct testi- 
 mony of the monuments of early English letters, it is evident that 
 the language must have become comparatively poor in all its higher 
 departments. The vocabulary of the printed literature of the thirteenth 
 centiu-y consists of about 8,000 words, of which not far from 7,000 are 
 Anglo-Saxon. Rejecting words of foreign origin, and what are obviously 
 diiferent forms of the same vocable, Bosworth's Anglo-Saxon Dictionary 
 contains something less than twice the latter number. Neither Cole- 
 ridge nor Bosworth can be supposed to be complete ; bitt, if we assume 
 that the one is as nearly so as the other, it would follow that one-half 
 of the total Anglo-Saxon vocabulary had been lost before the year 1300. 
 But as Coleridge's Glossarial Index is confined to printed books, and 
 Bosworth embraces most known Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, his list is 
 probably considerably more exhaustive than that of Coleridge. Be- 
 tween the year 1300 and Chaucer's time, there was, doubtless, some 
 further loss, and, upon the whole, I think it quite safe to say that at 
 least one-fourth, and in all probability one-third, of the words com- 
 posing the Anglo-Saxon tongue were utterly forgotten before Chaucer 
 had written a line. It further appears, from the character of the par- 
 ticular words which I have shown to have been lost, that the moral and 
 intellectual, and the poetical nomenclatures were the portions of the 
 vocabulary which had suffered most, and hence that a new supply of 
 terms in these depai-tments was an imperious necessity for all the pvir- 
 poses of literary culture. 
 
 in. 
 
 CHATJCER's additions to the ROMAN DE LA ROSE. 
 
 Sandras, Etude sur Chaucer, p. 38, in speaking of Chaucer's 
 translation of the Eoman de la Eose, observes : ' Nuile intention de 
 donner au Eoman de la Eose une couleur nationale, nulla intention de 
 rembellir ou de le corriger. Les differences qu'une comparaison scru- 
 puleuse pent decouvrir sont insignifiantes, et ce qu'on a pris pour des 
 interpolations se lit dans les manuscrits complets.' Eor one who has 
 had no opportunity of consulting ' les manuscrits complets,' it is difficult 
 to judge how far they sustain this broad statement ; but the passage 
 referred to in the text, which I think few readers would regard as 
 ' insignificant,' is not found either in Moon's edition of the text of De 
 Lorris, or in the Dutch translation published by Kausler in Vol. [I. of 
 bis Denkmaler Altniederliindischer Sprache und Litteratur. 
 
446 EOMAUNT OF THE KOSE : Lect. IX, 
 
 The entire passage in Mton's edition of the French text, ■tol. L 
 pp. 83, 84, stands thus : — 
 
 2086. Vilonnie premierement, 
 
 Ce dist Amors, veil et commant 
 
 Que tu guerpisses sans reprendre, 
 
 Se tu ne veulz vers moi mesprendre ; 
 2090. Si maudi et escommenie 
 
 Tous ceus qui aiment vilonnie. 
 
 Vilonnie iait li vilains. 
 
 Per ce n'est pas drois que ge Tains; 
 
 Viloins est fel et sans pitie, 
 2095. Sans servise et sans amiti^. 
 
 Apres, te garde de retraire 
 
 Chose des gens qui face a taire : 
 
 N'est pas proesce de mesdire, &c. &c. 
 
 Chaucer's interpolation, it will be seen, is introduced between verses 
 2095 and 2096. In the Dutch translation the passage is as foUow^: — - 
 
 2006. Ic verbiede hu, alle dorperheide 
 
 Te loechene eewelijc sonder hale, 
 
 Vp dat ghi mi wilt dienen wale. 
 
 Ic ghebanne ende doe bekinnen : 
 
 Dorperhede, alle die minne[n] 
 
 Van hem te doene, verstaet mie ; 
 
 Dorpre no dorpernie ne gaerdic nie, 
 
 "Want si fel zijn ende sonder ghenade, 
 
 In hem te hebben valschen rade ; 
 
 Te niemene dracht hi minne 
 
 So quaderande van zinne. 
 
 "Wacht hu mede, dat ghi niet vertrect 
 
 Dinghen, die willen zijn bedect, 
 
 Ende te heelne, dat te heelne staet ; 
 
 En es gheene meesterie te seggen quaet, etc. etc. 
 This translation is probably older than tliat of Chaucer, and is a fair 
 one, though I cannot agree with Kausler, that it ' kann, als Ueber- 
 tragung betrachtet, fiir meisterhaft gelten und darf sich dem 
 Chaucer'schen Versuche kuhn an die Seite stellen.' 
 
 The omission of what I have called an interpolation of Chaucer's, 
 in both Meon's text and in this old Dutch version, is certainly primS,- 
 facie evidence that it is an addition by the English translator ; and we 
 have a right to call upon those who affirm that his supposed amplifi- 
 
Lect. IX. ROMAUKT OF THE EOSB 447 
 
 cations of his original are all found in the best manuscripts, to produce 
 their texts of this passage. 
 
 I take this occasion to call the attention of English scholars to the 
 great interest of this Dutch translation, and, in fact, of the general 
 Netherlandish literature of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and firteenth 
 centuries, which, it is hardly extravagant to say, is as little known to 
 English and American scholars as that of China. I question whether 
 there is any cognate source of instruction upon early English philology 
 and etymology, which, if properly worked, would yield a richer harvest. 
 
 The translation in question does not conform so closely to Meon's text 
 as does that of Chaucer, but some passages, where Chaucer followed a 
 different reading from that text, ■ correspond pretty nearly with the 
 Dutch. Thus, in this passage : — 
 
 21. Within my twentie yeere of age, 
 When that love taketh his courage 
 Of younge folke, I wente soone 
 To bed, as I was wont to doone : 
 And fast I slept, and in sleeping 
 Me mette such a swevening. 
 That hked me wondrous wele, 
 But in that sweven is never a dele 
 That it n' is afterward befall. 
 Eight as this dreame woll tell us all. 
 
 Meon's text of the first five verses of the corresponding passage 
 is: — 
 
 Ou vintiesme an de mon aage, 
 
 Ou point qu' Amors pi-end le paage 
 
 Des Jones gens, couchiez estoie 
 
 Une nuit, si cum je souloie, 
 
 Et me dormoie moult forment, etc. etc. 
 
 The Dutch : — 
 
 Te minen rechten xx jaren, 
 
 Alse minne neemt te waren 
 
 Van ionghen lieden haren cheins, 
 
 So lach ic in een greet ghepeins 
 
 Vp mijn bedde, ende wart beuaen 
 
 Met eenen slape also zaen, etc. etc. 
 Cliaucer here uses soone in the sense of earl?/ in. the evening — a 
 meaning mentioned by GUI, . as I have noted in my First Series, 
 Lecture XXV. p. 580 — and the Dutch zaen, in the last line above 
 
448 A SERMON AGAINST MIEACLE-PLATS Lbct. IX. 
 
 quoted, corresponds nearly enough to render it highly probable that 
 both translators followed a text different from that of Meon, which does 
 not contain the same idea. It is singular that the word courage or 
 corage, in the second line quoted from Chaucer, should have been so 
 generally misunderstood. It is, as I have pointed out in a note on the 
 word courage in the American edition of the first volume of Wedg- 
 wood's Etj^mological Dictionarj^, the Low-Latin coraagium or cora- 
 gium, prestationis species, a due or tribute, as is clearly shown 
 both by the French pa age and the Dutch chains. 
 
 IV. 
 
 A SERMON AGAINST MIRACLE-PLAYS. 
 
 Knowe Jee, Cristen men, that as Crist God and man is botbe wcye, 
 trewth, and lif, as seith the gospel of Jon, weye to the errynge, trewth 
 to the unknowyng and doutyng, lif to the strynge to hevene and 
 weryinge, so Crist dude nothinge to us but eff'ectuely in weye of 
 mercy, in treuthe of ritwesnes, and in lif of jildyng everlastynge joye 
 for cure continuely morning and sorwynge in this valey of teeres. In 
 myraclis therfore that Crist dude heere in erthe, outher in hymsilf 
 outher in hise seyntis, weren so efectuel and in emest done, that to 
 synful men that erren thei broujten forjyvenesae of synne, settynge 
 hem in the weye of rijt beleve ; to doutouse men not stedefast, thei 
 broujten in kunnying to betere plesen God and verry hope in God to 
 been stedefast in hym ; and to the wery of the weye of God, for the 
 grette penaunce and suffraunce of the trybulacioun that men moten 
 have therinne, thes broujten in love of brynnynge charity, to the 
 whiche alle thing is li',t, and he to suiTere dethe, the whiche men 
 most dreden, for the everlastynge \ji and joye that men moste loven 
 and disiren, of the whiche thing verry hope puttith awey alle weri- 
 nesse heere in the weye of God. Thanne sythen myraclis of Crist 
 and of hyse seyntis wercn thus effectuel, as by oure bileve we ben 
 in certeyn, no man shulde usen in bourde and pleye the myraclis and 
 worlds that Crist so ernystfuUy wrou^te to oiire helye ; for whoevere 
 so doth, he errith in the byleve, reversith Crist, and scornyth God. 
 He errith in the bileve, for in that he takith the most precious werkis 
 of God in pley and bourde, and so takith his name in idil, and so 
 mysusith oure bile\'e. A ! Lord ! sythen an erthely sevvaunt dar not 
 taken in pley and in bourde that that her erthely lord taliilh in ernest, 
 myche more we shulden not maken oure pleye and bourde of tho 
 
Iect. IX. A SEKMON AGAINST MIEACLE-PLATS 449 
 
 myraclis and werkis that God so ernestfuUy wroajt to us ; for sothely 
 ■whan we so done, drede to synne is taken awey, as a servaunt whan 
 he bonrdith with his mayster leesith his drede to oiFendyn hym, 
 namely, whanne he bonrdith with his mayster in th t nd that his 
 mayster takith in ernest. 
 
 An half frynde tariere to soule helthe, redy to excusen the y vil and 
 hard of bileve, with Thomas of Ynde, seith, tliat he wU not leevyn the 
 forseyd sentense of myraclis pleyinge, but and men schewen it hym bi 
 holy writt opynly and bj' cure bileve. Wherfore that his half 
 frenschip may be turnyd to the hoole, we preyen hym to beholden first 
 in the seconde maundement of God that seith ' Thou schalt not take 
 Goddis name in idil ; ' and sythen the mervelous werkis of God ben 
 his name, as tlie gode werkis of craftesman been his name, than in this 
 hest of God is forbeden to tak\m the mervelouse werkis of God in idil ; 
 and how mowen thei be more takyn in idil than whanne thai ben 
 maad mennus japynge stikke, as when thei ben pleyid of japeris ? 
 And sythen emestly God dyde hem to us, bo take we hem of hym ; 
 ellis fosothe we taken hem in veyn. Loke thanne, frend, jif thi byleve 
 telUth that God dide his myraclis to us for we shulden pleyn hem, and 
 yn trowe it seith to the, ' nay, but for thou schuldist more dredyn hym 
 and lovyn hym,' and certis greet drede and gret effectuel loove suffrith 
 no pleyinge nor japyng with hym. Thanne sythen myraclis pleyinge 
 reTersith the wille of God, and the ende for the which be wroujt 
 myraclis to us, no doute but that myraclis pleyinge is verr^ takyng 
 of Goddis- name in ydil. And jif this siiffisith not to thee, albeit that 
 it shulde suffisen to an hethene man, that therefore wil not pley in the 
 werkis of his mawmete, I preye thee rede enterly in the book of lyf 
 that is Crist Jhesus, and if thou mayst fynden in hym that he evere 
 exsaimiplide that men .^lulden pleye myraclis, but alwey the revers, 
 and oure byleve cursith that ladden or lassen over that Crist exsaum- 
 plide us to don. Hon thanne darst thou holden with myraclis pleyinge, 
 sythen alle the werkis of Crist reversideu hem, and in none of his 
 werkis thei ben groundyd? namely, sythen thou seyst thiselven that 
 thou wolt nothing leven but that may be schewid of oure bileve, and 
 sythen in thing that is acordyng with the flessh and to the hkyng of it, 
 as is myraclis pleyinge, thou wilt nothing don a^eniis it, but .^if it be 
 schewid of oure bileve ; myche more in thing that is with the spirit, 
 and ahvey exsawmplid in the lif of Christ, and so fully writen in the 
 booke of lif, a-s is levyng of myraclis pleyinge and of alle japyng, thou 
 fihuldest not holden ajenys it, but if it myjte ben schewid ajens the 
 
 GO 
 
450 A SERMON AGAINST MIRACLE-PLATS Lect. IX.' 
 
 bileve, sytien in al thyng that is dowtous men shulden liolden with 
 the partye that is more favowrable to the spirit, and more exsawmpplid 
 in the lif of Christ; and so as eche synne distmyith hymsilf, and eohe 
 falshed, so thi answere distmyith hymsiife, and therby thou mayst 
 Avel witen that it is not trewe, but verre unk3mdenesse ; for if thou 
 haddist hadde a fadir that hadde suffred a dispitouse deth to geten thee 
 thyn heritage, and thou therafter woldest so lijtly bem it to make 
 therof a pley to the and to alle the puple, no dowte but that alle gode ' 
 men wolden demyen the unkynde, mlche more God and alle his seyntis 
 demyen alle tho cristen men unkynde that pleyen or favouren the pley 
 of the deth or of the myracles of the most kynde fadir Crist, that dyede 
 and wroujte myraclis to bryngen'men to the evere-lastande heretage of 
 hevene. 
 
 Therfore siche myraclis pleyinge now on dayes witnessith thre 
 thingis, first, is grete synne byforne the, second, it witnessith grete foly 
 in the doinge, and the thridd^ greet venjaunse aftir ; for rijt as the 
 chyldi-en of Israel, whan Moyses was in the hil bisily preyinge for hem, 
 thei mystristyng to hym, honouriden a calf of gold, and afterward eetyn 
 and drinken and risen to pleyn, and afterward weren sleyn of hem thre 
 and twenty thowsend of men ; so thanne as this pleyinge wittnesside 
 the synne of ther maumetrie beforn, and her mystryst to Moyses 
 whanne thei shulde most han tristenede to hym, and after ther foly in 
 ther pleyinge, and the thridde the venjaunse that cam after ; so this 
 myraclis pleyinge is verre witnesse of mennus averice and covej'tise 
 b3'fore, that is maumetrie, as seith the apostele, for that that thei 
 shulden spendyn upon the nedis of ther nejeboris, thei spenden upon 
 the pleyis, and to peyen ther rente and ther dette thei wolen grucche, 
 and to spende two so myche upon ther pley thei wolen nothing grucche. 
 Also to gideren men togidore to bien the derre ther vetailis, and to 
 stiren men to glotonye, and to pride and boost, thei pleyn thes myraclis, 
 and also to han wherof to speoden on these myraclis, and to holde 
 felawschipe of glotenye and leoherie in sich dayes of myraclis pleyinge, 
 thei bisien hem beforn to more gredily bygilen ther ne',bors, in byinge 
 and in sellving ; and so this pleyinge of myraclis now on dayes is werrd 
 witnesse of hideous ceveytise, that is maumetrie. And ri5|t as Moyses 
 was that tyme in the hil most travelj'nge aboute the puple, so now is 
 Crist in hevene with his fader most bisily preyinge for the puple ; and 
 never the latere as the chlyndren {sic) of Israel diden that tyme that 
 in hem was, in ther pleyinge of ther maumetrie, most folily to distrojen 
 the grete travele of Moyses, so men now on dayees, after ther hidouao 
 
Lect. IX. A SEEMON AGAINST MIBACLE-PLA.TS 451 
 
 maumetree of covetyse in tlier pleyinge of myraclis, thei don that in 
 hem is to distroje the ententive preyere of Crist in hevene for hem, 
 and so ther mji-aclis pleyinge witnessith ther most folye in ther doynge, 
 and therfore as nnkyndely seiden to Aaron the children of Israel, 
 Moyses beinge in the hil, ' we witen never how it is of Moyses, make 
 lis therfore Goddis that gon biforn us,' so unkyndeli seyen men nowe 
 on dayes, ' Crist doth now no myraclis for us, pley we therfore his 
 olde,' addyng many lesynges therto so colowrably that the puple jife as 
 myche credense to hem as to the trwthe, and so thei forjeten to ben 
 percever of the preyere of Crist, for the maumetrye that men don to 
 siche myraclis pleyinge ; maumetrye, I seye, for siche pleyinge men 
 as myche honoryn or more than the word of God whanne it is prechid, 
 and therefore blasfemely thei seyen, that siche pleyinge doith more 
 good than the word of God wanne it is prechid to the puple. A 1 
 Lord ! what more blasfeme is ajenus thee, than to seyen to don the 
 byddyng, as is to prechen the word of God doth fer lasse good than to 
 don that that is bodyn onely by man and not by God, as is myraclis 
 pleying ? Eit forsothe, as the lyknesse of myraclis we clepen myraclis, 
 rijt so the golden calfe the children of Israel clepiden it God ; in the 
 whiche thei hadden mynde of the olde myrachs of God beforn, and for 
 that licnesse thei worschipiden and preyseden, as thei worschipiden 
 and presiden God in the dede of his myraclis to hem, and therefore 
 thei diden expresse maiunetrye. So sythen now on daies myche of the 
 puple worschipith and preysith onely the licnesse of the myraclis of 
 God, as myche as the worde of God in the prechours mowth by the 
 ■whiche alle myrachs be don, no dowte that ne the puple doth more 
 mawmetrie now in siche myraclis pleyinge than dide the puple of 
 Israel that tyme in heryinge of the calf, in as myche as the lesynges 
 and lustus of myi'aclis pleyinge that men worschipen in hem is more 
 contrarious to God, and more acordynge with the devil, than was that 
 golden calf that the puple worschipid. And therefore the maumetrye 
 tliat tyme was but figure and licknesse of mennus maumeti-ye nowe, 
 and therfore seith the apostel, asse thes thingis in figure fellen to hem, 
 and thei-efore in siche myraclis pleyinge the devel is most plesid, as the 
 drvel is best payid to disceyve men in the hcnesse of that thing in 
 whiche by God man weren convertid biforhond, and in whiche the 
 devel was tenyd byfornhond. Therfore oute of doute siche myraclis 
 pleying pretith myche more venjaunce than dide the pleyinge of the 
 chyldren of Israel, after the heriynge of the calf, as this pleyinge settith 
 but japes grettere and more benfetes of God. 
 
 a a i 
 
452 EECOEDS OF COMMON LIFE Lect. IX. 
 
 V. 
 
 RECORDS OF COMMON LIFE. 
 
 I have somewhere seen it stated that Trevisa's manuscript of his 
 translation of Glanvilla de Proprietatibus Eerum is still in existence. 
 Philologically speaking, an edition of a work of this character would 
 be more valuable than a chronicle or a poem of equal extent. The 
 variety of subjects discussed by Glanville supposes a correspondingly 
 extensive vocabulary, and a greater range of verbal combination than 
 would be likely to occur in historical narrative, or in poetry, the 
 dialect of which is more conventional than that of prose. It is to 
 works on natural knowledge, and which connect themselves with prac- 
 tical life, that we are chiefly to look for information upon the actual 
 speech of bygone ages, and especially upon historical etymology — the 
 true story of the metamorphoses and migrations of words. 
 
 Grammaticasters seek the history of language in written, and espe- 
 cially in elegant literature; but, except in the fleeting dialect of 
 pedants, linguistic change and progress begin in oral speech, and it is 
 long before the pen takes up and records the forms and words which 
 have become established in the living tongue. 
 
 If you would know the present tendencies of English, go, as Luther 
 did, to the market and the workshop; you will there hear new words 
 and combinations, which orators and poets will adopt in a future 
 generation ; and in investigating the philological history of past ages, 
 whose market-places are grass-grown, and the hum of whose industry 
 is stilled, you must resort to those written memorials whose subjects 
 most nearly approximate to the busy every-day life of their time. 
 
 That literature which best preserves the unpremeditated,- half-uncon- 
 scious verbal expression of humanity is richest in true j)hilological 
 instruction, as it is in its revelations of the intellect and the heart of 
 man : hence the great value and the profound interest of old familiar 
 letters, journals, private records of all sorts. Precisely the disclosures 
 we shrink most from making with respect to ourselves, and the out- 
 spoken expressions we are shyest in using, attract us most in the life 
 of distant ages. The most insignificant original memorial of the actual 
 words of a living man has an imperishable worth to remote posterity. 
 Eefined and sensitive persons destroy their family letters, and are re- 
 luctant to record their names in the idbums of paper and of stone with 
 which all places of resort abound ; but, though we may not approve the 
 vanity which led a distinguished author to have his name carved oa 
 
Lbct. IX. OLD RECORDS 453 
 
 the summit of a pyramid he did not climb, I think no traveller looks 
 on the record of a visit to one of the tombs of the Egyptian kings by 
 an ancient Greek — who expresses his disappointment at finding nothing 
 to admire, ii ^ili tuv KiHov — or at the inscription rudely cut on the lega 
 of a gigantic statue at the entrance of tlie great rock-temple of Abou 
 Simbel, to commemorate the halt of a detachment of Roman soldiery 
 sent up into Nubia in search of deserters — or even at the bare name 
 ■which, three hundred years ago, the old herbalist, Belon, scratched 
 •with the point of his dagger on the smoky wall of a convent kitchen, 
 now in ruins, in Arabia Petrsa — without feeling that he has added 
 to his stores of knowledge both a historical fact and a ' form of words,' 
 -which will adhere to his memory when many an eloquent phrase eball 
 have vanished from it. < 
 
LECTUEE X. 
 
 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITEKATUEE FEOM THE 
 BEGINNING OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTUBY TO THE TIME 
 OP CAXTON. 
 
 When the political and mental agitations of tbe fourteenth 
 century -^ which had been, if not occasioned, at least greatly 
 increased by the antipapal schism — had once subsided, the in- 
 tellectual activity of the age of Langlande and Wycliffe and 
 Chaucer suddenly ceased, and was followed by a long period of 
 repose, or perhaps I might rather say, of lethargy. The literary 
 monuments we possess of the early part of the fifteenth centirry 
 exhibit few traces of original power. In some of them, even 
 the language seems to have rather retrograded than advanced ; 
 nor did it manifest much substantial progress, until the new 
 life, which the invention of printing infused into literature, 
 made itself felt in England. 
 
 The EngHsh mind, brilliant as were its achievements in the 
 era we have just passed over, was not yet so thoroughly roused 
 and enlivened, that it was able to go on in the path of creative 
 literature by its own inherent energies. It still required external 
 impulse ; and it was only by the succession of electric shocks it 
 received from the four greatest events in modern history, which 
 so rapidly followed each other — the invention of printing, the 
 discovery of the passage around the Cape of Good Hope, and of 
 the American continent, and the Reformation — that it was fully 
 awakened and inspired with that undying energy which, for 
 three hundred years, has filled the world with its renown. 
 
Lect. X. THOMAS OCCLEVE 455 
 
 The first important poetical writer of the fifteenth century, 
 whose works have come down to us, is Thomas Occleve, a 
 lawyer, who is supposed to have flourished about the year 1420. 
 Most of his works exist only in manuscript, and those that have 
 been printed are not of a character to inspire a very lively 
 desire for the publication of the remainder. They are princi- 
 pally didactic, and in great part translations, the most important 
 of them being a treatise on the Art of Government, taken 
 principally from a Latin work of Egidius, a Eoman writer of 
 the thirteenth century. The diction of Occleve is modelled 
 after that of Chaucer, of whom he professes to have been a 
 pupil, but there are some grammatical differences, the most 
 noticeable of them being the constant omission of the n final in 
 the infinitive mood, and in the third person plural of the verbs. 
 This, though not uncommon, was but of occasional, or at least 
 of very irregular occurrence in the preceding century. 
 
 I can find nothing better worthy of citation from this author 
 than his lamentation upon Chaucer, which Warton gives from 
 an unpublished manuscript : 
 
 But weleawaye, so is myne herte wo, 
 
 That the honour of English tonge is dede, 
 
 Of which I wont was han counsel and rede 1 
 
 O mayster dere, and fadir reverent, 
 
 My mayster Chaucer, floui-e of eloquence, 
 
 Mirrour of fructuous entendement, 
 
 O universal fadir in science, 
 
 Alas, that thou thine excellent prudence 
 
 In thy bed mortel mightest not bequethe I 
 
 What eyled Deth ? Alas why would he sle the I 
 
 O Deth that didist nought harm singulere 
 
 In slaughtre of him, but aU the lond it smertith : 
 
 But natheless, yet hastowe no powere 
 
 His name to sle. His hie vertue astertith 
 
 Unslayn from thee, which aye us lifely hertith 
 
 With boke[s] of his ornate enditing, 
 
 That is to all this lond enlumyning. 
 
 Tte versification of this extract is interesting as showing that 
 
456 E FINAL Lect. X. 
 
 the e final, which seems to have become silent soon after, was 
 still pronounced in Occleve's time, at least m poetry, as it had 
 been in Chaucer's; for bequeath, spelt bequethe, is made to 
 rhyme to sle the — 
 
 In thy bed mortel mightest not bequethe! 
 
 What eyled Deth ? Alas why would he sle the ? 
 
 The e final, which is mute in prose, is still counted in French 
 versification, and not unfrequently requires a prosodical accent, 
 though in actual reading of poetry, it is not much dwelt upon. 
 That it was once normally articulated in prose, in both English 
 and French, there can be no doubt. At what period it became 
 silent in either, it is difficult to determine, partly because 
 orthography seldom accurately represents orthoepy, and partly 
 because the change, like other orthoepical and grammatical 
 revolutions, came in gradually, and locally, so that while one 
 province or writer in a given century may have dropped the e, 
 another may have retained it many years later. The cause of 
 the loss of this articulation is the same in both languages, 
 namely, the tendency of both to discard inflectional syllables — 
 a tendency much aggravated in English by the confusion intro- 
 duced into its grammar through a mixture of unrelated tongues 
 discordant in their accidences. 
 
 Changes of this sort are not received in literature until they 
 have been long established in speech, and the fact, that in 
 French poetry the e final still counts as a syllable, while it has 
 been null in English verse for certainly three centuries, would 
 seem to imply that it continued to be colloquially pronounced 
 in France much longer than in England. 
 
 Contemporaneously with Occleve lived James I. of Scotland, 
 who was illegally seized, in his early childhood,* by Henry IV. 
 
 * There is a good deal of discrepancy among the authorities as to the date of 
 King James's capture — or rather as to his age at the time — and the duration of 
 his imprisonment. In the third and fifth stanzas of the second canto of the 
 King's Quair, the king himself says that he was taken prisoner at the age of 
 
tECT. X. JAMES I. OF SCOTLAND 457 
 
 of England in the year 1405, and kept for nearly twenty years 
 a pi'isoner. His captor caused him to be well educated, and 
 besides several pieces written, as it is said, unequivocally in the 
 Scottish dialect — the criticism of which does not come within 
 the plan of this course — he wrote, in English, as it seems, a 
 poem in about fourteen hundred lines, called the King's Quair, 
 or book. This is a eulogistic rhapsody on the Lady Jane Beau- 
 three, and in the sixth stanza of the same canto, he states that he had already 
 been imprisoned eighteen years, when he first saw his mistress -.-^ 
 
 Not far passit the state of innocence 
 
 But nere about the nowmer of zeiris thre^ 
 
 Were it causit throu hevinly influence 
 Of Goddis will, or other casualtee. 
 
 Can I not say, hot out of my contree. 
 By thair avise y' had of me the cure 
 Be see to pas, tuke I my aventure. 
 
 Upon the wevis weltring to and fro, 
 So infortunate was we that fremyt day, 
 
 That maugre plainly quethir we wold or no^ 
 W strong hand by forse schortly to say, 
 
 Of inymyis taken and led av/ay, 
 TVe weren all, and bro' in thaire contree, 
 Fortune it schupe non othir wayis to be. 
 
 TI. 
 
 Quhare as in strayte ward, and in strong prison, 
 
 So fere forth of my Ijf the hevy lyne. 
 Wont confort in sorowe, abandoune 
 
 The secund sistere, lukit hath to tuyne, 
 Nere, by the space of zeris twice nyne, 
 
 Tin Jupiter his merci list advert. 
 
 And send confort in relesche of my smert. 
 
 In Holinshed's History of Scotland, reprint of 1S08, vol. vi. p. 407, it is said: 
 'taken he was in the ninth yeare of his age, the 33 (sic) da^ of March, in the 
 yeare of our incamacion 1406, and was kept in captivitie of the Englishmen by 
 the space of eighteene yeares.' On page 426, the king is said to have been 
 murdered on the 21 of February 1436, ' in the 44 yeere of his age.' If King 
 James was forty-three years old in 1436, he must have been more than eight ia 
 1406, and upon the whole I think it safer to follow King James's own chronology 
 thaii that of historical compilera. 
 
458 JAMES I. OF SCOTXAND Lect. X. 
 
 fort, whom King James afterwards married ; and tLough its 
 subject and purpose did not give room for much fertility of 
 invention, it is full of delicacy, grace and feeling, smooth and 
 artistic in versification, and, in general poetic merit, superior to 
 any other English verse of the fifteenth or even the first half of 
 the sixteenth century. 
 
 The dialect is remarkable both for the occasional introduction 
 of Scandinavian words and forms — reminiscences, possibly, of 
 the author's childhood, which was used to a dialect much modified 
 by Northern influences — and especially for its freedom from all 
 French terms and idioms which had not been fairly naturalized 
 in English. The proportion of Eomance words in the King's 
 Qiiair is scarcely greater than in the works of Chaucer or of Grower, 
 and, as in those authors, we find that most of them are intro- 
 duced rather for the sake of rhyme and metre, than for any 
 superior adaptedhes's to poetical expression. His description of 
 the lady of whom he was enamoured is worth quoting at length : 
 
 And therew* keft I doun myn eye ageyne, 
 
 Qiihare as I few walkyng under the Toiire, 
 Full fecretely, new ciimyn hir to pleyne, 
 
 Thd faireft or the frefcheft zoung floure 
 Thiit ever I fewe, metho*, before that lioure, 
 
 For quhioh fodayne abate, anon aftert, 
 
 The blude of all my body to my hert. 
 
 And though I flood abaifit tho a lyte, 
 
 No wonder was ; for quhy ? my wittis all 
 Were fo ouercome w' plefance and delyte, 
 
 Only through latting of myn eyen fall, 
 That fudaynly my hert become hir thrall. 
 
 For ever of fi'ce wyll, for of manace 
 
 There was no takyn in hir fuete face. 
 
 And in my hede I drew ry* haftily, 
 
 And eft fones I lent it out ageyne, 
 And faw hir walk that verray womanly, 
 
 With no wight mo, bot only women tueyn^ 
 Than gan I ftudy in myfelf and feyne, 
 
 Ah ! fuete are ze a warldly creature, 
 
 Or hevingly tiling in likcnelTe of nature? 
 
Lect. X. JAMES I. OF SCOTLAND 459 
 
 Or ar ze god Cupiclis owin princefle 7 
 
 And cumj'n are to loiife me out of band, 
 Or are ze veray Nature the goddeffi?, 
 
 That have depayntit w* zour hevinly hand, 
 This gardyn full of flouris, as they Hand ? 
 
 Quhat lall I think, allace ! quhat reverence 
 
 Sail I mefter to zour excellence ? 
 GifF ze a goddefle be, and y' ze like 
 
 To do me payne, I may it not aftert ; 
 Giff ze be warldly wight, y' dooth me fike, 
 
 Quhy left God mak zou fo my dereft hert. 
 To do a fely prilbner thus fmert, 
 
 That lufis zou all, and wote of no* but wo, 
 
 And, therefore, merci fuete ! fen it is fo. 
 Quhen I a lytiU thrawe had maid my mone, 
 
 Bewailing myn infortune and my chance, 
 Unknawin how or quhat was beft to done, 
 
 So ferre I fallying into lufis dance. 
 That fodeynly my wit, my contenance, i 
 
 My hert, my will, my nature, and my mynd, / 
 
 Was changit clene ry' in ane other kind. i 
 
 Of hir array the form gif I fal write. 
 
 Toward her goldin haire, and rich atyre, 
 In fi-etwife couchit w* perils quliite. 
 
 And grete balas lemyng as the fyre, 
 W mony ane emerant and faire fkphire, 
 
 And on hir hede a chaplet frefch of hewe, 
 
 Of plumys partit rede, and quhite, and blewe 
 FuU of quaking Ipangis bry' as gold, 
 
 Forgit of fchap like to the amorettis, 
 So new, fo frefch, fo pleafant to behold, 
 
 The plumys eke like to the floure jonettis, 
 And other of fchap, like to the floure jonettis 
 
 And, above all this, there was, wele I wot» 
 
 Beautee eneuch to mak a world to dote. 
 About hir neck, quliit« as the fyre amaille, 
 
 A giidelie cheyne of fmall orfeverye, 
 Quhare by there hang a ruby, w'out faille 
 
 Like to ane hert fchapin verily. 
 That, as a Iperk of lowe fo wantonly 
 
 Semyt birnyng upon hir quhite throte, 
 Now gif there was gud pcrtye, God it wote. 
 
460 JAMES I. OF SCOTLAND LecT. X. 
 
 And for to walk that frefche Mayes morowe, 
 
 Ane hvke (he had upon her tiffew quhite, 
 That gudeliare had not bene fene to forowe, 
 
 As I fuppofe, and girt fche was alyte ; 
 Thus halfljng lowfe for hafte, to fuich delyte, 
 
 It was to fee her zouth in gudelihed, 
 
 That for rudenes to ijieke thereof I drede. 
 In hir was zouth, beautee, w' humble aport, 
 
 Bountee, richefle, and womanly faiture, 
 God better wote than my pen can report, 
 
 Wifdome, largeffe eftate, and conyng fure 
 In every point, fo guydit hir mefure, 
 
 In word, in dede, in fchap, in contenance, 
 
 That nature my' no more hir childe auance. 
 Throw quhich anon I knew and underllude 
 
 "Wele y* fche was a warldly creature, 
 On quhom to reft myn eye, fo mich gude 
 
 It did my woful hert, I zow aflure 
 That it was to me joye w*out mefure, 
 
 And, at the laft, my luke unto the hevin 
 
 I threwe furthwith, and faid thir verJis fevin : 
 O Venus clere ! of goddis ftellifyit. 
 
 To quhom I zelde homage and facrifife, 
 Fro this day forth zour grace be magnifyit, 
 
 That me reflauit have in fuch wife. 
 To lyve under zour law and fo feruife ; 
 ; Now help me furth, and for zour merci lede 
 
 My hert to reft, y* dels nere for drede. 
 Quhen I w' gude entent this orifon 
 
 Thus endit had, I ftynt a lytill ftound, 
 And eft myn eye full pitoufly adoun 
 
 I keft, behalding unto hir lytill hound, 
 That w' his bellis playit on the ground. 
 
 Than wold I fay, and figh therew* a lyte. 
 
 Ah ! wele were him y* now were in thy plyte I 
 An othir quhile the lytill nyghtingale, 
 
 That fat upon the twiggis, wold I chide, 
 And fay ry' thus, Quhare are thy notis fmale, 
 
 That thou of love has fong this morowe tydeT 
 Seis thou not hir y* fittis the befyde ? 
 
 Ffor Venus' fake, the blisfuU goddefle dure, 
 
 Sang on agane, and mak ?ny Lady chore. 
 
Lkct. X. JAMES I. OF SCOTLAND 461 
 
 And elie I pray, foi all the paynes grete, 
 
 That, for the love of Proigne, thy fifter dere^ 
 
 Thou fufferit quhilom, qulien thy breftis wete 
 "Were with the teres of thyne eyen clere, 
 
 All bludy ronne y* pitee was to here. 
 The crueltee of that unkny'ly dede, 
 Quhai-e was fro the bereft thy maidenhede. 
 
 Lift up thyne hert, and fmg w* gude entent, 
 And in thy notis fuete the trefon telle, 
 
 That to thy fifter trewe and innocent. 
 Was kythit by hu- hulband felfe and fell, 
 
 Ffor qnhois gilt, as it is worthy well, 
 Chide thir huftandis y' are falfe, 1 fay, 
 And bid them mend in the XX deuil way. 
 
 lytiU wreich, aUace ! maift thou not fe 
 
 Quho corny th zond? Is it now time to wrmg? 
 Quhat fory tho' is fallin upon the ? 
 
 Opyn thy throte ; haftow no left to fing ? 
 Allace ! fen thou of refbn had felyng. 
 
 Now, fwete bird fay ones to me pepe, 
 
 I dee for wo ; me think thou gynis flepe. 
 Haftow no mynde of lufe ? quhare is thy make ? 
 
 Or artow feke, or fmyt w' jeloufye ? 
 Or is fche dede, or hath fche the forfake ? 
 
 Quhat is the caufe of thy melancolye, 
 That thou no more lift maken melodye ? 
 
 Sluggart, for fchame ! lo here thy golden houre 
 
 That worth were hale all thy lyvis laboure. 
 Gif thou fiild fing wele ever in thy lyve. 
 
 Here is, in fay, the time, and eke the fpace : 
 Quhat woftow then ? Sum bird may cum and flryr^ 
 
 In fong w* the, the maiftry to purchace. 
 Suld thou than cefTe, it were great fchame aUace, 
 
 And here to wyn gree happily for ever ; 
 
 Here is the tyme to fj'ng, or ellis never. 
 
 1 tho* eke thus gif I my handis clnp. 
 
 Or gif I caft, than will fche flee away ; 
 And, gif I hald my pes, than will fche nap ; 
 
 And gif I crye, fche wate not quhat I fay : 
 Thus quhat is beft, wate I not be this day, 
 
 Bot blawe wynd, blawe, and do the leuis fchake, 
 
 That %n tuig may wag, and make hir to wake. 
 
462 JAMES I. OF SCOTLAND LboI. X. 
 
 With that anon ry' fche toke up a fang, 
 
 Quhare com anon mo hirdis and alight ; 
 Bot than to here the mirth was tham amang, 
 
 Ouer that to fee the fuete iicht 
 Of hyr ymage, my fpirit was fo Hght, 
 
 Metho' I flawe for joye w*out areft, 
 
 So were my wittis bound in all to feft. 
 And to the nottis of the philomene, 
 
 Quhilkis fche Jang the ditee there I maid 
 Direft to hir y* was my hertis queue, 
 
 Withoutin quhom no fongis may be glade, 
 And to that fanft walking in the fchade, 
 
 My bedis thus with humble hert enters, 
 
 Deoutly I faid on this manere. 
 Quhen fall zour merci rew upon zour man, 
 
 Quhois feruice is yet imcouth unto zow, 
 Sen quhen ze go, there is not ellis than, 
 
 Bot hert quhere as the body may not thron 
 Folow thy hevin, quho fuld be glad bot thou, 
 
 That fuch a gyde to folow has undertake. 
 
 Were it throu hell, the way thou no* forlake. 
 And, efter this, the birdis everichone 
 
 Tuke up ane other fang full loud and clere. 
 And w' a voce laid, Well is vs begone. 
 
 That with our makis are togider here ; 
 We proyne and play w'out dout and dangere. 
 
 All clothit in a foyte full frefch and newe, 
 
 In luffis fervioe befy, glad, and trewe. 
 And ze frefch May, ay niercifuU to bridis. 
 
 Now welcum be, ze floure of monethis all, 
 Ffor not onely zour grace upon us bydis, 
 
 Bot all the warld to witnes this we call, 
 That llrowit hath fo plainly over all, 
 
 W new frefch fuete and tender grene. 
 
 Our lyf, our luft, our govemoure, our quene. 
 This was their fang, as femyt me full heye, 
 
 W' full mony uncouth fwete note and fchill, 
 And therew' all that faire ypward hir eye 
 
 Wold call aniang, as it was Goddis will, 
 Quhare I might fe. Handing alone full ftill, 
 
 The faire failure y* nature, for maiftrye, 
 In hir vifage wro' had ftill lufingly. 
 
Lbct. X. JAMES I. OF SCOTLAND 463 
 
 And, quhen fche walkit, liad a lytill thrawe 
 
 Under the fuete grene bewis bent, 
 Hir fiiire frefch face, as quliite as any fiiawe, 
 
 Sohe turnythas, and fiirth her wayis went; 
 Bot tho began mj'u axis and turment, 
 
 To fene hir part, and fi'lowe I na my*, 
 
 Metho* the day was turnyt into ny'. 
 
 The dialect of this poem is English in almost everything but 
 the spelling. Only a single old manuscript of the King's Quair 
 exists, and I do not know that there is any reason to suppose it 
 to be the original, or even an authentic copy. The occasional 
 halting of the metre, which is in general smooth, is strong 
 evidence of some corruption of the text; and it may be 
 considered impossible that a young man, educated in England 
 from the age of three or even of eight or nine years, should 
 have employed the orthography of the manuscript in ques- 
 tion. It is, therefore, either a transcript made by a scribe not 
 well versed in the English dialect, or it has been nationalized 
 by some Caledonian, who 'loved Scotland better than the 
 truth.' 
 
 King James acknowledged Gower and Chaucer as his masters, 
 but he certainly did not learn from them this spelling of the 
 concluding stanza of the poem, in which he confesses his 
 obligations to them : — 
 
 Vnto impnis of my maisteris dere, 
 
 Gowere and Chaucere, that on the steppis satt 
 
 Of rhethorike, quliill thai were lyvand here, 
 Superlatiue as poetis laureate. 
 
 In raoralitee and eloquence ornate, 
 I recommend my buk in lynis seven. 
 And eke thair saulis vnto the blisse of hevin. 
 
 Apart from the internal evidence of the poem itself, we have 
 abundant other proof that its dialect is not that of the Scottish 
 nation in the first third of the fifteenth century. Holinshed 
 has preserved for us a piece of testimony on this subject, 
 directly connected with the prince himself, in a letter written 
 
464- ITDGATE Lect. X. 
 
 by King Eobert to King Henry IV., in anticipation of the 
 possibility of the young prince's capture while trying to ' force 
 the blockade,' and proceed to France. The diction of this 
 epistle is in the same pedantic strain which characterised the 
 dialect of many Scotch writers of the following century. Fully 
 twenty-five per cent, of the words are French or Latin, and 
 among them are such expressions as : ' thair empire is caduke 
 and fragill,' ' quhan princes ar roborat be amitee of other, &c.,' 
 *to obtemper to thir owr desires,' and the like. In short, the 
 whole style of the letter is as remote as possible from the sim- 
 plicity and naturalness of expressioQ that marked the English 
 of that period, and of which King James's poem constitutes so 
 good a specimen. 
 
 A little later, or about the year 1430, flourished Lydgate, a 
 poet of moderate merit, but to whom the popularity of his 
 principal subjects, the Fall of Princes, taken from Boccaccio, 
 the Destruction of Troy, and the Siege of Thebes — all founded 
 on middle-age adaptations and amplifications of classical narra- 
 tives — gave a more general circulation than the works of any 
 other wtiter of that century obtained. 
 
 Lydgate's poems are extremely numerous, and mostly still 
 inedited. They embrace a vast variety of subjects, including 
 some not precisely fit to be treated by an ecclesiastic. The un- 
 published works, so far as can be judged by the scanty extracts 
 in Warton and other critical writers, are of at least equal merit 
 with those which have been printed. It is much to be wished 
 that a selection of them might be edited, because, from their 
 great variety of topics, metre and prevalent tone, they would, 
 no doubt, furnish important contributions to the history of 
 English philology. Lydgate was one of the few Englishmen of 
 his time who enjoyed the benefit of both an English education 
 and a Continental literary training. He not only visited Italy, 
 as did hundreds of the priesthood, for professional purposes, but 
 carefully studied and mastered the languages and secular litera- 
 ture of that country and of France; and he is said to have 
 opened a school at his monastery, after his return, fA^- '" 
 
LeCT. X. MINOR POETRY OF FIFTEENTH CENTUET 465 
 
 instruction of young gentlemen in the arts of poetry and rhetoric, 
 and in all that is called belles-lettres learning. 
 
 The Story of Thebes was written as a sort of continuation of 
 the Canterbury Tales, and is preceded by a prologue, in which 
 the author says he fell accidentally into company with Chaucer's 
 pilgrims, and was invited to join them, and contribute a tale for 
 the entertainment of the party. The dialect of this composition 
 is evidently an imitation of the style and diction of Chaucer ; 
 and hence it is more antiquated than that of Lydgate's other 
 works, many of which are even more modern, both in vocabulary 
 and in idiom, than the diction of Spenser, who lived a century 
 and a half later. 
 
 The Fall of Troy is a compilation from a great variety of 
 sources, strung together not without art, and embellished with 
 many apparently original inventions of Lydgate's own. It pos- 
 sesses an interest of an archaeological as well as of a philological 
 character, for it brings the action of the personages, their cos- 
 tumes, their architecture and their habits to those of Lydgate's 
 time, and consequently adds something to our knowledge of the 
 English social life of the fifteenth century. 
 
 The versification of Lydgate is generally very smooth, but it 
 is sometimes difficult to resolve it into prosodical feet, on account 
 of the irregularity in the pronunciation of the e final, which was 
 now fluctuating, sometimes articulated and sometimes silent. 
 Upon what rule the pronunciation rested, or whether the poet 
 arbitrarily articulated or suppressed it, as the convenience of 
 metre dictated, I am unable to say ; but it is evident that in his 
 time there was a rapidly increasing inclination to drop it in 
 speech, though it was still retained in the orthography of a 
 great number of words which have now lost it. 
 
 The minor poetry of the fifteenth century is in general of 
 little interest or value, though there are some devotional pieces 
 not devoid of merit in versification, if wanting in originality of 
 thought. I give, as a specimen, a poem to the Virgin, from 
 Wright and Halli well's Eeliquise Antiquse, vol. ii. pp. 212, 213 : 
 
 H H 
 
466 MINOR POEMS OF FIFTEENTH CENTUEI Lbct. X, 
 
 Mary moder, wel thow be ! 
 
 Mary may den, thynk on me ; 
 
 Maydyn and moder was never non 
 
 To the, lady, but thou allon. 
 
 Swete lilary, niayden elene, 
 
 Shilde me Iro all shame and tene ; 
 
 And out of syn, lady, shilde thou me, 
 
 And out of det, for charite. 
 
 Lady, for thi joyes fyve, 
 
 Gyf me grace in this life 
 
 To know and kepe over all thyng 
 
 Cristyn feath and Goddis biddyng, 
 
 And truly wynne all that is nede 
 
 To me and myne, bothe cloth and fede. 
 
 Helpe me, lady, and alle myne, 
 
 Shilde me, lady, fro hel pyne. 
 
 Shilde me, lady, fro vilany, 
 
 And fro alle wycked cumpany. 
 
 Shilde me, lady, fro evel shame, 
 
 And from all wyckid fame. 
 
 Swete Mary, mayden mylde, 
 
 Fro the fende thou me shilde, 
 
 That the fende me not dere ; 
 
 Swete lady, thou me were 
 
 Bothe be day and be nyjt; 
 
 Helpe me, lady, with alle thi myjt, 
 
 For my frendis, lady, I pray the, 
 
 That thei may saved be 
 
 To ther souhs and ther life, 
 
 Lady, for thi joyes fyve. 
 
 For myn enimys I pray also, 
 
 That thei may here so do. 
 
 That thei nor I in wrath dye ; 
 
 Swete lady, I the pray, 
 
 And thei that be in dedly synne. 
 
 Let hem never dye therin ; 
 
 But swete lady, thou hem rede 
 
 For to amende ther my seede. 
 ^ Swete lady, for me thou pray to hevyn kyng, 
 / To graunt me howsill, Christe, and gode endvng. 
 
 Jhesu, for thi holy grace, 
 
 In heven blisse to have a place ; 
 
Lect. X. MIKOR POEMS OF riFTEEKTH CENTUKI 467 
 
 Lady as I tnist in the, 
 These prayers that thou graunt me ; 
 And I shall, lady, her belyve 
 Grete the with avj-s fyve, 
 A pater noster and a crede. 
 To helpe me, lady, at my nede. 
 Swete lady, full of wynne. 
 Full of grace and gode within, 
 As thou art flour of alle tin kynne, 
 Do my synnes for to blynne. 
 And kepe me out of dedly synne, 
 That I be never takyn therin. 
 
 T add, from the same collection, a short poem on grammaticstl 
 rules, written in a dialect which shows that the author, however 
 good a Latinist he may have been, had very vague notions of 
 English accidence and orthography : — 
 
 My lefe chyld, I kownsel ye 
 
 To ftirrae thi vj. tens, thou awyse ye; 
 
 And have mynd of thi clensoune, 
 
 Both of nowne and of pronowne, 
 
 And ilk case in plurele, 
 
 How thai sal end, awyse the wele ; 
 
 And thi participyls forgete thou nowth, 
 
 And thi comparysons be yn thi thowth; 
 
 Thynk of the revele of the relatyfe, 
 
 And then schaUe thou the bettyr thryfe { 
 
 Lat never interest downe falle. 
 
 Nor pem'tet with hys felows alle ; 
 
 And how this Englis schalle cum in, 
 
 Wyt tanto and quanta in a Latyn, 
 
 And how this Enghs schalle be chawngede, 
 
 Wyt verbis uewtyrs qwen thai are hawede ; 
 
 And howe a verbe schalle be fiirmede, 
 
 Take gode hede that thou be not stimnede; 
 
 The ablatyfe case thou hafe in mynd, 
 
 That he be saved in hys kynd ; 
 
 Take gode hede qwat he wylle do. 
 
 And how a nowne substantyfe, 
 
 WyUe corde with a verbe and a relatyfe; 
 
 Posculo, posco, peto. 
 
 a H 2 
 
468 MINOE POEMS OF FIFTEEKTH CENTDET Lect. X. 
 
 And yf thou wylle be a grammarion, 
 Owne thi iyngers to construccyon, 
 The infenytyfe mode alle thorowth, 
 "Wyt his suppyns es mykylle wroth ; 
 And thynk of pi-opur nownnys, 
 Both of kastels and of townnys ; 
 And when oportet cums in plas, 
 Thou knawys miserere has no gras. 
 
 The political poetry of this period, as a contribution to 
 contemporaneous history, has a value quite independent of its 
 merits, or rather demerits, in a literary point of view. The 
 rhymed chronicles are every way worthless ; but some of the 
 controversial and polemic political verse has much higher 
 claims. The Libel of English Policy, a poem of some fifteen 
 hundred lines, written apparently in the year 1436, is among 
 the most important productions of its kind, and is remarkable 
 for ' far-sighted views of public policy, and the knowledge it 
 displays of the material resources and commercial interests of 
 England. The prologue deserves quoting at length : — 
 
 THE LIBEL OF ENGLISH POLICT. 
 
 Here heginneth the prologe of the processe of the Libelle of Etiglyshe 
 Polycye, exKorfynge alle Englande to Icepe the xee enviroim, and 
 nanielye the narowe see, shewynge whate profete commeth thereof, 
 and also worshype and salvacioun to Englande and to alle Englyshe 
 menne. 
 
 The trewe processe of Englysh polycye, 
 Of utterwarde to kepe thys regno in rest 
 
 Of oure England, that no man may denye, 
 Nere say of soth but one of the best 
 Is thys, that who seith southe, northe, est, and weB^ 
 
 Cheryshe merchandyse, kepe thamyralte, 
 
 That we bee maysteres of the narowe see. 
 
 Ffor Sigesmonde the gi-ete emperoure, 
 
 Whyche j'et regneth, whan he was in this londe 
 
 Wyth kynge Herry the t*^, prince of honotire, 
 Here moche glorye as hym thought he founde; 
 A myghty londe, whyche hadde take on honde 
 
 To werre in Ffraunce and make mortalite, 
 
 And evere welle kept rounde aboute the see. 
 
LbCT. X. MTNOE POEMS OF FIFTEEKTH CENTDET 469 
 
 And to the kynge thus lie seyde, ' My brothere,' 
 "Whan he perceyved too townes Calys and Dovere, 
 
 • Of alle youre townes to chese of one and othere, 
 
 ' To kepe the see and sone to come overe 
 
 ' To wen-e onghtwardes and youre regno to recovere, 
 
 • Kepe these too townes, sire, and youre magest^, 
 
 • As youre tweyne eyne to kepe the narowe see.' 
 
 Ffor if this see be kepte in tyme of werre, 
 
 Who cane here passe with ought daungere and woo? 
 
 "Who may eschape, who may myschef dyfferre 7 
 What marchaundye may for by be agoo ? 
 Ffor nedes hem muste take truse every ffoo, 
 
 Fflaundres, and Spayne, and othere, trust to me, 
 
 Or ellis hyndered alle for thys narowe see. 
 
 Therfore I caste me by a lytele wrytinge 
 To shewe att eye thys condusione, 
 
 Ffor concyens and for myne acquytynge 
 Ayenst God and ageyne abusyon. 
 And cowaa-dyse and to oure enmyes oonfiisione; 
 
 Ffor iiij. thynges our noble sheueth to me, 
 
 Kyng, sliype and, swerde, and pouer of the see. 
 
 "Where bene oure shippes ? where bene oure swerdes become ? 
 Owre enmyes bid for the shippe sette a shepe. 
 
 Alias ! oure reule halteth, hit is benome ; 
 
 "Who dare weel say that lordeshyppe shulde take kepe 7 
 I wolle asaye, thoughe myne hert gynne to wepe, 
 
 To do thys werke, yf we wole ever the, 
 
 Ffor verry shame, to kepe aboute the see. 
 
 Shalle any prynce, what so be hys name, 
 "Wheche hathe nobles moche lyche oures, 
 
 Be lorde of see, and Fflemmyngis to oure blame 
 Stoppe us, take us, and so make fade the floures 
 Of Englysshe state, and disteyne oure honnoures ? 
 
 Ffor cowardyse, alias ! hit shulde so be ; 
 
 Therfore I gynne to wry te now of the see. 
 
 After the prologue, follow chapters on the trade between the 
 Continental states, which is conducted by way of the British 
 channel, the object being to show that if England controls that 
 
470 MINOB POEMS OF FIFTEENTH CENTUEY Lbct. X. 
 
 strait by her maritime towns on both coasts, and her fleets, 
 she is virtually the mistress of the commerce of Western 
 Europe. These chapters furnish a good deal of information on 
 the productive industry, the imports and exports, and all the 
 financiar interests of the countries bounded by the Atlantic and 
 the Baltic seas, as well as of the most important Mediterranean 
 ports, which latter seem to have furnished England with many 
 of the lighter and more costly articles of trade and luxury, 
 called by the writer, ' commodites and nycetees : ' — 
 
 The grete galees of Venees and Fflorence 
 Be wel ladene wy th thynges of complacence, 
 AUe spicerye and of grocers ware, 
 Wyth swete wynes, alle manere of chaffare, 
 Apes, and japes, and marmusettes taylede, 
 Nifles, trifles, that litelle have availede, 
 And thynges wyth whiche they fetely blere cure eye, 
 Wyth thynges not enduryng that we bye ; 
 Ffor moche of thys chaifare that is wastahle 
 Mighte be forborne for dere and dyssevable. 
 And that 1 wene, as for infirmitees, 
 In cure Englonde is suche comoditees, 
 Wythowten helpe of any othere londe, 
 Whych by wytte and practike bethe ifounde, 
 • That alle humors myght be voyded sure ; 
 Whych that w;e gledre wyth oure Englysh cure, 
 That wee shulde have no nede to skamonye, 
 Turbit, euforbe, correcte, diagredie, 
 Eubarde, sene, and yet they bene to nedefiiUe; 
 But I knowe thynges also spedefiille, 
 That growene here, as these thynges seyde; 
 Lett of this matere no mane be dysmayde, 
 But that a man may voyde infirmytee 
 Wythoute degrees fet fro beyonde the see. 
 And yett there shulde excepte be ony thynge, 
 It were but sugre, truste to my seyinge. 
 He that trustith not to my seyinge and sentence, 
 Lett hym better serche experience. 
 In this mater I wole not ferthere prese, 
 Who so not beleveth, let hym leve and seaae. 
 
IWTT. X. MINOE POEMS OF FIFTEENTH CENTUET 471 
 
 Tlius these galeise for tliis lykynge ware, 
 
 And etynge ware, here hens oure beste chaffare, 
 
 Clothe, wolle, and tynne, whiche. as I seyde befornCi 
 
 Oute of this londe werste myghte be forborne. 
 
 Ffor eche other londe of necessite 
 
 Have grete nede to by some of the tlire ; 
 
 And wee ressey ve of hem into this cooste 
 
 Ware and chaffare that lyghtlye wol be loste. 
 
 And wolde Jhesu that oure lordis wolde 
 
 Considre this wel, both yonge and olde ; 
 
 Namelye olde, that have experience, 
 
 That myghte the yonge exorten to prudence. 
 
 What harme, what hurt, and what hinderaunce 
 
 Is done to us unto youre grete grevaunce, 
 
 Of suche londes and of suche nacions 7 
 
 As experte men knowe by probacions ; 
 
 By wretynge as discured oure counsayles, 
 
 And false coloure alwey the countertayles 
 
 Of oure enmyes, that dothe us hinderinge 
 
 Unto our goodes, oure realme, and to the kynge ; 
 
 As wysse men have shewed welle at eye. 
 
 And aUe this is colowred by marchaundrye. 
 
 This chapter is followed by * an ensampelle of deseytte,' which 
 furnishes some ciu-ious information on modes and rates of 
 exchange and usury : — 
 
 Also they here the golde owte of thys londe. 
 And souketh the thryfte awey oute of oure honde, 
 As the waffore soukethe honeye fro the bee, 
 So mynuceth oure commodity. 
 Now wolle ye here how they in Cotteswolde 
 Were wonte to borowe, or they schulde be solde, 
 Here wolle gode, as for yere and yere. 
 Of clothe and tjmne they did in lych manere, 
 And in her galeys schyppe this marchaundye ? 
 Than sone at Venice of them men wol it bye, 
 Then utteme there the chaffare be the payse. 
 And lyghtly als ther they make her reys. 
 And whan tho gode bene at Venice solde, 
 Than to carrye her chaunge they ben fulle bolde 
 
472 PAOSE OF FIFTEENTH CENTTJKT LeCT. X. 
 
 Into riatmdres, ivhan tliei ttis money have, 
 
 They ■wyll it profre ther sotelt^ to save, 
 
 To Englysshe march aundis to yeve it onte by escliaiinge^ 
 
 To be paid agayn, thei make not straunge, 
 
 Here in Englonde, semynge for the better, 
 
 At the resey vinge and syght of the iettir. 
 
 By iiij. pens lesse in the noble rounde, 
 
 That is xij. pens in the golden pounde. 
 
 And yf we wolle have of paymente, 
 
 A ftiUe monythe than moste hym nodes assente^ 
 
 To viij. pens losse, that is shellyngis tweyne, 
 
 In the Englysshe pound, as eitesones ageyne 
 
 Pfor ij. monthes xij. pens must be paye, 
 
 In the Englysshe poimde, what is that to seye, 
 
 But iij. shy Hingis, so that in pounde feUe 
 
 Ffor hurte and harme harde is wyth hem to delle. 
 
 And whenne Englysshe marchaundys have contente 
 
 This eschaunge in Englonde of assente, 
 
 That these seyde Veneciance have in wone, 
 
 And Florentynes, to bere here golde sone 
 
 Overe the see into Flaundres ageyne. 
 
 And thus they lyve in Flaundres, sothe to sayne, 
 
 And in London, wyth suche chevesaunce 
 
 That men calle usure, to oure losse and hinderaunce. 
 
 Tlie wide range of vocabulary required for the lists of com- 
 modities and for the other commercial topics discussed in thia 
 poem, invests it with a good deal of philological interest, but it 
 offers nothing new in point of syntax or inflection. 
 
 The prose writers of the first three quarters of the fifteenth 
 century are not very numerous, nor, with an exception or two, 
 important. There are several chroniclers of this period who 
 have little historical merit, and it may be remarked as a rule 
 almost without exception, that the secular prose of the fifteenth 
 century is greatly inferior to the poetry, both in literary skill 
 and in philological interest. The time had not yet come for the 
 cultivation of the diction of prose. The freedom of speech, 
 which had grown up in the decrepitude of Edward III. and 
 the imbecility of his successor, the weak and unfortunate 
 
Iect. X. BISHOP PECOCK 473 
 
 Eichard IT., was gone. Liberty of thought was restrained in too 
 many ways, tyrannized over by too many despotisms, to be 
 allowed much range of exercise. The realities of life, political, 
 social, ecclesiastical, could not safely be discussed, and it was 
 only the imaginative, unsubstantial world of poetry, in which 
 the English mind was allowed a little room for expansion. 
 
 But, in spite of every effort to quench it, the spark which 
 Wycliffe had kindled still faintly glowed in the dreary ash-heap of 
 the Church itself; and the works of Pecock afford a gratifying 
 proof that the mantle of the reformer had fallen on worthy 
 shoulders, though he who bore it was so little able to comprehend 
 the scope and logical consequences of the principles on which 
 he acted, that he knew not even in what direction he was 
 marching. 
 
 The principal work of Pecock is called The Kepressor of 
 over-much Blaming of the Clergy. It was written about the 
 year 1450, and a very good edition of it has just been published 
 in the series entitled Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain 
 and Ireland in the Middle Ages. It is, as its title indicates, a 
 defence of many of the doctrines held by the Church of Eome 
 against the attacks of the LoUardists, or followers of Wycliffe, 
 and other reformers. But while Pecock assailed the heretical 
 opinions of the LoUardists, and sustained, with moderation, the 
 supremacy of the Papal See, the adoration of images and the 
 like, he was at the same time unconsciously undermining the 
 position on which he stood, by admitting that general councils 
 were not infallible, that the Scriptures were the true rule of 
 faith, and that religious dogmas ought to be supported by 
 argument, and not by the bare decree of an unreasoning 
 authority. Clearer-sighted men than himself saw whither 
 Pecock was drifting, and that his well-meant defence of the 
 Church was, in reality, a formidable attack upon the radical 
 principles of its organisation and the groundwork of its power. 
 He was, therefore, degraded from his bishopric, compelled to 
 recant^ and confined for the rest of his life in a conventual prison. 
 
474 BISHOP PECOCK Lect. X. 
 
 The appearance of a work like the Eepressor is important in the 
 ecclesiastical annals of England, because so many of the writings 
 of the early reformers were destroyed by the relentless hostility of 
 the authorities of the Church, that our materials for a full history 
 of those anticipatorymovements are incomplete. But the work of. 
 Pecock has still stronger claims to the attention of the student 
 of English literary history, both from its philological interest 
 and from its intrinsic merits, as being, if not the first, yet 
 certainly the ablest specimen of philosophical argumentation 
 which had yet appeared in the English tongue. The style of 
 Pecock bears a remarkable resemblance to that of Hooker, who 
 lived a century and a half later ; and this likeness in vocabulary 
 and structure of period is one of the many evidences tending to 
 prove that theology had, from the time of "Wyclifife to the 
 seventeehth century, a dialect of her own, which was in a great 
 measure distinct from and independent of that of secular 
 literature, and the regularity of whose progress was little 
 affected by the fluctuations that mark the history of the English 
 language in other departments of prose compositioD. 
 
 Although, in diction and arrangement of sentences, the 
 Eepressor is much in advance of the chroniclers of Pecock's 
 age, the grammar, both in accidence and syntax, is in many 
 points nearly where Wycliffe had left it ; and it is of course in 
 these respects considerably behind that of the poetical writers 
 we have just been considering. Thus, while these latter 
 authors, as well as some of earlier date, employ the objective 
 plural pronoun them, and the plural possessive pronoun their, 
 Pecock writes always hem for the personal and her for the 
 possessive pronoun. Thus in chapter xx. vol. ii. p. 128, 'Forto 
 conuicte and ouercome the said erring persoones of the lay 
 peple, and for to make hem leue her errouris, an excellent 
 remedie is the dryuyng of hem into sure knowing, or into 
 weenyng or opinioun, that thei neden mich more to leerne and 
 knowe into the profit and sure leernyng and knowing of Groddis 
 lawe and seruice, than what thei mowe leerne and knowe bi Aer, 
 
LECT. X. BISHOP TECOCK 475 
 
 reading and studiying in the Bible oonli,' &c. These pro- 
 nominal forms, however, soon fell into disuse, and they are 
 hardly to be met with in any English writer of later date than 
 Pecock. With respect to one of them, however, the objective 
 hem for thein, it may be remarked that it has not become 
 obsolete in colloqiual speech to the present day ; for in such 
 phrases as / sa^c 'em, / told 'em, and the like, the pronoun em 
 (or 'em) is not, as is popularly supposed, a vulgar corruption of 
 the full pronoun them, which alone is found in modern books, 
 but it is the true Anglo-Saxon and old English objective plural, 
 which, in our spoken dialect, has remained unchanged for a 
 thousand years. 
 
 To those not familiar with the English of the end of the 
 sixteenth, aud the beginning of the seventeenth century, the 
 style of Pecock has a quaint and antiquated air, from the free 
 use of several obsolete forms, and especially of the adjective 
 termination able, which he constantly adds to Saxon roots, as, 
 for example, unlackable, instead of the French indispensable, 
 unagainsayable, for indisputable. But such words were very 
 common a hundred and fifty years after Pecock wrote, though 
 now disused. The rejection of these hybrid words from the 
 modem vocabulary is curious, as an instance of the unconscious 
 exercise of a linguistic instinct by the English people. The 
 objection to such adjectives is their mongrel character, the root 
 being Saxon, the termination Eomance ; and it is an innate 
 feeling of the incongruity of such alliances, not the speculative 
 theories of philologists, which has driven so many of them out 
 of circulation. Besides these forms, Pecock uses the verbal 
 plural in en, and some other archaic inflections, as well as some 
 now obsolete words. The union of these old inflections with a 
 modern structure of period is interesting, because it shows 
 that the fusion of French and Saxon had given to their pro- 
 duct — the English tongue — a linguistic character which was 
 foimded more on logical principle than on grammatical form, 
 and that our maternal speech has been for four hundred years 
 
476 BISHOP PECOCK I-ECT. X. 
 
 eubstantially the same, though its inflectional characteristics 
 have been considerably changed. 
 
 The second chapter of the first part of the Repressor is here 
 printed entire, as a sample of Pecock's logic : — 
 
 Forto meete ajens the firste bifore spoken opinioun, and forte 
 vnroote and updrawe it, j schal sette forth first xiij. principal conclu- 
 siouns. But for as miche as this vnrooting of the first opinioiin and 
 the proofis of tho xiij. conolusiouns mowen not be doon and made 
 Tvithoute strengthe of argumentis, therfore that y be the better and the 
 cleerer vndirstonde of the lay peple in summe wordis to be aftir spoken 
 in this present book, y sette nowe bifore to hem this doctrine taken 
 schortli out of the faculte of logik. An argument if he be ful and 
 foormal, ■which is clepid a sillogisme, is mad of twey proposiciouns 
 dryuing out of hem and bi strengthe of hem the thridde proposicioun. 
 Of the whiche thre proposiciouns the ij. first ben clepid premissis, and 
 the iij^. folewing out of hem is clepid the conclusioim of hem. And the 
 firste of tho ij. premissis is clepid the first premisse, and the ij^. of hem 
 is clepid the ij^. premisse. And ech such argument is of this kinde, 
 that if the bothe premissis ben trewe, the conclusioun concludid out and 
 bi hem is also trewe ; and but if euereither of tho premissis be trewe, 
 the conclusioun is not trewe. Ensaumple her of is this. ' Ech man 
 is at Eome, the Pope is a man, eke the Pope is at Pome.' Lo here ben 
 sett forth ij. proposicions, which ben these, 'Ech man is at Rome;' 
 and ' The Pope is a man ; ' and these ben the ij. premyssis in this argu- 
 ment, and thei dryuen out the iij". proposicioun, which is this, 'The 
 Pope is at Eome,' and it is the conclusioun of the ij. premissis. Wher- 
 fore certis if eny man can be sikir for eny tyme that these ij. premyssis 
 be trewe, he may be sikir that the conclusioun is trewe ; thouj alle the 
 aungelis in heuen wolden seie and holde that thUk conclusioun were 
 not trewe. And this is a general reule, in euery good and formal and 
 ful argument, that if his premissis be knowe for trewe, the conclusioun 
 oujte be avowid for trewe, what euer creature wole seie the contrarie. 
 
 What propirtees and condiciouns ben requirid to an argument, that 
 he be ful and formal and good, is tau5t in logik bi ful fairs and sure 
 reulis, and may not be taujt of me here in this present book. But 
 wolde God it were leemed of al the comon peple in her modiris Ian- 
 gage, for thanne thei schulden therbl be putt fro myche ruydnes and 
 boistosenes which thei han now in resonyng ; and thanne thei schnlden 
 Boohe knowe and perceue whanne a skile and an argument binclith 
 and whanne he not byudith, that is to seie, whauue he couciudith £(ad 
 
LeCT. X. BISHOP PECOCK 477 
 
 protietli Ms conclusioun and wlianne lie not so dooth ; and tlianne tliei 
 sohulden kepe hem silf the better fro falling into errouris, and thei 
 my5ten the soonei- come out of errouris bi heering of argumentis maad 
 to hem, if thei into eny errouris weren falle; and thanne thei schulden 
 not be so blunt and so ruvde and vnformal and boistose in resonyng, 
 and that bothe in her arguying and in her answering, as thei now ben ; 
 and thanne schulden thei not be so obstinat ajens clerkis and ajens her 
 prelatis, as sumnie of hem now ben, for defaut of perceuyng wlianne an 
 ai^ument procedith into his conclusioun needis and wlianne he not so 
 dooth but semeth oonli so do. And miche good wolde come forth if a 
 sdiort compendiose logik were deuysid for al the comoun peple in her 
 modiris langage ; and certis to men of court, leernyng the Kingis lawe 
 of Tnglond in these daies, thilk now seid schort compendiose logik 
 were ful preciose. Into whos making, if God wole graunte leue and 
 leyser, y purpose sumtyme aftir niyn othere bisynessis forto assaie. 
 
 But as for now thus miche in this wise ther of here talkid, that y be 
 the better vndirstonde in al what y schal argue thoruj this present 
 book, y wole come doun into the xiij. conclusiouns, of whiche the firste 
 is this : It longith not to Holi Scripture, neither it is his office into 
 which God hath him ordeyned, neither it is his part forto grounde eny 
 gouernaunce or deede or seruice of God, or eny lawe of God, or eny 
 trouthe which mannis resoun bi nature may fynde, leerne, and knowe. 
 
 That this conclusioun is trewe, y proue thus : Whateuer thing is 
 ordeyned (and namelich bi God) for to be ground and fundament of 
 eny vertu or of eny gouernaunce or deede or treuth, thilk same thing 
 muste so teche and declare and seie out and ^eue forth al the kunnyng 
 Tpon the same vertu or gouernance or trouthe, wher with and wherbi 
 thilk same vertu, gouemaimce, or ti-outhe is sufficientli knowen, that 
 withoute thilk same thing the same kunnyng of thilk same vertu, gouer- 
 naunce, or trouthe may not be sufficientli knowen, so that thilk same 
 vertu, gouernaunce, or trouthe, in al the kunnj-ng withoute which he 
 may not at ftdle be leerned and knowen, muste nedis growe ibrth and 
 come forth out and fro oonli thiUc thing which is seid and holden to be 
 ther of the ground and the fundament, as anoon aftir schal be proued : 
 but so it is, that of no vertu, gouernaunce, or treuthe of Goddis moral 
 lawe and seruice, into whos fynding, Jeeming, and knowing mannis witt 
 may by his natural strengthe and natural hclpis come, Holi Scripture al 
 oon geucth the sufficient kunnyng ; neither fro and out of Holi Scrip- 
 ture al oon, whether he be take for the New Testament al oon, or for 
 the Newe Testament and the Gold to gidere, as anoon after schal ba 
 proued, growith forth and cometh forth al the knowing which is nedeful 
 
478 BISHOP PECOCK Leot. X. 
 
 to be had upon it : whei-fore nedis folewith, that of no rertu or gouer- 
 naunce or trouthe into wliich the doom of mannis resotm may sufficientli 
 asoende and come to, for to it fynde, leerne, and knowe withoute reue- 
 lacioim fro God mad ther vpon, is groundid in Holi Scripture. 
 
 The firste premisse of this argument muste needis be grauntid. For- 
 ■whi, if the sufficient letrnyng and kunnyng of eny gouernaunce or any ' 
 trouthe schulde as miche or more come fro an other thing, as or than 
 fro this thing which is seid to be his ground, thanne thilk other thing 
 schulde be lijlt miche or more and rather tlie groimd of thilk gouern- 
 aunce than this thing schulde so be ; and also thilk gouernaunce or 
 trouthe schuld haue ij. diuerse groundis and schulde be bildid vpon ij. 
 fundamentis, of which the oon is dyuers at-wyn fro the other, which 
 forto seie and holde is not takeable of mannis witt. Wherfore the first 
 premisse of the argument is trewe. Ensaumple her of is this : But 
 if m3'n hous stode so in this place of erthe that he not stode so in 
 an othir place of erthe ellis, this place of the erthe were not the ground 
 of myn hous ; and if eny othir place of the erthe bare myn hous, certis 
 myn hous were not groundid in this place of the erthe : and in lijk 
 maner, if this treuthe or gouernaunce, that ech man schulde kepe 
 niekenes, were knowe bi sum other thing than bi Holi Scripture, and 
 as weel and as sufficiently as bi Holi Scripture, thilk gouernaunce or 
 trouth were not groundid in Holi Scripture. Forwhi he stood not oonli 
 ther on ; and therfore the first premisse is trewe. Also thus : Ther mai 
 no thing be fundament and ground of a wal, or of a tree, or of an hous, 
 saue it upon which the al hool substaunce of the wal, or of the tree, or 
 of the hous stondith, and out of which oonly the wal, tree, or hous 
 Cometh. Wherfore bi lijk skile, no thing is ground and fundament of 
 eny treuthe or conclusioun, gouernaimce or deede, sane it upon which 
 aloon al the gouernaunce, trouthe, or vertu stondith, and out of which 
 aloon al the same treuthe or gouernance cometh. 
 
 That also the ij*. premisse is trewe, y proue thus : What euer deede 
 or thing doom of resoim dooth as fulli and as perfitli as Holi Scripture 
 it dooth, Holi Scripture it not dooth onli or al oon ; but so it is, that 
 what euer leernyng and kunnyng Holi Scripture jeueth upon eny of the 
 now seid gouernauncis, trouthes, and vertues, (that is to seie, upon eny 
 gouernaunce, trouthe, and vertu of Goddis lawe to man, in to whos 
 fynding, leernyng, and knowing mannis reaoun may bi him silf aloon, 
 or with natural helpi.=, rise and come,) mannis resoun may and can^jeue 
 the same leerning and knowing, as experience ther upon to be take 
 anoon wole schewe ; for thou canst not fynde oon such gouernaunce 
 taujt in HoU Scripture to be doon, but that resoun techeth it lijk weel 
 
LeCT. X. PEOSE OF FIFTEEXTn CE>^TURT 479 
 
 and lijlv fulli to be doon ; and if thou wolt not trowe this, assigns thou 
 summe suche and assaie. Wherfbre folewith that of noon suche now 
 seid gouernaiincis the leernyng and knowing is had and taujht bi Holi 
 Scripture oonli or alooue ; and therfore the ij*. premisse of the firste 
 principal argument must needis be trewe. 
 
 And thanue fertlier, thus : Sitlien the bothe premissis of the iirst 
 principal argument ben trewe, and the argument is fonnal, nedis muste 
 the conclusioun conchidid bi hem in tlie same arguyng be trewe, which 
 is the bifore set first principal conclusioun. 
 
 The Pastoa Letters contain many very curious specimens of 
 epistolary composition belonging to this and the preceding cen- 
 tury. They are principally written by persons of rank and 
 condition, but often betray a singular ignorance of the rules 
 of grammar and orthography. 
 
 There is no doubt that English was now the almost universal 
 spoken language of all classes of English society ; but it does 
 not even yet seem to have been regarded as a fit medium of 
 formal communication in ojBBcial circles. The first volume of 
 Royal and Historical Letters during the reign of Henry IV. — 
 the only volume yet published — embracing official correspond- 
 ence from 1399 to 1400 contains upwards of sixty letters, 
 reports, and other communications, the parties to which were 
 English or Scotch. All these, with the exception of one in 
 Scotch, and one and part of another in English, are in Latin or 
 in French ; laymen generally using the latter, while ecclesi- 
 astics commonly preferred the more learned language. It is, 
 however, a singular fact, that two of Henry's ambassadors to 
 France, Swynford and De Ryssheton, at a period -when French 
 was so commonly used in public documents in England, pro- 
 fessed themselves as ignorant of that language as of Hebrew. 
 ' Vestras litteras,' say they in a letter to the French Commis- 
 sioners, dated October 21, 1404, 'scriptas in Gallico, nobis 
 indoctis tanquam in idiomate Hebraico » * * recepimus.' 
 These same persons write to Henry IV. in Latin, and in all 
 probability their grammatical knowledge of English was about 
 on a par with their attainments in French. 
 
480 PEOSE OF FIFTEENTH CENTUET Lect. X. 
 
 The solitary English letter in this volume is as follows : 
 
 i 
 
 LORD GEET DE RUTHYN TO GKIFFITH AP DAVID AP GEIFFITH. 
 
 Gruffuth ap David ap Gruffuth. 
 
 We send the greting welle, but no thyng with goode hert. 
 
 And we have Tvelle understande thy lettre to us sent by Deykus 
 Vaghan, our tenaunt, which maken mention and seist that the fals John 
 Weele hath disseyved the. And seist that alle men knowne welle that 
 thu was under the protectioun of Mered ap Owyn, and sent to the as 
 thu seist by trete of thy cousynes, Maester Edward, and Edwarde ap 
 David, and asked the if thu woldest come inne, and he wolde gette the 
 thy chartere of the Kyng, and that thu slioldest be Keyshate in Chirk- 
 lond ; and other thyngis he beheght the, which he fullfyiled noght, as 
 thu seiste ; and after warde asked the whether thu woldest go over the 
 see with him, and he wolde gette tlie thy chartere of the Kino-, and 
 biyng the to hym sounde and saufe, and thu sholdest have wages as 
 moohe as any gentelle man that went with hym. And overe thus thu 
 seideist that John Welle seide befor the Bishope of Seint Assaph, and 
 befor thy cousynes, that, rather than thu sholdest faile, he wolde spenne 
 of his oun goode xx marcis. 
 
 Heer up on thu trusted, as thu seiste, and duddest gete the two men, 
 and boght the armoure for alle peces, horsen, and other araie, and 
 comest to Oswaldestree a nvp-ht befor that thei went ; and on the mo- 
 rowe aiiter thu sendest Piers Cambf , the receyvour of Chirklonde, thries 
 to hym, to telle hym that thu was redy, and he seide that thu slioldest 
 speke no worde with him. And at the last he saide he hadde no wages 
 for the, as thu seiste, and he hadde fully his retenue, and bade the goo 
 to Sir Richarde Laken to loke whether he hadde nede of the other noo, 
 with the which thu, as thu seiste, haddest nevere ado, ne nevere madest 
 covenaunt with. For thu woldest, as thu seiste, have goon for no wages 
 with hym over see, but for to have thy chartere of the Kyng, and sume 
 lyvyng that thu myghtest dwelle in pees. 
 
 And, as thu seist. Sir Eichard Laken and Straunge wolle berre 
 wittenesse that thu was redy and wylly for to goon with hym giffe he 
 hadde be trewe. And also thu seiste he cam to Laken and to Straunge 
 and wolde have made hem to take the, and thu haddest wittyng ther oi', 
 as thu seiste, and trussed the fro tliennes, and knowelechest that tliy 
 men cam and breeke our parkc by nyght, and tooke out of hyt two of 
 our horses, and of our mcnis. 
 
 And as hit is tolde the, thu seiste, that we ben in ])Ourpose to make 
 om- men bremio and sice in what so ever cuntree thu be inne, and wilt 
 
Lkct. X. PKOSE OF FIFTEENTH CENTURY 481 
 
 ■withouten doute, as thu seiste, as many men as we slee and as many 
 Lousen that we brenne for thy sake, as many brenne and slee for oui- 
 sake. And, as thu seiste. thu wilt have bothe breede and ale of the 
 best that is in our lordshipe ; and heer of thu biddest us have no doute, 
 the whiche is aguyn our wjlle, gife any thu have bveede other ale so, 
 and ther as thu berrest up on us that we sholde beii in pourpose to 
 brenne and sleen men and housen tor thy sake, or for any of thyn en- 
 clinant to the, or any of hem that ben the Kinges trewe liege men, we 
 was nevere so mys avised to worch agayn the Kyng no his lawes, 
 whiche giffe we dudde, were heigh tresoun ; but thu hast hadde fals 
 messageres and fals reportoures of us touohyng this matere ; and that 
 shaile be welle knowen un to the King and alle his Counsaile. 
 
 Ferthermore, tlier as thu knowlechest by thyn oun lettre that thy 
 men hath stolle our horsen out of our parke, and thu recettour of hem, 
 we hoope that thu and thy men shaile have that ye have deserved. 
 For us tliynketh, tliegh John "Welle hath doon as thu abovcn has certe- 
 fied, us thynketh that that sholde noght be wroken towarde us. But 
 we hoope we shaile do the a pryve thyng; a roope, a ladder, and a 
 ring, heigh on gallowes for to henge. And thus shaile be your endyng. 
 And he that made the be ther to helpyng, and we on our behalfe shaile 
 be welle willyng. For thy lettie is knowlechyng. 
 
 Written, etc 
 
LECTURE XI. 
 
 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATUKE FEOM CAXTON 
 TO TUB ACCESSION OF ELIZABETH. 
 
 The importance of the invention of printing, startling and 
 mysterious as it seemed, was very imperfectly appreciated by 
 contemporary Europe. It was at first regarded only as an 
 economical improvement, and in England it was slow in pro- 
 ducing effects which were much more speedily realized on the 
 Continent. In England, for a whole generation, its influence 
 was scarcely perceptible in the increase of literary productivity, 
 and it gave no sudden impulse to the study of the ancient 
 tongues, though the printing-offices of Germany and Italy, and, 
 less abundantly, of France, were teeming with editions of the 
 Greek and Latin classics, as well as of the works of Gothic and 
 Eomance writers, new and old. 
 
 The press of Caxton, the first English printer, was in activity 
 from 1474 to 1490. In these sixteen years, it gave to the world 
 sixty-three* editions, among which there is not the text of a 
 
 * The whole number of productions issued by Caxton is stated, in the Appendix 
 to the late reprint of The Game of the Ghesse, by Mr. Vincent Figgins, at sixty- 
 seven, three of which were printed before Caxton's return to England. Several 
 of these were but pamphlets, or perhaps single sheets. They may be classed as 
 follows : In French, two ; in Latin, seven ; two or three with Latin titles, but 
 language of text not indicated in the list ; the remainder in English. The only 
 original works of native English authors are : The Chronicles of Euglond, The 
 Doscripcioun of Britayne, The Polycronycon, Gower's Coufessio Amantis, 
 Chaucer's Tayles of Cantyrburye, Chaucer's and Lydgate's Minor Poems, Chau- 
 cer's Book of Fame, Troylus and Creseide, Lydgate's Court of Sapience, Lydgate's 
 Lyf of our Ladye, and possibly one or two others. These, with the exception of 
 the poems of Lydgate, and of Caxton's own additions to the works he published, 
 all belong to the preceding century. 
 
Lect. XL caxtoh's PKEsa 483 
 
 single work of classic antiqviity, though there are a few transla- 
 ions of Greek and Latin authors, chiefly taken, however, at 
 second hand from the French. Caxton printed a few ecclesias- 
 tical manuals, and a volume of parliamentary statutes, in Latin, 
 and one or two works in French ; but it does not satisfactorily 
 appear that his press issued a single original work by a contem- 
 porary English author, if we except his own continuations of 
 older works published by him. He rendered good service to 
 his ovvn generation, indeed, by printing editions of Chaucer, 
 Gower and Lydgate, and thus disseminating the works of those 
 authors through England ; but it is very doubtful whether, in. 
 the end, the publication of those editions was not an injury, 
 rather than a benefit, to the cause of later English literature. 
 
 It was Carton's general practice, as appears from his own re- 
 peated avowals, to reduce the orthography and grammar, and 
 sometimes even the vocabulary, of the authors he printed, to 
 the usage of his own time, or rather to an arbitrary and not 
 very uniform standard set up by himself. He had spent a large 
 part of his life in Flanders and in France, where he established 
 presses, and where he printed both in French and in Latin 
 before undertaking any English work. His own style is full of 
 Gallicisms in vocabulary and phrase, and there is very little 
 doubt that his changes of his copy were much oftener corrup- 
 tions than improvements.* In the preface to his second edition 
 of the Canterbury Tales, he professes to have conformed to an 
 approved manuscript; but this declaration evidently only nega- 
 tives the addition or omission of verses, or, as he expresses it : 
 
 * The nnmber of French words in Caxton's translations is large. In tlie 
 second edition of the Game of the Chesse — believed to be the first book he 
 printed in England — they are nearly three times as numerous, proportionately, 
 as in the Morte d' Arthur printed by him, but translated by Malorye ; and yet 
 Maioiye — whose general diction is perhaps more purely Anglo-Saxon than that 
 of any English writer, except the Wycliffite translators, for at least a century 
 before his age — adopted from his original many words which appear for the first 
 time in English in his pages. 
 
484 caxton's press Lect. Xt 
 
 'setting in somme thynges that he [Chaucer] never sayd ne 
 made, and laving out many thynges that he made, whyche ben 
 requysite to be sette in it ; ' and we have no reason to doubt 
 that in what he held to be minor matters, he practised in this 
 case something of the same license as with other authors.* 
 
 The printing of a manuscript generally involves the destruc- 
 tion of the original ; and there is little probability that any of 
 those employed by Caxton escaped the usual fate of authors' 
 copies. Besides this, the printing of a work greatly diminishes 
 the current value of existing manuscripts of the same text, just 
 as a new edition of a modern book often makes earlier impres- 
 sions worthless. In Caxton's age, English scholars possessed no 
 such critical acquaintance with their mother tongue, as to have 
 the slightest notion of the great importance of scrupulously 
 preserving the original texts of earlier writers; a.nd hence 
 Caxton's editions undoubtedly caused, not only the sacrifice of 
 the manuscripts on which they were founded, but the neglect 
 and destruction of many others, which might otherwise have 
 
 * The wliole passage is as follows : ' Whiehe boot I hare dylygently oversell, 
 and duly examyned to the ende that it he made aceordyng unto his owen makyng ; 
 for I fynde many of the sayd bookes, whiche wryters have abrydgyd it, and 
 many thynges left out, and in some places have sette certayn versys that he never 
 made ne sette in hys booke ; of whyche bookes so ineorrecte was one broughte to 
 me vi. yere passyd, whiche I supposed had ben veray true and correcte, and 
 aceordyng to the same I dyde do enprynte a certayn nomber of them, whyche 
 anon were solde to many and dyverse gentyl men, of whom one gentylman cam 
 to me, and sayd that this book was not according in many places unto the book 
 that Gefferey Chaucer had made. To whom I answered, that I had made it 
 aceordyng to my copye, and by me was nothing added ne mynushyd. Thenne he 
 sayd, he kiiewe a book whyche hys fader had and moche lovyd, that was very 
 trewe and aceordyng unto hys owen first book by hym made ; and sayd more, yf I 
 wold enprynte it agayn, he wold gete me the same book for a copye. How be it 
 he wyst well that hys fader wold not gladly departe fro it. To whom I said, in 
 caas that he coude gete me suclie a book, trcwe and correcte, yet I wold ones 
 endovoyre me to enprynte it agayn, for to satisfy the auctour, where as tofore by 
 ygnoraunce I erryd in hurtyng and dyffamyng his book in dyverce places, in 
 setting in somme thynges that he never sayd ne made, and leving out many 
 thynges that he made whyche ben requysite to bo sette in it. And thus we fyll 
 at accord and he full gentylly gate of hys fader the said book, and delyvered it to 
 me by wlnche I have corrected my book, as heere after alio alonge by the ayd« 
 of almighty God shal folowe, whom I humbly beseche &c' 
 
Iect. XI. ENOLISH OF FIFTEENTH CEMTtTRT 485 
 
 been saved to a period when their worth would have been better 
 appreciated. This serves to explain how it is that we have 
 older, better, and more numerous manuscripts of the Wycliffite 
 versions of the Bible than of Chaucer; aud, in a purely literary 
 point of view, it is a cause of congratulation, rather than of 
 regret, that Caxton never undertook the publishing of those 
 translations. Had he done this, we should, in all probability, 
 now possess only a corrupt printed text, and a few manuscripts 
 of doubtful value ; whereas the want of an early printed editiori 
 has insured the careful preservation of the codices, and the 
 scholarship of this century has given us two complete and 
 admirably edited ancient texts, with various readings from a 
 great number of old and authentic copies. 
 
 The works of Pecock, as I have observed, show that in his 
 hands the English theological prose dialect, though still sub- 
 stantially the same in grammatical form, had made a consider- 
 able advance upon WycHffe in vocabulary, and more especially 
 in the logical structure of period ; and the poems of King 
 James I. and of Lydgate exhibit, though in a less degree, in- 
 creased affluence and polish of diction as compared with Chaucer. 
 But in the secular prose of the fifteenth century we find few 
 evidences of real progress; and in the productions of Caxton 's 
 press, which, as we have seen, generally bear his own ear-mark, 
 little improvement is visible. P^or the every-day purposes of 
 material life, and for the treatment of such poetic themes and 
 the creation of such poetical forms as satisfied the taste of the 
 English people, the language of England was very nearly suffi- 
 cient, as Chaucer and his contemporaries had left it, and there 
 was naturally little occasion for efforts at improvement in speech 
 until new conditions of society and of moral and intellectual 
 culture should create a necessity for it. 
 
 These new conditions, which were common to Great Britain 
 and to the Continent, produced a visible effect upon the intel- 
 lectual life of the latter long before they showed themselves as 
 influential agencies in the literature of England. The insular 
 
486 ENGLISH OF CAXTOn's TIME Lect. XL 
 
 position of that country prevented the rapid spread of the new 
 opinions and the new discoveries which originated in Grerman 
 and Romance Europe; and they were the slower in disseminat- 
 ing themselves among the English people, because France, the 
 country with which England had the freest and most frequent 
 communication, was behind Italy and Germany in availing 
 itself of them. 
 
 The commercial and political relations between England on 
 the one hand, and Germany and the Italian states on the other, 
 were of no such closeness or importance as to create a reciprocal 
 influence between them. The vernacular tongues of these 
 latter were stranger to the Englishman than the speech of 
 France, which was still, to a considerable extent, the language 
 of English jurisprudence; and classical literature had not yet 
 become so well known to English laymen as to make the Latin 
 works of German and Italian literati readily intelligible to 
 them. At the same time, a growing national hostility to France 
 had gradually diminished the influence of French literature; 
 and thus, from the end of the fourteenth century till near the 
 close of the fifteenth, the English mind was left to its own 
 unaided action, its own inherent resources, while all the other 
 European states were territorially and politically so connected 
 that they were constantly acting and reacting upon each other 
 as enlivening and stimulating forces. 
 
 The civil wars of England had also an unfavourable effect 
 upon English literature; for — though the moral excitement of 
 periods of strife and revolution often begets a mental activity 
 which, after the tumult of -war is over, manifests itself in 
 splendid intellectual achievement — it is as true of letters as of 
 laws, that, for the time being, the clash of arms hushes their 
 voice to silence. 
 
 Perhaps there is no better method of enabling the reader 
 to form an idea of the condition in which Caxton found the 
 Eno-lish of his time, and the state to which he contributed to 
 bring it, than by introducing extracts from the Morte d' Arthur 
 
tlXT. XT. THE MOKTE d'ARTHUK 487 
 
 and from Caxton himself. The Morte d' Arthur is not, indeed, 
 a work of English iavention, nor, on the other hand, is it just 
 to style it simply a translation. No continuous French original 
 for it is known ; but it is a compilation from various French 
 romances, harmonized and connected so far as Malorye was 
 able to make a consistent whole out of them, by supplying here 
 and there links of bis own forging. 
 
 In the introduction to the reprint of 1817, Southey says: 
 * The Morte d' Arthur is a compilation from some of the most 
 esteemed romances of the Eound Table. Had the volumes 
 from which it is compiled existed in English, Sir Thomas 
 Malory would not have thought of extracting parts from them, 
 and blending them into one work. This was done at the best 
 possible time : a generation earlier, the language would have 
 retained too much of its Teutonic form ; a generation later, and 
 the task of translation would have devolved into the hands of 
 men who performed it as a trade, and equally debased the 
 work which they interpreted and the language in which they 
 wrote.' This is very superficial criticism. 
 
 " A generation earlier ' would have carried us back to the time 
 of Pecock ; ' a generation later ' would have brought us down to 
 that of Lord Berners, the translator of Froissart. If Pecock 
 be taken as the standard of his age, I admit the language 
 must be regarded as still retaining much more of its Teutonic 
 foTTH than it showed in the hands of Sir Thomas Malorye. But 
 while Pecock was grammatically behind his age, he was i-hetori- 
 cally far in advance of it ; and I am by no means certain that 
 he could not have given us a better translation of the patch- 
 work put together by Malorye than Malorye has done. On the 
 other hand, I cannot admit that Lord Berners ' debased ' either _ 
 ' the work he interpreted ' or ' the language in which he wrote,' 
 in his sometimes slovenly, but always marvellously spirited, 
 translation of the great chronicler Froissart.* 
 
 * I apply the epithet ' great ' to Froissart advisedly. I know that critical in« 
 restigators — tithers of mint and cumin — have detected errors of time and placa 
 
488 THE MOETE d'AETHTTE LeCT. XL • 
 
 The narrative of the death of Arthur, which I take from the 
 fifth chapter of the twenty-first book of the Morte d'Arthur, 
 according to Southey's reprint of Caxton's edition of 1485, is a 
 favourable specimen of Malorye's style. The proportion of 
 French words, which does not exceed four per cent., is smaller 
 than Malorye's general average; but it would be diflBcult to find 
 any author of later date than the middle of the fourteenth 
 century whose vocabulary is so ' Teutonic ' as his : — 
 
 Therfore sayd Arthur vnto syr Bedwere, take thoii Excalybur my 
 good swerde and goo with it to yonder water syde, and whan thou 
 comest there I charge the throwe my swerde in that water & come 
 ageyn and telle me what thou there seest. My lord said Bedwere your 
 coinmaundement shal be doon & lyghtly brynge you worde ageyn. So 
 syr Bedwere departed, & by the waye he behelde that noble swerde 
 
 in his chronology and his geography ; and no doubt he has sometimes ascribed, to 
 an insigiiiiicant and forgotten John, quaint words and hard knocks which were 
 really spoken and given by an equally insignificant and forgotten Peter. But his 
 canvas shows no false colouring, no want of keeping, no confusion of costume ; 
 and the incidents he narrates, if not always true of the persons whom he introduces 
 as parties to them, were, in general, true of somebody, or — wliich comes to the 
 same thing — might have been so, without any violation of the proprieties of 
 nature. 
 
 ■ Turner did not hesitate to introduce into his landscapes a tree — if necessary 
 for his lights, and shades, and distances — where nature had blunderingly left it 
 put, or some rutliless woodman cut it down. But there is this difference between 
 the two artists: the painter deliberately invented the missing object, and painted it 
 in ; the chronicler simply admitted that which was naiTated to him, if his instincts 
 told him it was probable and apposite, without very scrupulously inquiring into 
 its exact historical truth. 
 
 Without Froissart, we might constract a skeleton history of the fourteenth cen- 
 tury — a plot of the- drama which should be more exact in the mechanical 
 shifting of the scenes than his narrative — but the dramatis personse would bo 
 wired skeletons also, with no pulse in their arteries, no ' speculation in the eyes 
 ttey glare with.' 
 
 ■ A modern historian, writing the annals of Froissart's time, would certainly 
 'omit the story of the 'Lorde of Corasse's' familiar spirit Orton, and, in speaking 
 
 of the island of Cephalonia, would fail to inform us that 'the fayry and the 
 nympes be moeho conuersaunt there ; ' but Froissart's mixture of the truth and the 
 fable which intermixed themselves in the life of his time, makes us more inti- 
 mately acquainted with the man and woman of tho fom-teenth eeutui7 than w« 
 could become by the study of true annals in one volume, and of a learned essay on 
 popular superstitions iu another. 
 
IecT. XL THE MOKTE u'aRTUUR 489 
 
 that the pomel & the hafte was al of precyous stones, & thenne ha 
 sayd to hym self yf I throwe this ryche swerde in the water therof shal 
 neuer come good but harme & losse. And thenne syr bedwere hydda 
 escalybur vnder a ti-ee. And so as sone as he myght he came ageyn 
 vnto the kj'ng and sayd he had ben at the water and had throwen the 
 swerde in to the water. AVhat sawe thou there sayd the kyng, syr he 
 sayd I siuve no thynge but wawes and wyndes. That is vntrewly sayd 
 of the sayd the kynge. Therfore goo thou lyghtelye ageyn and do my 
 commaundemente as thou arte to me leef & dere spare not but throwe it 
 in. Than syr bedwere retorned ageyn & took the swerde in hys hande, 
 and than hym thought synne and shame to throwe awaye that nobyl 
 swerde, and so efte he hydde the swerde and retorned ageyn and tolde 
 to the kyng that he had ben at the water and done his commaunde- 
 mente. What sawe thou there sayd the kyng. Syr he sayd I sawe no 
 thynge but the waters wappe and wawes wanne. A traytour vntrewe 
 sayd kyng Arthur now hast thou betrayed me twyse. Who wold haue 
 wente that thou that hast been to me so leef and dere and thou arte 
 named a noble loiyghte and wold betraye me for the richesse of the 
 swerde. But now goo ageyn lyghtly for thy longe taryeng putteth me 
 in grete jeopardye of my lyf. For I haue taken colde, and but yf thou 
 do now as I byd the, yf euer I may see the I shal slee the (wyth) myn 
 owne handes, for thou woldest for my ryche swerde see me dede. 
 Thenne Syr Bedwere departed and wente to the swerde and lyghtly 
 took hit up, and wente to the water syde and there he bounde the 
 gyrdyl aboute the hyltes, and thenne he threwe the swerde as farre in 
 to the water as he myght, & there cam an arme and a hande aboue the 
 water and mette it, & caught it and so shoke it thryse and braundysshed, 
 and than vanj'sshed awaye the hande wyth the swerde in the water. 
 So syr Bedwere came ageyn to the kyng and tolde hym what he sawe. 
 Alas sayd the kyng helpe me hens for I drede me I haue taryed ouer 
 longe. Than syr Bedwere toke the kyng vpon his backc and so wente 
 wyth hym to that water syde ; & whan they were at the water syde, 
 euyn fast by the banke houed a lytyl barge wyth many fayr ladyes in 
 hit, & emonge hem al was a queue, and al they had blacke hoodes, and 
 al they wepte and shryked whan they sawe Kyng Arthur. 
 
 Now put me in to the barge, sayd the kyng and so he dj'd softelye. 
 And there receyued hym thre quenes wyth grete mornyng and soo they 
 sette hem doun, and in one of their lappes kyng Arthur layd hys heed, 
 and than that queue sayd, a dere broder why haue ye t'dvyed so longe 
 from me. Alas this wounde on your heed hath caught ouernioche 
 tolde. And soo than they rowed from the londe, and syr bedwers 
 
490 CiXTOK's EN&LISH Lect. XL 
 
 behelde all tho ladyes goo from liym. Than syr bedwere cryed a my 
 lord Arthur what shal become of me now ye goo from me. And leue 
 me here allone eroonge myn enemyes. Comfort thy self sayd the kyng 
 and doo as wel as thou mavst, for in me is no truste for to truste in. 
 For I wyl in to the vale of auylyon to hele me of my gi-euous wounde. 
 And yf thou here neuer more of me praye for my soule, but euer the 
 quenes and the ladyes wepte and shryched that hit was pyte to here. 
 And assone as syr Bedwere had loste the syght of the baarge he wepte 
 and waylled and so took the foreste, and so he wente al that nyght and 
 in the mornyng he was ware betwixte two holtes hore of a chapel and 
 an ermytage. 
 
 Caxton's introduction to the Morte d' Arthur is rather more 
 thickly sprinkled with French and Latin words than his ordinary- 
 writing, but it is, upon the whole, a fair sample of his style and 
 diction, which, it will be observed, contrasts strongly with the 
 Saxon-English of Malorye : — 
 
 After that I had accomplysshed and fynysshed dyuers hystoryea as 
 wel of contemplacyon as of other hystoryal and worldly actes of grete 
 conquerours & prynces. And also certeyn bookes of ensaumples and 
 doctryne. Many noble and dyuers gentylmen of thys royame of 
 Englond camen and demaunded me many and oftymes, wherfore that I 
 haue not do made & enpi-ynte the noble hystorye of the saynt greal, 
 and of the moost renomed crysten Kyng. Fyrst and chyef of the thre 
 best crysten and worthy, kyng Arthur, whyche ought moost to be re- 
 membred emonge vs englysshe men tofore al other crysten kynges. 
 For it is notoyrly knowen thoi-ugh the vnyuersal world, that there been 
 ix worthy & the best that euer were. That is to wete thre paynyms, 
 thre Jewes and thre crysten men. As for the paynyms they were tofore 
 the Incarnacyon of Cryst, whiche were named, the iyrst Hector of Troye, 
 of whome thystorye is comen bothe in balade and in prose. The second 
 Alysaunder the grete, & the thyrd July us Cezar Emperour of Rome 
 of whome thystoryes ben wel kno and had. And as for the thre Jewes 
 whyche also were tofoi-e thyncarnacyon of our lord of whome the fyrst 
 was Due Josue whyche brought the chyldren of Israhel in to the londe 
 of byheste. The second Dauyd kyng of Jherusalem, & the thyrd Judas 
 Machabeus of these thre the byble reherceth al theyr noble hystoryea 
 & actes. And sythe the sayd Incarnacyon haue ben thre noble crysten 
 men stalled and admytted thorugh the vnyuersal world in to the nombre 
 of the ix beste & worthy, of whome was fyrst the noble Arthur whose 
 
Lect. XI. CAXTOn's ENGLISH 491 
 
 noble actes I purpose to wryte in tliys present book here folowyng. 
 The second -vvas Charlcmayn or Chai-les the grete, of whome tliystorye 
 is had in many phices bothe in frensshe and englysshe, and the thyrd 
 and last was Godefi'ay of boloyn, of whose actes & life I made a book 
 vnto thexcellent prynce and kyng of noble memorje kyng Edward the 
 fourth, the sayd noble Jentylmcn instantly requyred me temprynte 
 thystorye of the sayd noble kyng and conquerour king Arthur, and of 
 his knyghtes wyth thystorye of the saynt greal, and of the deth and 
 endyng of the sayd Arthur. Affermyng that I ouzt rathej: tenprynet 
 his actes and noble fcates, than of godeti'oye of boloyne, or any of the 
 other eyght, consyderyng that he was a man born wythin this royame 
 and kj'ng and Emperour of the same. 
 
 And that there ben in frensshe dyiiers and many noble volumes of 
 his actes, and also of his knyghtes. To whome 1 answered, that dyuers 
 men holde oppynyon, that there was no suche Arthur, and that alle 
 suche bookes as been maad of hym, ben but fayned and fables, by cause 
 that somme cronycles make of hym no mencyon ne remenibre hym noo 
 thynge ne of his knyghtes. Wherto they answered, and one in speoyal 
 sayd, that in hym that shold say or thynke, that there was neuer suche 
 a kjmg callyd Arthur, myght wel be aretted grete folye and blyndenesse. 
 For he sayd that there were many euydences of the contrarye. Fyrst 
 ye may see his sepulture in the monasterye of Glastyngburye. And 
 also in polycronycon in the v book the syxte chappyti-e, and in the 
 seuenth book the xxiii chappytre where his body was buryed and after 
 founden and translated in to the sayd monasterye, ye shal se also in 
 thystorye of bochas in his book de casu principvm, parte of his noble 
 actes, and also of his falle. Also galfrydus in his bnitysshe book re- 
 counteth his lyf, and in diuers places of Englond, many remenibraunces 
 ben yet of hym and shall remayne perpetuelly, and also of his knyghtes. 
 Fyrst in the abbey of Westmestre at saynt Edwardes shryne remayneth 
 the prynte of his seal in reed waxe closed in beryll. In whych is 
 wryton Patricius Arthurus, Britannie, Gallie, Gennanie, dacie, Im- 
 perator. Item in the castel of douer ye may see Gauwayns skulle, & 
 Cradoks mantel. At Wynchester the rounde table, in other places 
 Launcelottes swerde and many other thynges. Thenne al these thynges 
 consydered there can no man reasonably gaynsaye but there was a kyng 
 of thys lande named Arthur. For in al places crysten and hethen he ia 
 reputed and taken for one of the ix worthy. And the iyrst of the thre 
 Crysten men. And also he is more spoken of beyonde the see moo 
 bookes made of his noble actes than there be in englond as wel in duche 
 ytalyen spanysshe and grekysshe as in frensshe. And yet of record re- 
 
492 NEW INFLUENCES Lect, XI, 
 
 niayne in wytnesse of hjra in Wales in the toune of Camelot the grete 
 stones & meruayllous werkys of yron lyeng vnder the gi'ounde & ryal 
 vautes which dyuers now lyuyng hath seen. Wherfor it is a meniayl 
 why he is no more renomed in his owne contreye, sauf onelye it accordeth 
 to the word of god, whyche sayth that no man is accept for a prophete 
 in his owne contreye. Theiie all these thynges forsayd aledged I coude 
 not wel denye, but that there was suche a noble kyng named arthui and 
 reputed one of the ix worthy & fyrst & cheyf of the cristen men, & 
 many noble volumes be made of hym & of his noble knyjtes in frensshe 
 which I haue seen & redde beyonde the see which been not had in our 
 maternal tongue, but in walsshe ben many & also in frensshe, & somme 
 in englysshe but no wher nygh alle. Wherfore suche as haue late ben 
 drawen oute bryefly in to englysshe, I haue after the symple connyng 
 that god hath sente to me, vnder the fauour and correctyon of al noble 
 lordes and gentylmen enprysed to enprynte a book of the noble hystoryes 
 of the sayd kynge Arthur, and of certeyn of his knyghtes after a copye 
 vnto me delyuerd, whyche copye Syr Thomas Malorye dyd take oute of 
 certeyn bookes of frensshe and reduced it in to Englysshe. And I 
 accordyng to my copye haue doon sette it in enprynte, to the entente 
 that the noble men may see and lerne the noble acts of chyualrye, the 
 jvjntyl and vertuous dedes that somme knyghtes vsed in tho dayes, by 
 whyche they came to honour, and how they that were vycious were 
 punysshed and ofte put to shame and rebuke, humbly bysechyng al 
 noble lordes and ladyes wyth al other estates of what estate or degree 
 they been of, that shal see and rede in this sayd book and werke, that 
 they take the good and honest actes in their remembraunce, and to 
 folowe the same. Wherin they shalle fynde many joyous and playsaunt 
 hystoryes and noble & renomed actes of huraanyte, gentylnesse and 
 chyualryes, For herein may be seen noble chyualrye, Curtosye, Hit- 
 manyte, frendlynesse, hardynesse, loue, irendshyp, Cowardyse, Mvirdre, 
 hate, vertue, and synne. Doo a'fter the good and leue the euyl, and it 
 shal brynge you to good fame and renommee. And for to passe the 
 tyme this book shal be plesaunte to rede in, but for to giue fayth and 
 byleue that al is trewe that is contuyned herin, ye be at your lyberte, 
 but al is wryton ior our doctryne, and for to beware that we faUe not 
 to vyce ne synne, but texcercj'se and folowe vertu, by whyche we may 
 come and atteyne to good fame and renommee in thys lyf, and after thys 
 sliorte and transytorye lyf to come vnto euerlastyng blysse in heuen, 
 the whyche he graunt vs that reygneth in heuen the blessyd Trjnyte. 
 Amen. 
 
 But the period was at hand when the four g'-eat events 
 
I.ECT. XI. BISHOP FISHER 493 
 
 I mentioned in the last lecture were to exert upon England 
 the full strength of their united influence ; and I shall now 
 endeavour to point ovit the effects they produced during the 
 first half of the sixteenth century, though I shall not have 
 space always to distinguish between these effects as referable 
 to this or that particular cause, or to describe specifically the 
 different modes in which those causes acted. It must suffice, 
 for the present, to say that the influence of them all was in one 
 and the same direction. They all tended to promote a wider 
 and more generous culture, a freer and bolder spirit of inves- 
 tigation, a more catholic and cosmopolitan view of the mutual 
 relations of different branches of the human family, a deeper 
 insight into the secrets of this mysterious life of ours, and a 
 range of the imagination corresponding to the vastly enlarged 
 field of observation which was now opened to the vision of men. 
 
 I have repeatedly spoken of the diction of theology and 
 religion in England, as having always been in a more advanced 
 stata of culture than that of secular prose. This continued to 
 be the relation of the two dialects, not only through the 
 period to which my sketches extend, but until after the Eesto- 
 ration of Charles II. From that epoch, theology declined in 
 general estimation, and was no longer regarded as a necessary 
 study for laj'men of finished education. Its dialect was of 
 course neglected, and in the space of a single generation it lost, 
 and has never since recovered, its ancient superiority over the 
 tongue of secular life. 
 
 An extract from a sermon delivered by Bishop Fisher in 
 1509, in memory of the Countess of Derby, mother of King 
 Henry VII., will serve to show the character and condition of 
 the language when employed foi solemn and religious purposes 
 at this period : — 
 
 This holy Gofpel late red contayneth in it a Dyalogue, that is to fay 
 a Commymcation betwixt the Woman of bleflyd Memory, called 
 Martha, and our Savyour Jhefu. Which Dyalogue I would apply unto 
 this noble Prynces late decealyd, in whofe remembrance this ohice and 
 
494 BISHOP FISHEB LbcT. XI. 
 
 obfervances be done at this time. And thre tliyngs by the leave of 
 God I will entende. Firil, to Ihew wherein this Prynces may well be 
 lykned and compared unto the blelTyd Woman Martha. Second, how 
 fhe may complain unto our Savyour Jhefu for the paynful dethe of her 
 body, like as Martha dyd for the dethe of her Broder Lazarus. Thyrde, 
 the comfortable Anfwere of our Savyour Jhefu unto her again. In the 
 firft fhall ftand her prayfe and commendation ; In the fecounde, our 
 mournynge for the grete lofs of hyrr ; In the thyrd, our comfort again. 
 
 Fyrft I fay, the comparyfon of them two may be made in four thyngs ; 
 In noblenefs of Perfon, In difcypline of their Bodys, In orderyng of 
 their Souls to God, In Hofpytalytyes kepping, and charytable dealyng 
 to their Neighbours. In which four, the noble Woman Martha (as lay 
 the Doftors, entreatynge this GolJDel and hyr Lyfe) was iingularly to be 
 commended and prayfed : wherefore let us confider lykewife, whether 
 in this noble CountefTe may ony thynge like be founde. 
 
 Firfte, the blefled Martha was a woman of noble blode, to whom by 
 inherytance belonged the Caftle of Bethany ; and this noblenefs of blode 
 they have, which defcended of noble Lynage. Befide this, there is a 
 noblenefs of maners, withouten which, the noblenefs of blode is moche 
 defaced, for as Boecius fayth, if oughte be good in the noblenefs of 
 blode, it is for that thereby the noble men and women ftiolde be 
 afhamed, to go out of kynde, from the vertuous maners of their aun- 
 cetrye before. Yet alfo there is another noblencfle, which aryfeth in 
 every Perfon, by the goodnefle of nature, whereby fuU often fuch as 
 come of ryghte pore and unnoble Fader and Moder, have grete abletees 
 of nature to noble dedes. Above all the fame, there is a foure maner 
 of noblenelTe, which may be called, an encreafed nobleneffe, as by mar- 
 ryage and affynj'te of more noble perfons ; fuch as were of leffe con- 
 dycyon, may encreafe in hygher degree of nobleneffe. 
 
 In every of thefe, I fuppofe, this Counteffe was noble. Fyrft, flie 
 came of noble blode, lyneally defcendyng of Kynge Edward the 3d. 
 within the foure degree of the feme. Her Fader was Johan Duke of 
 Somerfet, her Moder was called Margarete, ryghte noble as well in 
 maners, as in blode, to whom flie was a veray Daughter in all noble > 
 maners, for ftie was bounteous and lyberal to every Perfon of her 
 knowledge or acquaintance. Avarice and Covetyfe (he moft hated, and 
 forowed it full moche in all perfons, but fpecially in ony, that belong'd 
 imto her. She was alfo of fyngular Eafynefs to be fpoken unto, and 
 fuU curtayfe anfwere (he would make to all that came unto her. Of 
 mervayllous gentylenefs fhe was unto all folks, but fpecially unto her 
 owne, whom fhe trulled and loved ryghte tenderly. Unkynde fhe 
 
Lect. XI. rOED BEKNEES'S FEOISSAET 495 
 
 wolde not be tinto no creatiii-e, ne forgetful! of ony kyndnefs or fervyce 
 done to lier before, -wliicli is no lytel part of veray noblenefs. She was 
 not vengeable, ne cruell, but redy auone to foi-gete and forgyve injuryes 
 done unto lier, at the leell defyre or mocyon made unto her for the 
 fame. Jlcrcyfidl alfo and pyteous flie was unto fuch, as was grevyed 
 and -wrongfully troubled, and to them that were in Poverty, or feke- 
 neft, or any other myfery. 
 
 To God and to the Chirche full obedient and tradable. Serchynge 
 his honour and plclure fuU belyly. A warenefs of her felf fhe had 
 alway to efohewe every thyng, that myght diflioneft ony noble Woman, 
 or dillavne her honour, in ony condycyon. Fryvelous thyngs, that 
 were lytell to be regarded, fhe wold let pafs by, but the other, that 
 were of weyght and lubttauce, wherein Ihe myglit proufyte, fhe wolde 
 not let for ony payne or labour, to take upon hande. Thefe and many 
 other fuch noble condycj^ons, left unto her by her Ancetres, fhe kept 
 and encreafed therein, with a greate dylygence. 
 
 The third noblenefs alfo fhe wanted not, which I fayd, was the noble- 
 nefs of Nature. She had in a maner all that was prayfable in a 
 "Woman, either in So\il or Body. Fyrft, fhe was of Angular Wifedom 
 ferre paflyng the comyn rate of women. She was good in remem- 
 braunce and of holdyng memorye, a redye wytte fhe had alfo to 
 conceive all thyngs, albeit they were ryghte derke : Eight ftudious fhe 
 was in Bokes, which fhe had in grete number, both in Englyfh and in 
 Frenfhe, and for her exercife and for the profyte of others, fhe did 
 tranflate divers maters of Devocyon out of the Frenfh into Englyfh. 
 Full often fhe complayned, that in her youthe, fhe had not given her to 
 the underltanding of Latin, wherein fhe had a lyteU perceyvyng, 
 (pecyally of the Eubryflie of the Drdynall, for the faying of her Servyce, 
 which fhe did well underfland. Hereunto in favour, in words, in gefture, 
 in every demeanour of herfelf fo grete noblenefs did appear, that what 
 flie fpake or dyde, it mervayUoufly became her. 
 
 The most important English work of tlie first quarter of the 
 sixteenth century, whether as a philological monument, or as a 
 production which could not have failed to exert an influence on 
 tlie tone of English literature, is Lord Berners's Translation of 
 the Chronicles of Froissart, the first volume of which wa.s 
 published in 1523, the second in 1525. Lord Berners had been 
 distinguished in military and civil life, in which he continued 
 actively engaged until he returned from a mission to Spain ia 
 
496 LOED BEENERS'S FEOISSAET Lect. XI. 
 
 1518, and was appointed to the responsible, but, apparently, not 
 very laborious, post of Grovernor of Calais, which then belonged 
 to the English crown. He occupied his leisure with literary 
 pursuits, and, besides the Chronicles of Froissart, he translated 
 Arthur of Little Britain, an absurd romance of chivalry, and 
 several other works. He states, in the preface to Froissart, 
 and elsewhere, that the task was undertaken by command of 
 Henry VIII. The translation of so voluminous a work was 
 probably not begun until his retirement to a post of comparative 
 quiet ; and if we suppose that he devoted the same time to the 
 first as to the second volume, it must have been commenced 
 about the year 1521. 
 
 Notwithstanding the sworn friendship between Henry VIII. 
 and Francis I. — of which so ostentatious a profession was made 
 at the famous Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520 — Henry was 
 cajoled by the adroit flattery bestowed on him by the Papal 
 Court, for his Treatise on the Seven Sacraments, into a secret 
 league with Pope Leo X. and Charles V., then King of Spain, 
 but not yet emperor, against Francis I. This alliance was 
 concluded in November 1521, and in the summer of 1522 
 Henry commenced hostilities against France. The extrava- 
 gant prodigality of the English prince, in royal festivities and 
 other showy but unprofitable expenditures, had exhausted the 
 treasures which the avarice of his father had accumulated, and 
 he was obliged to resort to the most burdensome and unjust 
 measures to replenish his exchequer and prepare for the foreign 
 war in which he was about to engage. 
 
 It is a not improbable conjecture, that the hope of reconciling 
 the English people to the expenses and sacrifices of a war with 
 France was a prominent motive with the king for desiring a 
 translation of Froissart to appear at this time. However this 
 may be, few things could have been better calculated to 
 accomplish this object than the brilliant and picturesque 
 sketches given, by the most delightful of chroniclers, of the 
 exploits of the Black Prince, and of the other numerous 
 
Lect. XI. LORD BEENEES'S FEOISSAET 497 
 
 instances of heroic daring and chivalrous achievement with 
 which his spirited pages glitter. A large part of France was the 
 undoubted patrimony of the Norman dynasty in England, and 
 there had been questionable claims to other still more extensive 
 provinces. The revival of the memory of these asserted rights 
 might be expected to have, by appealing to the interests and the 
 pride of England, a powerful effect in exciting the ambition of 
 the people, and inducing them cheerfully to submit to the new 
 burdens which a war with France would impose upon them. 
 
 Lord Berners's translation of Froissart was the first really 
 important work printed in the English language, relating to 
 modern history. It was almost the only accessible source of 
 information respecting the local history of England, and her 
 relations to the Continental powers, in the fourteenth century ; 
 for though the scene is for the most part laid in France and 
 Spain, yet it contains ' a pretty full account of the wars of 
 Edward III. with the Scots, and of the insurrectionary move- 
 ments in the time of Eichard II. ; and, moreover, England was 
 a direct party to almost every event which it narrates as belong- 
 ing more immediately to the domestic history of France or 
 of Spain. 
 
 The entire subject, then, was one of special interest to the 
 English people, and the extraordinary literary merit and the 
 popular character of the work eminently fitted it, both to 
 initiate Englishmen into a knowledge of some of the principal 
 epochs of their own national life, and to promote a taste for 
 historical reading and composition. It must, therefore, inde- 
 pendently of its philological worth, be considered as a work of 
 great importance in English literary history, because it ua- 
 doubtedly contributed essentially to give direction to literary 
 pursuits in England, and thus to lay the foundation of an entire 
 and very prominent branch of native literature. 
 
 It was soon followed by a considerable number of new 
 English histories, such as those of Hall and Fabian, and by 
 editions and continuations of earlier annalists, as, for example, 
 
 K K 
 
498 LORD BEENEUS'S FEOISSAET IecT. XI. 
 
 of Hardynge ; and we are therefore probably indebted for these, 
 such as they are, and in some degree even for the more valuable 
 compilation of Holinshed, to the impulse given to historical 
 studies by the publication of Lord Berners's Froissart. 
 
 The translation is executed with great skill ; for while it is 
 faithful to the text, it adheres so closely to the English idiom 
 that it has altogether the air of an original work, and, with the 
 exception of here and there a single phrase, it would not be 
 easy to find a passage which exhibits decisive internal evidence 
 of having been first composed in a foreign tongue. 
 
 The account of the origin of the great schism in the four- 
 teenth century is as follows : — 
 
 Anon after the dethe of the pope Gregory, the cardynalles drew 
 them into the conclaue, in the palays of saynt Peter. Anone after, as 
 they were entred to chose a pope, acordyng to their vsage, such one as 
 shuld be good and profytable for holy churche, the romayns assembled 
 the togyder in a great nombre, and came into the bowrage of saynt 
 Peter : they were to the nombre of xxx. thousand what one and other, 
 in the entent to do yuell, if the mater went nat accordynge to their 
 appetytes. And they came oftentymes before the oonclaxie, and sayd, 
 Harke, ye sir cardynalles, delyuer you atones, and make a pope ; ye 
 tary to longe ; if ye make a romayne, we woll nat chaung him ; but yf 
 ye make any other, the romayne people and counsayles woll nat take 
 hym for pope, and ye putte yourselfe all in aduenture to be slayne. 
 The cardynals, who were as than in the danger of the romayns, and 
 herde well those wordes, they were nat at their ease, nor assured of 
 their lyues, and so apeased them of their yre as well as they mjrght 
 with fayre wordes ; but somoche rose the felony of the romayns, y' 
 suche as were next to y* conclaue, to thentent to make the cardynalles 
 afrayde, and to cause them to codiscende the rather to their opinyons, 
 brake vp the dore of the conclaue, whereas the cardynalles were. 
 Than the cardynalles went .surely to haue been slayne, and so fledde 
 away to saue their lyues, some one waye and some another ; but the 
 romayns were nat so content, but toke them and put them togyder 
 agayn, whether they wolde or nat. The cardynalles than seynge the- 
 selfe in the daunger of the romayns, and in great parell of their lyues, 
 agreed among themsdfe, more for to please the people than for any 
 deuocyon ; howbeit, by good electyon they chase an holy man, a car- 
 dynall of the romayne nacion, whome pope Vrbayne the fyfte had 
 
Lect. XI. LORD BEKNEES'S FKOISSAET 499 
 
 made cai-dynall, and he was called before, the cardynall of saynt Peter. 
 This electyon pleased greatly y" romayns, and so this good man had all 
 the ryghtes that belonged to the papalite ; howebeit he lyued nat but 
 thre dayes after, and I sliall sliewe you -why. The romayns, who de- 
 syred a pope of their owne nacion, were so ioyttJl of this newe pope, 
 y' they toke hym, who was a hundred yere of age, and sette hym on a 
 whyte mule, and so ledde him vp and doune throiigh y" cytie of Rome, 
 exaltyng him, and shewyng howe they had vaquesshed the cardynals, 
 seyng they had a pope romayn accordyng to their owne ententes, in so 
 moche that the good holy man was so sore traueyled that he fell syck, 
 and so dyed the thyrde daye, and was buryed in the churche of saynt 
 Peter, and there he lyethe. — Eeprint of 1812, vol. i. pp. 510, 511. 
 
 Of the detlie of this pope, the cardynalles were right sorowfull, for 
 they saw well howe the mater shulde nat goo well to passe : for they 
 had thought if y* pope had lyued, to haue dissimuled amonge the 
 romayns for two or thre yeres, and at the laste to haue brought the see 
 apostolyke into some other place than at Rome, at Napoles, or at 
 Gennes, out of the daujiger of the romayns : but y' dethe of the pope 
 brake their pm-pose. Than the cardynalles went agayne into the con- 
 claue in greater dauger than they were iu before, for y^ romayns assem- 
 bled them togyder agayne before the conclaue, and made semblant to 
 breke it vp, and to slee them aU, if they dyde nat chose a pope acordyng 
 to their myndes, and cryed to the cardynalles, and sayd. Sirs, aduyse 
 yowe well : if ye delyuer vs a pope romayne we be content, or els we 
 woU make your heedes reeder than your hattes be : suche wordes and 
 manasshes abasshed greatly y^ cardynals, for they hadde rather a dyed 
 confessours than martyrs. Than to brynge themselfe out of that daun- 
 ger and pareU, they made a pope, but he was none of the colledge of 
 cardynals, he was archbysshop of Bare, a great clerke, who greatly had 
 traueyled for the welthe of holy churche ; with his promocyon of 
 popalyte, the romayns were apeased, for the cardynall of Genne put 
 out his heed out at a wyndowe of the conclaue, and sayd on hygli to y^ 
 people of Rome, Sirs, apease you, for you haue a pope romayne, and 
 that is Bartylmewe des Angles, archbysshop of Bare : the people aim- 
 swered all with one voyce, than we be content ; the same archebysshoppe 
 was nat as than at Rome, I thynke he was in Napoles. Than he was 
 incontynent sent for, of the whiche tydynges he was ryght glad, and so 
 came to Rome ; and at his comyng there was great feest made to hym ; 
 and so he had all the ryghtes that parteyned to the papalyte, and was 
 called Vrban the sixt of that name : the romayns had great ioy : his 
 creacyon was signified to all the churches of cristentie, and also to 
 
500 LORD BEENEES'S FEOISSAET I,ect. XI. 
 
 emperours, kynges, dukes, and erles ; and the cardynalles sent worde to 
 all their frendes, that he was chosen by good and trewe electyon ; how- 
 beit, some of them repented them after, that they had spoken so largely 
 in the mater. This pope renounced all graces gyuen before, and so 
 dyuers departed fro their countres and places, and went to Eome to 
 haue giace. — ^Vol. i. p. 511. 
 
 It hath ben long sithe I spake of holy church ; now I wyll retourne 
 therto, the mater requyreth it. Ye haue well herde here before, howe 
 by the exortacyon of the romayns, the cardynalles, who as than raygned, 
 to apease the people of Eome, who were greatly moued against the, 
 made a pope of the archbysshojirike of Bari, calkd before Bavtylmewe 
 des Angles : he receyued the papalyte, and was called Vrbayne the sixe, 
 and so opyned grace as the vsage was. Thentencyon of dyuers of y* 
 cardynals was, y' whan they niyght se a better hour and tyme, they 
 wolde agayn retourne to their election, bycause this pope was nat pro- 
 fytable for them, nor also to the church as they said, for he was a 
 fumisshe man and malincolyous ; so that wha he sawe hymselfe in 
 prosperyte and in puysfance of the papalyte, and that dyuers kynges 
 cristned were ioyned to him, and wrote to him, and dyde pvit them 
 vnder his obeysaunce, whereof he waxed proude and worked all on 
 heed, and wolde haue taken away ii-o y^ cardynals dyuers of their 
 rightes and olde customes, the whiche greatly displeased them : and so 
 they spake togyder, and ymagined howe he was nat well worthy to 
 gouerne the worlde ; wherfore they purposed" to choose another pope, 
 sage and discrete, by whom the churche shulde be well gouei-ned. To 
 this purpose the cardynals putte to all their payne, and specially he y* 
 was after chosen to be pope : thus all a somer they wer in this pur- 
 pose ; for they that entended to make a newe pope durst nat shewe their 
 myndes generally, bycause of the romayns ; so that in the tyme of the 
 Tacacyon in the courte, dyuers cardynals departed fi-o Kome, and went 
 about Eome to sport the in dyuers places at their pleasure. And pope 
 Vrbane went to another oytie called Tyeulle, and ther he lay a long 
 season, in this vacacion tyme, whiche myght nat longe endure : for at 
 Eome ther were many clerkes of sudrie places of the worlde, abydinge 
 for graces, the whiche was promysed to dyuers of them. Than the 
 cardynals all of one acorde assembled togyder, and their Toyces rested 
 on sir Eobert of Geneaue, somtyme sonne to the erle of Genesue. His 
 first promocyon was, he was bysshoppe of Therouene, and after bys- 
 fihoppe of Cambrey, and he was called cardynal of Genesue. At this 
 election were the most parte of the cardynals, and he was called Cle- 
 ment. — p. 547. 
 
Lect. XI. moee's life of EICHAEB lit 501 
 
 Lord Berners's orthography is irregular and confused ; but 
 this is probably, in a considerabje degree, the fault of he 
 printers, who at that time were generally Germans or Dutch- 
 men, little acquainted with English. His syntax is marked by 
 archaisms, such as the use of the form in -th in the third per- 
 son singular present indicative, and not unfrequently in the 
 plural and in the imperative ; and his style, like that of other 
 secular compositions up to this period, is much less advanced in 
 philological development than the diction of contemporaneous 
 theological literature, or, with the exception of an inflection or 
 two, even than that of Pecock, who lived three quarters of a 
 century earlier. The difference, however, between Lord Ber- 
 ners and Fisher, from whom I have given an extract, is not 
 wholly owing to the superior culture of the theological dialect, 
 but partly to the fact that Lord Berners wrote in advanced life. 
 His style, though more idiomatic than most of the productions 
 of Caxton's press, had probably been formed by the perusal of 
 those works, and the long years he had spent in camp and 
 council had allowed him no leisure to keep up with the later 
 philological improvement of his native tongue. 
 
 There is another historical work of the first half cf the 
 sixteenth century, the style of which exhibits a later phase of 
 the language than Lord Berners's Froissart, or than any other 
 secular prose composition of its own period: I refer to the 
 celebrated Life of Eichard IIL, ascribed to Sir Thomas More, 
 which first appeared anonymously in Grafton's edition of 
 Hardynge's Chronicle, printed in 1543.* In this edition it was, 
 in all probability, modernized to the standard of the times, and 
 I strongly suspect that this process was carried farther still by 
 Eastell, who published More's works in 1557. Rastell, indeed, 
 complains that the text, as given by Grafton in Hardynge, and 
 in Hall's Chronicle, is 'very muche corrupte in many places, 
 Bometyme hauyng lesse, and sometime hauing more, and altered 
 in ft'ordes and whole sentences : muche varying from the copie 
 
 • See First Series, Lecture VI. p. 124. 
 
502 SIR THOMAS MOEE Lect. XL 
 
 of his own hand, hy which thys is printed ;' hut I find it difficult 
 to believe that either the orthography or the syntax of Eastell's 
 edition is that of the year 1513, when the work is alleged to 
 have been ' written,' though left 'unfinished.'* 
 
 Although the historical value of this work is questionable, it is 
 of much philological importance, because it is indisputably the 
 best English secular prose which had yet been written. The excel- 
 lence of its style is such as an Englishman in that age could have 
 attained only by a familiar acquaintance with the more advanced 
 diction of the theological literature of the English language. 
 This acquaintance More certainly possessed in a high degree, but 
 his own controversial writings are inflamed by a passion which 
 destroyed his mastery over self, and betrayed him, not only into 
 hasty and violent expression, but into a confusion of thought 
 which is remarkable in a man otherwise so clear-headed.f 
 
 More became a madman the moment he approached the 
 question of religious reform.| He wished to have it engraved 
 
 * See lionger Notes and Illustrations, I., at tbe end of this lecture. 
 
 t A striking instance of this will be found in the First Series, Lecture XXVI. 
 p. 581. 
 
 I His opponents declared that he delighted in worrying those unsound in the 
 faith, and that, not content with the torture scientifically applied, in pursuance of 
 his orders, by the regular professors of that art attached to the prisons, he set 
 up an amateur inquisition in his own garden, where he used to tie persons sus- 
 pected of heresy to a tree, which he jocosely called the Tree of Life, and hare 
 them soundly whipped, after which he accompanied them to the Tower to see 
 them racked secundum artem. All this More denies, and it is fair to let him 
 have the benefit of his tra verse in his own words. ' Dyuers of them,' says he, 
 'haue sayd that of suche as were in my howse whyle I was chauncellour, I vsed 
 to examyne them wyth turmentes, causynge them to be bouden to a tre in my 
 gardyn, and there pituously beten. * » * Por of very trouth, albe it that 
 for a great robbery or a heygbnouse murder, or sacryledge in a chyrche, wyth 
 caryenge away the pyxe wyth the blessed sacrament, or vylanously castynge it 
 out, I caused some tyme such thynges to be done by some ofiycers of the marshalsy 
 or of some other prysos wyth whyehe orderynge of them by theyr well deserued 
 payne, & wythout any greate hurte that afterwarde sholde stycke by them, 
 I founde out and repressed many suche desperate wreches, as ellys had not fliyled 
 to haue gone ferther abrode, & to haue done to many good folke a gTet deale 
 mych more harme ; yet though I so dyd i tlieues, murderers, and robbers of 
 chyrches, and notwythstandynge also that hLretykes be yet mych worse then al they, 
 yet saujng onely theyr sure kepynge, I neuer dyd els cause any such thyng to be 
 
Lect. XI. SIR THOMAS MOBE 503 
 
 on his tombstone that he was 'Ficnbus, Homicidis, Hceretloisque 
 Tnolestus,'' the scourge of Thieves, Murderers, and Heretics, 
 capping the climax with the hei-etic, as the greatest malefactor 
 of the three. But More is not the only public functionary 
 who has desired that his funeral monument should perpetuate 
 the infamy of his most criminal abuses of power.* 
 
 We ought not to expect to find, in the controversial writings of 
 a man inspired by such furious passions, models of elegance or 
 coiTectness of style, and accordingly it is only in the Life of 
 Eichard III. that More seems to deserve the praise so often 
 bestowed upon him as one of the fij-st great English prose 
 writers, t 
 
 More's Life of Eichard III. is found not only in the complete 
 edition of his works published in 1557, but in Hardynge, Hall, 
 and Holinshed. It is, therefore, readily accessible, and it has 
 been so often quoted as to be in some degree familiar to all 
 students of English literature. I prefer, therefore, to illustrate 
 his style by an extract from some of his less known writings ; 
 and I select, for that purpose, the rarest of them all, the 
 
 done to any of them all in all my lyfe.' — The Apologye of syr Thomas More, 
 knyght, 1533, fs. 195, 196 (Collected "Works, edition of 1557, p. 901). He then 
 proceeds tx) state two exceptions where he admits that he applied corporal 
 chastisement, one to ' a chylde and a seruaunt ' in his own house, for speaking 
 and teaching ' rngracyouse heresye agaynst the blessed sacrament of the anlter,' 
 and another where the same discipline was administered to a half-insane person 
 for gross indecency of beharionr at public worship. He proceeds : ' And of all 
 that euer came in my hande for heresy, as helpe me God, sauynge as I sayd the 
 sure keping of them, and yet not so sure neyther but that George Constantyne 
 coulde stele awaye ; ellys had neuer any of them any strype or stroke gyue them, 
 so mych as a fylyppe on the forhed.' More's method of ' sure keping ' of persons 
 charged with heresy, it appears, was to confine them in the stocks in his garden, 
 "where the inconvenience they endured from exposure to the weather, and from the 
 painful mode by which they were secured, was, of itself, a torture as inhuman as 
 the infliction of the rod. Upon the whole, then, his own evidence convicts him 
 of being an uncharitable hater and a cruel persecutor of those who differed from 
 him in religious opinion. 
 
 * James Buchanan is said to have expressed the wish that the word 'Le- 
 COMPTON ' might be carved on the slab which should cover his grave. 
 
 t See, on the authorship of this work, First Series, Lecture VI. p. 124. 
 
604 SIK THOMAS MOKE Ibct. XL 
 
 unpaged leaf between pp. 1138 and 1139 of Rastell's edition, 
 which is wanting in very many copies : — 
 
 After that sir Thomas More hadde caused to be printed this laste 
 booke (intitled : the answer to the first parte of the poysoned boke, 
 ■which a namelesse heretike hath named the supper of the lord) he wrote 
 and caused to bee printed in the ende thereof (after certaine correccions 
 of faultes escaped in the printyng thereof) this that followeth : 
 
 Sir Thomas More knighte 
 to the christen reader. 
 
 After these faultes of the printer escaped in this boke, I shall not 
 let, good reders, to geue you like warnynge of one faute of myne owne, 
 escaped me in my booke laste put forth of the debellacion of Salem and 
 Byzance. In y^ first chapter wherof (Numero. 933. and in the seconde 
 colume) cancell and putte out one of those ouersightes that I lay to j" 
 pacifier, in those ix Knes, of which the first is the li lino of y^ same 
 colume, and the last is the 19 (the first of which 9 lines beginneth 
 thus : Moreouer &c.). For of trouthe not the pacifier but myselfe was 
 ouersene in that place wyth a litle hast in misse remebring one worde 
 of his. For whereas he sayth in the parson of Byzance, in the third 
 lefe of Salem and Bizance -: ' I wil cause it to be writen into this 
 dyaloge worde for worde as it is come to my handes : ' I forgate wha I 
 answered it that -he said, 'as it is come,' and toke it as though he 
 sayde ' as it commeth to myne handes.' 
 
 And therfore albeit that I haue knowen many that haue red it, of which 
 I neuer found any that found it, yet sythe it happed me lately to looka 
 theron, and find mine ouersight my self, I wold in no wise leue it, 
 good reder, vnreformed. Nor neuer purpose while I liue, whersoeuer I 
 may perceiue, either mme aduersary to saye well, or my selfe to haue 
 saide otherwyse, to let for vs both indifferently to declare and saye 
 the truth. 
 
 And surely if they wold vse yeself same honeste plaine truthe 
 towarde me, you shold sone see, good reders, all our contecions ended. 
 For than shold you se, that like as I haue not letted after mine apologye 
 to declare y* Tindale hadde somewhat amended and asswaged in one 
 point his formar euill assercions concerning satisfaccion, so shoulde he 
 confesse the trouth that I had truely touched him, and that hymselfa 
 had sore erred, as well in the remenat therof, as in all his other 
 heresies. And than also, like as I let not here, for the pacifiers part, to 
 declaii'. myself ouersene with hast iu this one poit, so should he not 
 
LecT. XI. WILLIAM TTNDALB 505 
 
 let well and honestly to say the trotith on the tother side, and cofesse 
 himself very far ouersene w* log leisure, in al the remenant besyde. 
 I saye not in all that he saith, but in all that is debated betwene vs. 
 
 I wote wel y^ best horse wer he which wer so sure of fote, that 
 runne he neuer so fast wold neuer in his life neither fall nor stable. 
 But sithe we can fynde none so sure, that horse is not much to be mis- 
 liked, which that with courage and prycking forth in hast, happing for 
 all hys fowre fete sometime to catch a fall, getteth vp again lightly by 
 himself w*oute touch of spurre or any check of y« bridle. No nor 
 yet that horse to be caste awaye neither, that getteth vp agayne apace 
 w* the checke of them bothe. Nowe lyke as with the best kinde can 
 I not compare, so of the third sorte at the least wise wiU I neuer fayle 
 to be, tliat is to wyt, ryse and reforme my selfe, whan any manne shewe 
 me mj' faulte. And as nere as I can wi-U. I serche them, and as sone as I 
 spye them, before anye man controUe the, aryse, and as I now do, mine 
 own seUe reforme the. Which kynd is, you wotte, well nexte vnto the 
 best. But yet on the tother side, of all myne aduersaries coulde I neuer 
 hitherto fynde any one, but whan he catcheth once a fall, as ech of them 
 hath caught full manye, there lyeth he still tumblyng and toltryng in 
 myre, and neyther spurre nor brydle ca one ynche preuayle, but aa 
 though they were not fallen in a puddle of dirte, but rubbed and layde 
 in litter vnder the manger at theyr ease, they whyne and they byte, and 
 they kick and they spume at him that would help them vp. And y* 
 is yet a fourth kynde, the woorst, ye wotte well, that canne be. 
 
 This extract is a fair average specimen of the modesty, can- 
 doTir, charity, refinement, and logic of Sir Thomas More in his 
 controversial writings. His Treatise on the Passion, written 
 during his last imprisonment, and interrupted by his depriva- 
 tion of pen, ink, and paper, by order of the king, is in better 
 temper, but little superior in style or ability to this frag- 
 ment. His fame as an English writer must rest on the Life of 
 Eichard III., if, indeed, that is his work, and his claim to our 
 sympathy as a man finds a better support in his family letters 
 and his last hours, than in his voluminous theological discus- 
 sions, or in his administration of his spiritual jurisdiction. 
 
 More's most conspicuous antagOLJst was Tyndale, whose 
 translation of the New Testament, first published in 1526, has 
 exerted a more marked influence upon English philology than 
 
506 THE EEFOEMATION . Lect. XI. 
 
 any other native work between the ages of Chaucer and of 
 Shakespeare. I have, in the twenty-eighth lecture of my first 
 series, and elsewhere in the same volume*, so fully discussed 
 the merits and importance of this translation that I need not 
 again enter upon it ; but I append to this lecture the eighth 
 chapter of Matthew from Tyndale's translation, edition of 1526, 
 reprinted at Andover, from Bagster, in 1837. For further 
 illustration, I subjoin the singular translation of the same 
 chapter, executed by Sir John Cheke about the year 1550. 
 
 When we consider the extensive circulation which the works 
 of Wycliffe and other reformers had for a long period enjoyed, 
 and the progress which the dialect of theology had made, it 
 seems remarkable that, at the commencement of the reforma- 
 tory movement, there should have been found in England so 
 few men capable of maintaining its principles by argument. 
 But the brutal and malignant despotism of Henry VIII. had so 
 effectually put down the spirit of free inquiry in the earlier 
 years of his reign, that when he himself thought it convenient 
 to throw off allegiance to the see of Eome, there was a want of 
 theological talent and learning in his dominions, which had to 
 be supplied from Continental sources. Hence, very many of 
 the instructors of the English people ia the principles of the 
 Eeformation were of German, Dutch, or Swiss birth, and the 
 English reformers themselves had often resorted to the Conti- 
 nent for study, or for security from persecution. These foreign 
 teachers generally wrote in Latin, and when their writings 
 were translated, paraphrased, or epitomized for the edification 
 of the laity, they brought with them many new words and 
 idioms — a special phraseology, in fact, suited to the discussion 
 of the doctrines they advanced. At that period of universal 
 religious excitement, the study of theology was, to the man of 
 liberal culture, just what the study of political history and 
 public economy is in our day — a necessary complement to the 
 
 ♦ See First Series, pp. 113, 171, 383, 625, 627, a^a lUustrationa II. and m. at 
 the end «f this lec'voce. 
 
Lect. XL CLASSICAL LEAKNING 507 
 
 special learning required for the exercise of his particular pro- 
 fession, or the performance of his general duties as a member 
 of the body politic. Every man of education, every man who 
 read at all in fact, read theological books, and consequently 
 there was, almost at once, a very considerable accession of Latin 
 words to the vocabulary of English. 
 
 The study of classical literature was in England rather a 
 consequence, than an efficient cause, of the Eeformation. In 
 Grermany, France, and Italy, the case had been otherwise. 
 There, the revival of Grreek, and especially of Latin secular 
 philology, preceded and prepared the way for the diffusion of 
 works of religious controversy. The literature of Greece 
 enlightened and liberalized the minds of scholars, and the 
 speech of Rome furnished a vehicle, a universal language, by 
 means of which the works of a free inquirer in one country 
 could be circulated in another, without the delay of translation, 
 or the expense of getting up new editions ; while, in England, 
 the first step necessarily was to make the ti-eatise intelligible 
 by an English version. 
 
 There is no doubt that the desire of reading in their native 
 form new works, which at that time were exciting a profound 
 interest throughout the civilized world, and of consulting the 
 original texts of the sacred writings, and of the fathers of the 
 church, was one of the principal incentives to the study of 
 classical lore, which had hitherto made little progress in 
 England.* The versions of classic authors, printed by Caxton, 
 were made at second hand from the French, with the exception 
 of Cicero's De Amicitia, which was translated from the orioinal 
 by Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester. 
 
 Even the universities afforded but slender fixcilities for the 
 acquisition of classical Latin and Greek, and the Greek pro- 
 
 * Sir Thomas More quotes Tyndale as making this extraordinary assertion: 
 •Kemember ye not howe in our owne timo, of al that taught grammar in England 
 not one understode ye latine tong ? ' More denies that the fact is apposite as an 
 illustration for the purpose for wliich Tyndale had used it, but so far from dis- 
 puting its truth, he impliedly admits it. Workes, p. t'H D. 
 
508 MODERN GEAMMAES Lect. Xt 
 
 fessorship at Cambridge was not founded until aboiit 1540* 
 Hence the few Englishmen who desired to pursue such studies 
 were obliged to repair to the Continental schools for that pur- 
 pose. It is true that the transfer of instruction from the 
 monasteries to public schools — a step absolutely indispensable 
 to th°- progress of classic philology — had begun with the cen- 
 tury. Lilly, the famous grammarian, who had learned Greek 
 in the Levant, became the first master of St. Paul's School in 
 1500; and about twenty-two grammar schools were established 
 within as many years after that date. Cardinal Wolsey exerted 
 his powerful influence in support of a more liberal . system of 
 education than had been pursued at the conventual seminaries ; 
 but his plans of improvement met most violent opposition from 
 the jealousy of the monastic orders, and from their reluctance 
 to surrender the monopoly of education, which had proved so 
 lucrative a source of income, and at the same time so efficient 
 a means of securing political influence. Besides this, the new 
 schools had to contend with the superstitious prejudices of the 
 clergy, most of whom both thought all heathen literature pro- 
 fane and blasphemous, and feared danger from the creeping 
 in of heresies in consequence of the general diffusion of an 
 acquaintance with the New Testament in the Grreek text. 
 
 For these reasons, classical literature long remained at a low 
 ebb, and it can hardly be said to have exerted an appreciable 
 influence upon the English language much before the middle of 
 the reign of Henry VIII. 
 
 The first immediate result of this study was naturally an 
 increased attention to the grammar of the vernacular, and a 
 disposition to assimilate its theory to that of the ancient lan- 
 guages. Hitherto, neither English, nor even French, is known 
 to have possessed dictionaries, grammars, or written rules or 
 philological helps of any sort.* There existed, indeed, several 
 
 * English was ordered to he taught in the common schools in the fourteenth 
 eentury, and in a passage already referred to, Tyndale and Sir Thomas More speak 
 of grammar-schools, the masters of which were ignorant of Latin. Here, then, if 
 
Lect. XI. palsghate's grammar 509 
 
 Anglo-Latin glossaries and vocabularies, but these seem to have 
 been intended to facilitate the study of conventual Latin rather 
 than to serve to explain the meaning of English words.* So 
 far as yet appears, the first grammatical treatise in the English 
 language — the earliest evidence that any Englishman had ever 
 thought of subjecting any modern tongue to the discipline of 
 philological principle and precept — is Palsgrave's remarkable 
 French grammar, composed for the use of the Princess Mary, 
 and printed in 1530. This presents a very full and complete 
 view of French accidence, syntax, and idiomatic structure, with 
 a copious vocabulary. As it is written in English and constantly 
 illustrates French grammar by comparison with English, it is of 
 high value as a source of information upon the authorized forms 
 
 a period of a century and a half, during wliich English was scholastically taught. 
 How was this practicable without aceidences or grammatical manuals of some 
 kind? Of all literary products, children's school-books are the most perishable. 
 Spelling-books fifty years old are as rare as Caktohs, and the presf'nt existence of 
 a real ^ra-book is as questionable as that of the unicorn. An English grammar, 
 of Chaucer's time, or Pecock's, or even of Tyndale's boyhood, would be a trouvaille, 
 that would well repay a half-year's search among mouldering manuscripts. 
 
 * The author of the compilation called PromptOrius or Promptorium ParvU- 
 lorum. Way's very valuable edition of which is one of the most important 
 contributions ever made to English historical etymology, expressly states that he 
 prepared the work for the use of young ecclesiastics, 'qui nunc ad usum 
 dericalis loquele velut cervi ad fontes aqaarum desiderant sed Latina vocabula 
 ignorantes,' etc. 
 
 It is an observation of some interest with respect to the permanence of local 
 dialects, which many modem linguists so strongly insist upon, that the author 
 declares: 'eomitatus tamen Northfolchie modum loquendi solum sum seeutus, 
 quem solum ab infancia didici, et solotenus plenius perfectiusque cognovi,' and 
 again at the close of the preface : ' Explicit preambulum in libellum predictumi 
 secundnm vulgarem modum loquendi orientalium Anglorum.' This preface is 
 dated in 1440. Forby's vocabulary of East-Anglia gives us the peculiarities of 
 the colloquial dialect of the same counties in 1830. There are, it is true, some 
 coincidences between the two word-lists, but he must be a philologer of easy 
 faith, who can find in the comparison of them satisfactory evidence that the 
 special dialect of the Orientates Angli of 1440 was identical with that of the 
 East-Anglians of 1830. It must however be admitted, for the comfort of be' 
 lievers in the immutability of vulgar speech, that the Chronicle of Capgrave, a 
 Norfolk man who flourished in the first half of the fifteenth century, presents 
 many more points of resemblance with the modern dialect of that county thai 
 •re to be fonnd in the Promptorium. 
 
510 CLASSICAL LEAIiNING Lect. XL 
 
 of our own language at that period ; and, though intended solely 
 for instruction in a foreign tongue, the study of it could not 
 have failed to throw much light on the general principles of 
 English syntax, and thus to contribute, in an important degree, 
 to the improvement of English philology. Palsgrave's views of 
 the logical and syntactical structure of language were taken 
 from one of the Greek grammars then in vogue. He accordingly 
 applied the doctrines of ancient grammar to his exposition of 
 the theory of the French, and indirectly of the English, and 
 his work did much to introduce the grammatical nomenclature 
 of the Latin into English, and to establish philological opinions 
 more in harmony with the structure of ancient inflected, than of 
 modern indeclinable, languages.* 
 
 The inducements which the writings of Grerman and Swiss 
 and Dutch Reformers suggested for acquiring a knowledge of 
 Hebrew and Greek and classical Latin, gave a great impulse to 
 the study of the humanities, as they were called. Ancient 
 authors were made comparatively familisir, by translations whose 
 vocabulary and style were marked by Latinisms ; and the diction 
 of English writers, who were able to read those authors in the 
 original, was, consciously or unconsciously, enriched by borrowed 
 phrases and single terms, needed to express the new ideas and 
 new sentiments that were pouring in from so many sources. 
 Thus the profane literature of Greece and Eome contributed, 
 both directly and indirectly, to enlarge the stock of English 
 
 * The most remarkable peculiarity of Palsgrave's English is, that where an ad- 
 jective belonging to the technical nomenclature of grammar foUows its noun, he 
 commonly makes its plural in s ; thus : verbes actyres parsonalles, verbes depo- 
 nentes or comens, pronounes inteiTOgatives, &e. &c. AVe have still current in 
 English a few examples of adjectives inflected for the plural, but they are cases 
 ■where the noun has been so long dropped from the phrase, that it has been for- 
 gotten. Thus, in 'Know all men by these presents,' presents is an adjective, 
 agreeing with letters understood; per has litteras presentes. Premises, in deeds of 
 conveyance, is also an adjective, its noun being understood. 
 
 Palsgrave was, so fiu' as I know, the fii'st writer who used a, figured pronuncia- 
 tion, which he employs both to convey the sounds of the letters, and to show how 
 the liaisons are made. Thus he writes : 
 
 Kegnans par droit, heureux et glorieux, 
 Eeuavnpai'droatevi'evzegloriAvz. 
 
Lect. XL SKELTON 511 
 
 words, and the vocaLulary grew with constantly increasing 
 rapidity. 
 
 It is fortunate tltat Tyndale's translation of the New Testa- 
 ment, first published in 1526, was executed before the traditional 
 sacred dialect, handed down from the time of Wycliffe, was yet 
 raiich affected by this flood of Latinisms, which, a few years 
 later, produced so marked a change in the English language. 
 The Ehemish version shows us something of what we should 
 have had in the place of our present translation, had Tyndale's 
 work been postponed a short time longer. An English trans- 
 lator of the next genei-ation would not have thought of studying 
 Wycliffe, but would have taken the current English of his time 
 as the standard of style, and given us a text perhaps a little 
 more accurate than that of Tyndale, but altogether inferior in 
 force, beauty, and purity of expression. 
 
 But let us turn for a moment to the poetic literature of the 
 reign of Henry YIII. It is Uttle to the credit of modern taste 
 and refinement, that so gross and repulsive an author as Skelton 
 should be better known to students of old English literature, 
 than the graceful and elegant Surrey and Wyatt. Puttenham 
 well cbavacterizes Skelton as a 'rude rayling rimer,' and it is 
 not too much to say of him, that while he has all the coarseness 
 of Swift, he does not atone for it by a spark of the genius of 
 Chaucer. Most of Skelton's works appeared in the time of 
 Henry VIIL, but he seems to have had a reputation for 
 learning in his earlier youth ; for Caxton, in the preface to an 
 edition of the ^neid which he had himself translated from a 
 French version, speaks of Skelton as one 'knowne for suflfycyent 
 to expoune and Englysshe every dyffyculte that is therein;' and 
 at a later day, when he was tutor to Prince Henry, afterwards 
 King Henry VIII., he was complimented by Erasmus as ' Britan- 
 nicarnm litcrarum decus et lumen.' It is more to his classical 
 scholarship than to li's poetical works that he owed his original 
 literary reputation, and though his translations of some ancient 
 «iuthors, which are still preserved in manuscript, would be a 
 valuable contribution to English philology, the loss of his 
 
512 STEPHEN HAWE8 Lect. XI. 
 
 rhymes would be but a trifling injury to English literature. 
 His learning certainly did little for the improvement of his 
 English style, and we may say of his diction in general, that all 
 that is not vulgar is pedantic. 
 
 Stephen Hawes, who flourished in the reigns of Henry VIL 
 and Henry VIII., was the author of the Passetyme of Pleasure 
 and of several other poems, all popular in his time and all now 
 deservedly forgotten. Warton thinks that he 'added new 
 graces to Lydgate's manner,' but these graces I am unable to 
 discover, and I agree with Wright in the opinion, that in all 
 respects his works are 'monuments of the bad taste. of a bad 
 age.' They have, however, a certain philological interest, both 
 on account of their versification, which, though far from melli- 
 fluous, presents some improvements, and especially as showing 
 the rapidity with which French and Latin words were now 
 flowing into the language, and as illustrating that connection 
 between rhymed verse and a Eomance vocabulary, of which I 
 have so often spoken. The fifth chapter of his dull allegory, 
 the Passetyme of Pleasure, is entitled, 'How Science sent him 
 fyrst to Gramer, where he was received by Dame Congruyte,' 
 
 and is as follows : — 
 
 1. 
 
 The lady Gramer in all humbly wyse, 
 
 Dyd me recc3've into her goodly scoole ; 
 
 To whose doctrine I dyd me advertise 
 
 For to attayne, in her artyke poole, 
 
 Her gyfted dewe, for to oppresse my doole ; 
 
 To whom I sayde that I wold gladly Icrne 
 
 Her noble connynge, so that I myght desoeme 
 
 2. 
 
 What that it is, and why that it was made? 
 
 To whych she answered than, in speciall, 
 
 By cause that connynge shoulde not pale ne fade, 
 
 Of every scyence it is original], 
 
 Whych doth us tech ever in generall 
 
 In all good ordre to speke directly, 
 
 And for to wryte by true ortografy. 
 
Lmt. XL STEPHEN HAWE8 513 
 
 s. 
 
 Somtyme in Egypt reygned a noble kyng, 
 Iclyped Evandev, whych dyd well abounde 
 In many vei-tues, especially in lernyng ; 
 Whych had a doughter, that by her study found 
 To wryte true Latyn the fyrst parfyt ground. 
 Whose goodly name, as her story sayes, 
 "Was called Cai-mentis in her hvyng dayes. 
 
 4. 
 Thus in the tyme t)f olde antiquytie, 
 The noble phylosophers, wyth theyr whole delyghte, 
 For the comon prouftyte of all huraanite, 
 Of the seven sciences for to knowe the ryght, 
 They studied many a long wynters nyght, 
 Eche after other theyr partes to expresse, 
 Thys was theyr guy se to eschewe ydelnesse. 
 
 5. 
 The pomped carkes wyth foode dilicious 
 . They dyd not feed, but to theyr sustinaunce ; 
 They folowed not theyre fleshe so vycious, 
 But ruled it by prudent gorernaunce ; 
 They were content alway wyth suiEsaunce, 
 They coveyted not no worldly treasure, 
 For they knewe that it myght not endure. 
 
 6. 
 But nowe a dayes the contrary is used: 
 To Wynne the mony thejT studyes be all set. 
 The commen proiyt is often refused. 
 For well is he that may the money get 
 From his neyghbour wythout any let. 
 They thynke nothynge they shall from it paa, 
 Whan all that is shall be touined to was. 
 
 7. 
 The bryttel fleshe, nourisher of yyces, 
 Under the shadowe of evyU slogardy, 
 Must need haunte the carnall deUces ; 
 Whan that the brayne, by corrupt glotony, 
 Up so downe is tourned than contrary. 
 Frayle is the bodye to grete imhappynea, 
 Whan that the head is full of dronkennes. 
 !< I. 
 
514 STEPHEN HAWES IeCT, Xt 
 
 8. 
 So doo they now ; for they nothyng prepence 
 Howe cruell deth doth them sore ensue. 
 They are so blynded in worldly neoligence, 
 That to theyr merite they wyll nothyng renewe 
 The seven scyences, theyr slouth to eschewe ; 
 To an others profyt they take now no keepe, 
 But to theTjrr owne, for to eate, drynke, and sleepe. 
 
 9. 
 And all thys dame Gramer told me every dele, 
 To whom I herkened wyth all my diligence; 
 And after thys she taught me ryght well 
 Fyrst my Donet and then my accidence. 
 I set my mynde wyth percying influence 
 To lerne her scyence, the fyrst famous arte, 
 Eschewyng ydlenes and layeng all aparte. 
 
 10. 
 Madame, quod I, for as much as there be 
 Eight partes of speche, I would knowe ryght fayne^ 
 What a noune substantive is in hys degre, 
 And wherefore it is so called certayne ? 
 To whom she answered ryght gentely agayne, 
 Sayeng alway that a noune substantyve 
 Might stand wythout helpe of an adjectyve. 
 
 11. 
 
 The Latyn worde whyche that is referred 
 Unto a thynge whych is substancyall, 
 For a noune substantyve is wel averred, 
 And wyth a gender is declynall ; 
 So all the eyght partes in generall 
 Are Laten wordes, annexed properly 
 To every speche, for to speke formally. 
 
 12. 
 
 And gramer isthe-fyrst foundement 
 Of every science to have construcoyon : 
 Who knewe gramer wythout impediment 
 Shoulde perfytely have intelleccion 
 Of a ly tterall cense and moralyzacion. 
 To construe every thynge ententifly. 
 The worde is gramer wel and ordinatly. 
 
Lect. XL STTEBEY AND -WTATT 615 
 
 By worde the world was made orygynally, 
 
 The hye Kynge sayde, it was made incontinent ; 
 
 He dyd comu.atiude, al was made shortly. 
 
 To the world the worde is sentfncious judgemente. 
 
 I marked well dame Gramers seatement, 
 
 And of her than I dyd take my lycence, 
 
 Goynge to Logyke wyth aU my dylygence. 
 
 In these thirteen stanzas are ninety-one lines, of which sixty- 
 six end in rhyming words of Latin or French origin, and in 
 stanzas fifth, eleventh, and twelfth, not a single rhyme is of 
 Anglo-Saxon derivation. 
 
 The poems of Surrey and of Wyatt, who flourished in the 
 latter part of the reign of Henry VIIL, are in a very different 
 strain, both of thought and of language. They are of import- 
 ance in the history of English, from the great advance they show 
 upon the diction of other versifiers of the period ; and in the 
 history of literature, as proving that Italian poetry was now be- 
 o-inning to assume somewhat the same influence upon English 
 verse which French had exercised a hundred and fifty years 
 before. There was, however, this difference. The French 
 poets not only banished the native rhythms and dictated the 
 forms of English poetry, but they contributed very essentially 
 to the creation of a new poetic diction, by introducing new 
 words and grammatical idioms, while the Italian poets, though 
 supplying models of poetic composition and suggesting new 
 metres and metrical combinations, added little or nothing to 
 the vocabulary, and did not at all influence the syntax of 
 English. 
 
 Surrey — in imitation of the Italian poets who were striving 
 to discard rhyme, as a barbarous corruption of the dignity of 
 verse, and to restore the classic metres, or at least a system of 
 versification founded exclusively on prosodical accent — trans- 
 lated two books of Virgil's ^neid, in blank verse ; and this is 
 said to be the first specimen of unrhymed poetry in the English 
 
 L L 2 
 
516 BLANK VERSE Lect. XI. 
 
 tongue. This "Wart on calls a 'noble attempt to break the 
 bondage of rhyme,' and Eoger Ascham thinks that in the 
 experiment Surrey was seeking ' the fayrest and ryghtest way.' 
 But the versification of the translation is rugged and uneven, 
 and, upon the whole, greatly inferior, in snjoothness of flow and 
 skill in melodious adaptation of words, to Surrey's own rhymed 
 poems. -A writer long accustomed to compose in rhyme, but 
 who at last sets himself free from the restraints of consonance, 
 is apt to make a bad use of his new found-liberty, and to 
 convert it into too great prosodical license. This was the case 
 with Surrey, whose blank verse is very often quite undistinguish- 
 able from common prose. 
 
 The dialect of Surrey, and of Wyatt whose works very 
 closely tesemble the poems of Surrey, is much more modern 
 than that of any preceding writer, and it is noticeable that we 
 rind in them a less frequent use of forms now obsolete than in 
 even the prose authors of the same period. This is a singular 
 fact, for in all literatures the diction of poetry inclines- to 
 archaism of expression ; and the departure of Surrey and Wyatt 
 from the usual rule is perhaps to be explained by the circum- 
 stance that they had no English precedents in the vein of 
 poetry which they chose to pursue, and, consequently, no native 
 models of a poetic diction consecrated to the utterance of the 
 sentiinents they wished to express. They therefore adopted the 
 colloquial dialect of their time, which had discarded many in- 
 flections and idioms still habitually retained in written, literature 
 whether prose or verse ; whereas, if they had employed poetic 
 forms examples of which already existed in English, they could 
 hardly have failed to follow their diction also. 
 
 The poems of these authors have exercised a more important 
 influence on the poetical dialect of the English language than 
 has been generallj» supposed ; for their popularity — which was 
 partly due to their adoption of a popular dialect — and their 
 great merit, not only made them authoritative standards and 
 models, but tended in a considerable degree to discourage the 
 
LecT. XL BISHOP LATIMER 517 
 
 Study of older authors, who now very soon began to be con- 
 sidered as rude and barbarous. Although, therefore, Surrey and 
 Wyatt did much to polish and refine the language of their art, 
 yet they on the other hand deprived it of something of its 
 force and energy, by lessening the authority, and consequently 
 occasioning the neglect, of the great master whom Spenser, 
 half a century later, was wise enough to hold to be at once the 
 fountain and the reservoir of the English tongue. 
 
 The sermons of Bishop Latimer, which belong to this period, 
 are of much interest, because they are written in a very familiar 
 style, and give us, perhaps, a better idea of the living speech ol 
 educated men at that time than any other existing literary 
 monument. The serinons of Latimer, and other works of 
 similar linguistic character, serve well to show a truth which 
 has but lately begun to be recognized in philology: that though 
 foreign-born words and new logical combinations of familiar 
 words are generally introduced by written literature, yet syntac- 
 tical and inflectional changes originate with the people, and are 
 current in every-day speech some time before they are recog- 
 nized as admissible in formal composition. Latimer's writings, 
 reduced to the modern orthography, present scarcely more 
 difficulty to a reader of our own time than a newspaper of this 
 century ; but there are few prose or poetical works of that day 
 belonging to the higher walks of literature, which are not much 
 more archaic in their structure and vocabulary than these plain- 
 spoken homilies. The following extracts are from the rare 
 volume of sermons, seven in number, preached by Latimer 
 before King Henry VIII. and his Court, in March and April, 
 1549:— 
 
 FROM SERMON 11. 
 
 I can not go to my boke for pore folkes come vn^ me, desirynge me 
 that I wyll speake y* theyr matters maye be heard. I trouble my Lord 
 of Canterburye, & beynge at hys house nowe and then I walke in the 
 garden lokyng in my boke, as I canne do but Uttle good at it. But 
 some thynge I muste nedes do to satisffe thvs place. 
 
618 BISHOP LATIMEE Lect. XI. 
 
 I am no soner in the garden and haue red a whyle, but by and by 
 commetli there some or other knocking at the gate. 
 
 Anone cometh my man and saytli : "Syr, tliere is one at the gate 
 woulde speake wyth you. When I come there, then is it some or other 
 that desireth me that I wyll speake that hys matter might be heard, & 
 that he hath layne thys longe at great costes and charges, and can not 
 once haue hys matter come to tlie hearing, but amog all other, one 
 especially moued me at thys time to speake. 
 
 Thys it is syr : A gentylwoman came to me and tolde me, that a 
 greate man kepeth certaine landes of hyrs from hyr and wilbe hyr 
 tenaunte in the spite of hyr tethe. And that in a whole twelue moneth 
 she coulde not gette but one daye for the hearynge of hyr matter, and 
 the same daye when the matter shoulde be hearde, the greate manne 
 broughte on hys syde a greate syghte of Lawyers for hys counsayle, 
 the gentilwoman had but one ma of lawe:'and the great man shakes 
 him so, so that he ca [not] teU what to do, so that when the matter 
 came to the poynte, the Judge was a meane to the gentylwoman that 
 she wold let the great ma haue a quietnes in hyr Lande. I beseche 
 your grace that ye wyU loke to these matters. 
 
 FKOM SERMON III. 
 
 Ther is a certen ma that shortely after my iyrst sermon, beyng asked 
 if he had byn at y^ sermon that day, answerd, yea : 1 praye you sayd 
 he how lyked you him ? marye, sayd he, eue as I lyked hym alwayes, a 
 sedicious felow. Oh Lord he pinched me there in dede, nay he had 
 rather a ful byt at me. Yet I comfort mysehe with that, y* Christ hi 
 selfe was noted to be a sturrer vp of the people agaist the Emperoure, 
 and was contented to be called sedyciouse. 
 
 It becommeth me to take it in good worthe, I am not better then he 
 was. In the Icynges daies y' dead is, a meanye of vs were called 
 together before him to saye our myndes in certaine matters. In the 
 ende one kneleth me downe, & accuseth me of sedycion, that I had 
 preched sedyciouse doctryne. A heuy salutation, and a hard poit of 
 such a mans doynge, as if I should name hym, ye woulde not thynke 
 it. The kynge turned to me and saied : What sale you to that, syr ? 
 Then I kneled downe, and turned me first to myne accuser, and 
 required hym : • 
 
 Syr, what fourme of preachige would you appoynt me to preacho 
 before a kynge ? 
 
 Woulde you haue me for to preache nothynge as eoncerninge a Kynge 
 in the Kynges sermo. Haue you any commissyon to apoynt me what I 
 ehal preache ? Besydes thys I asked hym dyuers othere questyons, and 
 
Lkct. XI. BISHOP LATIMER 519 
 
 he would make no answer to none of them all. He had nothynge to 
 laye. Then I turned me to the kyiige, and submitted my seUe to hya 
 grace and sayd : I neuer thoughte my sehe worthy, nor I neuer sued to 
 be a preacher before youre grace, but I was called to it, and woulde be 
 wylling yf you mislyke me, to geue place to my betters. Tor I gxaut 
 ther be a gret meany more worthie of the rome then I am. And if be 
 so youre graces pleasiu-e to allowe theym for preachers, I coulde be 
 content to here theyr bokes after them. But if youre grace allowe me 
 for a preacher, I would desyer your grace to geue me leue to dischardge 
 my cociece. Geue me leue to frame my doctrine accordenge to muie 
 audyece. 1 had byn a veri dolte to liaue preached so at the borders of 
 your realme as I prech before your grace. 
 
 FROM THE SAME. 
 
 Wo worthe these giftes, they subuert iustyce euerye where. Sequuntur 
 retribntiones. Some what was geue to the before, & they must nedea 
 gyue somewhat again, foi; gyffegafe was a good felowe, this gyfFegaffe 
 led the clen fro iustice. They folow giftes. A good felowe on a time 
 had an other of hys frends to a breake faste, and sayed : Yf you wyll 
 come you shall be welcome, but I tell you afore hande, you shall haue 
 but sclender fare, one dish and that is all. What is that, saide he. A 
 puddyne, and nothynge els. Mary, sayde he, you ca not please me 
 better, of all mettes, that is for myne owne toth. You may draw me 
 round about the towne with a puddyng. 
 
 These brybinge magistrates and iudges folow gyftes faster the the 
 fellowe would followe the puddynge. 
 
 I am content to beare the title of sedition w* Esai. Thankes be to 
 God, I am not alone, I am in no singularitie. Thys same man that 
 laj'ed sedition thus to my charge was asked an other tyme, whether he 
 were at the sermon at Paules crosse ; he answered y* he was there, and 
 beynge asked what newes there. Marye quod he, wonderftdl newes, 
 wee were ther cleane absolued, my mule and all hadde full absolution. 
 Ye may se by thys, that he was such a one that rode on a mule, and 
 that he was a gentyhna. 
 
 In dede hys mule was wyser then he, for I dare say, the mule neuer 
 sclaundered the preacher. Oh what an vnhappy chaunce had thys 
 Mule to carrye such an Asse vppon hys back^ ! I was there at the 
 sermon my selfe. In the end of his sermon he gaue a generall abso- 
 lution, and as farre as I remember, these, or such other lyke were hys 
 wordes, but at the least I am sure, thys was hys meanynge. As 
 manye as do knowledge your selfes to be synners, and confesse the 
 Bame and standea not in defece of it, and hertely abhorreth it. 
 
520 BISHOP LATIMEB J-ect, XL 
 
 and wyl beleve in y« death of Ctrist, and be conformable themnto, Ego 
 absoluo vos, quod he. Now, saith thys getylman, bys mule -was 
 absolued. The preacher absolued but such as were sory and dyd 
 repente. Bilyke then she dyd repente hyr stumblynge, hys Asse was 
 wyser then he a greate deale. I speake not of worldely wysedome, for 
 therin he is to wyse, yea, so wyse, that wyse men maruayle howe 
 he came trulye by the tenth part of that he hathe. But in wisdome 
 which consisteth in rebus Dei, in rebus Salutis, in godlye matters, & 
 pertayning to our saluacyo, in this "wisedome he is as blynde as a bittel. 
 Thei be T'anquam equus et mulus in quibus non est intellectus ; Lyke 
 horses and mules that haue no understandynge. * 
 
 If it were true that the mule repented hyr of h3T stumblyng I 
 thynke shee was better absolued then he. I pray God stop his mouthe, 
 or els to open it to speake better, and more to hys glory. An other 
 man quickned with a word I spoke (as he saied opprobriously agaynste 
 the nobility that theyr childre dyd not set forthe Gods worde, but were 
 vnpreachynge prelates), was offended wyth me. 
 
 FEOM SERMON VI. 
 
 The arte of shutynge hath ben in tymes past much estemed in this 
 reahne, it is a gyft of God that he hath geuen ts to excell all other 
 nacions wythall. It hath bene Goddes instrumente, whereby he hath 
 gyue vs manye victories agaynste oxire enemyes. But nowe we haue 
 taken vp horynge in tounes, in steede of shutyng in the fyeldes. A 
 wonderous thynge, that so exceUente a gift of God shotilde be so lytle 
 estemed. I desyer you my Lordes, even as y* loue the honoure, and 
 glory of God, and entende to remove his indignacion, let ther be sente 
 fourth some proclimacion, some sharpe proclimacion, to the iustices of 
 peace, for they do not their dutye. Justices now be no iustices, ther be 
 manye good actes made for thys matter already. Charge them vpo theyr 
 allegiaur.ee y* this singular benefit of God maye be practised, and that 
 it be not turned into bollyng, glossyng, and whor}'ng wy thin the townes, 
 for they be neghgente in executyng these lawes of shutyng. 
 
 In my tyme my poore father was as diligent to teach me to sliote aa 
 to learne anye other thynge, and so I thynke other menne dyd theyr 
 children. He taught me how to drawe, how to laye my bodye in my 
 bowe, and not to drawe wyth stregth of armes, as other nacions do, 
 but with strength of the bodye. I had my bowes boughte me ac- 
 cordyng to my age & stregth ; as I encreased in them, so my bowea 
 were made bigger and bigger, for men shal neuer shot well, excepte 
 they be broughte Vp in it. It is a goodly art, a holsome kynde of 
 
tECT. XI. SIE JOHN CHEKE 521 
 
 exercise, mtich commended in phisike. Marsilius Ficinns, in hya 
 boke de triplici vita (it is a greate while sins I red liym nowe), but I 
 remebre he commendetli this kinde of exercise, and sayth that it 
 wrestleth agaynste manye kyndes of diseases. In the reuerece of God, 
 let it be continued. 
 
 Sir John Cheke, Professor of Greek in the University of 
 Cambridge, is perhaps the first Englishman in whose prose style 
 the influence of a familiarity with classical literature is fully 
 and clearly manifested. I mean the legitimate and proper 
 influence, which is, not the crowding of our diction with Latin 
 words and idioms, not an affluence of quotation or of remi- 
 niscence of ancient history and fable, but grammatical accuracy 
 in syntax and inflection, strict attention to the proper use of 
 words singly considered, and idiomatic purity in the construc- 
 tion of phrases and the arrangement of periods. In vocabulary, 
 Cheke was a purist by principle ; for in his almost only known 
 original composition, the Hurt of Sedition, he employs none but 
 words which had been for centuries familiar to every intelligent 
 Englishman. In his specimen of a translation of the New 
 Testament, of which only a few chapters are extant — if, indeed, 
 more ever existed — he carries his purism still farther, and 
 introduces many Anglo-Saxon compounds, of his own coinage, 
 in place of the technical words belonging to Christian doctrine 
 which older translators had transferred, without change, from 
 the Grreek and Latin texts to their own versions.* 
 
 Cheke was no advocate of popular rights, but the following 
 paragraphs from his Hurt of Sedition may even now be read 
 with profit by those whom they concern. I take them from 
 
 * See Cteke's translation of the eighth chapter of Matthew's gospel, in 
 longer Notes ajid Illustrations, III., at the end of this lecture. 
 
 Among the new words fabricated hy Cheke for liis translation are : biwordes, 
 ^rabies, examples; crossed, crucified; dMtee (deputy) of ye fourth part, 
 tetrarch; forsaiers and forschewers, prophets; frosint, sent out, and froscndir, 
 he who sends out; freschman, proselyte; gainUrth, regeneration; groundwrought, 
 founded ; hunderdcr, centurion ; moond (mooned), lunatic ; onvjriting, super- 
 scription; outpcopling, carrying into captivity; outbom, alien; outcalled, elect J 
 touliscA (animal), the natural man ; trutom (true turn), true translation. 
 
522 SIR JOHN CHEKE Lect. XI. 
 
 Holinshed, reprint of 1808, vol. iii. pp. 987, 988, 992, 1005, 
 1007. 
 
 Among so manie and notable benefits, wherewith God hath ah-eadie 
 and plentifullie indued vs, there is nothing more beneficial), than that 
 we haue by his grace kept vs quiet from rebellion at this time. For 
 we see such miseries hang ouer the whole state -of the common-wealth, 
 through the great misorder of your sedition, that it maketh vs much to 
 reioise, that we haue beene neither partners of your doings, nor con- 
 spirers of your counsels. For euen as the Lacedemonians for the 
 auoiding of drunkennesse did cause their sons to behold their seruanta 
 when they were drunke, that by beholding their beastlinesse, they 
 might auoid the like vice : euen so hath God like a mercifull father 
 staled vs from your wickednesse, that by beholding the filth of your 
 fault, we might iustlie for offense abhorre you like rebels, whome else 
 by nature we loue like Englishmen. And so for our selues, we haue 
 great cause to thanke God, by whose religion and holie word dailie 
 taught vs, we learne not onelie to feare him trulie, but also to obeie 
 our king faithfuUie, and to serue in our owne vocation like subiects 
 honestlie. And as for you, we haue suerlie iust cause to lament you 
 as brethren, and yet luster cause to rise against you as enimies, and 
 most iust to ouerthrow you as rebels. 
 
 For what hurt could be doone either to vs priaiatlie, or to the whole 
 common-wealth generallie, that is now with mischiefe so brought in by 
 you, that euen as we see now the flame of your rage, so shall we neces- 
 sai'ilie be consumed hereafter with the miserie of the same. Wherefore 
 consider your selues with some light of vnderstanding, and marke this 
 grecuous and horrible fault, which ye haue thus vilelie committed, 
 howe heinous it must n^eds appeare to you, if ye will reasonablie con- 
 sider that which for my duties sake, and my whole countries cause, I 
 will at this present declare vnto you. Ye which be bound by Gods 
 word not to obeie for feare like men-pleasers, but for conscience sake 
 like cristians, haue contrarie to Gods holie will, whose offense is euer- 
 lasting death, and contrarie to the godlie order of quietnesse, set out to 
 vs in the kings maiesties lawes, the breach whereof is not vnknowne to 
 you, tikcn in hand vncalled of God, vnsent by men, vnfit by reason, 
 to cast awaie your bounden duties of obedience, and to put on you 
 against the magistrats, Gods office committed to the magistrats, for the 
 reformation of your pretensed iuiuries. In the which dooing ye haue 
 first faulted grieuouslie against God, next offended vnnaturallie our 
 Boueieigne lord, thirdlie troubled miserablie the whole common-wealth, 
 
Lect. XL HE JOHN CHIiKB 523 
 
 Tndoone cruellie manie an honest man, and brought in an vtter miserie 
 both to vs the kings subiects, and to your selues being false rebels.' And 
 yet ye pretend that pai-tlie for Gods cause, and partlie for the common- 
 wealths sake, ye doo arise, when as your selues cannot denie ; but ye 
 that seeke in word Grods cause, doo breake indeed Gods commande- 
 ments ; and ye that seeke the common- wealth, haue destroied the com- 
 mon-wealth : and so ye marre that ye would make, and brake that ye 
 would amend, because ye neither seeke anie thing rightlie, nor would 
 amend anie thing orderlie. 
 
 « • * • 
 
 But what talke I of disobedience so quietlie ? Haue not such mad 
 rages ruia in your heads, that forsaking and bursting the quietnesse of 
 the common peace, ye haue heinouslie and traitorouslie incamped your 
 selues in field, and there like a bile in a bodie, naie like a sinke in a 
 towne, haue gathered togither all the nastie vagabonds and idle loiterers 
 to beare armour, &c. &c. 
 
 * • • • 
 Desperate sicknesse in physicke must haue desperate remedies, for 
 
 meane medicines will neuer helpe great griefes. So if ye cast your 
 selues into such sharpe diseases, ye must needs looke for sharpe medi- 
 cines againe at your phj'sicians hands. And worthie ye be to suffer 
 the extremitie in a commonwealth, which seeke to doo the extremitie, 
 and by reason must receive the like ye offer, and so be contented to 
 bide the end willinglie which set on the beginning willfuUie. 
 » * * * 
 
 Thus the whole countrie lacking the good opinion of other nations, 
 is cast into great shame by your vnrulinesse, and the proceedings of the 
 countrie, be they neuer so godlie, shall be ill spoken of, as vnfit to be 
 brought into vse ; and good things hereby that deserue praise, shall 
 bide the rebuke of them that list to speake ill, and ill things vntouohed 
 shall be boldlier mainteined. 
 
 * » • • 
 
 And with what dutie or vertue in ye, can ye quench out of memorie 
 this foule enterprise, or gather a good report againe to this realme, who 
 haue so vilelie with reproch slandered the same, and diuerslie discre- 
 dited it among others, and abated the good opinion which was had of the 
 iust gouernement and ruled order vsed heretofore in ihis noble realme, 
 which is now most grieuous, bicause it is now most without cause. 
 
 If this outward opinion (without further inconuenience) were all, yet 
 it might well be borne, and would with ease decaie as it grewe : but it 
 hath not onlie hurt vs with voice, but indangered vs in d6ed, and cast. 
 
524 THE EEFOEMATION AND CLASSICAL LEAKNINd Lect. XL 
 
 vs a great deale behind the hand, where else we might haue had a 
 iollie foredeale. For that opportunitie of time which seldome clianceth, 
 and is alwaies to bee taken, hath b^ene by j^our froward meanes lost 
 this yeare, and so vainlie spent at home for bringing downe of you, 
 which should else pi'ofitablie haue beene otherwise bestowed, that it 
 hath beene almost as great a, losse to vs abrode, to lacke that we might 
 haue obteined, as it was combrance at home to go about the ouerthrow 
 of you, whose sedition is to be abhorred. And we might both con- 
 iienientlie ■ haue inuaded some, if they would not reasonablie haue 
 growne to some kind of friendship, and also defended others which 
 would beside promise for times sake vniustlie set upon vs, and easllie 
 haue made this stormie time a faire yeare vnto vs, if our men had 
 beene so happie at home, as our likelihood abrode was fortunat. 
 
 The Eeformation, at first, gave a stimulus to the study of 
 Latia as the universal speech of science and of philosophical 
 and religious discussion, and of Greek as the language in which 
 the New Testament — if not originally written in that tongue — • 
 had at least come down from the primitive ages of Christianity. 
 But the attention of the learned was soon drawn from the 
 secular literature of Greece and Eome and absorbed in theo- 
 logical and scholastic casuistry; and finally a superstitious 
 distrust of the tendency of profane scholarship succeeded to the 
 admiration with which the classical authors had been so recently 
 regarded. The dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII, 
 broke up some schools, and numbers of the Greek and Latin 
 manuscripts preserved in the conventual libraries were de- 
 stroyed — sometimes in the blind fury of a popular outbreak, 
 and sometimes by the monks themselves, who preferred burning 
 their books to allowing them to pass into the hands of the here- 
 tics. Hence the cause of classical learning sustained a check in 
 England, and the study can hardly be said to have fairly re- 
 vived until the reign of Elizabeth, who was herself a good Greek 
 and Latin scholar. 
 
 This short interruption, so far from proving- injurious to the 
 improvement of the English language, was rather a benefit to 
 it ; for it put a temporary stop to the influx of Latin words, 
 
Lect. XI. MYSTERIES AND MOBALITIES 525 
 
 which -were threatening to overwhelm the Anglo-Saxon vocabu- 
 lary, and before the study of Grreek and Latin came again into 
 vogue, English had gathered strength enough and received suffi- 
 cient polish and culture to be able to sustain itself as a literary 
 dialect against the encroachments of ancient or foreign philo- 
 logies. 
 
 About the close of the first third of this century, John 
 Heywood introduced a new species, if not a new genus of lite- 
 rature — the comedy. The comedy is distinguished from the 
 Mysteries, Moralities, Interludes, and other histrionic exhibi- 
 tions which had preceded it, by devoting itself to the repre- 
 sentation of popular manners and of scenes from familiar life. 
 The Mysteries were properly theological, the Moralities ethical, 
 in aim, and professedly in tone. The characters were either 
 taken from sacred history or they were allegorical personifica- 
 tions of virtues and vices. To draw an exact line between 
 them, or between either of them and later forms of theatrical 
 representation, is impossible, because they belong to uncritical 
 ages, when authors themselves had no clear notions of the prin- 
 ciples of imaginative literature, or of the boundaries by which 
 truth to nature requires us to divide its different branches ; and 
 what they confounded in practice, it is idle for us to attempt to 
 separate in theory. 
 
 These ancient scenic entertainments were often intermixed 
 with buffoonery and burlesque, or with incidents and dialogue 
 of a graver character, sometimes approximating closely to the 
 incidents and sentiments of real life. They therefore prepared 
 the way for the reception and the composition of both comedy 
 and trao-edy — for the entire drama, in short — and this branch 
 of English literature is more indebted to these rude essays for 
 its special character than to the influence of the classic stage. 
 
 I oufht here to notice certain important formal and substan- 
 tial distinctions between the English drama and that of the 
 Continent in general, the French especially, which latter shows 
 much more strongly the influence of classic models, and of the 
 
526 THE ENGLISH DEAMA Lect. XL 
 
 traditions belonging to the scenic representations of tlie middle 
 ages. In form, the English writers have usually disregarded 
 the unities of time and place to which the French so strictly 
 adhere, and in action and tendency, they have a less distinctly 
 avowed, though not less real, moral and didactic character. 
 , The comedies of Moli^re, for instance, are professedly designed 
 to satirize, each some one prevalent vice or folly; and every 
 play is as conspicuously marked and labelled as the phials of an 
 apothecary's shop ; so that the moral patient is always informed 
 beforehand what malady the medicine is intended to cure, and 
 what drug he is about to swallow. The moral of the English 
 comedy is not thus ostentatiously displayed, nor, in the highest 
 examples of that species of composition, is the purpose of the 
 dramatist Kmited to the exposure and castigation of a single 
 weakness or a single wrong. 
 
 And herein, as in all else, the Shakespearian drama is in- 
 iinitely more true to nature than all other schools. Providence 
 and nature indeed are great moral teachers, but their lessons are 
 neither ticketed nor announced in advance ; nor are they single, 
 or observant of the stage proprieties of time or place. A man 
 is not born, and bred, and trained up, and sent out into the 
 world, with a retinue of dramatis personae, for no other purpose 
 than to show forth, by his example, tiie excellence of virtue, or, 
 by his punishment or disgrace, the evils of ambition and avarice, 
 the folly of pride or the absurdities of fashion and social con- 
 ventionalism ; for even the Deity does not employ persons solely 
 as means to an end. We are all here for a multitude of pur- 
 poses, individual to ourselves or common to our fellow-men, 
 and none is sent hither only as a model or as a Avarning. The 
 lessons of the world are incidental, not formal or specific ; and 
 that great humanity, from which we are to learn how to solve the 
 problems of social life, is a wise teacher indeed, but no pedant. 
 
 The plays of Heywood, to borrow the words of Wharton, ' are 
 destitute of plot, humour, or character' — certainly very essential 
 ingredients in true comedy. Hence, they ai-e of no intrinsic 
 
Lect. Xr. JOHN H2TW00D 527 
 
 importance, and their literary interest is only that which attaches 
 to all distinctly characterized first essays in every branch of 
 composition. They are valuable, not as models, but only as the 
 first cleaxly recognized specimens of their kind, and as marking 
 a period of transition and of a new creation in dramatic avt. 
 They have, too, a philological interest and value, but this will 
 be more appropriately considered in connection with the diction 
 of the later English dramatists, who, by a short interval, pre- 
 ceded Shakespeare. 
 
 In any general view of English literature, a notice of the ballad 
 poetry is indispensable ; but in a course devoted chiefly to the 
 philology of our tongue, this branch of our poetry must occupy 
 a very subordinate place, because the diction of the ballads 
 does not appear truly to represent either the colloquial language 
 of their own periods, or the literary dialect, as exhibited in any 
 other form of prose or poetical composition. It is therefore to 
 be reo'arded as a special nomenclature rather than as a part of 
 the general language of England. The English ballads are 
 usually of moderate merit, and they seem to have been com- 
 posed by and for persons of a low grade of culture. There are 
 indeed many very strildng exceptions to this latter remark, but 
 in these cases, the dialect rises at once above the level of that of 
 the ordinary ballad poetry, assimilates itself to the diction of 
 other poetical writings, aad is hardly distinguishable from them 
 in either vocabulary or inflection. 
 
 The singular grammatical forms of many English ballads 
 seem to be mere ignorant corruptions, or unwarrantable licenses 
 of inferior rhymsters, and they can never be cited as authorities 
 in philological discussion. The Scottish ballads are in general 
 superior to the English, and it is highly probable that they 
 derive many of their literary as well as their dialectic peculiari- 
 ties from the songs of the Scandinavian bards, whose popular 
 ballads are generally of a higher rank than those of the English 
 or of any other of the Northern nations. The Scottish resemble 
 tlie Scandinavian ballads both in form and in diction, and some 
 
528 OLD ENGLISH BALLADS LeCT. XL 
 
 Northern words and forms occur in them, of which it would not 
 be easy to produce examples in other branches of literature. 
 
 The individual peculiarities of dialect which mark these per- 
 formances are too numerous to be noticed in detail, but I may 
 observe in general, that the conjugations of the verbs seem to 
 be almost arbitrarily varied, and the writers often fail to dis- 
 tinguish between the radical and the servile, or so to speak 
 accidental, parts of words. 
 
 Besides this, there is, as to most of them, a total uncertainty 
 with respect to their local origin and their date, and therefore 
 we can assign them to no dialectic class, no definite period, in 
 the history of the language. In spite, therefore, of the beauty, 
 the psychological, and even the historical interest of many of 
 these productions, they must be excluded from the rank of 
 influences or of landmarks in our philological annals.* 
 
 LONGER NOTES AND ILLUSTEATIONS. 
 I. 
 
 SIK THOMAS MORe's LtFE OF RICHAKD III. 
 
 As I have observed in my former Series of Lectures, Appendix, 
 p. 388, the coalescent forms asaued and afled occur in Hardynge's text 
 of More's Life of Richard III., p. 547, reprint of 1812. The passage 
 is probably an addition by Grafton, as it is not found in RastelJ's 
 edition. It would seem not likely that so learned a man as More would 
 have employed such incorrect expressions ; but, nevertheless, a case of 
 coalescence is found in the edition of Rastell just referred to, and it is 
 possible that it is one of many which the original manuscript contained, 
 and which the editor had resolved into their elements. It is this: 
 ' This deuise all be it that it made the matter to wise men more un- 
 lykely, well perceyuyng that the iutendours of suche a purpose wolde 
 
 * I cannot dismiss the subject of ballads -without dramng the attention of my 
 readera to the admirable and very complete collection of English and ScottisH 
 ballads, in eight volumes, edited by Professor F. J. Child, of Harvard University. 
 Great care has been exercised in the selection of the most authoritative texts, and 
 they are illu>trated with a profusion of folk-lore, -which, -with the ballads, make* 
 the work a true encyolopaidia of popular song. 
 
Lect. XI. MORE's life of RICHARD III. 529 
 
 father liaue tadde tlieyr barneys on theyr backes than taue bounde 
 them Tippe in bavrelles' &c. — Workes of Sir Thomas More, p. 45, E. 
 
 On pages 52, 66 and 67 of Rastell's edition, are inserted long passages, 
 which, according to the marginal note, were ' not written by Master 
 More in this history by him writte in English, but are translated out of 
 this history which he wrote in Laten.' The orthography of these 
 passages is not distinguishable from that of the rest of the work, nor 
 indeed would it be easy to point out any special differences, in syntax 
 or diction, between what is declared to be More's composition, and 
 what is, apparently, llastell's translation. But between 1513 and 1557 
 very considerable changes had taken place in the spelling and the 
 phraseological combinations of English, and it is hence fairly to be 
 inferred that the editor, according to the custom of the time, had con- 
 formed the orthography and the grammar of More's original manuscript 
 to later usage. 
 
 Holinshed incorporated this life into his chronicle, and in the edition 
 of 1586 it is professedly printed 'according to a copie of his [More's] 
 owne hande, printed among his other Works.' This of course refers to 
 Easfell's edition ; but the editor modernizes Rastell's text, as Rastell, 
 no doubt, had done with j\lore's oiiginal. In my former Series of 
 Lectures, XXVI., p. 584, I have noticed the distinction between sith 
 and since as having arisen while those between the two affirmative and 
 between the two negative particles were passing away. Sir Thomas 
 More, according to the edition of 1657, generally employs sith as an 
 illative, siiice as an adverb or preposition of time ; but the distinction is 
 so often disregarded, that it is evident it had not become fully established 
 in his time, or in that of his editor. Thus on p. 50, H, in a passage 
 translated by Rastell, sith, but, two lines lower, in More's text, sins, are 
 illiitives; and siris is employed in the same way, pp. 64, H, 186, H, 
 and elsewhere. On the other hand, sith is a time-word, p. 223, D, 
 1427, C, and in other passages. The cases of the use of sins as an 
 illative on pp. 50 and 64 occur in the Life of Richard III., and in both 
 instances, the Holinshed of 1586, reprinted in 1808, has sith. The 
 loo-ical distinction between since and sith, as respectively expressive of 
 sequence and consequence, had now become clearly recognized, and 
 Holinslied modernized his author accordingly. 
 
 In fact, not only is the orthography of Rastell very greatly changed 
 in Holin.shed, but rhetoric and grammar are, in numerous instances, 
 accommodated to the taste or critical opinions of the later editor. Thus, 
 in the first paragraph, Rastell has : ' Kyng Edwarde of that name the 
 fourth • ' Holinshed : ' King Edward the fourth of that name; ' Rastell; 
 
 U M 
 
530 TTNDALE Lect. XL 
 
 * Edwarde the Piynce, a thirtene yeare of age ; ' Holinshed : ' Edward 
 tlje prince, a thirteene yeares of age.' 
 
 More's manuscript being no longer in existence, we cannot presume 
 to say how far Eastell corrected it ; but if he did not make very con- 
 siderable alterations, he must have been, for his time, the most con- 
 scientious of editors. I regret that I have not been able to institute 
 a comparison between Eastell and the original editions of More's con- 
 troversial writings, as this would furnish a means of judging how nearly 
 his text of the Life conforms to the manuscript. 
 
 Note. — Since my manuscript was sent to press, I have had an oppor- 
 tunity of comparing the original edition of More's Apology; printed by 
 Eastell in 1533, with the text given by the same publisher in his 
 edition of More's complete English works, printed in 1557. As we 
 might expect in the repetition of a work by the same press, the 
 differences between the two texts are, in general, orthrgraphical 
 merely, such, for example, as the spelling, e;/e, eyen, muclie, fearde 
 in the later, for the yie, yien, myche, ferd, of the former edition, and I 
 have not observed any instance of a change in grammatical construc- 
 tion, or of the substitution of a different word, in the text of 1557. 
 
 With respect to sith and since, I note that in the Apology sith is used 
 as an illative between fifty and sixty times, as a time- word twice, folios 
 76 and 110, edition of 1533, while since (synnys, synne, synnes,) 
 occurs, always as a time-word, on folios 77, 84, 106, 148, 199, 202, 
 203, 210, 214, 232 and 243. 
 
 II. 
 
 Matthew's gospel chapter viii. from ttndale. 
 
 1 When Jesus was come downe from the mountayne, moch' people 
 folowed him. 
 
 2 And lo, there cam a lepre, and worsheped him saynge, Master, if 
 thou wylt, thou canst make me clene. 
 
 3 He putt forthe his bond and touched him saynge : I will, be clene, 
 and immediatly his leprosy was clensed. 
 
 4 And Jesus said vnto him. Se thou tell no man, but go and shews 
 thysilf to the preste and offer the gyfte, that Moses commaunded to be 
 offred, in witnes to them. 
 
 5 When Jesus was entred in to Capernaum, there cam vnto him a 
 certayne Centurion, besechyng him 
 
 6 And saynge : Master, my servaunt lyeth sicke att home off the 
 palsye, and is grevously payned, 
 
Lect. XI. TTNDALE 531 
 
 7 And Jesvis sayd vnto him. I -will come and cure him. 
 
 8 The Centurion answered and saide : Syr I am not worthy that 
 thou shuldest com vnder the rofe of my housse, but speake the worde 
 only and my servaunt shalbe healed. 
 
 9 For y also my selfe am a man vndre power, and have sowdeeres 
 Tndre me, and y saye to one, go, and he goeth : and to anothre, come, 
 and he cometh : and to my servarmt, do tliis, and he doeth it. 
 
 10 When Jesus herde these taynges: he maiveyled, and said to 
 them that folowed him : Verely y say ynto you, I have not founde so 
 great fayth : no, not in Israeli. = 
 
 11 I say therfore vnto you, that many shall come from the eest and 
 •weest, and shall rest with Abraham, Ysaac and Jacob, in the kyngdom. 
 of heven : 
 
 12 And the childi'en of the kingdom shalbe cast out in to the 
 vtmoost dercknes, there shalbe wepinge and gnasshing of tethe. 
 
 13 Then Jesus said vnto the Centurion, go thy waye, and as thou 
 hast believed so be it vnto the. And his servaunt was healed that 
 same houre. 
 
 14 And Jesus went into Peters housse, and saw his wyves mother 
 lyinge sicke of a fevre, 
 
 15 And he thouched her hande, and the fevre leeft her; and she 
 arose, and ministred vnto them. 
 
 16 When the even was come they brovight vnto him many that 
 were possessed with devylles, And he cast out the spirites with a word, 
 and healed all that were sicke, 
 
 17 To fulfill that whiche was spoken by Esay the prophet sainge: 
 He toke on him oure infirmytes, and bare cure sicknesses. 
 
 18 When Jesus saw moche people about him, he commaunded to 
 go over the water. 
 
 19 And there cam a scribe and said vnto him : master, I woll folowe 
 the whythersumever thou goest. 
 
 20 And Jesus said vnto him : the foxes have holes, and the byrddes 
 of the aier have nestes, but the sonne of man hath not whereon to leye 
 Lis heede : 
 
 21 Anothre that was one of hys disciples seyd vnto him : master 
 sufTre me fyrst to go and burye my fiither. 
 
 22 But Jesus said vnto him : folowe me, and let the deed burie 
 their deed. 
 
 23 And he entred in to a shyppe, and his disciples folowed him, 
 
 24 And lo there arose a greate srorme in the see, in so moche, that 
 the shippe was hyd with waves, and he was aslope. 
 
532 SIR JOBS CHEKE Lect. XL 
 
 25 And his disciples cam vnto tim, and awolte Him, sayinge: 
 master, save us, we perislie. 
 
 26 And lie said vnto tlieni : why are ye fearfuU, o ye endewed -nifk 
 lytell faithe ? Then he arose, and rebuked the wyndes and the see, 
 and there foiowed a greate calme. 
 
 27 And men naai-vejled and said: what man is this, that bothe 
 wyndes and see obey him ? 
 
 28 And when he was come to the other syde, in to the countre off 
 the gergessns, there met him two possessed of devylls, which cam out 
 of]Pthe graves, and were out off measure fearce, so that no man mygh* 
 go by that waye. 
 
 29 And lo they cryed out saynge : O Jesu the sonne off God, what 
 have we to do with the? art thou come hyther to torment vs before the 
 tyme [be come] ? 
 
 30 There was a good waye off from them a greate heerd of swyne 
 fedinge. 
 
 31 Then the devyls besought him isaynge.: if thou cast vs out, 
 suffre vs to go oure waye into the heerd of swyne. 
 
 32 And he said vnto them : go youre wayes: Then went they out, 
 and departed into the heerd of swyne. And lo, all the heerd of swyne 
 was caryed with violence hedlinge into the see, and perisshed in the 
 water. 
 
 33 Then the heerdmen fleed, and went there ways into the cite, and 
 tolde every thinge, and what had fortuned vnto them that were possessed 
 of the devyls. 
 
 34 And lo, all the cite cam out, and met Jesus. And when they 
 sawe him they besought him, to depart out off there costes. 
 
 III. 
 
 SIR JOHN -CHEKe's translation OF MATTHEW VIII. 
 
 And when he cam from y' hil y^''' folowd him a greet companj of 
 men, and lo 4 leper stood, and boud himself to him' and said L if jow 
 wilt yow maist clens me, And Jesus stretched forth his hand, and 
 touched him and said. J wil. be thow clensed. And bi and bi his 
 lepernes was clensed. And Jesus said vnto him, look J'ow tel no man. 
 But go y "wais schew yself to y^ priest. And offer y* gift which Moses 
 comanded to be given y* y^' might beer witness yeerof 
 
 As Jesus cam into Capernaum, yeer cam an hunderder vnto him and 
 ■eued vnto him on this sort. Sir mi servant^ lieth sick in mi house of 
 
 ' TTfioaeKvygi, * iraTfi. 
 
Ijsct. XI. SIH JOHN CHEKB 533, 
 
 y« pakej, grevotisli tormented. And Jesus said vnto him. I wil come 
 and heel him. And y* hiinderder answerd him with y<^^s wordes. Sir 
 J am not a fit man ivhoos liouse ye schold enter. S;u ye onh' y^ word 
 and mi servant' schal be heeled. For I am a man vnder y« power of 
 oyer, and have soldiei-s vnderneth me, and J sal to y^ soldier go and 
 he goeth, and to an other com and he cometh, and to mi servant do y^ 
 and he doth it. Jesus heering y« mai-velled and ssiid to y^™ y' folowed 
 him. Trull J sai vnto jow, J have not found so gieet faith no not in 
 JarL But J sai vnto yow y' mani schal earn froBi y° Est, and y* West, 
 and schal be set with Abraham Jsaak and Jacob in y" kingdoom of 
 heaven, but y'' childern of y^ kingdoom schal be thrown in to outward 
 daa-knes, yeer schal be weping and gnasching of teth. And Jesus said 
 to y^ hunderder, go y wais and as yow beleved.st, so be it vnto y". And 
 Lis servant was heeled even in y^ saam howr. 
 
 And Jesus cam in to Peters hous, and saw his moother in law laid 
 down and sick of y^ axess,* and he touched her bi y^ hand and y^ aj^es 
 left her, and sche roos and served them. 
 
 And late in y* evening y^' brought him mani y' was develled, and 
 with his word he cast out y= sprits, and healed al y' weer il at ease, y' 
 Jsaie y= pOpheets wordes which he sptiak might be fulfilled. He hath 
 taken our weaknes on him, and hath born our sickness. 
 
 And Jesus seing much resort about him comanded j'em to go to ;ye 
 fur side of y* water. And on of y^ Scribes cam and said vnto him. 
 Master J wil folow y" whiyersoever yow goost. and Jesus said vnto 
 him. Foxes hath dens, and j^ birds of y'aier hath nests, but y" son of 
 man hath not wheer he mai lai his hed. 
 
 And an oyer of his disciples said vnto him. Sir suffer me first to 
 depart, and buri mi ikyer. And Jesus said vnto him folow me and let 
 y* deed buri yeer deed. 
 
 And after he entered into & boot' his discipils'' folowed him, and lo 
 yeer was a greet stoorm on y^ see, in so much y' y® boot was coverd 
 with y* waves. He slept. And his discipils came and raised him, and 
 said. L. save vs we perisch. And he said vnto yem, ye smalfaithd 
 whi be ye aferd. yen he roos and rebuked y^ windes and y= see, and 
 yeer was a gi-eat calm. Biit y^ men yeer marveled and saied. What 
 maner of man is y"^ y* winds and see obej him. 
 
 And after he was come en y* other side into y' gergeseens contree, 
 y""" metfc him ij develds, coming forth from y= graves, veri fiers men,* 
 60 y' no man cold pas y* wai, and lo y^' cried and said, what haav we 
 
634 Sm JOHM CHEKE Lect. XI. 
 
 to do with y* Jesus yow son of god. Camest yow hither afoor hand to 
 torment vs. And yeer was a good wai from y^™ an herd of mani swijn 
 feeding. And y' devels desird him saieng. Jf yow cast vs forth suffer 
 vs to go into y^^ heard of swijn. And he bad y''™ goo. And y'* went 
 forth, and went into y° herd of swijn. And lo y* hool heerd of swijn 
 set on ' y^*"^ wai bi an hedlong place ■^ in t6 y" see, and died in y^ waters. 
 And y^ swijnherds fled and came into citee, and told y=™ y^' hool 
 matter, and what taking y® dovelleds weer in. And loo y« hool cittee 
 cam forth and met Jesus, and after y'' had seen him y'^ desii'ed him y* 
 
 eer 
 
 he wold depart out of ^ooa coosts. 
 
 ' Hpfiiiat. ' Kara tov Kpti/tfoi 
 
LECTURE Xn. 
 
 THK ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE DURING THE 
 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. 
 
 The Mirrour for Magistrates, to which Wavton devotes much 
 more space, and ascribes more importance than it merits, was 
 the first conspicuous work that appeared after the accession of 
 Elizabeth, and was moreover the most voluminous production 
 in English poetry between the time of Lydgate and that of 
 Spenser. It was the work of several different writers ; but only 
 one of them, Sackville, better known as the author of G-orbodue, 
 exhibits any real poetical power. 
 
 The general plan of the work is an imitation of Boccaccio's 
 De Gasibus Frincipum, which, as I have mentioned, was made 
 by Lydgate the groundwork of his Fall of Princes ; but the 
 personages in the Mirrour for Magistrates all belong to English 
 history, and the narrative part, of the poem is little else than a 
 rhymed chronicle, designed to include all the tragical events 
 known to have happened to persons distinguished in the annals 
 of England. 
 
 The prologue by Sackville, or Induction as he calls it, is not 
 destitute of invention, and the versification is smooth and flow- 
 ing ; but, both in this respect and in its allegorical representa- 
 tions, it is so far inferior to Spenser, that it has been deservedly 
 eclipsed by that great author. Nor does this work possess 
 much philological value, for it exhibits few marks of progress 
 or change in the language. In this latter particular, it is more 
 archaic than Surrey and Wyatt, who preceded it by a generation. 
 
536 STANIHURST Lect. XII. 
 
 The e final is sometimes articulated in the possessive, though 
 otherwise silent, as : 
 
 With Nighte's starres thick powdred evei-y where. 
 
 This is a point of some interest, because it helps to explain a 
 grammatical corruption, which about this time became almost 
 universal — the employment of the personal pronoun his as the 
 sign of the possessive case. 
 
 A remnant of the old Anglo-Saxon gerundial, in its passive 
 signification, sometimes occurs, as : 
 
 The soile that earst so seemly was to seen, 
 
 seen being here used passively, instead of our modern form to 
 be seen. In this case, however, seen is not a participle, but has 
 the force of a true passive infinitive or gerundial. 
 
 Sackville is the principal, if not the sole, author of a more 
 important work, which has been published both under the title 
 of Gorboduc and of Ferrex and Porrex. This is remarkable as 
 being the first regular tragedy in the English language, though 
 constructed in many respects upon very different principles 
 ftom the modern tragedy. The most noticeable feature of its 
 form is the introduction of what was called the ' dumb show,' 
 an allegorical pantomimic chorus, at the beginning of each act, 
 and of a regular vocal chorus at the end of each except the last. 
 The use of the former seems to have been to fill up the space 
 between the acts with something which vshould serve to render 
 less abrupt the change of time and place ; for the unities are 
 not observed in the play, and Sackville evidently thought that 
 this departure from the canons of the classic stage ought to be 
 in some way compensated. 
 
 The rule of unity of time and place had really no higher 
 origin than the mechanical difficulties of scene-shifting on the 
 primitive stage. It is fortunate for dramatic truth that modern 
 artists have been wise enough to rise above so arbitrary a pre- 
 Bcription. Life and nature exhibit no man's whole character. 
 
tECT. Xn. STANIHURST 537 
 
 develope and illustrate no master passion, in a single day, or 
 upon a single scene. In the moral and intellectual, as in the 
 physical world, time is an essential element. The events which 
 subdue or aggravate our native propensities produce no imme- 
 diate and appreciable effects upon character. Moral results are 
 slowly unfolded, and can be seen and appreciated only by the^ 
 alternate lights and shades of differently combined circum- 
 stances and varied impulses. Nature does not upheave and shape 
 a continent at one throe, and even chemical affinity forms no 
 instantaneous combinations of multiplied ingredients. Both the 
 formation and the knowledge of character are gradual and slow. 
 We know and appreciate a man only by continued observation, 
 under different conditions of time and place and circumstance ; 
 and the characters of a drama can best be revealed, in all their 
 completeness, only by changes of outward surroundings, and a 
 succession of events, the occurrence of which at one place and 
 one time implies a greater violation of the truth of life than is 
 involved in the shifting of a scene, or the supposition that days, 
 or weeks, or years intervene between acts of the drama which, 
 upon the stage, are separated by an interval of but a few 
 moments. 
 
 I have mentioned that Lord Bemers's translation of Froissart 
 ■was followed by the appearance of several original English 
 chronicles, generally of slender literary merit ; but the period 
 we are now considering gave birth to a work of much greater 
 importance, both in an historical and in a philological point of 
 view. I refer to the Chronicle of Holinshed, which, as well as 
 those of Hall and other early annalists, was diligently studied 
 by Shakespeare, and must have influenced his style, as well as 
 furnished him with historical and biographical facts. Holin- 
 shed's history of England is a compilation fronr various authors, 
 some of earlier date, and some writing expressly for this under- 
 taking. There is, therefore, naturally a great diversity and 
 inequality of style and of literary merit. In these respects, 
 few parts of Holinshed come up to the Life of Bichard III., 
 
538 STAHIHUBST Lect. XIL 
 
 ascribed to More, still fewer to Cheke's Hurt of Sedition. The 
 range of subjects discussed in this compilation is great; for the 
 work attempts the natural, and partially the literary, history of 
 England, as well as its political and its martial annals. The 
 multiplicity of topics treated required a corresponding extent 
 and variety of diction, and therefore this chronicle, in its several 
 parts, constituted much the most complete and comprehensive 
 repository of the English tongue which had yet appeared. It 
 is hence of great value, as an exhibition of the full resources of 
 the language of prose in the middle of Queen Elizabeth's reign. 
 The most curious, and, to the lexicographer at least, the most 
 important part of this collection, is the description and history 
 of Ireland by Eichard Stanihurst, contained in the sixth volume 
 of the edition of 1808. Stanihurst was a literary coxcomb, who 
 had a high and apparently a well-merited reputation for learn- 
 ing, bat who did not succeed in impressing his contemporaries 
 with much respect for his abilities as an original writer, or even 
 as a translator; for, like most of the literati of his time, he 
 attempted the difficult problem of rendering the beauties of 
 classic poetry in modern verse. He published a version of the 
 first four books of Virgil's ^neid in hexameters, but does not 
 seem to have found encouragement in public favour to prosecute 
 the work. Nashe, as quoted by Warton, observes that ' Stany- 
 hurst, the otherwise learned, trod a foul, lumbring, boisterous, 
 wallowing measure in his translation of Virgil.' The reader 
 will not find in the following specimen, which I take from 
 Warton, much cause to dissent from this opinion : — 
 
 With tentiue listning each wight was setled in harkning ; 
 Then father jEneas chronicled from loftie bed hautie : 
 You bid me, O princesse, to scarifie a festerd old sore, 
 Now that the Troians were prest by the Grecian annie. 
 
 Warton adds, ' With all this foolish pedantry, Stanyhurst was 
 certainly a scholar. But in this translation he calls Chorebus, 
 one of the Trojan chiefs, a bedla/mite ; he says that old Priam 
 
LrCT. XII. STANIHUItST 539 
 
 girded on his swovd Morglay,* the name of a sword in the 
 Gothic romances ; that Dido would have been glad to have been 
 brought to bed even of a cockney, a DancUprat liopthumh; and 
 that Jupiter, in kissing his daughter, hust his pretty prating 
 pcm-oV The same critic quotes these lines from a piece of 
 Stanilmrst's called 'An Epitaph against rhyme,' the object of 
 which, I suppose, was to illustrate, by example, the great supe- 
 riority of the hexameter to the more modern measures, and the 
 advantages of combining the two systems: — 
 
 A Sara for goodnesse, a great Bellona for budgenesse, 
 
 For myldnesse Anna, for chastitye godlye Susanna. 
 
 Hester in a good shift, a ludith stoute at a dead lift : 
 
 Also lulietta, with Dido rich Cleopatra : 
 
 With sundrie namelesse, and women many more blamelesse, &c. 
 
 Stanihurst flourished in that brief period of philological and 
 literary affectation which for a time threatened the language, 
 the poetry, and even the prose of England with a degradation 
 as complete as that of the speech and the Kterature of the last 
 age of imperial Eome. This quality of style appears in its 
 most offensive form in the nauseous rhymes of Skelton, in its 
 most elegant in Lillie, in its most quaint and ludicrous in 
 Stanihurst. Spenser and Shakespeare were the Dei ex machina 
 who checked the ravages of this epidemic ; but it still showed 
 virulent symptoms in Sylvester, and the st3'le of glorious Fuller 
 and of gorgeous Browne is tinted with a glow which is all the 
 more attractive becarse it is recognised as the flush of convales- 
 cence from what had been a dangerous malady. 
 
 Stanihurst's dedication of his history to ' Sir Henrie Sidneie, 
 Lord Deputie Generr.U of Ireland,' is characteristic : — 
 
 My verie good Lord, there haue beene diuerse of late, that with no 
 small toile, and great commendation, haue throiighlie imploied them- 
 seluea in culhng and packing togither the scrapings and fragments of 
 
 * "Warton seems to have overlooked the ohvious etymology of this nama^ 
 which is Bomance, not Gothic, it being a compound of mort and glaive. 
 
640 STANIHFEST Lect. XI I, 
 
 the historie of Ireland. Among wliicli crue, vaj fast friend, and inward ; 
 companion, maister Edmund Campion did so learnedlie bequite him- 
 selfe, in tine penning of certeine breefe notes, concerning that countrie, 
 as certes it was greatlie to be lamented, that either his theame had not 
 beene shorter, or else his leasure had not beene longer. For if Alexan- 
 der were so rauisht with Homer his histoi-ie, that notwithstanding 
 Thersites were a crabbed and a nigged dwarfe, being in outward feature 
 so deformed, and in inward conditions so crooked, as he seemed to 
 stand to no better steed, than to lead apes in hell : yet the valiant cap- 
 teine, weighing how liuelie the golden poet hath set forth the (buglie 
 dandeprat\ in his colours, did sooner wish to be Homer his Thersites, 
 than to be the Alexander of that doltish rithmour, which vntertooke 
 with his woodden verses to blase his famous and martiall exploits: how 
 much more ought Ireland (being in sundi-ie ages seized of diuerse good 
 and coragious Alexanders) sore to long and thirst after so rare a clarke 
 as maister Campion, who was so vpright in conscience, so deepe in 
 iudgement, so ripe in eloquence, as the countrie might haue beene well 
 assured to haue had their historie trulie reported, pithilie handled, and 
 brauelie polished. 
 
 Howbeit although the glose of his fine abbridgment, being matcht 
 with other mens dooings, bare a surpassing kind of excellencie : yet it 
 was so hudled up in haste, as in respect of a Campion his absolute per- 
 fection, it seemed rather to be a woorke roughlie hewed, than smoothlie 
 planed. Vpon which ground the gentlemen being willing that his so 
 tender a suckling, hauing as yet but greene bones, should haue been 
 swadled and rockt in a cradle, till in ti-act of time the ioints thereof 
 were knit, and growen stronger : yet notwithstanding he was so crost 
 in the nicke of this determination, that his historie in mitching wise 
 wandred through sundrie hands, and being therewithal! in certeine places 
 somewhat tickle toonged (for maister Campion did leame it to speake) 
 and in other places ouor spare, it twitled more tales out of schoole, 
 and drowned weightier matters in silence, than the author (vpon better 
 view and longer search) would haue permitted. Thus much being by 
 the sager sort pondered, and the perfection of the historie earnestlie 
 desired : I, as one of the most that could doo least, was fully resolued 
 to inrich maister Campion his chronicle, with further additions. But 
 weighing on the other side, that my course packthred could not haue 
 beene sutablie knit with his fine silke, and what a disgrace it were, 
 bungerlie to botch vp a rich garment, by clouting it wich patches of 
 Bundrie colours, I was forthwith reclaimed from my former resolution, 
 reckoning it for better, that my pen should walke in such wise in that 
 
Lew. XII. STANIHrBST 541 
 
 craggie and balkisli waie, as the truth of the matter being forprised, 1 
 would neither openlie borrow, nor priuilie inibezell aught to anie great 
 purpose Irom his historie. But as I was hammering that worke by 
 stealths on the anuill, I w^as giuen to vnderstand by some of mine 
 acquaintance, that others had brought our raw historie to that ripe- 
 nesse, as my paine therein wiiuld seeme but needlesse. Wherevpon 
 being willing to be eased of the burden, and loath also in lurching wise 
 to forstall any man his trauell, I was contented to leue them thumping 
 in the forge, and quietlie to repaire to minevsuall and pristinat studies, 
 taking it not to stand with good maners, like a flittering flie to fall in 
 an other man his dish. Howbeit the little paine I tooke therein was 
 not so secretlie mewed within my closet, but it slipt out at one chinke 
 or other, and romed so ferre abroad, as it was whispered in their eares 
 who before were in the historie busied. The gentlemen conceiuing a 
 greater opinion of me than I was well able to vpliold, dealt verie effec- 
 tuallie with me, that as well at their instance, as for the affection I bare 
 my natiue countrie, I would put mine helping hand to the building 
 and perfecting of so commendable a worke. Hauing breathed tor a 
 few daies on this motion, albeit I knew that my worke was plumed 
 ■with downe, and at that time was not sufficientlie feathered to flio : yet 
 I was by them weied not to beare my selfe coy, by giuing my entier 
 friends in so reasonable a request a squemish repulse. Wherefore, my 
 sinoTilar good lord, hereis laid downe to your lordship his view a briefe 
 discourse, with [a, lagged historie of a ragged wealepublike. , Yet as 
 naked as at the first blush it seemeth, if it shall stand with your 
 honor his pleasure (whom I take to be an expert lapidarie) at vacant 
 houres to insearch it, you shall find therein stones of such estimation, 
 as are worth to be coucht in rich and pretious collars. And in especiall 
 your lordship, aboue all others, in that you haue the charge of that 
 countrie, maie here be schooled, by a right line to leueR your 
 gouernement For in perusing this historie, you shall find vice 
 punished, vertue rewarded, rebellion suppressed, loialtie exalted, 
 haughtinesse dishked, courtesie beloued, briberie detested, iustice im- 
 braced, polling officers to their perpetuall shame reprooued, and 
 vpright gouemours to their eternall fame extolled. And trulie to 
 my thinking such magistrals as meane to have a vigilant eie to their 
 charge, cannot bestow their time better, than when they sequester 
 themselues from the affaires of the wealepublike, to recreat and quicken 
 their spirits by reading the chronicles that decipher the gouernement of 
 B wealepublike. For as it is no small commendation for one to beare 
 the dooin<'s of manie, so it breedeth great admiration, generallie to haue 
 
542 STANIHUEST Lect. XII. 
 
 all those qimlities in one man harboured, for wlliche particularlie 
 dinei'se are eternised. And who so will be addicted to the reading of 
 histories, shall readilie find diuerse euents worthie to be remembered, 
 and snndrie sound examples dailie to be followed. fVpoii which ground 
 the learned haue, not without cause, adiudged an historic to be the 
 marrow of reason, the creame of experience, the sap of wisdome, the 
 pith of iudgement, the librarie of knowledge, the kemell of policie, 
 the vnfoldresse of treacherie, the kalender of time, the lanterne of 
 truth, the life of meraorie, the doctresse of behauiour, the register of 
 antiquitie, the trumpet of chiualrie. /And that our Irish historic being 
 diligentlie heeded, yeeldeth all these commodities, I trust the indifferent 
 reader, vpon the vntwining thereof, will not denie. But if anie man 
 his stomach shall be found so tenderlie niced, or bo deintilie spiced, as 
 that he male not, forsooth, digest the grosse draffe of so base a countrie, 
 I doubt not but your lordship, who is thoroughlie acquainted with the 
 woorthinesse of the Hand, will be soone persuaded to leaue such quaint 
 and licourous repastours, to feed on their costlie and delicate wood- 
 cooks, and willinglie to accept the louing present of your heartie wel- 
 willer. The gift is small, the giuer his good will is great : I stand in 
 good hope, that the greatnesse of the one will coimterpoise the smal- 
 nesse of the other. Wherefore that I male the sooner vnbroid the 
 pelfish trash that is wrapt within this treatise, I shalle craue your 
 lordship to lend me either your ears in hearing, or your eies in 
 reading the tenor of the discourse following. 
 
 I add the following passages from pp. 6, 7, for tte sake of 
 the odd speculations on language. It is noticeable that among 
 the words mentioned by Stanihurst, near the end of the extract, 
 as having been borrowed by the Irish from the English, are 
 coat and gown. These are two of the words cited by Davies as 
 sufficient proof to 'convict' the Englishman ' of belonging to a 
 race that partakes largely of Celtic blood.' I have no doubt 
 that Davies is an abler philologist than Stanihurst; but Stani- 
 hurst is good eyidence to show that these words were not 
 claimed as Celtic in Celtic Ireland iteelf, three hundred years 
 ago. 
 
 I find it solemnlle aduouched, aswell in some of the Irish pamphlets 
 as in Girald. Camb. that Gatlielus or Gaidelus, & after him Simon 
 Brecke, deuised the Irish language out of all other toongs then extant 
 
Lect. XII. STANIHUBST 543. 
 
 in the world. And thereof (saith Cambrensis) it is called Gaidelach, 
 partlie of Gaidelus the first founder, and partlie for that it is com- 
 ponnded of all languages. But considering the course of interchanging 
 and blending of speeches togither, not by innention of art, but by vse 
 of talke, I am rather led to beleeue (seeing Ireland was inhabited 
 within one yeare after the diuision of toongs) that Bastolenus, a branch 
 of Japhet, who first seized vpon Ireland, brought thither the same kind 
 of speech, some of the 72 that to this familie befell at the desolation of 
 Babell. Vnto whom succeeded the Scithians, Grecians, Egyptians, 
 Spaniards, Danes, of all which the toong must needs have borowed 
 part, but especiallie reteining the steps of Spanish then spoken in 
 Granado, as firom their mightiest ancestors. Since then to Henrie 
 Fitzempresse the conqueror no such inuasion happened them, as 
 whereby they might be driuen to infect their natiue language, vntouched 
 in manner for the space of seuenteene hundred yeares after the arriuall 
 of Iberius. It seemeth to borrow of the .Spanish the common phrase, 
 Commestato, that is, How doo you ? or how fareth it with you ? It 
 fetchetch sundrie words irom the Latine, as arget of Argentum, monie ; 
 salle of seel, salt ; cappouUe of Caballus, a plough horse, or (according 
 Tnto the old English terme) a caball or caple; birreat of the old 
 motheaten Latine word Birretum, a bonnet. The toong is sharpe and 
 sententious, & offereth great occasion to quicke apophthegms and 
 proper allusions. Wherefore their common iesters and rimers, whom 
 they terme Bard."!, are said to delight passinglie these that conceiue the 
 grace and propertie of the toong. But the true Irish indeed differeth 
 so much from that they commonlie speake, that scarse one in fiue 
 hundred can either read, write, or -frnderstand it. Therefore it is 
 preserued among certeine of their poets and antiquaries. And in verie 
 deed the language carrieth such difEoultie with it, what for the strauge- 
 nesse of the phrase, and the curious featnes of the pronuntiation, that a 
 verie few of the countrie can atteine to the perfection thereof, and much 
 lesse a forrener or stranger. 
 
 A gentleman of mine acquaintance reported, that he did see a woman 
 in Kome, which was possessed with a babling spirit, that could haue 
 chatted anie language sauing the Irish ; and that it was so difficult, as 
 the verie deueU was grauelled therewith. A gentleman that stood by 
 answered, that he tooke the speech to be so sacred and holie, that no 
 damned feend had the power to speake it ; no more than they are able 
 to saie (as the report goeth) the verse of saint John the eviangelist, ' Et 
 verbum caro factum est.' Naie by God his mercie man (quoth the 
 other) I stand in doubt (I teU you) whether the apostles in their 
 
544 STANIHUBST Lect. XII. 
 
 copious mart of languages at Jerusalem could Laue spolten Irish, if 
 they were apposed : whereat the companie heartilie laughed. As fluent 
 as the Irish toong is, yet it lacketh diuerse words, and borroweth them 
 verbatim of the English. As there is no vulgar Irish word (vnles.se 
 there be some od terme that lurketh in anie obscure shrowds or other 
 of their storehouse) for a cote, a gowne, a dublet, an hat, a drinking 
 cup : but onelie they vse the same words with a little inflexion. They 
 Tse also the contracted English phrase, God morrow, that is to saie, 
 God glue you a good morning. 
 
 The space I have devoted to Staniliurst may seem out of 
 proportion to his merits ; but I have dwelt upon him as perhaps 
 the most characteristic specimen of the very numerous, though 
 short-lived, class to which he belongs— a class which has 
 exercised a more important and, I must add, in the end bene- 
 ficial, influence on the English language than appears to have 
 been generally allowed. The straining after effect, which is so 
 visible in these writers, led them to employ the widest voca- 
 bulary within their reach, and to experiment upon all possible 
 combinations of words. Their extravagances were soon made 
 ridiculous by the purer style of the generation of authors which 
 immediately followed them, and while they were, but for a very 
 brief period, dangerous by the force of their example, their 
 affluence and variety of diction long served as a repository of 
 verbal wealth, wkich succeeding literature has largely drawn 
 upon. 
 
 I have spoken of the literary and philological affectation of 
 Stanihurst's time, as having assumed its most elegant form in 
 the works of Lillie, the Euphuist. Though the quality of style 
 called Euphuism has more or less prevailed in all later periods 
 of English literature, the name which designates it had become 
 almost obsolete and forgotten, until Scott revived it in his 
 character of Sir Piercie Shafton. The word is taken from 
 Euphues,* the name of the hero of a tale by John Lillie, the 
 first part of which is entitled Euphues, the anatomie of Wit ; 
 
 * The Greek iv(pv!!! means well- grown, symmetrical ; also clever, witty, and tliia 
 IB the sense in which Lillie applies it to his hero. 
 
Lect. Xn. EUPHUISM 545 
 
 the second, Enphues and tis England. It consists of the his- 
 tory and correspondence of a young Athenian, who, after 
 spending some time in Italy, visits England, in the year 1579; 
 and as this was the period when the author flourished, it was, 
 of course, a story of the time of its appearance. The plot is a 
 mere thread for an endless multitude of what were esteemed 
 fine sayings to he strimg upon, or, as Lillie himself expresses 
 it, ' fine phrases, smooth quips, merry taunts, jesting without 
 meane and mirth without measure.' The formal characteristics 
 of Euphuism are alliteration and verbal antithesis. Its rhe- 
 torical and intellectual traits will be better understood by an 
 example, than by a critical analysis. An extract from the 
 dedication of the second edition to the author's ' Very good 
 friends, the Gentlemen Scholars of Oxford,' may serve as a spe- 
 cimen. It is as follows : — 
 
 There is no privilege that needeth a /lardon, neither is there any 
 remission to be asked, where a commission is gi-anted. I speake this, 
 Gentlemen, not to excuse the o/Tence which is. taken, but to oiFer a 
 defence where I was mistaken. A cleare conscience is a sure card, truth 
 hath the prerogatiue to speake with plainnesse, and the modesty to heare 
 with patience. It was reported of some, and beleueed of many, that in 
 the education of Ephcebus, where mention is made of Uniuersities, that 
 Oxford was to much either Aefaced or defamed. I know not what the 
 enuious have picked out by malice, or the curious by wit, or the guilty 
 by their own galled consciences ; but this I say, that I was as farre from 
 thinking ill as I find them from iudging well. But if I should goe about 
 to make amends, I were then fault}- in somewhat amisse, and should shew 
 my selfe Uke Apelles Prentice, who coueting to mend the HOse marred 
 the neck ; and not vnlike the foolish Dier, who neuer thought his cloth 
 Slack vntU it was Jumed. If any fault be committed, impute it to 
 Euphues who knew you not, not to Lylie who hates you not. Yet I may 
 of all the rest most condemne Oxford of vnkindnesse, of vice I cannot, 
 vho seemed to weane me before she brought me forth, and to giue me 
 bones to gnaw before I could get the teat to suck. Wherein she plajed 
 the nice mother, in sending me into the Country to nurse, where I tyred 
 at a dry breast three yeeres, and was at the last enforced to wcane my 
 aeKe. But it was destiny, for if 1 had not bin gathered horn the tree 
 
 N N 
 
546 eiR PHILIP SIDNEY LecT. XII, 
 
 in the bud, I should being blowne haue proued a blast : and as good it 
 is to be an addle Egge, as an idle bird. 
 
 Euphues at his arriuall I am assured will view Oxford, where he 
 will either recant his sayings, or renue his complaints : he is now on 
 the seas ; and how he hath beene tossed I know not : but whereas I 
 thoiight to receiue him at Doner, I must meet him at Hampton. 
 Nothing can hinder his comming but death, neither anything hasten 
 his departure but vnkindnesse. 
 
 Concerning my selfe, I haue alwayes thought so reuerently of 
 Oxford, of the SchoUers, and of their manner, that I seemed to be 
 rather an Idolater than a blasphemer. They that inuented this toy 
 were vnwise, and they that reported it, rakind, and yet none of them 
 can proue me vnhonest. But suppose I glaunced at some abuses ; did 
 rot lupiters egge bring forth as well Helen a light huswife in earth 
 as Castor a bright starre in heauen? The Estrich that taketh the 
 greatest pride in her feathers, picked some blast : no countenance but 
 hath some blemish ; and shall Oxford then be blameless ? I wish it 
 were so, but I cannot think it is so. But as it is, it may be better : 
 and were it badder, it is not the worst. I thinke there are few Vni- 
 iiersities that haue Icsse faults than Oxford, many that haue more, none 
 biit haue some. But I commit my cause to the consciences of those 
 that either know what I am, or can guesse what I should be : the one 
 will answer themselues in construing friendly, the other if I knew them, 
 1 would satisfie reasonably. 
 
 Thus loth to incur the suspicion of vnkindnesse in not telling my 
 mind, and not willing to make any excuse where there needs no 
 amends, I can neither craue pardon, lest I should confesae a fault, nor 
 conceale my meaning, lest I should be thought a foole. And so I end 
 yours assured to use. 
 
 The success of Euphues was very great. The work was 
 Ion"- a vade-mecum with the fashionable world, and considered 
 a model of elegance in writing and the highest of authorities in 
 all matters of courtly and polished speech. It contains, with all 
 its affectations, a great multitude of acute observations, and just 
 and even profound thoughts; and it was these striking qualities, 
 not less than the tinwel of its style, which commended it to the 
 practical good sense of contemporary England. 
 
 The style of Sir Philip Sidney, one of the brightest ornaments 
 of the elegant prose literature of his day, is not a Uttle affected 
 
Lect. XIL SYLVESTER 547 
 
 by the prevalent taste for the conceits of euphuism, though he 
 introdxices them much less frequently than Lillie ; for they form 
 the staple of Lillie's diction, while they are but occasional 
 blemishes in that of Sidney. Sidney is, however, much less 
 dexterous and graceful in the use of alliteration, consonance, 
 and antithesis, than the gre. + improver, if not the inventor, of 
 this artificial style. With Sii. " 'lip, they are so laboured and 
 unnatural, as almost always to produce an appearance of clumsi- 
 ness and want of skill, rather than of mastery, in a trifling art ; 
 while from the pen of Lillie they flow as easily as if he could 
 speak no other dialect. 
 
 Sidney's tedious romance, the Arcadia, much admired when 
 first published, is now deservedly almost forgotten ; but his in- 
 genious and eloquent Defence of Poesy will always maintain a 
 high place in the aesthetieal literature of England. It is not 
 only an earnest and persuasive argument, but is, in style and 
 diction, the best secular prose yet written in England, and 
 indeed the earliest specimen of real critical talent in the lite- 
 rature. 
 
 The poems of Sidney, though relatively less remarkable than 
 the Defence of Poesy, and more frequently disfigured by trivial 
 conceits, are, nevertlieless, conspicuous for propriety and elegance 
 of language, and ease and grace of versification. Some of them 
 are in classic metres, but the best perhaps are those fashioned 
 after Italian models, and especially the sonnets. Eut the re- 
 semblance of these poems to those whose versification and stanza 
 they imitate is, as in the case of Surrey, formal merely; for 
 they are English, not Italian, in thought, and their diction has 
 borrowed nothing from the language of Italy. 
 
 The favour of the English public was next divided between 
 two authors, one of whom is now almost wholly forgotten, and 
 the other is, after a temporary olilivion, now again reviving and 
 recovering his just position as one of the greatest of English 
 poets. I refer to Sylvester, the translator of the works of Du 
 Bartas, a contemporary French writer, and to Spenser, the 
 
 M N 2 
 
548 SPENSEE Lect. XII. 
 
 author of tlie Faery Queene, the Shepherd's Calendar, and other 
 minor works. 
 
 The principal poem of Du Bartas, which is a history of the 
 Creation, was written in a snfEciently inflated style ; bnt this 
 was exaggerated by Sylvester, who added many peculiarities of 
 his own, such, among others, as compound, or rather agglutinated, 
 words made up of half a dozen radicals.* its poetical merit is 
 slender, but the translation is not without philological interest, 
 because it contains a considerable number of words and forms, 
 of which examples are hardly to be met with elsewhere, and 
 there are passages which serve as commentaries and explanations 
 of obscure expressions in Shakespeare, and other dramatic 
 authors of the time; It is, however, diflScult to understand how 
 an age that produced a Shakespeare could bestow such un- 
 bounded applause on a Du Bartas and a Sylvester. 
 
 Spenser was reproached in his own time with an excess of 
 archaisms ; but the real fault of his diction lies rather in the 
 use of forms and expressions which had become obsolete because 
 they deserved to perish, for which no good authority could be 
 cited, and which were, probably, unauthorized coinages of the 
 inferior poets from whom Spenser took them, or in many cases 
 perhaps licenses of his own. In the employment of words of 
 these classes, he is often far from happy, but in the mastery of 
 the true English of his time, in acute sensibility of ear and 
 exquisite skill in the musical arrang-ement of words, he has no 
 superior in the whole compass of English literature. 
 
 It does not come within my plan to criticise the allegory of 
 the Faery Queene, and indeed he must be a superstitious critic, 
 whom the defects of the plot, and its allegorical character, deter 
 from enjoying the endless beauties of detail with which this 
 most charming poem overflows. 
 
 The most striking peculiarity of Spenser's diction is analogous 
 to that which I have before mentioned as one of Chaucer's 
 greatest merits — a rare felicity in verbal combinations — and in 
 
 * See First Series, Lecture ix. p. 204. 
 
tEcr. xiL bacon's essatb 549 
 
 ^enser it chiefly consists in a very nice sense of congruity in 
 the choice and application of epithets. His adjectives not only 
 qualify the noun, but 'they are so adapted to it, that they 
 heighten or intensify its appropriate meaning ; and they are 
 often used with a reference to the radical sense of the noun, 
 ■which shows that Spenser knew how to press even etymology 
 into use as a means of the embellishment of poetical diction. 
 
 The Faery Queene is at present more studied, I believe, than 
 it was a century since ; but the Shepherd's Calendar, which is 
 less familiarly known, is full of most exquisite poetry, and the 
 minor wm-ks of Spenser are scarcely less interesting to the 
 reader of taste, and to the philologist, than his great allegorical 
 epic. 
 
 Most of lie works of Lord Bacon belong to the following 
 century, and therefore do not come within the period to which 
 our inquiries are limited ; but Bacon's naost popular and most 
 immediately influential production, his Essays, appeared in 
 1596, and there is scarcely a volume in the whole prose litera- 
 ture of England, which is, more emphatically, at once a product 
 of the English intellect, and an agency in the history of English 
 practical ethics. The style of the Essays is very attractive, 
 though never pedantically exact, and often even negligent, in 
 its observance of the rules of grammatical concord and regimen ; 
 but though many Latinized words are introduced, even its 
 solecisms are English, and it is, in all probability, a fair picture 
 of the language used at that time by men of the highest culture, 
 in the conversational discussion of questions of practical philo- 
 sophy, or what the Grermans call world-wisdom. It is didactic 
 in character, and though it offered nothing new to the English 
 heart, it revealed much to the English consciousness, of that 
 day. It is a formulating of the living ethics and social opinions 
 of the cultivated Briton of Elizabeth's age, a distinct expression 
 of sentiments and of principles which the nation had been 
 trained to act upon, though most often no doubt unconsciously ; 
 and its immediate success was owing to its immediate and 
 
550 ENGLISH GKAMMAES Lect. XU. 
 
 universal recognition as an embodiment of the national law of 
 life, which all had felt, but none had yet presented to the mind 
 in a recorded objective form. 
 
 "We have now followed the great current of the English 
 speech to near the point where we propose to terminate our 
 investigations ; but there are several tributaries and sources of 
 its philological improvement, which require a somewhat detailed 
 examination before our survey can be said to be approximately 
 complete. 
 
 The revival of the study of classical literature, after a short 
 suspension, and the in pulse which had been given to modern 
 philology by the publication of Palsgrave's French Grammar, 
 led to the production of a considerable number of English 
 grammars. These have now become exceedingly rare, and are 
 almost forgotten. So far as I can judge from the few I have 
 seen, the writers, misled by their partiality for the ancient 
 languages and literature, occupied themselves less with inquiry 
 into the facts and principles of English philology, than with 
 speculations upon improvements which might be introduced 
 into the syntax and orthography of their native speech. They 
 are seldom to be relied upon as evidence with regard to the 
 actual practice of the best native writers, and still less, as to the 
 true theory of the English tongue. The great authors of the 
 fourteenth and earlier centuries were little studied, Anglo-Saxon 
 was forgotten, and the cognate languages of Grermany and the 
 North were almost unknown. Hence these treatises, instead of 
 being, as all grammars ought to be, chiefly historical, are specu- 
 lative, and designed to effect a reform or re-construction of the 
 language. Even Ben Jonson's grammar — which is known to 
 us only in a sketch or abridgment, the manuscript of the com- 
 plete work having been destroyed by fire — though a learned 
 and able production, is, in many particulars, not sustained by 
 the practice of good authors or even by his own.* 
 
 In one respect, however, these old grammars are interesting, 
 
 • See First Series, Lecture v. p. 108. 
 
tECr. XIL CEITICISM AND THEORT 651 
 
 if not harmonious and intelligible enough to be really instruc- 
 tive. I refer to their theories of orthography and pronunciation, 
 which are curious and often ingenious. But phonology was not 
 then known as a science, the radical sounds had not yet been 
 analyzed, and the writers were generally ignorant of the orthoepy 
 of the Grothic languages. Besides this, the pronunciation of 
 English was strangely discordant in different shires, and it is 
 impossible to reconcile these orthoepists with each other or with 
 themselves.* 
 
 Many eminent native scholars, such for example as Ascham, 
 systematically decried the English language as a barbarous 
 jargon incapable of polish or refinement, and unfit to be the 
 vehicle of the inspirations of poetry, or of elegant literature in 
 prose, Sidney, much to his honour, defends the capacities of 
 the English tongue for the highest culture, and it is a striking 
 proof of bis philological insight, that he was among the first of 
 modern scholars to perceive the advantage of an uninflected 
 structure, and of a syntax founded directly on the logical, not 
 the formal, relation of words.f 
 
 Though Ascham was theoretically opposed to the employment 
 of English for literary purposes, or even in discussing the simple 
 and popular subject of archery, yet he showed no inconsiderable 
 power in the use of it, and his Schoolmaster, as well as his other 
 English writings, were highly useful in his time, and were, in 
 all respects, important contributions to the literature of that age. 
 
 Artistic theoiy and criticism have been plants of slow growth 
 in English literature. As I have said in relation to morals, the 
 Englishman, in every branch of mental as well as of physical 
 effort, inclines to action rather than to speculation. He trusts 
 to his instincts and his common sense to guide him, and leaves 
 it to others to philosophise upon the organic principles which 
 
 * See First Series, Lecture, xxiL 
 
 t For the opinions of Ascham on the English language, and for those of 
 other scholars of his and the immediately preceding centuries, see First Series, 
 Xecture xii. pp. 444, 445 ; for those of Sidney, see same volume. Lecture iv. 
 p. 88. 
 
552 CRITICISM AND THBOKT LecT. XII. 
 
 iave dete}'mined the shape and character of his productions. 
 The age of Elizabeth, however, gave birth to some works in 
 critical and artistical theory. One of the most conspicuous of 
 these is Puttemham's Arte of English Poesie, first published in 
 1589. It is, as the author expresses it, 'Contriued into three 
 Bookes : The first of Poets and Poesie, the second of Propor- 
 tion, the third of Ornament.' This treatise shows some learning 
 and some observation, but no very accurate critical appreciation 
 of the authors it attempts to characterise. As to the more con- 
 spicuous ornaments of -old English literature, it is true, posterity 
 has confirmed many of Puttenham's judgments, at least as to 
 the relative rank of the authors, though not always for his 
 reasons. But, on the other hand, he speaks of the dull rhj'ming 
 chronicler, Harding, as ' a Poet Epi-ck or Historicall,' who 
 'handled himselfe well according to the tinie and maner of 
 his subiect;' he extravagantly commends many of his now 
 forgotten contemporaries, and concludes his meagre list of those 
 'who in any age haue bene the most commended writers in 
 cure English Poesie,' with this ' censure' upon Queen Elizabeth; 
 'But last in recitall and first in degree is the Queene, our 
 soueraigne Lady, whose learned, delicate, noble Muse, easily 
 surmounteth all the rest that haue writte before her time or 
 ■since, for sence, sweetnesse and subtillitie, be it in Ode, Elegie^ 
 Epigram, or any other kinde of poeme, Heroick or Lyricke, 
 wherein it shall please her Maiestie to employ her penne, euen 
 by as much oddes as her owne excellent estate and degree 
 •exceedeth all the rest of her most humble vassalls.' 
 
 The most valuable part of this work is that which treats of 
 the formal requisites of poetry, and especially of versification, 
 because it throws a good deal of light on the pronunciation of 
 that age — a subject respecting which we are far from being 
 well informed. When, however, we compare these chapters of 
 Puttenham with what had long before been accomplished in 
 the Romance languages in the same branch of criticism — for 
 example, with the Provenyal Flors del Gay Saber, estier dichaa 
 
1-KCT. XII. TRAHSIATIONS S53 
 
 Las Leys d' Amors, of the fourteenth century, published by 
 Gatien Arnoult — we must admit that the technicalities of the 
 poetic art, if instinctively practised, had been as yet but imperr 
 fectly discussed in England. 
 
 The Reformation, as has been before observed, had occasioned 
 the translation of many moral and religious works from the 
 Latin, and thereby enriched the theological dialect. Soine 
 essays in the translation of secular Latin and Greek authors 
 were made in the early part of the sixteenth century ; but the 
 reaction against classical learning, which succeeded to the im- 
 pulse given to it by the Eeformation, checked this branch of 
 literary effort, and not many further attempts were made in it 
 vmtil the study of Greek and Latin came again into vogue after 
 the accession of Elizabeth. Versions of ancient authors, Latin 
 especially, were now made in great numbers, and there are few 
 writers of eminence in the literature of Eome, not many in that 
 of Greece, who did not receive an English dress. 
 
 Notwithstanding aU that has been said, by Johnson and 
 others, upon the influence of translation in corrupting language, 
 I believe there is no one source of improvement to which 
 English is so much ^debted, as to the versions of classical 
 authors which were executed between the middle of the six- 
 teenth century and the death of Elizabeth. English, though 
 much enriched, was still wanting in copiousness, and there 
 existed no such acquaintance with Anglo-Saxon that any of its 
 defects could be supplied from that source. Hence Latin and 
 French were the only fountains from which scholars could draw, 
 and translations from those languages not only introduced new 
 words, but what was scarcely less important, new combinations 
 of words for expressing complex ideas. 
 
 They performed still another very signal service, which has 
 been almost wholly overlooked by writers who have treated of 
 the philological history of England. The variety of subjects 
 discussed, and of styles employed by the classical writers, 
 obliged the translators, not orly to borrow or to coin new words. 
 
554 TEANSLATIONS Lect. XII. 
 
 where no native terms existed for the expression of the thoughts 
 they sought to render, but to seek, in English literature new 
 and old, in popular speech, and in the nomenclature of the 
 liberal and the mechanical arts, domestic equivalents for a vast 
 multitude of words, whose places could not be supplied by the 
 transference of Latin terms, because these would have been 
 unintelligible. Hence these translations did not merely enrich 
 the language by an infusion of new philological elements, but 
 they gathered up, recorded, and thus preserved for future study 
 and use, the whole extent of the vocabulary then known to the 
 English nation. This process is particularly observable in the 
 old versions of the more encyclopedic authors, such as Plutarch's 
 Lives and his Morals. The Lives were translated by North, 
 about the middle of Elizabeth's reign, from the admirable 
 French version of Amyot, and though occasional errors in 
 rendering were committed by both Amyot and North, the 
 style of Plutarch is upon the whole more faithfully repre- 
 sented by this old and quaint version than by any of the 
 later attempts. 
 
 Pliny's Natural History and Plutarch's Morals came later. 
 They, as well as Livy and some other voluminous Latin works, 
 were translated by Philemon Holland, at about the close of 
 Elizabeth's reign, and they constitute an inexhaustible mine 
 of linguistic wealth. Pliny's Natural History was designed as 
 a complete treatise upon all the branches of material knowledge 
 known to the ancient world. The learning of the Greeks and 
 Romans on these subjects was very little inferior to that of 
 England in Elizabeth's time, and few branches of science, or of 
 practical art, were at all cultivated at that period, which are 
 not represented and fully discussed by Pliny. Hence the trans- 
 lation of the Natural History required the employment of the 
 entire English nomenclature of physical learning and of mecha- 
 nical craft. Holland's version exhausts the technical vocabulary 
 of his age, thus gathering, in a single volume, the whole of the 
 material side of the English language, and constituting the 
 
tECT. Xn. TKANSLATIONS 555 
 
 most valuable and comprehensive source of information upon 
 old English names of processes, of things, and of the sensuous 
 properties of things, which exists in a collected form. 
 
 The most celebrated translators of Latin verse in Elizabeth's 
 time were Phaer or Phaier, and Grolding. The former 'tra- 
 duced,' as some old writers have it, the first nine books of 
 Virgil's ^neid, and the latter, with more ability, translated 
 Ovid's Metamorphoses and many other Latin works, in prose as 
 well as verse. Of Master Phaer, I suppose my readers will 
 not care to know more, after perusing Virgil's account of the 
 building of Carthage by the Moors under Queen Dido, as 
 Englished by biTin : — 
 
 The Moores with courage went to worke, 
 
 some vnder burdens grones : 
 Some at the wals and towrs with hands 
 
 were tumbling vp the stones. 
 Some measurd out a place to build 
 
 their mansion house within : 
 Some lawes and officers to make 
 
 in parlment did begin. 
 An other had an hauen cast, 
 
 and deepe they trench the ground, 
 Some other for the games and plaies 
 
 a statehe place had found. 
 And pillers great they cut for kings, 
 
 to garnish foorth their wals, 
 And like as bees among the flours, 
 
 when fresh the summer fals, 
 In shine of sunne applie their worke, 
 
 when growne is vp their yoong : 
 Or when their hiues they gin to stop, 
 
 and honie sweet is sproong. 
 That all their caues and cellars close 
 
 with dulcet liquor fils, 
 Some doo outlade, some other bring 
 
 the stuffe with readie wils. 
 Sometime they ioine, anJ all at once 
 
 doo from their maugcr-- fat 
 
556 TKANSLATIONS Leot. XIL 
 
 The slothful drones, that would consume, 
 
 and nought would doo to get. 
 The worke it heats, the honie smels, 
 
 of flours and thime ywet, &c. &c. 
 
 Grolding's Ovid is a spirited and creditable work, and at that 
 date, 1567, the condition of the language would hardly have 
 admitted of a better. Warton bestows well-merited praise on 
 his version of the transformation of Athamas and Ino in the 
 fourth book of the Metamorphoses, and there are many other 
 passages not inferior in excellence. 
 
 I cannot say so much in favour of G-olding's Epistle or Dedi- 
 cation — a summary, or rhymed table of contents, of his 
 author — or of his Preface to the Eeader, supposed by Warton 
 to have been designed for the comfort of the ' weaker Puritans,' 
 or 'simple sort,' as'Golding calls them, who might be scandal- 
 ised at the heathen profanity and idolatry of Ovid. If the 
 Puritans of that day thought Ovid forbidden fruit, and were 
 ' simple ' enough to be converted to a belief in the lawfulness of 
 reading him by no better arguments than Grolding's, they must 
 have been 'weak' indeed; and I suspect stout John Knox — 
 Golding's contemporary, and perhaps his countryman* — would 
 have required stronger logic to persuade him of the innocence 
 of anything he held to be wrong. 
 
 During the period we are considering, the English language 
 received numerous and important accessions from travel and 
 commerce, which were enlarging with the rapid progress of 
 geographical discovery. Many descriptive accounts of foreign 
 countries were printed, and the public curiosity welcom^ed with 
 avidity narratives of adventure and observation in distant lands. 
 Foreigners from remote nations visited England, new wares 
 were introduced, the tropical world had been recently opened 
 
 * I do not know upon how good auftiority Warton pronounces Golding to have 
 been a native of London. The epistle'is dated at ' Barwicke,' and in my copy, 
 London, 1595, a manuscript note, in ^u old hand, states that Golding was '■ 
 Scot' 
 
Ll«T. XIL TRATEL AND COMMEECE 557 
 
 to Christian observation, and new stores of natural knowledge 
 flowed in from regions which had been unknown to Europe 
 from the commencement of the historical era. 
 
 The Fardle of Facions, a description of the manners and 
 customs of the different nations of the world, translated from 
 the Latin and printed about the year 1550, is one of the earliest 
 and most curious books of this class, and, for its extent, philo- 
 logically one of the most' interesting. It was soon succeeded by 
 more voluminous works in the same department, among which 
 the most valuable are, the Decades of Peter Martyr, the travels 
 of Vertomannus in the East, and some other works which were 
 reprinted about fifty years ago in a quarto volume intended as 
 a supplement to Hakluyt. But these are all surpassed in im- 
 portance by Hakluyt's collection of voyages and travels, first 
 published in 1589, which not only exhibits a great range of 
 vocabulary, but contains many narratives of no small degree of 
 literary merit. 
 
 It is perhaps to the excited curiosity produced by these works 
 that we are to ascribe, in part at least, the progress which the 
 study of the Oriental languages, the Arabic especially, made in 
 England in the sixteenth century. The' knowledge of Arabic pro-* 
 moted that of the cognate Hebrew, and the effects of this learn- 
 ing are visible in the revision of the English Scriptures by the 
 translators appointed by King James, several of whom possessed 
 an amount of Oriental learning rare in later ages of English 
 literary history. 
 
 There are also certain other branches of knowledge, or, at 
 least, of study, which, though specialities, nevertheless exerted 
 a considerable influence upon the general language both of 
 common life and of books. I refer to the nomenclature of 
 natural science, of alchemy, of astrology, and of the professions 
 of medicine and the law. These, indeed, are not generally 
 regarded as embraced in the term literature, but abundant 
 traces of them are found in literature ; for it has been seriously 
 axgued, from Shakespeare's familiarity with legal terms, that 
 
558 SCIENTIFIC STUDIES Lect. XII. 
 
 he must have been an attorney's clerk, at the least, if not a 
 practising lawyer, just as similar evidence has been cited to 
 prove that he was a good classical scholar and an experienced 
 navigator, and, as it might be, to show that he was a medical 
 man, because he makes one of his characters say that ' parmacity 
 was good for an inward bruise.' 
 
 In the sixteenth century speculation was rife in all the 
 pursuits I have mentioned ; and by virtue of that common 
 bond which has long been recognised as existing between all 
 knowledges, and more especially in consequence of the change- 
 fulness of this restless modern life of ours, there is a perpetual 
 intermingling and amalgamation of all classes, professions, and 
 dialects. The result is that the technical words of every science, 
 every art, are continually wandering out from the laboratory 
 and the workshop, and incorporating themselves into the com- 
 mon speech of the ignorant as well as of the learned ; and there 
 is scarcely a human pursuit from which the every-day language 
 of England has not borrowed, appropriated, and generalised 
 more or fewer terms of art. 
 
 Although, as I have often remarked, the dialect of theology 
 was a special nomenclature, yet the fact, that theology was 
 studied as a branch of general education, made its dialect more 
 familiar than that of any other single art or science, and 
 through the sixteenth century it maintained its relative impor- 
 tance as an elevating, refining, and at the same time enriching, 
 and essentially progressive influence. Besides a vast mass of 
 strictly professional works in the department of theology, the 
 last half of the sixteenth century produced numerous editions 
 and revisals of the English Scriptures, the universal circulation 
 of which influenced the speech of England in a variety of ways, 
 but most especially in counteracting the tendency of secular 
 literature to the adoption of a Latinised phraseology and syntax; 
 for all the Protestant English versions of the Bible are ulti- 
 mately founded on Wycliffe, and are all remarkable for the 
 purity of their Anglo-Saxon diction. 
 
Lect. XII. THEOLOGY 559 
 
 Next in importance to the translations of the Bible as a con- 
 servative influence in English philology, we must rank the 
 liturgy of the Anglican church, which, in its various forms, 
 belongs to the reign of Edward VI. and Elizabeth. The diction 
 of this ritual is as conspicuous for the Anglo-Saxon character of 
 the style as the English BiLies, and the daily repetition of por- 
 tions of its contents, by almost the whole population of England, 
 could not but have had a powerful eiiect in fashioning the speech, 
 and tincturing the written dialect, of the English people. 
 
 The diction of theologj-. parhaps I should say of English 
 prose, reached its highest point of excellence in the works of 
 Hooker, the first four boois of whose Ecclesiastical Polity were 
 printed in 1594, the fifth in 1557. The style of Hooker is 
 sometimes unnecessarily involved and obscure, and he is fond of 
 Latinisms, both in words and in the arrangement of his periods. 
 One of the latter class is the inversion by which the participle 
 in the compound tenses, and the adjective, precede the nomina- 
 tive, as, for example : ' Brought already we are even to that 
 estate which Grregorie Nazianzen mournefullie describeth ; ' 
 • able we are not to deny, but that we have deserved the hatred 
 of the heathen; ' 'Dangerous it were for the feeble braine of man 
 to wade farre into the doings of the most High.' This is the 
 usual Latin order of arrangement, and it was a favorite construc- 
 tion with all the translators of the period we are considering. 
 Hooker is perhaps the first English prose writer who exhibits 
 philosophical precision and uniformity in the use of words, and 
 this is the peculiarit}'^ of his style which gives it its greatest 
 philological value. This nicety of discrimination he extends 
 even to particles, a remarkable instance of which is the distinc- 
 tion between sith and sithenoe, or since, the former being always 
 an illative or argumentative word, the latter simply narrative, 
 indicating time after. I cannot say that this distinction was 
 invented by Hooker, but it certainly is not much older than his 
 time, though a tendency towards it begins to be observable soon 
 after the middle of the sixteenth century. Hooker is, so far as 
 
560 HOOKEE Lbct. XIL 
 
 I know, the only important English aiithor who constantly 
 observes this very important logical difference, though, indeed, 
 it is not often overlooked by his contemporaries, Spenser and 
 Sylvester. Hooker's periods are sometimes cumbrous and in- 
 ^'olved, partly from the influence of his devotion to Latin theo- 
 logical literature, and partly from his desire to accompany his 
 general propositions with the conditions, qualifications, and 
 limitations belonging to them ; but he has many passages of the 
 most admirable rhetorical beauty, and of a musical flow not less 
 melodious than that of the periods of Milton. 
 
 I have observed that no great English writer has ever been 
 wholly able to suppress the quality of humour. Hooker would 
 be claimed as an exception, and in truth he is one of the gravest 
 of authors, but one cannot but suspect that a smile is lurking 
 under some of the illustrations which accompany his most serious 
 arguments. Thus, having declared that Grod works nothing 
 without cause, he instances the creation of woman, (which he 
 intimates was an afterthought, and declares that Grod's ' will had 
 n'evfir inclined ' to perform it, ' but that he saw it could not be 
 wel, if she were not created.' In this, he seems to have meant 
 ' a half jocose expression of the same sentiments to which John 
 Knox had, not many years before, given such passionate utter- 
 rance in his ungenerous, but very eloquent First Blast of the 
 Trumpet against the monstrous Eegiment of Women. 
 ' Hooker's works are a chain from which it is hard to detach a 
 linkj without a fracture. The continuity of his style is one of 
 its merits, and no very good idea of his manner is to be gained 
 from single paragraphs. There are two or three regular stock 
 quotations from Hooker, which are always produced as samples^ 
 when his literary merits are under discussion, and they are 
 therefore somewhat familiar to the 'reading public;' but I am 
 afraid there are many D.D.s, whose only knowledge of this 
 great writer is derived from those passages. I can afford space 
 only for the second chapter of the first book of the ' Ecclesiasticall 
 ■politie,' which I print from the rare edition of 1594. 
 
Lkct. xil hooker 561 
 
 AH' things that are haue some operation not violent or casuall. 
 Neither doth any thing euer begin to exercise the same without some 
 foreconceaued eade for which it worketh. x\nd the ende which it 
 worketh for is not obteined, vnleSse the worke be also fit to obteine it 
 by. For vnto euery ende eiiery operation will not serue. That which 
 doth assigne vnto each thing the kinde, that which doth moderate the 
 force and power, that which doth appoint the forme and measure of 
 working, the same we tearme a Lawe. So that no certaine end coidd 
 euer be attained, vnlesse the actions whereby it is, attained were regular, 
 that is to say, made suteable fit and correspondent vnto their end, by 
 some Canon rule or lawe. Which thing doth first take place in the 
 workes euen of God himselfe. All things therefore do ■ worke after a 
 sort according to lawe : all other things according to a lawe, whereof 
 some superiour, vnto whome they are subiect, is author ; only thp 
 workes and operations of God haue him both for their worker, and « 
 for the lawe whereby diey are wrought. The^beiiig of God is_a kinde y 
 of lawe to his working : for that perfection which God .is, geueth - 
 perfection to that he doth. Those naturall, necessaiy, and internal 
 operations of God, the generation of the Sonne, the proceeding of the 'fj 
 Spirit, are without the compasse of my present intent : which is to ■ 
 touch only such operations as haue their beginning and being by a 
 voluntarie purpose, wherewith God hath eternally decreed when an(J 
 howe they should be. Which eternall decree is that wee tearme an 
 eternall lawe. Dangerous it were for the feeble braine of man to wade 
 farre into the doings of the most High, whome although to knowe be 
 life, and ioy to make mention of his name : yet our soundest knowr 
 ledge is to know that we know him not as in deed he is, neither can 
 know him : and our safest eloquence concerning him is our silence, 
 when we confesse withoxit confession that his glory is inexplicable, his 
 greatnes aboue our capacitie and reach. He is aboue, and we vpon 
 earth, therefore it behoueth our wordes to be warie and fewe. Our 
 God is one, or rather verie onenesse, and meere vnitie, hauing nothing 
 but it selfe in it selfe, and not con.sisting (as all things do besides God) 
 of many things. In which essential vnitie of God a Trinitie personal! 
 neuerthelesse subsistcth after a manor far exceeding the possibilitie 
 of man's conceipt. The works which outwardly are of God, they arp 
 in such sort of him being, one, that each person hath in them somewhat 
 peculiar and proper. For being three, and they all subsisting in the 
 essence of one deitie ; from the. Father, by the Sonne, through the 
 Spirit all things are. That which the Sonne doth hcare of the Father, 
 and which the Spirit doth receiue of the Father & the Sonne, the sam,a 
 
 O 
 
562 HOOKEU Lect. XIL 
 
 we haue at the liads of the Spirit as being the last, and therfore 
 the neerest vnto vs in order, although in power the same with the 
 second and the first. The wise and le;irned among the verie Hea- 
 thens themselues, haue all acknowledged some first cause, whereupon 
 originallie the being of all things dependeth. Neither haue they 
 otherwise spoken of that cause, then as an Agent, which knowing 
 tohat and why it worketh obserueth in working a most exact order 
 or lawe. Thus much is signified by that ivhich Homer mentioneth, 
 Ai6<; olTEXsiero fiovXrj. Thus much acknowledged by Mercurius Tris- 
 megist. Toi' irai'Ta Koapiov kiro'irfaiv o Erjftiovpyiie ov y^ipuiv aWd Xoyu). 
 Thus much cofest by Anaxago. and Plato, terming the maker of the 
 world an pUellectual worker. / Finallie the Stoikes, although imagining 
 the first cause of all things to be fire, held neuerthelesse that the same 
 fire hauing arte, did dSw flali'Cuv iwl yeriaei Kurrfivv. They all confesse 
 therfore in the working of that first cause, that counsell is vsed, reason 
 followed, a loay obserued, that is to say, constant order and law is kept, 
 whereof it selfe must needs be author vnto it selfe. Otherwise it 
 should haue some worthier and higher to direct it, and so could not it 
 selfe be the first. Being the first, it can haue no other then it selfe to 
 be the author of that law which it willingly worketh by. God there- 
 fore is a law both to himselfe, and to all other things besides. To 
 himselfe he is a law in all those things, whereof our Sauiour speaketh, 
 saying, My Father worketh as yet, so I. God worketh nothing without 
 cause. All those things which are done by him, haue some ende for 
 which they are done : and the ende for which they are done, is a reason 
 of his will to do them. His will had not inclined to create woman, 
 but that he saw it could not be wol if she were not created, Ifon est 
 bomim, It is not good man should be alone. Therefore let vs make an 
 helper for him. That and nothing else is done by God, which to leaue 
 vndone were not so good. If therfore it be demanded, why God 
 hauing power and habilitie infinite, th' effects notwithstading of that 
 power are all so limited as we see they are : the reason hereof is the 
 end which he hath proposed, and the lawe whereby his wisedome hath 
 stinted th' efiects of his power in such sort, that it doth not worke 
 infinitely but correspodently vnto that end for which it worketh, euen 
 al things xpijcrrwc, in most decent and comely sort, all things in measure, 
 number, and waight. The generall end of Gods externall working is 
 the exercise of his most glorious and most abundant vertue : Which 
 abundance doth shew it selfe in varietie, and for that cause thia 
 varittie is oftentimes in Scripture exprest by the name of riches. The 
 Lord hath made all things for his owne sake. Not that any thing ia 
 
LKcr. XII. HOOKER 563 
 
 made to be beneficiall vnto him, but all tilings for bim to shew bene- 
 ficence and grace in them. The particular di-ift of euery acte pro-| 
 ceeding externally fiom God, we are not able to discerne, and therefore ! 
 ciiimot ahvaies giue the proper and certaine reason of his works. How- \ 
 beit vndoubtedly a proper and certaine reason there is of eueiy finite 
 worke of God, in as much as there is a law imposed vpon it ; which if ' 
 there were not, it should be infinite euen as tlie worker himselfe is. / 
 They erre therefore who thinke that of the will of God to do this or ' 
 tliat, there is no reason besides his will. Many times no reason knowne 
 to vs ; but that there is no reason thereof, I iudge it most vnreasonable 
 to imagine, in as much as he worketh all things Kara tiiv PovKIjvtov] 
 SeXtjfiuTos avTov, not only according to his owne will, but the counselll 
 of his owne mil. And whatsoeuer is done with counsell or wise reso- 
 lution, hath of nece.'^itie some reason why it should be done, albeit ; 
 that reason be to vs in some things so secret, that it forceth the wit of 
 man to stand, as the blessed Apostle himself doth, amazed thereat, 
 the depth of the riches both of the wisdome and knoioledge of God, How 
 vnsearchable are his iudgements, ^c. That law eternall which God 
 himself hath made to himselfe, and thereby worketh all things wherof 
 he is the cause and author, that law in the admirable frame wherof 
 shineth with most perfect bewtie the countenance of that wisedome 
 which hath testified concerning her self. The lord possessed me in the 
 beginning of his way, euen be/ore his works of old, I was set vp, ^c. 
 That law which hath bene the patterne to make, and is the card to guide 
 the world by ; that laAv which hath bene of God, and with God euer- 
 lastingly : that law the author and obseruer whereof is one only God 
 to be blessed for euer, how should either men or Angels be able per- 
 fectly to behold ? The booke of this law we are neither able nor 
 worthie to open and looke into. That little thereof which we darkly 
 apprehend, we admire, the rest with religious ignorance we humbly and 
 meekly adore. Seeing therfore that according to this law he worketh, 
 of whom, through whom, and for whom are all things, although there 
 seeme vnto vs cofusion and disorder in th' affaires of this present 
 world : Tamen gvoniam bonus viundvm rector temperat, recte fieri 
 cuncta ne dubites. Let no ma doubt but that euery thing is weU done, 
 because the world is ruled by so good a guide, as transgresseth not his ; 
 owne law, then which nothing can be more absolute, perfect & lust, j 
 The law whereby he worketh, is eternall, and therefore can haue no ' 
 shew or cuUor of mutabilitie : for which cause a part of that law being 
 opened in the promises which God hath made (because his promises are 
 nothing else but declarations what God will do for the good of meu) 
 
 o o 2 
 
564 BBAMATIC DICTION Lect. Xlt 
 
 touching those promises the Apostle hath witnessed, that God may as 
 possibly deny himselfe and not be God, as faile to performe them. And 
 coceming the counsel of God, he termeth it likewise a thing vnchange- 
 dble, the counsell of God, and that law of God whereof now we speake 
 being one. Nor is the freedom of the wil of God any whit abated, let 
 or hindered by meanes of this, because the imposition of this law vpo 
 himself is his own free and volutary act. This law therfore we may 
 name eternall, being that order which God before all ages hath set 
 down with himselfe, for himselfe to do all things by. 
 
 I have now shown how the vocabularies of many branches oif 
 English literature had been gradually increased in copiousness, 
 their diction refined and polished, and their grammar simplified ; 
 but there is still one department — and that, considered simply 
 in its literary aspects, the highest — ia which hitherto compara- 
 tively little had been accomplished. I mean that modifiication 
 of the colloquial language of actual life, which was required to 
 fit it for employment in the scenic representation of the various 
 phases and conditions of humanity, as they are conceived and 
 interpreted by the great masters of the dramatic art. 
 
 In popular farces, and in merely occasional theatrical 
 pieces intended to serve a special temporary purpose, the collo- 
 quial language of the day may properly be employed ; but in 
 dramas designed for permanent existence, the diction of the 
 dialogue must be of a more enduring and less changeable cha- 
 racter than the speech of the hour, which is always more 
 coloured by fleeting and superficial influences than is usually 
 supposed by those who have not made the actual language of 
 life a study.* 
 
 * Every generation, every year almost, has its pet words, applications, forms, 
 and comlpinations, originating now in some accidental circumstance, now in some 
 theory, early association, habit, or caprice of a favourite writer, which, for the 
 time, constitute nns'ghtly excrescences upon the hody of the speech, but finally 
 drop oflF and are forgotten. To take single words : it is difficult at this moment 
 to find a page in a popular French writer, which does not contain thn word 
 pr^oeeuper, or some of its derivatives. On the other side of the Channel, I 
 I must instance a more unfortunate case. The epithet loveli/ can fitly be used only 
 \f>i hdngs capable of exciting, by their moral and physical perfections, the passion 
 
Lect. XIL DEAMATIC DICTION 665 
 
 It is a proof of the acuteiiess of the English dramatists -who 
 lived a little before, and with, Shakespeare, that they perceived 
 the necessity of a style somewhat removed from the vernacular 
 speech of their time ; hut it is also a proof of the weakness of 
 their judgment, that, instead of adopting a phraseology which 
 was natural, idiomatic, and permanent, without being local or 
 vulgar, they invented a conventional style of expression, which 
 not only never was used in real society, but which never could 
 be, without a violation of the laws both of lauffuao-e and of 
 thought. The dialect of tragedy is not the style which men on 
 the stage of life, influenced as they are by temporary and acci- 
 dental conditions of speech, actually use, but it is the diction 
 which, according to the permanent and essential genius of the 
 language, and the supposed moral and intellectual categories of 
 the personages, constitutes the truest and most precise expres- 
 sion of the thoughts and purposes which animate them. 
 
 Although the phraseology which the earlier English play- 
 wrights put into the mouths of their personages is in a high 
 degree unnatural and inappropriate, yet in the wide variety of 
 their Characters, and of the circumstances in which they placed 
 them, they not unfrequently unwittingly strayed into a fit and 
 expressive style, and thus there was gradually accumulated a 
 fragmentary and scattered store • of material for a copious and 
 multifarious dramatic diction. 
 
 of love, and, at tlie same time, of reciprocating if; That only is lovely wKioh is | 
 both loveable and loring. In the affectation and exaggeration, which so often 
 characterizes the phraseology of polite society, this unhappy word was seized 
 upon and generalized in its application, audit soon hecame the one epithet of com- 
 mendation infyoung ladies' seminaries and similar circleSjjjwhere it was and is 
 applied indis&iminately to all pleasing material objects, from a piece of plum- 
 cake to a Gothic cathedral. Euskin unluckily adopted this school-girl triviality, 
 and, by the popularity of his writings, has made it almost universal, thereby 
 degrading, vulgarizing, and depriving of its true significance, one of the noblesfc 
 words in the English language. 
 
 In satirical comedy such abuses of language may very well be introduced, fop 
 the sake of pillorying them. Shakespeare — whose comedy is not in the technical 
 sense satirical — has a few examples of this sort, the most marked being in the 
 case of the word dement in the first scene of the third act of Twelfth Night, to 
 which I have referred on a former occasion. 
 
566 THE BEITISH NATION Lect. XII, 
 
 In speaking of tlie relations of Chaucer to his time and to 
 the earlier literature of the language, I observed that his style 
 of expression was eclectic, that he coined no words and im- 
 ported few, but contented himself with the existing stock of 
 native and already naturalized foreign terms — the excellence 
 of his diction consisting in the judgment and taste of his 
 selection, and his mutual adaptation of terms individually 
 familiar. 
 
 For the purposes of Chaucer and his a.ge, for the expi-ession 
 of the limited range of thought and subject with which the 
 English nature of his time was conversant, a limited vocabulary 
 sufficed, and the existing literature of England supplied nearly 
 the entire stock of words demanded for the uses of the poet. 
 But in Shakespeare's day, though humanity, English humanity 
 
 ,' especially, was still the same, yet the philosophical conception 
 of humanity was immensely enlarged, diversified, and enriched. 
 The myriad-minded Shakespeare^ as, by an application of a 
 
 j term borrowed from one of the Greek fathers, Coleridge has so 
 appropriately called him — took in this vast conception in all 
 
 ; its breadth, and was endowed with a faculty of self-transforma- 
 tion into all the shapes in which the nature of man has been 
 incarnated. He hence required a variety of phraseologies — 
 words and combinations of words — as great as the varieties of 
 humanity itself are numerous. 
 
 Now this compass and flexibility of expression could be found , 
 only in the language of a people who possessed such a moral 
 and intellectual constitution, and had enjoyed such a moral and 
 social training, as had previously fallen to the lot of no modern 
 nation. 
 
 The English people, as I have before observed, is a composite 
 nation, resulting from the fusion of a Germanic with a Scandi- 
 navian and a Gallo-Eoman race. Its language is made up of 
 ingredients derived from sources as varied as its blood, and 
 England thus unites, in its children and its speech, the ethno- 
 logical elements, which, in their separate action in the social and 
 
Lect. XII. THE BEITISH NATION 567 
 
 political life of Continental Europe, have shown themselves most 
 efficient in all great and worthy achievement. 
 
 In the political history and condition of the England of 
 Elizabeth's time, there were circumstances eminently favourable 
 to many-sided intellectual progi-ess, and to the development of a 
 wide variety of individual character. Although the dififerent 
 nationalities, which had contributed to the population of Eng- 
 land, had become so far amalgamated as to have produced a 
 recognizable uniformity of character, yet the chemical combina- 
 tion had not been so complete as wholly to extinguish the sepa- 
 rate traits of each. These had propagated, and still propagate, 
 themselves more or less unmixed, from century to century, just 
 as, in human and brute life, peculiarities of remote ancestry 
 manifest themselves in late descendants, and often reappear in 
 lines where for generations they had seemed to be extinct. 
 Hence, the English have in all ages been remarkable for indi- 
 viduality, and what we call originality, or, if you please, eccen- 
 tricity or oddity of character. 
 
 These supposed individualities usually combine, with some- 
 thing that is peculiar to the man John or Peter, much more that 
 is common to a nation, a family, or a class, and the eccentric 
 person is, in reality, oftener a typical or representative man than 
 an anomaly. He is noticed as a strange or peculiar individual, 
 not because his character is a departure from the general laws 
 of humanity, but because he is, locally or chronologically, sepa- 
 rated from the class to which he belongs, and we observe him 
 as an isolated phenomenon, not as an instance of a species.* 
 
 * True imaginative conception oi character, ■whether in dramatic or in narrative 
 lit-erature, depends more upon power of observation than of invention. The 
 truest personages in fiction are those most accurately copied from actual life, and 
 the impression produced upon us by a character in a work o. imagination is just 
 in proportion to the degree in which we recognize it as real. We do not know, 
 historically, how far Shakespeare drew from individual nature, how far his per- 
 sonages are portraits ; but modern criticism and literary history are continually 
 accumulating evidence to prove that all great artists record what they see, much 
 more frequently than they invent what they have never witnessed. 
 
 Modern English literature has not produced a more Shakespearian — I might 
 
568 THE BEITISH NATION Lect. XII. 
 
 The free development of these various forms and types of 
 humanity in England has been much favoured by a detached 
 geographical position, which has protected the nation against 
 controlling foreign influences, by the extended commerce and 
 navigation, which its long line of coast, its numerous harbours, 
 its coal and tin, the excellent quality of its wool, and some 
 other native products, have secured to it, and perhaps in a still 
 greater degree by the character of its political institutions, 
 which have been, from a remote age, of a more popular and 
 liberal character than those of any of the great Continental 
 states. 
 
 English life, in the sixteenth century, was full of multifarioua 
 experiences. There had always been a greater number and 
 variety of stimulating tendencies and influences, and greater 
 practical liberty of yielding to them, in England than in any 
 other modern nation ; and consequently, in the time of Shakes- 
 peare, the human intellect, the human heart, affections, and 
 passions, were there more fully and variously developed, and 
 the articulate expression of all these mental and moral con- 
 ditions and impulses more cultivated and diversified, than in 
 any contemporaneous people. 
 
 In all the facilities for the observation of human life and 
 nature on a wide and comprehensive scale, the Englishman of 
 Shakespeare's time was at a more advanced point than has even 
 yet been reached in the society of any other of the Gothic or 
 Eomance nations. This is one of the reasons why the plays of 
 Shakespeare have such an incontestable superiority over the 
 drama of all other modern com, tries, and why so many thoughts 
 which, in the recent literature of Continental Europe, have been 
 hailed as new revelations, are, to the Englishman, but the thou- 
 sandth repetition of old and familiar oracles, or generalizations 
 
 Eay a more Origiiial-^ comic character than Lever's Major Monsoon in Charles 
 O'Malley. But Major Monsoon is well known to be a minutely accurate portrait 
 of the character, a faithful chronicle of the sayings and doings, of a real living 
 person. 
 
Lect. XII. CHAtrCEK AND SHAKESPEABB 569 
 
 which have, from time immemoria], been matters of too uni- 
 versal and every-day consciousness to have been thought worthy 
 of a place in English literature at all. 
 
 Shakespeare stood, to the age of Elizabeth and of James, in 
 just the position which Chaucer occupied with respect to that 
 of Edward III. and of Eichard II. ; and in these two authors, the 
 genius and the literature of their respective ages reached its 
 culminating point. For the excellence of each, all preceding 
 English history and literature was a necessary preparation, and 
 the dialect of each was composed by an application of the same 
 principles to the philological material which earlier labourers 
 tad gathered for them. 
 
 The material thus prepared for the two great masters of the 
 English tongue was in a very different state when it passed 
 imder their respective manipulation ; and it may be seriously 
 questioned whether, simply as a philological constructor, Chaucer 
 ■were not the greater architect of the two. In Chaucer's time, 
 every department of the language was rude, defective, and un- 
 poHshed, and the task of enriching, harmonizing, and adapting 
 was performed by him alone. Shakespeare had been preceded 
 by a multitude of skilful artists, who had improved and refined 
 all the various special vocabularies which make up the totality 
 of the English language ; and the common dialect which more 
 or less belongs to all imaginative composition had been carried 
 by others to almost avS high a pitch of perfection as is found ia 
 Shakespeare himself. 
 
 Chaucer, as a linguistic reformer, had great advantages over 
 Shakespeare, in possessing a better philological training. He 
 grew up in an almost equal familiarity with French, then a 
 highly cultivated dialect, and with his mother tongue, and he 
 vas also well acquainted with Latin and with Italian; but we 
 have no reason to believe that Shakespeare had acquired any- 
 thing more than -the merest smattering of any language but 
 Jiis own. 
 
 But although the dialect of Shakespeare does not exhibit the 
 
^'70 shakespeaee's diction Lect. XII. 
 
 same relative superiority as that of Chaucer over all older and 
 contemporaneous literature, its absolute superiority is, neverthe- 
 less, unquestionable. I have before had occasion to remark that 
 the greatest authors very often confine themselves to a restricted 
 ; vocabulary, and that the power of their diction lies, not in the 
 ; multitude of words, but in skilful combination and adaptation 
 of a few. This is strikingly verified bj'- an examination of the 
 stock of words employed by Shakespeare. He introduces, 
 indeed, terms borrowed from every art and every science, from 
 all theoretical knowledge and all human experience; but his 
 entire vocabulary little exceeds fifteen thousand words, and of 
 these a large number, chiefly of Latin origin, occur but once or 
 at most twice in his pages. The afHuence of his speech arises 
 from variety of combination, not from numerical abundance. 
 And yet the authorized vocabulary of Shakespeare's time pro- 
 bably embraced twice or thrice the number of words which he 
 found necessary for his purposes ; for though there were at that 
 time no dictionaries which exhibit a great stock of words, yet in 
 perusing Hooker, the old translators, and the early voyagers and 
 travellers, we find a verbal wealth, a copiousness of diction, 
 which forms a singular contrast with the philological economy 
 of the great dramatist. 
 
 In his theory of dramatic construction, Shakespeare owes little 
 — in his conception of character, nothing — to earlier or con- 
 temporary artists ; but in his diction, everything except felicity 
 of selection and combination. The existence of the whole 
 copious English vocabulary was necessary, in order that his 
 marvellous gift of selection might have room for its exercise. 
 Without a Cimabue and a Giotto, a Fra Angelico and a Perugino, 
 there could not have been a Eaphael ; and all previous English 
 philology and literature were indispensable to the creation of a 
 medium, through which such revelations of man as had not yet 
 been made to man might be possible to the genius of a Shake- 
 speare. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 ALE 
 
 ALEXANDER the Great, story of, 
 196 
 Alexander, Prof., monosyllabic sonnets, 
 
 98 
 Alfred, King, unknown to early English 
 
 literature, 230 
 Ancren Eiwle, The, 169 
 Anglo-Saxon art, 105 
 
 — Chronicle, 104 
 
 — language, character of, 92 
 
 origin of, 45, 48 
 
 mixed, 47, 55 
 
 our knowledge of, 88 
 
 Latin words in, 60 
 
 not English, 56 
 
 pronunciation of, 62, 69 
 
 orthography of, 65, 69 
 
 inflections in, loss of, 107, 111 
 
 grammar of, 119 
 
 derivatire and composite, 95, 
 
 113 
 
 vocabulary of; 89, 93, 94 
 
 moral and intellectual Tocabulaiy 
 
 of, early obsolete, 135, 136, 
 
 443 
 
 — — formation of words in, 113 
 
 — literature, loss of, 11 
 
 -no influence on English, 100 
 
 unhistoric, 102 — 105 
 
 — manuscripts, age of, 54 
 
 — people, origin of, 43, 49 
 and Celts, 60, 85 
 
 and Scandinavians, 62 — 69 
 
 and Normans, 103, 106 
 
 — translation of Gospels, 96 
 Armenian language, construction in, 46 
 Ascham, Boger, works, 551 
 
 BACON, Lord, essays, 549 
 BaUads. Old English, 13, 527 
 Beowulf, poem of, 101 
 Berners, Lord, translation of Eroissart, 
 
 495 
 Biondelli, remarks on the dialects of 
 
 Italy, 338 
 Body and Soul, Dialogue between, 240 
 Boethius, Alfred's extracts from, 133 
 Brunetto Latini, why he wrote in 
 
 French, 243 
 
 OANALE, Jiartino de, why he wrote 
 in French, 243 
 Catalan, monosyllabic poems in, 97, 117 
 Caxton, dialect of, 483, note ; 490 
 ■ — ■ influence of, on English language 
 
 and literature, 483 
 Celtic etymologies, 85, 542 
 Chaucer, copies and editions of, 17 
 
 — Grammar of, 18 
 
 — Canterbury Tales, 417 
 
 — and Gower, Lecture ix., and specially, 
 
 428 
 
 — influence on English, 381—388 
 
 — and Froissart, 395 
 
 — Bomannt of the Eose, 390, 402 
 Cheke, Sir John, Hurt of Sedition, 521 
 
 New Testament, 521, 532 
 
 Cimbric, changes of letter in, 195 
 Classical learning and Reformation, 507, 
 
 324, 553 
 
 — literature, loss of, 1 1 
 Commerce, vocabulary of, 292 
 Contzen, Wanderungen der Kelten, 31 
 Curtasye, Boko of, 291 
 
572 
 
 IBDES 
 
 DEF 
 
 DEFERENCE to great names in lite- 
 rature, 342 
 Dialects, divergence of, 54, 82 
 Drama, dialect of, 564 
 Dulcarnon, etymology of, 126, note 
 Dutch literature, old, value of, 447 
 
 Tyi Final, in English and French, 466 
 -*-' Edward III., Poem on the D^ath 
 of, 287 ■ - ' - 
 
 Emphasis, changes in, 67 
 England and the Papacy, 1, 9, 340 
 English language, foreign constructioiSr 
 in, 74 
 
 — ■ — ■ changes in, 33, 257 
 
 commencement of, 140, 145, 262 
 
 dialects in, 151 
 
 gi-ammar of, 2i 
 
 mixed, 47 
 
 little used for ofBcial purposes 
 
 tefore fifteenth century, 479 
 
 periods in, 143 
 
 vocabulary of, in thirteenth cen- 
 tury, 140, 260 
 
 — literature, commencement of, 146, 
 
 188, 259, 262 
 
 chronology of, 2 
 
 essential character of, 5 
 
 independence of, 5, 6 
 
 -. eajly, unhistorical, 226, 230 
 
 minor poems, early, 242 
 
 — manuscripts, 440 
 
 — nation imbued with Somanee cul- 
 
 ture, 401 
 
 — nationality, character of, 566, 568 
 
 — people, first existence of, 275 
 Euphuism in English literature, 544 
 
 FASLES, popular, antiquity of, 396 
 Fer in Kyng Horn, meaning o^ 
 215 
 Fifteenth century, minor poems of, 465 
 Fisher, Bishop, style of, 493 
 French language, double form of, 23 
 mixed, 58 
 
 — — common literary language of 
 
 Europe in thirteenth century, 
 243 
 
 — ■ — use of in England, 336 
 
 — words how introduced into English, 
 
 265 
 Frisic dialects, 73 
 
 LAT 
 
 Frisie, pronunciation of, 61 
 Froissart as an historian, 487 
 — in England, 336 
 
 GENDEE, grammatical, 108 
 Germanic dialects, 19, 61, 76, 80 
 Golding's translation of Ovid, 555 
 Gothic, how used in this course, 41 
 G-ower's Confessio Amantis, 432 
 <3rammar, study of, 26, 27 
 in England, 607 — 650 
 
 HA"WES, Pastyme of Pleasure, 612 
 Heimskringla, Danish critic's opi' 
 nion of, 105 
 Henry III., proclamation of, 189 
 Hereford's share in Wycliffite versions^ 
 
 344, 360, 440 
 Heywood, John, works o^ 525 
 Historical literature of Middle Ages, 
 
 10; 55 
 Holinshed's Chronicle, 537 
 Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, 559 
 Horn, Kyng, Geste of, 211 
 Humour, characteristic of English lite- 
 rature, 298, 300 
 
 — wanting in Anglo-Saxon literatiire, 
 
 298 
 
 — and wit products of culture, 299 
 hill, sound of, 171 
 
 ICELANDIC sagas, character of, 254, 
 note 
 Icelandic vocabulary, 94 
 Individuality of character, 567 
 Invention in literature, 398 
 Italian dialects, note on, 337 
 Italy, traditional culture in, 299 
 iw, sound of, 65, 171 
 
 TAMES I., of Scotland, works o^ 457 
 
 LANGLANDE. Sec Piers Ploughman 
 Language, how affected by great 
 authors, 382 
 
 by external causes, 147, 2S9 
 
 — ■ how classed, 106 
 Latimer, sermons of, 617 
 Layamon, Chronicle o^ 161 
 
INDEX 
 
 573 
 
 LIB 
 
 libel of English Policy, 468 
 
 liillie, the Euphuist, 544 
 
 Linguistic studies, 28 
 
 Literary property, 396 
 
 Literature, national, what constitutes, 
 
 263 
 Local dialects, 509, note 
 IjoUards in England, 7 
 Iiord's Prayer in different dialects, 76 
 Lovely, vulgar misuse of, 564, note 
 Luxury, not inconsistent with grossness 
 
 of manners, 291 
 Lydgate, works of, 464 
 Lyric poetry. Early English, 253 
 
 MACAEONIC poetry, English, 244 
 of Ausonius, 249 
 
 Mandeville, Sir John, extract from, 271 
 
 vocabulary of, 2J8 
 
 Minot, Laurence, poems of, 277 
 Miracle plays, sermon against, 448 
 Mirrour for Magistrates, 535 
 Mceso-Gothic text of Matthew viii., 
 393 
 
 — language, 90 
 
 Monsoon, Major, in Charles O'Malley, 
 
 568, note 
 More, Sir Thomas, English works o^ 
 
 501, 523 
 Morte d' Arthur, 488 
 
 — — Southey's criticism on, 487 
 
 "VTATTIRE, appreciation and love o^ 
 
 iS 415 
 
 ^fantical dialect, 334 
 
 .^ibelnngen Lied, 19 
 
 Norman conquest of Englancl, effects 
 
 oi, 138 
 Xormans in England, 138 
 
 O Normal sound of, 65 
 ) Occleve, Thomas, works of, 445 
 Ohther's Narrative, extracts from, 125 
 Onnnlum, the, 177 
 Orthography and pronunciation, 194 
 Owl and Nightingale, 205 
 
 rl^GEAVE, French grammar, 509 
 Papacy, ascription of Divine attri- 
 butes t», 8, 34 
 
 SCI 
 Parsing machine. Brown's, 40 
 Participles in Gothic languages, 72 
 Pecock's Eepressor, 473 
 People, meaning of the word, 275 
 Pet words, national, 664 
 Phaer's translation of Virgil, 555 
 Philology neglected, 25, 39 
 Piers Ploughman, date and character of, 
 
 295, 334 
 
 imitators of, 334 
 
 ' metre of, 286 
 
 Political Poems, Early English, 249 
 Poetry, dialect of, 149 
 Promptorium Parvulorum, 509 
 Pronunciation of Danish and Swedish, 
 
 68 
 
 — of Spanish and Portuguese, 68 
 Purvey, revision of Wycliffite versions, 
 
 344, 362 
 
 — version of Psalm cii., 376 
 
 — on translation, 363 
 Puttenham, Arte of English Poesy, 552 
 
 RECOEDS of common life, philo- 
 logical value of, 452 
 Beformation and classical learning, 507, 
 624, 553 
 
 — effects of, 12 
 
 Eegular and irregular verbs, 377 
 Keligious dialect in English, 365 
 Ehyme and Eomance words, 390, 
 
 615 
 Eichard Cceur de Lion, poem on, 226 
 Eichard II., poem on, 334 
 Robert of Brunne, 235 
 Eobert of Gloucester, Chronicle, 231 
 
 Lives of the Saints, 233 
 
 Soman de la Eose, and Chaucer's Ter- 
 
 sion, 445 
 
 — Dutch translation of, 447 
 Romance, how used in this course, 42 
 Eomance languages, origin and jharati- 
 
 ter of, 15, 37 
 — ■ oldest specimens o^ 71 
 Eunio characters, 69 
 
 O Verbal ending in, 216 
 *^j Sackville, works of, 535 
 Satirical poems against clergy, 251 
 Scandinavian languages, 62, 81 
 Science and art, influence o^ on English 
 vocabulary, 658 
 
674 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Seetzen's use of Platt-Deutsch, 338 
 Senses, names and division of, in 
 
 Anglo-Saxon and Old English, 135 
 Shakespeare and Chaucer, 569 
 Shakespeare and the English language, 
 
 569 
 Sidney, Sir Philip, works of, 647 
 Skelton, works of, 511 
 Sounds, simple and compound, 171, 
 
 note 
 — foreign, appreciation of, 87 
 Spenser, Edmund, works of, 648 
 Stanihurst, works of, 638 
 Surrey and Wyatt, works of, 516 
 Surtees' Psalter, 216 
 Sylvester, translation of Du Bartas, 
 
 647 
 
 THEOLOGY, study of, in England, 
 506, 558 
 — dialect of, 493 
 Thomas a Becket on the Papacy, 8 
 Translation, practice of, 412 
 Translations, effect o^ on English, £63 
 
 TTTC 
 
 Travel and commerce, effect o? on 
 
 English, 657 
 Tyndale, New Testament, 505, 511, 530 
 
 u. 
 
 Kormal sound of, 65 
 , UMlas, Bishop, 90, 91 
 
 Unities, dramatic, 526, 637 
 Urban, Pope, 8 
 
 YEESIFICATION, Gothic and Ro- 
 mance, 276, 283, 284 
 
 WIT, product of culture, 299 _ 
 Words individually considered, 
 383, 442 
 
 — in combination, 384 
 
 Wycliffe and his school, Lecture viii, 
 pp. 339 — 378 
 
 — Apology for the Lollards, 367 
 
 — commentary on Gospels, 366 
 
 — New Testament, 370 
 
 — literary influence of, 371 
 
 — opinions of the Papacy, and advios 
 to the Pope, 8 
 
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