CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY ^ BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE DATE DUE rRi 1 qRrt ^ItStRVE 1 HLL D^^'Um^P AM^s^i»?& ^■=WI\1 *» ©?■ U'" "" flHMHNIIlP APTT CAVLOKO rniNTCOINU.l.A. i PE 1075.W98" 1921™"' ''"'""' 3 1924 026 571 160 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924026571160 HISTORY OF MODERN COLLOQUIAL ENGLISH SHAKESPEARE'S WORKMANSHIP. By Sir Arthur Quiller- CoucH, M.A., Litt.D., King Edward VII Professor of English Literature in the University of Cambridge. Demy 8vo, cloth. 15s. net. (Third Impression.) ' Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch's analy- sis of Shakespeare's craftsmanship goes direct to the principles of drama- tic construction ; and if ever the poetic drama seriously revives in England it is more than likely that this book vtrill be found to have had a hand in the revival.' — Westminster Gazette, T. FISHER UNWIN, LTD. LONDON. A HISTORY OF MODERN COLLOQUIAL ENGLISH By henry CECIL WYLD AUTHOR OF ' THE HISTORICAL STUDY OF THE MOTHER TONGUE ' 'a SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLISH," ETC. ETC. ETC. T. FISHER UNWIN LTD LONDON: ADELPHI TERRACE ^'^, PE First published Ip20 Second Edition ig2i All Rights Reserved Printed in Great Britain PREFACE The collection of the material upon which this book is based, the arrangement of this, and the writing of the book itself have occupied about five years, during which I have also had many other distractions and occupations. Whatever may be the shortcomings and defects of the present treatment, it is vain to attempt to extenuate or excuse them in a short preface. On the other hand, such merits and new informa- tion as the book may possess may be left for the discriminating reader to discover for himself. I offer no apology for having omitted any specific treatment of the history of the EngUsh Vocabulary, and of Enghsh Syntax, during the centuries between Chaucer's day and our own. Nor do I conceive that those who have a first-hand acquaintance with the subject will make it a ground of reproach to the author, that having, after all, done some- thing, he has not attempted to do everything. It seems reasonable that a writer should select for himself the aspects of a subject with which he will deal. As I have myself not been altogether idle, during the last twenty years or so, in attempting to add to knowledge in various domains of the history of our language, I think I am entitled to invite others to give the world systematic treatises, even if these should be no more exhaustive than the treatment of other aspects in the present volume, upon historical English Syntax^ and upon English Semantics. I have observed that these are branches of English studies which many people consider important for somebody else to tackle. With regard to the present work, the facts here stated are with very few exceptions derived direct from the sources, that is from the documents themselves. The conclusions drawn from these, both the larger generalizations and the more minute points, are independently arrived at, and represent my own interpretation of the facts. I have not looked up specially everything that has previously been written upon the innumerable questions here discussed, but have preferred to make my own inferences from my own material. In all cases where I have taken facts or conclusions from others, I hope and believe that I have made full acknowledgement. In the slight sketch of Middle English dialectal features given in vi PREFACE Chapter II, I have made use to some extent of the well-known mono- graphs of Morsbach, Lekebusch, DoUe, and Frieshammer, but most of the statements are based upon my own observations. As regards the Modern Period, the credit due to a pioneer belongs to Dr. R. E. ■^ Zachrisson, who in Chapter II of his important work on The Pronuticia- tion of English Vowels, from 1400 to 1700, has emphasized the impor- tance of what I have called occasional spellings, in the writings of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Dr. Zachrisson's collection of these spellings, and his method of dealing with them, have resulted in the need for a modification of the views previously held concerning the chronology of sound changes characteristic of the Modern period. My own treatment of the vowels in accented syllables is based primarily upon the spellings of the kind referred to, and I am personally con- vinced that further investigations, over a wider period of time, will vindicate more and more, in the main, the views first stated by Dr. Zachrisson. I believe I differ from some of his conclusions — I have not compared my results point by point with his — but it appears to me incontestable that we must put the ' vowel shift ' much further back than we were formerly accustomed to do. Future research into the history of English pronunciation will, I think, concern itself rather with the testimony of the imconsciously phonetic spellings in the documents of the past, and with that of rhymes, than with the writings of the old grammarians. It is often said that great caution is needed in using rhymes to establish the existence of this or that pronunciation. This is perfectly true, and the same might be said of every other source of information concerning the speech of earlier generations. Great caution is necessary in all research, and so are courage and imagination. I have utilized the phonetic spellings of the earlier documents in an attempt at the history of the pronunciation of vowels in unaccentuated syllables, see Chapter VII, and in dealing with the changes under- gone by consonantal sounds, see Chapter VIII. It is satisfactory to find that many features of pronunciation hinted at by the writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are often expressed by the occasional spellings much earlier. The writers on pronunciation not infrequently adopt, as a phonetic spelling to express their meaning, forms practically identical with those occasional spellings, into which writers of letters and other documents quoted below so often . slip unconsciously. Thus it is rather striking to find for instance * Porchmouth for ' Portsmouth ' mentioned by Elphinston as a vulgarism in his day, to find the name spelt a hundred years earlier with -ch- in the Verney Memoirs, and again more than a hundred years earlier still by Admiral Sir Thomas Howard (cf p. 292, below). In the face of this PREFACE vii evidence, it is hardly possible to doubt that the pronunciation referred to by Elphinston existed about two and a half centuries before his day. The references to the old orthoepists and grammarians in this book are taken either from my own notes, made some years ago from the copies of these works in the Bodleian, from modern reprints, or, in a few cases, from copies of the originals in my possession. The quotations from •^ Mulcaster's Elementarie are in all cases from a photographic repro- duction of the Bodleian copy which my colleague Professor Campagnac kindly lent me. Books and collections of documents written in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, from which forms are taken, are included in the short Bibliography at the beginning of the book. I have not thought it worth while to draw up a list of works belonging to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as it seemed most probable that all of these would be known and accessible to readers of this book. My gratitude is due to various friends who have helped me in different ways. Dr. John Sampson read the first four chapters in manu- script and gave me the advantage of his advice on many important points. His kindly interest in the work, continually displayed, and his friendly encouragement, are not the least considerable benefits I have received from him. Professor Elton was so kind as to read the proofs of Chapters IV and V, and to make many valuable criticisms and comments. I regret very much that I was unable, owing to the stage which the work had reached, to adopt many of his suggestions, or to develop further several interest- ing lines of investigation which he indicated. • I can assure him that I am none the less grateful to him, and that his informing remarks will not be wasted. To Professor R. H. Ca§s _J owe a peculiar debt. Not only have I consulted him constantly on all kinds of minor points, chronological, biographical, textual, and never in vain, but I have derived enduring pleasure and inspiration, and much valuable information, from our fre- quent discussions concerning all manner of literary questions, both of a general and special character. Mr. Case most generously placed not only his stores of knowledge and the benefit of his highly cultivated taste, but also his Ubrary at my disposal. To him I owe my acquaintance with several important sixteenth- and seventeenth-century works, notably ^Laneham's Letter, and the Comparison of the Stages ; he also lent me copies of these and several other rare books and tracts. I offer my best thanks to Professor Campagnac for lending me his photographs of Mulcaster, to Professor Foster Watson for bringing the / Correspondence of Dr. Basin to my knowledge, and for the loan of viii PREFACE the volume, and to Professor CH- Firth f or calling my attention to, and lending me, vol. i of the Verney Papers, and for pointing out the importance of the State Papers of Henry VIII. I tackled the latter too late in the day to do more than skim a few forms from the surface of a single volume. The references to the passages from BoswelPs Life of fohnson on pp. 167 and 212 were most obligingly sent me by Mr. A. Okey Belfour of Belfast. Miss Serjeantson of the University of Liverpool has helped me in many ways : in verifying and checking a large number of references, in copying out several rather long extracts from seventeenth- and eigh- teenth-century sources, and in some cases, by supplying me with actual forms — for instance a 3rd Pers. Sing, in -s in Bokenam which I had overlooked. For these not unimportant services, promptly and cheer- fully rendered, my gratitude is now expressed. In conclusion, I feel that if this book succeeds, on the one hand, in so interesting the general reader that he is impelled to study the subject for himself in the sources, and if, on the other, the special student of English should find in it such a collection of facts and inferences, and such a mapping-out of the ground as shall serve as the basis for further discussion and investigation, then the volume will have justified its existence. HENRY CECIL WYLD. The University of Liverpool. December, i^ig. NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION I HAVE taken the opportunity afforded by the demand for a fresh edition of this book to correct a few misprints which had been overlooked previously, to remodel one or two sentences, and make a few slight additions here and there — e. g. a late example of her for their in colloquial use on p. 328, and a reference or two which had been omitted — e.g. to Queen Elizabeth's form offen for often on p. 302. The much-needed Word Index, for which several reviewers clatifbiired, and for which I myself have often felt the necessity, has now been supplied. This contains, it is believed, all the forms and spellings of importance from Chapters VI, VII, and VIII. It does not contain the Middle English words from Chapter II, nor the Modern forms in the earlier Chapters, except in so far as these occur in the Chapters on the history of pronunciation in detail, which as a matter of fact most of them do. The grammatical forms from Chapter IXj and the Colloquial Idioms, are not indexed. On the other hand, the words and expressions cited in Chapters IX and X are arranged according to a definite plan, and can be found without much difficulty under the various headings. The Subject Index contains references to most of the principal writers quoted, and to various general problems dealt with throughout the book. HENRY CECIL WYLD. Merton College, Oxford. June, ig2Z. CONTENTS PAGE Alphabetical List or Sourcks — ^Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries . . . xi Remarks on Phonetic Notation xiv Table of Phonetic Symbols used in this Book . . . xiv Chapter I. Introductory i II. Dialect Types in Middle English and their Survival in the Modern Period . . z6 III. The English of the Fifteenth Century . . 62 IV. The English of Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth . ...... 99 V. The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries . 148 VI. The History of English Pronunciation in the Modern Period — The Vowels of Accentuated Syllables 189 VII. The Vowels of Unstressed Syllables < .258 VIII. Changes in Consonantal Sounds . . .282 IX. Notes on Inflexions 31^ X. Colloquial Idiom ^^g Index 099 ALPHABETICAL LIST OF SOURCES Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries Only. ^Alleyn, Edward, Memoirs of (i 593-1626). Ed. Payne Collier, Shake- speare Society, 1843. Alleyne Papers (1580-1661). Ed. Payne Collier, Shakespeare Society, 1843. Aragon, see Catherine. VAscham, Roger. Toxophilus, 1545 ; The Scholemaster, 1563. Audelay, John. Poems, 1426. Percy Soc, 1844. Bath, Earl of. Letters, 1540, in Ellis' Orig. Letters, ser. 2, vol. ii, 157. Beaufort, Margaret {1443-1509). Ellis' Letters, i. I. 46, &c. Berners, Juliana. A Treatyse of Fysshynge, 1496. Wynkyn de Worde. •^ Eer ners, Lord. Translation of Froissart, 1520. Ed. W. P. Ker. Bokenam, dsbern. Lives of Saints, 1443. Baleyn, Anne, Queen. Letters, 1528, in Ellis, i. I ; i. 2 ; ii. 2. Booke of Quinte Essence, 1460-70. Buckhurst, Thomas Sackville, Lord. Works. Ed. R. W. Sackville West. London, 1859. Burghl^jijJWilliqni Cecil, Lord. Letters in Ellis (cit. ser. vol. and p.), and in Bardon Papers. Burial of Edward IV, 1483. In Letters and Papers, vol. i. Capgrave, John. Chronicle 14. Ed. Hingeston, Rolls Series, 1858. Catherine of Aragon, Reception of, 1501. In Letters and Papers, vol. i, pp. 404, &c. Cavendish. Life of Cardinal Wolsey, 1577. Kelmscott Pressj 1893 (reprinted from Author's MS.). Caxton, William. Life of Jason, 1477. Ed. Munro, E.E.T.S.', 1913. Celibacy, Vows of, 1459-1527. In Lincoln Diocesan Documents, g.v. Cely Papers, 1473-88 ; Ed. Maldon, Camden Soc, xgoo. Chetwynd Chartulary, 1490-4. Wm. Salt, Archaeol. Soc, xii, 1891. Constable of Dynevor Castle (temp. Hen. IV). Letter in Ellis, ii. I. Coventry Leet Book,{xom 1421. Ed. Reader Harris, E.E.T.S., 1901. Cranmer, Archbishop. Letters (1533-7), in Ellis, ser. i, vol. ii ; and ser. 37 vofc-iii. Creation of Henry, Duke of York a Knight of the Bath, 1494. In Letters and Papers, vol. i, pp. 388, &c. Darrell-Hungerford Letters &c. {c. 1560-88); in Society in the Eliza- bethan "Age," Hubert Hall, 1887. Dives Pragmaticus, A booke in Englyshe metre, of the great Marchaunt- man called, 1563. Reprinted Univ. Press, Manchester, 1910. [Remarks on Dialect, &c., and a Glossary by H. C. Wyld.] Editha, Life of Saint, 1420. Ed. Horstmann. Edward VPs First Prayer Bjiok, 1549; Second Prayer Book, 1552. Elizabeth, Queen._ _(lX Letters, in EUis; (2) Letters to James I, Camden Soc, 1849 ; (3) Letters inlBardon Papers, Camden Soc, 1909 ; (4) Eng- lishings (translations of Boethius, &c), 1593. Ed. Pemberton, E.E.T.S., 1899. v' EUis, Sir Henry, Original Letters Illustrative of English History ; 3 series of 3 vols. each. Cit. ser., vol., and p. >/ Elvott. Sir Thomas. The Booke of the Gouernour, 1 53 1. Ed. Croft, 2 vols., i88oI~ xu ALPHABETICAL LIST OF SOURCES Exeter Tailors' Gild, Ordinances of, 1466. Ed. Toulmin Smith, in English Gilds, E.E.T.S., 1870. Fisher, John, Bishop of Rochester (fl. 1459-1535). English Works, ed. Mayor, E.E.T.S., 1876 ; and Letter in Ellis, iii. 2. 289. Fortescue, Sir John. Governance of England, 147 1-6. Ed. Plummer, Oxford, 1885. Godstow, English Register of, 1450. Ed. A. Clark, E.E.T.S., 1905. Googe, Barnabe. Eglogs, Epytaphes, and Sonnettes, 1563. Ed. Arber. Gosson, Stephen. The Schoole of Abuse, 1579. Ed. Arber. Gregory, William. Chronicle, in Historical Collections of a Citizen of London. Gairdner, Camden Soc, 1876, Harvey, Gabriel, Letter Book of (1573-80). Ed. C. J. L. Scott, Camden Soc, 1884. Henry VIII, King. Letters, 1515 and IS44- In Ellis' Orig. Letters, ser. 1, vols, i and ii. Hocdeve. Regiment of Princes ; Minor Poems, 1413, 1414. Ed. Fumivall, E.E.T.S., 1899 and 1892. Howard, Lord Admiral Sir Edward. Letter to Henry VHI, 1513, in Ellis, ii. I. 213, &c. Hungerford, see Darrell-Hungerford. Instructions given to Lord Montjoie, 1483. In Letters and Papers, vol. i. Ireland, Conquest of, 1450. Ed. Fumivall, E.E.T.S. Ireland, State of, 1515. In State Papers of Henry VIII, Pt. Ill, 1834. Irish Documents, 1489-93. In Letters and Papers, vol. i. Knaresborough Wills, from 1512. Surtees Soc, vol. civ, 1902. Knight, Dr. (Bishop of Bath and Wells). Letters, 1512. Ellis, ser. 2. i and ser. 3. i. Laneham, Robert. Letter from, 1 575, in Captain Cox his Ballads and Books. Ed. Furnivall, Ballad Society, 1871. Latimer, Bishop Hugh, (i) Seven Sermons ; (2) The Sermon of the Plough, 1549. Arber's Reprints. Layton, Richard, Dean of York. Letter to Lord Cromwell, 1535. Ellis, 2. a, pp. 60, &c. Lever, Thomas. Sermons, 1550. Ed. Arber, 1895. ■^ Lily, John. Euphues Anatomy of Wit, 1579 ; Euphues and his England, . 1580 . Ed., one vol., Arber, 1895. Cit. 'Euphues p.'; Dramatic Works, 2 vols. Ed. Fairholt, 1892. Lincoln Diocesan Documents, 1451, &c (Wills, Leases, Vows, &c.). E.E.T.S., 1914. Cit. L.D.D., name of Doc, date, and p. Lydgate. London Lyckpenny ; Extracts from Story of Thebes, in Skeat's Specimens of Eng. Lit. Machyn, Henry. Diary, 1550-3. Camden Soc. Margaret, Queen, of Anjou, and Bishop Bekinton. Letters, 1420-42. Camden Soc. Margaret, Queen of Scotland. Letters, 1503, in Ellis, i. i, p. 42. Mary, Queen of Scots. Letters to KnoUys, 1568. Ellis, i. 2. 253. Mason, John. Letter, .1535, in Ellis, ii. 2. 54, &c. Monk of Evesham, Revelation of (1482). Ed. Arber. More, Sir Thomas. Letters, 1523-9, in Ellis, i. i and i. 2. Cit. p. See also Robynson and Roper. - Mulcaster, Richard. Elementarie, 1581. [Quoted from photographic copy of original in Bodleian.] Oseney Abbey, Register of, 1460. Ed. A. Clark, E.E.T.S., 1907. Palladius on Husbandry, 1421. Ed. Lodge, E.E.T.S., 1873. Cit. p. and line. Paston, Margaret. Letters in vols, i, ii, iii of Paston Letters, 1440-70. Ed. Gairdner. Paston, William (the Judge). Letters, 1425-30, in P.L., vol. i. Pecock, Bishop Reginald {o{ Chichester). The RepressOT, c. 1449. 2 vols. Ed. Babington, Rolls Series, i860. ALPHABETICAL LIST OF SOURCES xiii Peele, George. Edward II. Malone Society. Pery, Thomas. Letter to Mr. Ralph Vane, 1539. Ellis, ii. z, pp. 140, &c. Puttenham, Richard (or George). The Arte of English Poesie, 1589. Ed. Arber. ._ Raleigh, Sir Walter. Selections from his Historie of the World, his Letters, &c. Ed. G. E. Hadow, Oxford, 1917 ; also Works, 8 vols., Orford, 1829. Rede me and be not wroth, I I2i. Ed. Arber. Reivle of Suslris' Menouresses, c. 1450. E.E.T.S., 1914. Robert the Devil, fifteenth century. Robynson, Raphe. English Translation of Sir Thomas More's Utopia, 1556. Ed. J. R. Lumby, Cambridge, 1891. Roper, William. Life of Sir Thomas More. Prefixed to Lumby's edition of Utopia. Sackville, Thomas. See Buckhurst. Seynumr,^Sir Thffmas. Letters, 1544. State Papers of Henry VIII, vol. i. Shakespeare, William.. Various Plays from facsimile of First Folio of 1623, cit. play, act, and sc. Reprinted L. Booth, 1864. Shillingford, John, Mayor of Exeter. Letters and Papers, 1447-50. Camden Soc, 187 1. Short English Chronicle, 1464. Ed. Gairdner, Camden Soc, 1880. Shrewsbury^, Countess of. Letters, 1581-2, in Ellis, ii. 2. 63, &c. ; ii. 3. 60, &c. — Sidney, Sir Philip, Miscellaneous Works. Ed. W. Gray, 1893 ; Complete Poems, Ed. A. B. Grosart. 2 vols., 1873. Siege of Rouen (in Short Eng. Chron.), c. 1420. "- Skelton,John. Magnyfycence, i:. 1516. Ed. Ramsay, E.E.TS., 1908. Smith, Sir Thomas, (i) pe Republica Anglorum (in English), 1565 ; (2) Letters (1572-6), in Ellis, ii. 3 ; iii. 3. — Spenser, Rdmttnd; V^ox\i^. Ed. Hales. Globe edition. State of Ireland (see Ireland). Suffolk Wills (Bury Wills and Inventories), 1463-1569. Camden Soc. — Surrey, Thos., Earl of. Letters to Wolsey, 1520 ; State Papers, Hen. VIII, Pt. Ill ; Henry, E. of. Poems in Tottel's Miscellany. Ed. Arber. — Udail, Nicholas. Roister Doister, 1553-66. Ed. Arber. Verney Family. Letters and Papers of fifteenth century to 1639. Ed. Bruce, "Camden Soc., 1853. Cit. Vemey P. Watson, Thomas. 1582-93. Edited Arber, 1870. Webbe, William. A Discourse of English Poetrie, 1586. Ed. Arber. Wilson, Thomas. The Arte of Rhetorique, 1585 (3rd ed.). Ed. Mair, Oxford, 1909. Wingfield, Sir Robert. Letter to Henry VIII, 1513. Ellis, ii. I. 210, &c Worcester, Ordinances of, 1467. In Toulmin Smith's English Gilds. Works of Later Date. It has not been thought necessary to make a list of the various works referred to in the later chapters, belonging to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as when these are not well known, sufficient references are given in the text. REMARKS ON PHONETIC NOTATION In a book like the present, which deals with a large number of questions connected with pronunciation and its changes, it is absolutely indispensable that we should be able to express rapidly, accurately, and unambiguously the precise sounds we are dealing with. This cannot be secured without the aid of Phonetic Notation. The main essentials of a Phonetic Notation are : that there shall be a separate symbol for each separate sound ; that no symbol should be written if there is no sound to be expressed — e. g. no r is required in part, to express the pronunciation of most educated Englishmen at the present day; we therefore write [pat]; that the same symbol should always express one and the same sound — thus [s] is always the initial sound in soap, [z] always the final sound in buzz, &c. When it is remembered, for instance, that the oflScial spelling takes no cognizance of the many sound changes discussed in Chapters VI, VII, VIII, it is evident that ^spelling' has nothing to do with the various problems involved, and that since we are dealing with sounds, we must have a simple and accurate means of expressing the phonetic facts we are considering. Thus the word flood, although often so spelt in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, may have, at a given time, three different pronunciations among different classes of speakers. In writing about these we can express the various sounds quite clearly by writing [u, ii, a], but not by speaking about the ' w-sound '. If the simple principles just enumerated be borne in mind, 'and if the reader does not associate the symbols in [ ] with the sounds which they express, often very inconsistently, in the traditional spelling, he will find very little difficulty in making out what sound is referred to. Even if he does experience some trouble at first in getting a clear idea of the sound intended, he may comfort himself by remembering, that if a phonetic notation were not used, he would be unable to gain any idea on the subject at all. TABLE OF PHONETIC SYMBOLS USED IN THIS BOOK Note that whenever phonetic symbols are used in the text they are enclosed in [ ]. Vowels. Symbol Sound expressed, [2] = English i as in bit. [i] = English ee as in see; or French i in si. The vowel of the latter is short.) REMARKS ON PHONETIC NOTATION xv [e] = English e in bet; when long [e] the French e before r as in pire. [e] = French / in , J], &c. A Voiced Consonant is one during the articulation of which the vocal chords vibrate and produce a kind of 'buzz' — [z, v, % z], &c., which may be contrasted with the Voiceless, or Un-voiced, corresponding sounds [s,f,t>J], &c. CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY Writers upon the history of language are very careful to insist that the process of development or evolution of speech takes place in the living, spoken language, and not in written documents. It is pointed out that language changes in the very act of speaking, that changes in pronuncia- tion, accidence, and the rest come about gradually, and by imperceptible degrees, within the lifetime of a single generation, and in transmission from one generation to another. A history of a language is an account of these slight and gradual changes, the cumulative results of which, in the course of several generations, may be very remarkable. In a primitive age, the written form of a language is, in the main, a reproduction of the spoken form, and follows as nearly as may be, though often lagging somewhat behind, the changing fortunes of the latter. If a language ceases to be spoken as a normal, living means of intercourse between man and man, the written form can no longer change, but must remain fixed, since it must consist merely of a reproduction of ancient models ; there is no longer a living, changing speech to mould its character and keep it up to date. It is an unfortunate circumstance for students of the history of a lan- guage, but one from which there is no escape, that they are dependent upon written documents for a knowledge of all but die most recent developments, since, in the nature of things, they can gain no direct and personal access to the spoken language earlier than the speech of the oldest living person they may know. We are bound, therefore, to make the best use we can of the written records of the past, always bearing in mind that our question in respect to the writers of these documents is ever — How did they speak ? What fact of pronunciation is revealed by, or concealed beneath, this or that spelling ? Our business in this book is mainly concerned with English as it has been spoken during the last. four or five centuries; we are not attempting a history of literary form, and our interest in written documents, whether they rise to the dignity of works of literature, or be of a humbler character, is primarily in proportion to the light these compositions throw upon the spoken English of the period in which they were written. At the same time, in the course of our inquiry, we are bound to deal with the origin and character of the English of Literature and its historical relation to the spoken English of the various periods. If we turn for a moment to consider quite briefly the linguistic conditions in our own country at the present time, there are several outstanding facts which at once arrest attention. On the one hand, we have a written form of English which is common to all literary productions, and which is invariable as 2 INTRODUCTORY regards spelling and grammar, both in books and private documents; Written English is fixed and uniform. On the other hand, we find almost endless variety in the spoken language. If we call up for a moment, in no matter how hazy a manner, two or three different types of English which we have heard spoken in as many widely separated areas in this country, it is apparent at once that these types differ very much from each other in almost every respect. Their sounds — that is, the ways in which they are pronounced — are different ; so, too, in many respects, are the grammatical forms, and there are differences often in the names of quite common objects. If we think of these different types of uttered speech in relation to the written language we should perhaps find it diSicult to say which of them appeared to be least effectually expressed by our present system of spelling. In any case it must be obvious to every one that Literary English at the present time cannot be intended to repre- sent equally the language as spoken locally, let us say in Devonshire, Oxfordshire, or Yorkshire. Perhaps it was never intended to represent any of these types, and, if not, it may well be asked. To what spoken type does it correspond ? Again, it is quite possible for an educated person to speak with a very marked provincial accent, and yet to write perfectly good English. In such a case the man may be said to speak one dialect and to write another, and the character of his spoken dialect need not influence his manner of writing to the smallest degree. Certainly no indication of his peculiarities of pronunciation will be traceable in his spelling. It is necessary to consider rather more closely the varieties which exist in present-day Spoken English. As a rule when we speak of the English Dialects we mean varieties oi English which are associated with particular geographical areas or counties. Many of these types of English at the present time are distinguished, according to the popular view, chiefly by possessing a more or less strange pronunciation, and certain elements in their vocabulary which are not current coin in every part of the country, and especially not among the more educated portion of the community. Speech varieties of this kind, confined to particular areas, it is proposed to call Begional Dialects. By the side of these, there are numerous other types of English which are not characteristic of any special geographical area, but rather of social- divisions or sections of the population. Of these the chief is the type which most well-bred people think of when they speak of ' English '. At the risk of offending certain susceptibilities this type of English must be further described and particularized. As regards its name, it may be called Good English, Well-bred English, Upper-class English, and it is sometimes, too vaguely, referred to as Standard English. 'For reasons which will soon appear, it is proposed here to call it Received Standard English. This form of speech differs from the various Regional Dialects in many ways, but most remarkably in this, that it is not confined to any locality, nor associated in any one's mind with any special geographical area ; it is in origin, as we shall see, the product of social conditions, and is essentially a Class Dialect. Received Standard is spoken, within certain social boundaries, with an extraordinary degree of uniformity, all over the country. It is not any more the English of London, as is sometimes mistakenly maintained, than it is that of York, or Exeter, or Cirencester, VARIETIES OF SPOKEN ENGLISH 3 or Oxford, or Chester, or Leicester. In each and all of these places, and in many others throughout the length and breadth of England, Received Standard is spoken among the same kind of people, and it is spoken everywhere, allowing for individual idiosyncrasies, to all intents and pur- poses, in precisely the same way. It has been suggested that perhaps the main factor in this singular degree of uniformity is the custom of sending youths from certain social strata to the great public schools. If we were to say that Received English at the present day is Public School English, we should not be far wrong. It has been said that Received Standard is one from among many forms of English which must be grouped under Class Dialects. By the side of this type there exist innumerable varieties, all more or less resembling Received Standard, but differing from it in all sorts of subtle ways, which the speaker of the latter might find it hard to analyse and specify, unless he happened to be a practised phonetician, but which he perceives easily enough. These varieties are certainly not Regional Dialects, and, just as certainly, they are not Received Standard. Until recently it has been usual to regard them as so far identical with this, that the differences might be ignored, and what we here call Received Standard, and a large part of these variants that we are now considering, were all grouped together under the general title of Standard English, or Educated English. This old classification of English Spfeech, as it now exists, into Provincial (Regional)Dialects, and Standard or Educated English, was very inadequate, since it ignored the existence of Class Dialects, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it ignored the existence of more than one Class Dialect, and included under a single title many varieties which differ as much from what we now call Received Standard as this does from the Regional Dialects. The fact is that these types of English, which are not Provincial or Regional Dialects, and which are also not Received Standard, are in reality offshoots or variants from the latter, which have sprung up through the factors of social isolation among classes of the community who formerly spoke, in most cases, some form of Regional Dialect. It is proposed to call these variants Modified Standard, in order to dis- tinguish them from the genuine article. This additional term is a great gain to clear thinking, and it enables us to state briefly the fact that there are a large number of Social or Class Dialects, sprung from what is now Received Standard, and variously modified through the influence of Regional speech on the one hand, or, on the other, by tendencies which have arisen within certain social groups. These forms of Modified Standard may, in some cases, differ but slightly from Received Standard, so that at the worst they are felt merely as eccentricities by speakers of the latter; in others they differ very considerably, and in several ways, from this type, and are regarded as vulgarisms. It is a grave error to assume that what are known as 'educated' people, meaning thereby highly trained, instructed, and learned persons, invariably speak Received Standard. Naturally, such speakers do not make ' mistakes ' in grammar, they may have a high and keen perception of the right uses of words, but with all this they may, and often do, use a type of pronunciation which is quite alien to Received Standard, either in isolated words or in whole groups. These deviations B2 4 INTRODUCTORY from the habits of Received Standard may be shown just as readily in over-careful pronunciation, which aims at great ' correctness ' or elegance — as when / is pronounced in often, or when initial h is scrupulously uttered (wherever written) before all personal pronouns, even when these are quite unemphasized in the sentence — as in a too careless and slipshod pronunciation — as when buttered toast is pronounced hutterd tose, or object is called objic, and so on. Again, the deviation from Received Standard may be in the direction neither of over-carefulness nor of over-slovenliness. There may be simply a difference of sound, as when clerk is made to rhyme with shirk, or laugk with gaff, or valet is pronounced without a -/, as if it were a French word. > Or the difference may not have to do with pronunciation at all, but may consist in the inappropriate use of a word — say of lady or gentleman, or some other simple ' derangement of epitaphs '. Different social grades have different standards of what is becoming in speech, as they have in dress and manners, or other questions of taste and fashion. Thus, for example, while some habitually use 'em, ain't, broke (past participle), shillin, others would regard such usage with disapproval. All these things and countless others of like nature are in no wise determined by ' education ' in the sense of a knowledge of books, but by quite other factors. The manner of a man's speech from the point of view we are considering is not a matter of intellectual training, but of social opportunity and experience. It is of great importance for our purpose in this book that the distinction between Regional and Class Dialects should be clearly grasped, and also that the existence of Modified Standard, by the side of Received Standard, should be fully recognized. The very nature and origin of the English of Literature and of Received Standard Spoken English cannot be understood unless these facts be clearly before us. Both the latter and Literary English derive their origin ' from several Regional types, and have from time to time been influenced by others in minor respects. But, during the last two centuries at least, the modifications which have come about in the spoken language are the result of the influence not primarily of Regional but of Class Dialects. Upon these influences, and their effects, it will be our business in this book to attempt to throw some light. But the question will be asked, Where does Received Standard English come from ? This question must be answered, at least in outline, at once. It is evident that any form of language, whatever may be its subsequent history, must, in the beginning, have had a local habitation, an area over ' which it was habitually spoken, a community of actual speakers among whom it grew up and developed. In other words, if Received Standard is now a Class Dialect, and the starting-point of other Class Dialects, it must once have been a Regional Dialect. If we examine the records of our language in the past, it appears that from the thirteenth centuiy onwards a large number of writings exist which were produced in London, and apparently in the dialect of the capital. These documents are of various kinds, and include proclama- tions, charters, wills, parliamentary records, poems, and treatises. Among the latter we may reckon the works of Chaucer. The language of these ORIGIN OF LITERARY ENGLISH 5 London writings agrees more closely with the form of English which was later recognized as the exclusive form for literary purposes than does the language of any other mediaeval English documents. So far, then, it appears that Chaucer used the dialect spoken in London for his prose and poetry ; this is proved by the agreement of his language with that of other documents of a literary or an official character, written in London before, during, and after his time. When, after the introduction of printing, a definite form of English becomes the only one used in literary composition, that form is on the whole, and in essential respects; ' the normal descendant of Chaucer's dialect, and of Caxtqn'g. The latter writer specifically states that he uses the type of English spoken in London,'' and in the following century, EjJltaai^™. to whom we shall again refer later, recommends, as the proper English for the writer, that which is spoken in London. LondQn_apeech then, or one type of it, as it existed in \ the fourteenth century, is the ancestor- of Literary English, and it is also ; the a_ncestor~of our present-day Received Standard. Written Standard may be liaid to have' existed fronrthe end of'tfie fourteenth century, ' although it was not used to the complete exclusion "of other loffiK~fbr , another hundred years or so. It is^more difficult to date the beginning of the existence of a spoken standard. It is certairTtlMt educated""people continuea~-to use local 'dialects long after they had given up attempt- ing to put these local forms down on paper. This is true of the upper classes no less than of the humbler. As we shall see, there are plenty of proofs of this in literature. The question is. How soon did men begin toi feel that such and such forms were ' right ' in the spoken language, and. that others should be avoided? for it is the existence of this feeling that constitutes the emergence of a favoured or standard dialect. The exis- tence of such a standard of Spoken English.^ is certainly established by remarks of grammarians and others in the sixteenth century, and it is highly probable that the first recognition of the superiority of one type over the others must be placed at least as early as the fifteenth century, and perhaps earlier still. A further question, closely related to the above, but not quite identical with it, is. When did the ancestor of our present Received Standard become a Class Dialect ? Another way of putting this question is to inquire how early do appreciable and recognized divergences appear between the speech of the upper and lower classes in London. There are general reasons for believing that social dialects would arise quite early in a large community ; it may be possible, though not easy, to establish from docu- mentary evidence a probability that they actually did exist in the fifteenth century ; it is quite certain that in the sixteenth century a difference was recognized, between upper-class English and the language of the humbler order of the. people, and we have the perfectly definite statement of Puttenham that this was the case; A simpler problem, but one which must be touched upon here, is the diffusion of the common literary type of the written language on the one hand, and of the Spoken Standard English upon the other. As we shall see, before the middle of the fifteenth century, long before printing was introduced, we find that the local dialects are less and less used in writing, whether in private more or less official documents. 6 INTRODUCTORY such as wills and letters, or in what we must regard as literary works in the special sense. This is due partly to the study of London oflScial documents by scribes and lawyers and other officials, partly, in the case of literature proper, to the immense vogue of Chaucer. With the advent of Caxton and his successors the spread of a know- ledge of the English in which he wrote became easy and natural. The diffusion of the Spoken Standard was a much slower process. It is not complete at the present time, as we see from the fact that more or \ less pure Regional Dialects still linger on. The first classes, outside the 1 metropolis, to acquire the Spoken Standard would be those representa- l tives of the nobility and gentry who visited the Court for longer or I shorter periods, and the higher officials : the great lawyers, statesmen, and ecclesiastics whose business brought them into contact with the King and . his courtiers. Another influence was that of the Universities, who sent out ; the clergy into country parishes, and masters into the schools. The influ- ence of printed books was no doubt considerable, even in modifying actual speech, for'aHKoagh these could not afiect pronunciation to any great extent, they made an ever-increasing public acquainted with the gram- matical forms and general structure of a dialect which had these features in common with what was becoming more and more the standard medium of intercourse in polite society. Not less important than the above, in spreading the current coin of the form of English which has gradually taken the place of the old Regional Dialects nearly everywhere, are the activities of trade and commerce. The necessity for intercourse between the great provincial centres of industry and the metropolis, and the extraordinary development of means of locomotion during the nineteenth century, which facilitated travel, have carried the speech of London into all parts of the country and made it the current form. On the other hand, while the geographical diffusion of some form of Standard English has thus grown apace, its spread among all classes of the population has been secured by the breaking down of social boundaries and intermingling of classes, as well as by the development of education. In all the schools, in no matter what geographical area, or among what social grade, an attempt is made to eliminate the most marked pro- vincialisms and vulgarisms. Thus gradually the Regional Dialects are being extirpated, the coarser features of the vulgarer forms of Class Dialect are being softened, and the speech of the rising generation is being brought up to a certain pitch of refinement — or so it is beheved. At any rate a process of modification is always going on. Thus a form of speech which began as a Regional Dialect has become at once the sole recognized form used in writing, and has gradually extended its sway in colloquial use not merely all over the country, but among all classes. But this latter process could not happen without a loss of uniformity, I and thus a fresh differentiation has taken place, resulting in the large , number of forms of Modified Standard which now exist. , _ Among the forms we may distinguish two main kinds — one kind which is definitely modified by some existing Regional Dialect, and another which seems to be more purely a Class Dialect with no characteristic PROVINCIAL AND VULGAR ENGLISH 7 Regional influence that can be discovered. Of the former kind there are innumerable varieties, and they may be heard in the larger towns such as York, Manchester, Liverpool, and Birmingham, &c. The other kind of Modified Standard seems to exist chiefly among the more or less educated Middle Class of the South, especially within fifty miles or so of London, and, of course, in London itself. The distinctive character of the Modified Standard of the big towns remote from London consists chiefly in certain approximations in the pronunciation of vowel, and, to a lesser degree, of the consonantal sounds to those of the nearest Regional Dialect. This kind of English is often described as ' a provincial accent '. We ought probably to reckon the typical Cockney English of London, as ' spoken by educated Middle Class people, in the same class as the above, j only here we should not speak of a ' provincial accent ', but of a ' Cockney | accent '. The peculiarities of this kind of London English, which dis- tinguish it from Received Standard, are doubtless as much Regional in origin as are those of Liverpool or Manchester. Much below these types in the social scale we have, both in London and in the big towns of the Midlands, other forms of Modified Standard, also influenced by the Regional Dialect, only more strongly so than the educated speech just referred to, various other Glass Dialects which we should not hesitate to describe as vulgar. The London Cockney of the streets is an example of this genre. The special type of Modified Standard spoken in such a centre as Liverpool or Manchester may become so well established that each of these and similar cities may form a starting-point whence linguistic influence spreads over an area coextensive with their social and economic influence. Thus the process of difi'erentiation is almost infinite, and the tendency j of language is not, as it has sometimes been wrongly said, in the ' direction of uniformity, but of variety. The former view, which arose /' from a realization that the old Regional Dialects of England were dis-' appearing, lost sight of the fact that their place was being taken by a totally different form of English, not developed normally from the several Regional Dialects, but one of different origin, acquired through external channels. The old dialects were not growing like each other, but were vanishing. In their places various forms of !\tolified Standard have arisen. "" " We may now briefly consider the dialectal character of the London English from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Already in Henry Ill's Proclamation of i2t;8 we find that the dialect has both S outher n and East Midlandjeatoes, while Davie, about half a century later, and the loiirteenth-century London Charters show the same mingling of type, and also have some specifically South-Eastern or Kentish forms. The East Midland characteristics become more marked, and the purely Southern less so. Chaucer's poetry shows a slight increase of the East Midland element, and a corresponding diminution of the Southern, and in his prose the Southern element is weaker still, j Fifteenth-century official London documents and the language of Caxton have very largely lost the purely Southern features, and henceforth the j English of Literature and Standard Spoken English display less and less the characteristics of the old Southern Dialect, and an ever-growing 8 INTRODUCTORY Iproportion of tjgical East Midland pecu liarit ies. Thus London English 'has ever been a combination of elements characteristic of at least three Regional Dialect types, and while all three are still clearly traceable to-day, present-day English is very largely descended from the old East Midland type. Throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, how- ever, purely Southern features, since discarded, crop up, here and there, in the published works and in the private correspondence of the best writers. The history of London English since Davie, and later of Received Standard, has been a gradual shifting of the relative preponderance in the , various Regional elements of which it is composed. The influence of the Class Dialects probably began in the sixteenth century. The mixed character of the dialect of London in the Middle Ages is not to be wondered at, having regard to the geographical position of the city. Further, the growing importance of London as a market brought traders into it from all parts of the country, and the strong East Midland influence probably came from the great business centre of Norwich. A great deal has been said about different types of dialect, and it is , well to be quite clear as to the nature of the distinctions which separate I these. It will be convenient to deal with these under the three main heads of Pronunciation, Accidence, or Grammatical forms, and Vocabulary. ^ Perhaps the most iraporta,nt characteristic of dialect is its -pronunciation. At the present time, it is certainly this feature which chiefly distinguishes Received Standard from the different kinds of Modified Standard, especially when the latter, as so often happens, is spoken by persons who are more or less highly educated. Such people will hardly differ in their grammar from Received Standard, and as regards Vocabulary, except in a limited number of familiar colloquialisms and slang which certainly do vary from class to class, it may be said that, on the whole, persons of the same kind or degree of instruction possess approximately the same range of words. This is largely determined by general culture and habits of reading. It is of course obvious that every occupation or profession has technical words of its own, which, while habitual to its members, are unfamiliar or perhaps unknown to those outside. These technical ' trade terms ' are not under consideration for the moment. To return to Pronunciation. In the older dialects, where conditions are less complex, the question resolves itself very largely into the special treatment, within a certain speech area, of an original sound. We must illustrate this point briefly. In Old English there was a diphthong (i.e. a combination of two vowel sounds) eo which, according to its origin, was long in some words and short in others. The dialects of the South- West, and West Midlands, by the middle of the thirteenth century at any rate, had altered this sound into one closely resembling the present French vowel in du. This vowel is written «, after the French method, in Middle English. On the other hand, the dialects of the East, especially the East Midlands (East Anglia), changed this old diphthong into a sound which was written e, which, when it represented the old long -, but pronounced like French u in bu, lune, &c. There are three possibilities. In the larger part of the country, the South-West, the Central and West Midlands as far north as Lancashire and Derbyshire, the old sound remained apparently unaltered in the M.E. period, and was written with the French symbol for this sound — u. In the South-East, Kent, Essex, and a large part of East Anglia, the old sound appears in M.E. as e, indeed it had taken this form already in the ninth century in Kent; but in the North, and in the East Midlands, including parts of Nor- folk and Suffolk, O.E. y appears as i in Middle English. Now the London Dialect of the fourteenth century has all three developments of this sound ; indeed the same word may occur in more than one type, showing that all three types were current in the London area. Examples are : — O.E. synne ' sin ', M.E. sinne, siinne, senne ; O.E. byrian ' to bury ', M.E. Urie(n), burie{n), berie{n) ; O.E. brycg ' bridge ', M.E. brigge, briigge, ' bregge ; O.E. cyssan ' to kiss ', M.E. kisse{n), kusse{n), kesse{n). In Eresent-day English, we preserve all threejjpes, although we do not admit more than one form of any given word":— thus kiss, sin, hill, bridge, ridge, list (vb.), &c., belong to the E. Midland type ; bundle, rush (the plant), thrush, clutch, cudgel, and some others, are derived from the type having the French «-sound in Old and Middle English, though this has changed since the latter period into quite a different sound; -whWt fledge, knell, merry represent the Kentish, South-Eastern, and East Anglian type. It should be noted that our bury is spelt according to M.E. ii-type, and pronounced according to the South-Eastern type, while busy is also spelt according to the former type, but our pronunciation of it is derived from the E. Midland bisy, very commonly found in M.E. and Early Modern. All the above words have the vowel _y in Old English. It is quite possible, though at present difScult to establish, that the 10 INTRODUCTORY distribution of types in the above words depended originally upon Class Dialects. In any case the usage fluctuates, even in good visiters, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and does not altogether agree with our present habits. One of the things which complicates our problems is that it is possible for a peculiarity which is Regional in origin to pass into London speech and Early Standard English through the chaiinel of a particular class, so that so far as this particular form of English is coii- cerned the feature begins as a characteristic of Class Dialect.. From this starting-point it may gain wider and finally, perhaps, almost universal currency. An apparent example of this is the pronunciation of i as e, e. g. tell for till, sence for since, cetezen for citizen, and so on. This pecu- liarity, to judge by the occasional spellings, gains ground gradually in London English from the late fifteenth century onwards. These e-spellings appear to be more numerous among the middle-class writers, in private letters, &c., than among the more distinguished members of society, though the latter are by no means free from them. In the eighteenth century tell, &c., is distinctly mentioned as a London vulgarism. So far as our evidence goes, these ^-spellings, in words that originally had i, appear earliest, and are most frequent, in documents written in the extreme East — Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk. If this is correct, then we have here a Regional character which was given currency through the lower and middle classes of the metropolis, and later, to judge from the spellings in the Verneys'and Lady Wentworth's Letters (cf. p. 229), must have been fairly widespread in the speech of the upper classes of that period. This peculiarity has apparently disappeared entirely from decent English, though a pronunciation something like/i«« for pin, &c., is common among vulgar speakers. A rather more difiicult problem is presented when in Received Standard two different types are found side by side, one of which is of compara- tively late appearance, when this later type, being at one time exhibited by a large number of words, has at the present time become restricted to a much smaller group — when in fact the distribution of the types among words of one and the same original class has gradually been altered. A case in point is seen in the history of a large group of words which in Middle English contained the combination -er-, the original pronunciation of which was approximately that of the Mod. German er 'he'. As regards the spelling of these words, present-day English writes sometimes -er-, as in certain, servant, &c., sometimes -ear-, as in learn, heard, &c., sometimes -ar-, as in star, far, dark, &c. We have two distinct vowel sounds in the above wotos, one that of the vowel in bird, the other that of the first vowel xn father. All the words spelt -ar- are pronounced with this latter sound, and also some spelt -er-, as clerk, Derby, &c., and a certain number spelt -ear-, as heart, hearth. The rest, whether spelt -ear- ox -er-, are pronounced with the sound heard in bird. Now all these words and many others were originally written with -er- in M.E. Why this diversity in pronunciation at the present time, a diversity which has actually to some extent been crystallized in the spelling ? How has it come about that many of these words are now pronounced with the vowel as in bird, which in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries ~,\ were pronounced, by good speakers, according to the ' -ar- ' type ? That INFLUENCE OF CLASS DIALECT ii this was so is proved not only by the statements of writers on pronuncia- tion, but by the spelling in private and published documents. Thus, to mention a few sixteenth-century instances, Bishop Latimer writes swarvtng ^ ' swerving ', farventlye, clargie, hard ' heard '; Ascham has hard ' heard '; ' Queen Elizabeth writes Aarde and parson 'person'; Thomas Wilson writes darth ' dearth '. (For a fuller treatment of this point, and evidence oi -ar- pronunciations in the following centuries, see pp. 212-22, below.) At the present time the distribution of the -er- (vowel as in 6ird) and -ar- (vowel as in/aiher) types is perfectly fixed in Received Standard, and none of the above pronunciations would be considered polite, though the j list of -ar- pronunciations in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries which differ from our own is even longer than that for the sixteenth (see pp. 165 ; 217-21). Between the last quarter of the eighteenth and the first quarter of the nineteenth century, it is evident that a very great shifting took place in Received Standard, in the distribution of the two types of pronunciation in words of this class. What is the reason for this ? "' I think it is difficult, if not impossible, to suggest any other cause than the influence of Class dialect. The history of this question is very curious, ! and the details must be left for a later chapter, but it may be stated here ; in outline, and without proofs. The change of -er- to -ar- seems to have ' ' started in the dialects of the S. East (a few spellings occur in the thirteenth century), and to have spread to East Anglia; from 1460 onwards these forms are pretty numerous in the Regional dialect of Essex and Suffolk. The London Ofiicial dialect and the Literary dialect had but few -ar- forms before the fifteenth century, and they are rare before the end of this or the beginning of the following century. Their number increases with the advance of the century, and they are most numerous in the private documents of Middle Class writers down to the middle of the sixteenth century. The facts seem to pgmt to th«_-ar-fqrrg_s being jrajgotEgf^ from below into tjpper_ Ckss English. They^ becorne increasingly fasliionable_untI[JfieJast^guartef of th£_j!ighteentF^nturjjjwhenjthey rMedeT§pre_Ae_otheiLjypei leaving jcqmgaratively_Xew^^urvivors,_an^ those chiefly, though not entirely, sucn words as dark, &c., where the -ar- spelling was by this time traditional and fixed. I believe that the explana- tion must be sought in the influence of cultivated Middle Class speakers, who were not content to abide by the now traditional pronunciation ' sarvice ', ' vartue ', ' sarmon ', but preferred to adopt what they conceived to be the more ' correct ' and ' refined ' pronunciation suggested by the spelling, which by that time had long been fixed. If this view is the J right one, and the facts seem to establish it, then we have here a linguistic ^ feature which found its way from a Regional dialect into Middle Class ) London speech, passed thence into Received Standard, only to be ousted later by a fresh wave of Middle Class influence, this time in the direction of a deliberate attempt at elegance. In its inception, this innovation was probably considered as vulgar and finnicky, as we still \ consider ' fore-head ' instead of ' forrid ', or ' of/en ' instead of ' offen ', | which last, by the way. Queen Elizabeth herself wrote, and doubtless I pronounced. While so many words formerly pronounced according to the -ar- type are now pronounced according to the -er- type, the former is still 12 INTRODUCTORY adhered to in clerk, heart, and in the proper names Berkshire, Berkley, Bertie, Derby, &c., and this in spite of the spelling. To pronounce these as with the vowel heard in hird is a vulgarism from the point of view of Received Standard, and in heart this pronunciation is probably never heard. We may now pass to illustrate variations in Accidence associated with different dialect types. Good examples, of old standing, are the forms of the 3rd pars. Pres, Indie, sing., and the pi. of the same tense in verbs. In M.E. all the SoiKhem and most of the Mi*and dialects used a 3rd pers. sing, in -eth, cumeth, &c., until we get pretty far north, to Lincoln- shire, where forms iri,^ -es, -is, cutnes, cumis, &c., were almost equally I common. The Northern dialects always use cumis, cums, &c. At the I present day the -eth forms are unknown in colloquial Enghsh anywhere, but are often used in poetry, chiefly because they provide an additional syllable for purposes of metre, and they are familiar to all through the Bible and the Prayer Book. These forms are, then, survivors of the old Southern and Midland usage. The -j forms, now universal, are originally Northern, but from the point of Modern English they may be regarded as Midland, since it is pretty clear that they have come into the language of everyday life from East Anglian sources. (On this point, however, see pp. 334-7, below.) Now tliiese -s forms are practically vmknown in London English, official, literary, and colloquial, during the whole of the fifteenth and the early part of the sixteenth century. In East Anglia, however, they appear, even in prose, during the latter part of the fifteenth century, and are found occasionally mUclv earlier. They are very rare in Literary English prose or in private letters until quite late in the sixteenth century, though they are copiihoner in some writers, e. g. Latimer, Ascham, Wilson, than in others, and it may be noted that these three were all Cambridge men, and belonged respectively to Leicestershire, Yorkshire, and Lincolnshire. The -f forms are very common in Queen Elizabeth's letters written during the last twenty years of her life, but much rarer in the earlier ones, written when she was a girl. In poetry, in the first half of the sixteenth century, 3rd persons in -j are commoner than in the prose of the same period, showing that their use here at a time when they were not in common and familiar use is due to metrical reasons. It seems that by the begin- ning of the seventeenth century, however, these forms had become usual in familiar speech and private letters, though the -eth forms con- tinued to be used not only in poetry, but in the more elevated prose style. This is well seen in the Authorized Version, and in such writers as Raleigh and Browne. The auxiliaries hath and doth continued in literary, and perhaps also in occasional colloquial, use throughout the eighteenth century. The old M.E. Pres. Indie, plurals are as follows : in the South -eth, we cumep, or cumeth, &c. ; in the Midlands -en, we cumen, Ac; in the ' North -es, or -is, we cumis, Sec. The earliest London documents have the Southern forms exclusively, but as early as 1258 the Midland forms / predominate (Hen. Ill's Proclamation), and Davie in 1327 has only one example of an -eth ending. The later fourteenth-century documents, including the works of VOCABULARY AS TEST OF DIALECT 13 Chaucer, have very many forms in -en or -e, and very few in -eth. Caxton's typical form is -en. Henceforth we may say that -en or the -e with the loss of -n is the characteristic form of Literary English, and this is the ancestor of our present form without ending. The -n is found only sporadically during the sixteenth century. By the side of these Midland forms, thfe Southern -eth occurs in private letters, and even in published literary works here and there throughout the sixteenth century, being found, for instance, occasionally in Euphues. (For details on the Pres. Indie. Sing, and PL, see pp. 334-41, below.) In the history of these verbal forms we see the gradual displacement and finally the complete elimination, in Literary and Standard Spoken English, of one dialectal type by another. Turning now to Vocabulary as a feature of dialectal type, we find that in the older works on Modern Regional Dialect this is almost the only aspect dealt with; indeed most of these works are, in the main, mere glossaries of the various dialects. It is a fact that the present-day provincial dialects between them possess a very large number of words which either (a) are not used at all in Received Standard, or (^) which express different ideas in the dialects from those which they express in Received Standard. On the other hand, nearly all dialect glossaries contain numbers of words, assigned to the dialect, which are perfectly current in the best spoken and Literary English, and used everywhere in precisely the same sense. For an element of vocabulary to rank as a characteristic dialect feature, this element, or word, must be either unknown altogether in Literary and Received Standard English, or else must be used in different sense, with a different idiomatic value from those given to it in Spoken or Literary Standard. Such Scotch words as neave ' fist ', sieek ' to close ', ashei ' dish ', jaw-box ' sink ', amongst thousands of others, fulfil the first of the above conditions — all of them would be entirely outlandish and incomprehensible to English people of the South — while Irish-English after in he 's after doing it = ' he 's just done it ', Scotch and North of Ireland to think long meaning ' to feel lonely ', Irish-English to knock in the horse knocked him at the stone gap ^ ' threw him at the stone wall ', and bold in the sense of ' naughty ', said of a child, fulfil the second condition. ^ As regards the earlier periods of English, a minute analysis of the characteristic regional distribution of vocabulary has yet to be made for Middle English. It is, however, a well-ascertained fact that in certain districts of the Midlands and North very large numbers of Scandinavian words were in use which were unknown in the South, and the occurrence of these in a text would be a safe test, apart from other considerations, by which to rule out a southern origin. In Middle English it would seem that words often had a comparatively limited diffusion, if we may judge of this from the rarity of their occur- rence. In such texts as the West Midland Alliterative Poems (Pearl, Patience, Cleanness, &c.) and Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight, there are dozens of words which seem to be peculiar to these texts, and to have died out of all dialects at the present time. The history of a very large part of the vocabulary of the present-day English dialects is still very obscure, and it is doubtful whether much of it is of any antiquity. So 14 INTRODUCTORY ['far very little attempt has been made to sift the chaff from the grain in ! that vast receptacle the English Dialect Dictionary, and to decide which elements are really genuine ' corruptions ' of words which the yokel has ' heard from educated speakers, or read, misheard, or misread, and kignorantly altered, and adopted, often with a slightly twisted significance. - Probably many hundreds of ' dialect ' words are of this origin, and have no historical value whatever, except inasmuch as they illustrate a general ; principle in the modification of speech. Such words are not, as a rule, characteristic of any Regional Dialect, although they may be ascribed to one of these, simply because some collector of dialect forms has happened to hear them in a particular area. They belong rather to the category of ' mistakes ' which any ignorant speaker may make, and which such persons do make, again and again, in every part of the country. The question which chiefly concerns us here with regard to vocabulary is how far Standard English, written and spoken, has been influenced by provincial vocabulary during the last four or five hundred years. This is a very difficult question to answer with any degree of certainty, but the probability is that such influence has been very slight. After all, the essentials of our vocabulary are pretty much the same as they are in Chaucer or Caxton. Certain terms and idioms have become obsolete ; certain aflFectations and preciosities which occur in Caxton have perished — if indeed they ever lived in English, outside his works ; many new words of learned origin, or learned concoctions, such as terms from Greek elements to designate new scientific discoveries, many words from foreign tongues, have become current in our speech since the beginning of the fifteenth century ; but has there been any great influx of plain English words from English provincial dialects ? Such words would necessarily be terms connected with the simplest and most ordinary experiences of everyday life, and life on rather a humble plane. But words of this kind have not been renewed since the fifteenth century to any great extent, and it is certain that it is not from the uncouth Regional dialects, already falling into disrepute among both the learned and the polite, that the rising Standard English would derive the means for a completer and subtler expressiveness. When at the present time we find that some word or expression, claimed as a characteristic of some Regional dialect, is in ordinary use either in good colloquial or Literary Enghsh, we shall probably do well to believe, unless the contrary is proved, that the so-called ' dialectal ' term has been borrowed from one or other of the latter sources, rather than that the reverse process has happened. If we consider contemporary English, whether written or spoken, it does not appear that the Regional dialects are exerting any appreciable influence upon our vocabulary. It is certain that no one picks dialect words and expressions out of a dictionary to introduce them into his speech or his writings. There is the novel which contains large portions of dialogue in dialect — sometimes genuine, perhaps oftener fictitious — but the sporadic appearance of such works is not suflicient to give a wide currency to new elements of vocabulary. It is doubtful whether even Mr, Thomas Hardy, in spite of the considerable vogue of the Wessex REGIONAL DIALECT AND LITERARY ENGLISH 15 Novels, has imposed a new word from the West Country upon Literature, outside the circle of his imitators. It may be that here and there a writer deliberately uses a dialect word which he has learnt either from Mr. Hardy or Louis Stevenson, for the sake of novelty or picturesqueness, but the occasional occurrence of such a word in a novel or a poem, a word which perhaps nine readers out of ten do not understand, is hardly sufficient to establish the claim — if indeed such a claim be made — that our present-day Literary English is being influenced as regards vocabulary by Regional dialect. The great factor which nowadays destroys the value' of Vocabulary as a specific characteristic of a given Regional dialect, is the migratory habits of the population. Almost every village, even in districts remote from London or other great centres of population, contains several inhabitants who have come into it from some more or less distant county, either because they have married natives of the village, because they are in the service of local farmers or gentry, or the railway company, or because they were employed in the construction of the local railway line, and stayed on after this was completed. These persons bring with them alien habits of speech, and their families form so many nuclei whence these spread to a wider circle. This is certainly true of pro- nunciation and accidence, but probably to a lesser extent than of vocabulary, for this is far more readily acquired than new vowel sounds or a fresh grammatical system. The influence of one Regional dialect upon another, brought about by the migration of individuals from one area to another, would be a curious chapter in the study of local dialect, which some day perhaps may be written. So far nothing has been attempted upon this aspect of the subject, and it seems to be assumed, for the most part, that a Regional dialect is a pure dialect, except in so far as it is influenced by some form of Standard English. The fact that this is far from being the case will become more and more apparent after the War. When the soldiers return to their villages they will undoubtedly bring a greatly enlarged vocabulary, consisting partly of new technical terms, partly of the current slang of the Army, partly also of words picked up from their mates in the Regiment, who represent often a great variety of linguistic types. These returned heroes will naturally and properly enjoy a considerable prestige among their fellow villagers, and it would seem inevitable that much of their new jargon will become part and parcel of the speech of the rising generation. It is thus not improbable that the War will have destroyed, in many areas, the last frail claims of Vocabulary to be con- sidered a specific characteristic of the dialect. But if the vocabulary of Regional dialects has not greatly influenced the English of Literature, neither has \X. fait fortune in Received Standard Spoken English. Among speakers of this form of English, country dwellers alone have any direct contact with local dialect in the strict sense. It is impossible to lead the life of the country, and to share its sports and interests, without coming into more or less close relations with persons whose normal speech is the Regional dialect of the place. In this way, most speakers of Received Standard who live in the country gain, involuntarily, a very I 6 INTRODUCTORY fair knowledge of the local dialect in all its aspects. They can imitate the pronunciation, they know the characteristic grammatical ' mistakes ', and they know a considerable number of the typical words and idioms. Yet, in the South and South Midlands at any rate, most persons whose natural speech is Received Standard would not dream of attempting to use the local dialect, pronunciation, and accidence in speaking with their humbler friends. If they did so it would be felt as an insult by the latter. The superior classes keep their excursions into dialect for occasions when they wish to reproduce an amusing thing that some villager has said, for the entertainment of their equals. On the other hand, while retaining his own mode of pronunciation and his own grammar, a speaker of Received Standard may employ, without offence, in his intercourse with all classes, a considerable number of words and expressions, relating to the everyday life of the country, drawn from the local dialect. Such words will for the most part be of a more or less technical character, and connected with agriculture, horses, cattle, and sport. But these terms will hardly be used apart from the scenes and occupations to which they naturally belong, and a man who might quite naturally speak in his own village of selling tegs, of finding 21, yaffle's nest, or, if he were an Irishman, of lepping a horse, would probably use the ordinary words sheep, wood- pecker, jump, at a London dinner- table. In such a case as this the knowledge and occasional use of dialect words could not be said to affect in any way the normal vocabulary of the speaker, any more than would the knowledge of the words of a foreign language, and the proper use of them when speaking that language. Of course if a speaker were unacquainted with the words current in Received Standard, and habitually made use of large numbers of dialect words, in all companies and places, it must be admitted that, even if he spoke ' good ' grammar and had the normal pronunciation, his speech had so far been modified by the Regional form. But, as a matter of fact, such a case is hardly conceivable. The exclusive use of a typical Regional dialect vocabulary, a use not confined to a few categories of words, but em- bracing expressions indispensable in every aspect of life, would not exist apart from the employment also of the typical pronunciation and gram- matical forms of the dialect — in fact a speaker whose vocabulary is of this character will not be a speaker of Received Standard at all, but of Regional dialect pure and simple. To sum up, it is difficult to see how, \ in recent times, Regional dialect can exercise any considerable direct \ influence upon the vocabulary of Received Standard English. Such influ- ence, in so far as it exists at all, must be indirect, and exerted through the medium of Class dialect — ^that is, through the various forms of Modified Standard. Just as we have seen that the other Class dialects have reacted and are continually reacting upon Received Standard, and thence upon the language of Literature, in respect of pronunciation and gram- matical forms, so this is also true of Vocabulary. This brings us to a brief consideration of Vocabulary as a distinguishing and typical feature in Class Dialect. We have already touched, in passing, upon this point (see p. 4, above). It is desirable to illustrate it rather more fully. It is a curious fact that the characteristic features of the colloquial vocabulary of Received VULGARISM IN VOCABULARY 17 Standard at any given period consist rather in what is omitted than in what actually occurs. There exists a set of prohibitions and taboos which are quite rigidly, though unconsciously, observed by certain circles, just as in others they are quite as naturally and innocently ignored. We may begin from the point of view of Received Standard, and with this negative side of the case. It must be clearly borne in mind that, in the following and all remarks upon the subject of contemporary Received Standard, no attempt is made to dictate upon ' correctness ' in speech, to set up canons of propriety, or to give instruction as to how people \ 'ought' to speak. We approach the subject merely as students and , observers of linguistic facts, which happen to be closely related to social 1 phenomena. We neither blame nor praise ; we are indifferent to what this or that authority may censure or approve. We are simply concerned with what exists among different sections of speakers, and our business is to record faithfully certain habits of speech, and not to exhibit our own preferences. With these prefatory remarks we may begin our brief catalogue of curiosities, and we thus designate them not because of any inherent strangeness or eccentricity in the words themselves, but on account of the curious fact that what are normal and natural elements of speech in some circles, are regarded in others as ' vulgar ' and laughable. We may begin with what have been called ' shopwalker words ', such as »m/ for waistcoat, singlet for vest, neckwear for ties, footwear for hoots and shoes. It is possible that some regard all these terms as graceful and elegant modes of expression, far superior to the homelier words which they displace. On the other hand, there are many speakers who would as soon think of uttering horrible oaths before ladies, as of using such words seriously. Another word, less 'shoppy' and technical than the above, but used by some with a sense of refinement, is serviette instead of napkin, whereas others hardly know the word and would be slightly startled if one of their friends were to use it. A very curious usage '^ belongs to that of the definite article before the names of complaints and maladies. The same speakers who might say ' the influenza ', ' the measles ', ' the cholera ', ' the stomach-ache ', ' the scarlet fever ', would never dream of saying ' the bronchitis ', ' the headache ', ' the appendicitis ', 'the cough', ' the cold', ' the kidney disease ', while they might omit the article altogether before the entire list of aches and ills just enumerated. The use of the definite article before the names of diseases, &c., was H formerly the fashion, and so great an authority on social projjriety as Lord Chesterfield said ' the head-ach '. Again, other speakers would use the article before the name of every ill to which human flesh is heir. A word which many reprehended when the present writer was young is gentle- manly, gentlemanlike being considered the proper word. The latter is now apparently obsolescent in wide circles of speakers, and the former has nearly won the day. The censure formerly directed against gentlemanly arose solely from the feeling — right or wrong — that it belonged to the vocabulary of a lower social stratum and was therefore a vulgarism. An interesting reference occurs in a letter of Lord Macaulay of May 28, 1831, in which he records that Lady Holland objected to certain words, saying — ' Then there is talented, influential, and gentlemanly. I never C i8 INTRODUCTORY could break Sheridan of saying "gentlemanly " though he allowed it was wrong,' (See Life and Letters of Macaulay, Popular ed., pp. 150, 151.) Reference has already been made to the discrete and restricted use of the words gentleman and lady which many practise, preferring the terms man and woman in referring to the human male and female. On the other hand, many sections of the population now give to the former words an appli- cation so universal that more fastidious persons regard these as possessing distressing associations. Thus many would put quite differently the statement — ' The party consisted only of my wife and one of her lady friends, myself and another gentlemaa' A certain experience and dexterity, if instinct be lacking, are required in the use of the two words. If it were necessary to attempt to formulate t he g engral_te ndenc ies which have _been discernible in Received Standard English_during_the last three centuries and a half, a,nd~which have been increasingly potent duning the last hundred and fifty years, we should name two, which are to some extent opposed, but both of which are attributable to social causes. The first is the gradual decay of cereinoniousness and formality which_ha,s_overtaken jhe_sgeech Em3"modes oT address, no less than the manners^ of goo djiociety. The second is the effbrt-^sometimes conscious anST deliberate, sometimes unconscious — after ' correctness ' or correcti- tude, whichj on the one hand, has almost eliminated the use of oaths and has softened away many coarsenesses and crudities of expression — as we~ should now feel them to be, however little squeamish we may" be — while on the other it has, by a rigid appeal to the spelling — the very worst and most unreliable court for the purpose — definitely ruled out, as ' incorrect ' or ' slipshod ' or ' vulgar ', many pronunciations and gram- matical constructions which had arisen in the natural course of the development of English, and were formerly universal among the best speakers. Both of these tendencies are due primarily to the social, political, and economic events in our history which have resulted in bringing different classes of the population into positions of prominence and power in the State, and the consequent reduction in the influence of the older governing classes. Among these events, which we can only glance at here, are the break-up of the feudal system, which upset tempo- rarily the old social conditions and relations ; the extinction of most of the ancient baronial families in the Wars of the Roses; the disendowment of the monasteries, and the enriching of the king's tools and agents, which produced an entirely new class of territorial magnates in Henry VIII's time ; the rise of the great merchants in the towns in the late Middle Ages, and the further growth of this class, which under Henry and Elizabeth pro- duced men of the type of Gresham ; the Parliamentary Wars and the social upheaval of the Protectorate ; the enormous growth of commerce and industry, and the rise of banking during the eighteenth and early nine- teenth centuries ; and especially, perhaps, the development of steam in manufactures, and the building of railways. By these means many families, in the course of two generations, passed from the shop, the hand-loom, the plough-tail, or from trundling the wheelbarrow, into the great land-owning ) classes, and became endowed with political influence and even, occasion- \ ally, with political insight, one or both of which often rapidly led them to the peerage. In quite recent times the judicious exploitation of the gold SOCIAL CHANGES AND LINGUISTIC HISTORY 19 and diamonds of South Africa lias brought men from the meanest fortunes to great wealth, and therefore to positions of social prestige, within a few years. Such are a few of the factors which have brought about a continual recruitment of the upper classes from below — often from the very depths. We may add to these the growth of educational facilities — very much enhanced of late years — which increasingly through- out the last few centuries have enabled the young man of talent to carve for himself a way to fortune and importance, and to reach positions where he could be useful to the State or to the Church. While the skeleton of the fabric of English society has remained the same since the break-up of the feudal system, the actual human elements in every section are being continually modified. Applied to the time of Edward IV such phrases as ' baronial class ', or Tenants in Chief, imply generally, the descendants of the companions of the Conqueror. We still have a baronial class, but its members are not all the sons of these men. Every .class, is, for_.ever being renewed fi'om_below, and though the old labels remain, they have largely lost their significance. These social changes have inevitably brought with them corresponding changes in manners and in speech. It may be said that the new arrivals within each social group would assimilate the speech and manners of those among whom they came, and this is no doubt largely true, but the speech and habits of a lifetime are not changed in a moment, as a vesture. Much of the old remains, and slowly and imperceptibly the new-comers react upon their environment, almost as much as they are influenced by it. Thus, for instance, it is suggested that the Middle Class Puritan ideals have gradually brought about a greater reticence of expression and a more temperate use of expletives, and also a greater simplicity of manners, from which many of the airs and graces of the older order were eliminated. Again, a highly cultivated and intellectual section of the Middle Class have played a prominent part in Church and State since the time of Elizabeth, We see, under that monarch, a generation of courtiers, states- men, and prelates, who were also scholars, and even some who, like Sir Thomas Smith, were educational reformers and writers upon language, as well as statesmen. The influence of these learned courtiers would be in the direction of correctness and elegance of utterance, in opposition to the more careless and unstudied speech of the mere man of fashion. It is not forgotten that the English aristocracy of the older kind has always pro- duced from time to time its Surreys, Sidneys, and Sackvilles. There can be no better conditions for the formation of colloquial speech than a society in which the graces and lightness of the courtier are united to the good taste and sound knowledge of the scholar. From such a circle we might expect a mode of speech as far removed from the mere frivolities of fashion, the careless and half-incoherent babble of the fop, as from the tedious preciousness of the pedant, or the lumbering and uncouth utterance ' of the boor. Such a speech would be worthy to become the common standard of a great people, and the conditions under which it could arise existed, if anywhere, at the Court of Elizabeth. Lord Chesterfield, with his usual sound sense, remarks in one of his letters : ' The common people of every country speak their own language very ill ; the people of fashion (as they are called) speak it better, but not always correctly, ca 20 INTRODUCTORY because they are not always people of letters. Those who speak their own language the most accurately are those who have learning and are at the same time in the polite world ; at leasftheir language will be reckoned the standard of the language of that country' (Letter 103). We have described one kind of result, of the mingling of classes, upon English manners and speech, but there is another which is less happy in its manifestations. It is one thing to bring naturalness to the manners of an age which has too many artificial airs and graces, by introducing an honest, independent simplicity of bearing ; it is quite another thing to supplant a gay geniality, or a courtly and gracious ceremoniousness, by a loutish awkwardness which springs from an ignorance of how to behave, by a blatant and vulgar familiarity of address which knows no discrimina- tion, or by a stiff-backed pomposity that ill conceals an uneasy self- conceit. "These things neither attach nor charm. Similarly, in the matter of speech, it is good to contribute a nice and accurate sense in the use of words, a clearness and precision of construc- tion, a definite and unambiguous enunciation, when all these are com- bined with the ease, the lightness, the swiftness, and the complete absence of deliberately studied utterance which are the essentials of civilized colloquial speech. It is quite another thing to be so haunted by the fear of not being • correct ' as to attempt an over-precise pronunciation — based for the most part upon the supposed force of the spelling — which departs so far from established usage as to suggest that the speaker is ignorant of this j to adopt words and locutions derived from books and in their place there, but unusual and misplaced in colloquial English; to aim at a sham refinement in pronunciation and vocabulary, to shun what is familiar through fear of being vulgar — in a word to be either artificial or pedantic. Such are among the chief vices of Middle Class English at the present time, and such they have always been. These traits at first strike speakers who are unaccustomed to them as ridiculous and vulgar, but by force of habit, many of them gain, first tolerance, and then even acceptance, and the history of English, during the last couple of centuries at any rate, shows that many of these features have been imposed upon Received Standard and have taken the place of the old traditional forms, while others are in process of becoming accepted despite the contempt of the older generation. This is perhaps the natural result of the shifting standards of taste, manners, and speech which were inseparable from the social movements referred to. It is significant that while the Middle Classes used to insist upon being 'genteel', the very word has now fallen into disrepute, and is held to express a false ideal of breeding, a bogus refinement, far more vulgar than downright coarseness. We may illustrate, in passing, the decay of ceremoniousness as exhibited in language, in the modes of address. It is certain that the plays, novels, as well as the private letters, diaries, and memoirs of the sixteenth, seven- teenth, and eighteenth centuries reveal a state of manners and address among the superior classes far more stately and elaborate than anything that now obtains ; even Miss Austen's novels occasionally exhibit a style of colloquial English which would now be felt as stilted and high-flown. •Taking the mode of addressing and referring to people, whether in CEREMONIOaSNESS OF ADDRESS 21 conversation or in letters, we need only consider here the use of St'r and Madam, My Lord, My Lady, Four Lordship, and so on. How many sons and daughters would now use any of these forms to their parents? We may say that among persons who, without being intimate, meet or correspond on terms of anything like equality, and still more so among relations and intimate friends, all these modes of address are obsolete in private hfe, and survive only in formal letters to strangers, or, in uttered speech, only from the public platform, in courts of justice, and upon official ceremonial occasions. How different was the custom in the eighteenth century may be gathered from one of Lord Chesterfield's letters, in which he says — ' It is extremely rude to answer only Yes or No to anybody, without adding Sir, My Lord, Madabi, according to the quality of the person you speak to.' Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, writing to her intimate friend Lady Bristol, makes constant use of polite formulas — ' You'll wonder, Madam,' &c., 'I received your Ladyship's letter'; to Lady Rich she writes ' I have just received at Vienna your Ladyship's compliments ' ; again — ' you see. Madam,' and so on. Lady Lucy Wentworth, writing as a child, in 1739, to her 'Dear Papa', Lord Strafford, signs herself 'Your Lord- ship's most dutifiill and most affectionet daughter ', and adds a postscript, referring to her sister — ' Lady Hariot beggs her duty to your Lordship.' Such graces of address have vanished from the friendly intercourse of intimates and relations, apparently with the triumph of ' the genteel thing ', and it can hardly be temerarious to connect the modern off-hand style, and the decline in the external forms of politeness, which has been going on for a hundred years or more, with the rapid rise of a wealthy bourgeoisie and industrial class, who were perhaps inclined to attach too little value to externals. The social movements which have so profoundly affected Received Standard English, have changed it also in that aspect which is the outward expression of manners, and nowadays an off-hand informality and familiarity of address are considered a part of the natural and inevitable equipment of good breeding. No part of a language is perhaps more difficult for a stranger to acquire, and to apply with propriety, than the polite formulas which are current at a given moment in a particular society ; nothing in speech is more inti- mately related than these to the social, moral, and cultural state of which language is the most vital expression. With regard to the second tendency, that — at its best — towards greater decorum and less crudity in expression, or — ^in its less admirable light — towards 'gentility', sham refinement, and a mincing utterance, it has already been said that the Middle Class has so far won the day, for good or for ill, that that outspokenness which characterized the familiar speech of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has been considerably toned down. While among both the upper and the lower classes, as distinct from those which intervene, a freedom and frankness of thought and expression have always prevailed which differ widely from what the author of The Decay in the Art 0/ Lying called 'the kind of conversation that goes on at a meat-tea in the house of a serious non-conformist family ', it would be easy to cull from the plays and letters of the seven- teenth and eighteenth centuries words and expressions placed in the 22 INTRODUCTORY mouths of well-bred ladies, or coming naturally from their pen in corre- spondence, which women of equal breeding nowadays would consider coarse and indelicate. Not many women at the present time would write — if they could — ^some of the poems of Lady Mary Montagu. We may take examples almost at random from the dramatists. ' I wonder, Sir Francis,' says Lady Heartfree in Varibrugh's Journey to London — ' I wonder you will allow the lad to swill his guts with such beastly lubberly liqupur.' If the genuineness of this as a picture of the speech of a ' woman of qt^ality ' in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century be doubted, we have ample confirmation in the Wentwoith Papers of the first third of the latter century. ' My father is laid up with the gout ; ' writes young Lady Strafford, ' I believe I shall jumble my guts out between this and Russell Street, for since my father has been ill, I have gon every day.' Again, the same lady says, speaking of the abode of Prince Eugene in London — ' I wonder Mons. Marshall can talk of his great liveing here, for they had a very indifferent lodging in St. James Street, and the house was keept the nastiest I ever see a house, and used to stink of your favorite dish onions, ready to kill me.' This is not elegant diction according to our present views, and few great ladies would now speak or write thus. (See further examples in Chap. X.) Still more remote is all this from the speech of a bourgeoisie which, if it cannot aspire to the fine manners of its betters, dare not cultivate their freedom of expression, as it is not always sure of being able to distinguish true refinement from mere squeamishmess. People who are anxious above all to be ' genteel ' dare not run risks or play pranks in conversa- tion. A very shrewd hit at the flimsy sham refinement, which was current already in the eighteenth century, is made by Goldsmith in the immortal dialogue of thealehouse revellers in She Stoops to Conquer, and the satire is all the more telling and laughable by reason of the incongruity of the fine sentiments expressed, and the vulgarity of the language in which they are couched. Squire Lumpkin has just sung the stirring ballad of ' The Three Jolly Pigeons ', which is greeted with great enthusiasm. When this has subsided the following comments are made by those present : 'I loves to hear him sink, bekeays he never gives us nothing that's low. — 'O damn anything that's low, I cannot bear it — ' The genteel thing is the genteel thing any time : if so be that a gentle- man is in a concatenation accordingly. — ' I like the maxuin of it master Muggins. What though I am obligated to dance a bear, a man may be a gentleman for all that. May this poison me if my bear ever dances but to the very genteelest tunes: "Water Parted", or "The minuet in Ariadne".' ' The genteel thing is the genteel thing ' — 'Damn anything that's low ' — there is the whole gospel of a certain class of speakers. It may be put into any terms you please, but the sentiment is the same. The difficulty for them is just this, to be quite sure what is ' genteel ' and what is ' low '. Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Hotspur, in Henry IV, a protest against a particular form of ' gentility ' whicla has completely triumphed in our day, namely, the use of mild expressions of asseveration instead of THE « GENTEEL THING' 23 oaths of a more lurid character. While the following is directed specific- ally at the bourgeois habit of avoiding strong expressions of a particular kind, its wider applicability to mincing and over-niceness in general can hardly be doubted. (The text and spelling are those of the First Folio.) Hotspur. Come He haue your song too. Lady. Not mine in good sooth. Hotspur. Not yours in good sooth ? You sweare like a Comfit-makers Wife: Not yours in good sooth ; and, as true as I liue ; And, as God shall mend me; and, as sure as day: And giuest such Sarcenet-suretie Oathes, As if thou neuer walk'st further then Finsbury. Sweare me, Kate, like a Lady as thou art, A good mouth-filling Oath : and leaue in sooth, And such protest of Pepper Ginger-bread, To veluet- Guards, and Sunday-Citizens. Act III, sc. i, ' Like a Comfit-maker's Wife ' ! ' Sunday-Citizens ' ; there is the whole matter in a nutshell. ' Swear me like a Lady as thou art — a good mouth- filling oath' — a very different school of manners this from that which demands ' the genteel thing '. We shall return later to the subject of fashionable oaths and expletives, the use and character of which varies from age to age, aiid to some extent from individual to individual. We may note here, by way of contrast with the above, that that very great gentleman Lord Chesterfield, while admitting that ' you may some- times hear some people, in good company, interlard their discourse with oaths, by way of embellishment, as they think', adds — 'but you must observe, too, that those who do so are never those who contribute, in any degree, to give that company the denomination of good company. They are always subalterns, or people of low education; for that practice, besides that it has no one temptation to plead, is as silly, and as illiberal, as it is wicked' (Letter 166). This pronouncement is at the other extreme from that of Hotspur. It has a certain historical interest both on account of its author and of the date at which it was written — 1748. Even allowing for the century and a quarter since Shakespeare, and the undoubted reaction in speech and manners from the licence of the Restoration, there are reasons for thinking that Lord Chesterfield, in this particular respect, was decidedly ahead of the society — or, as he would have said, the ' company ' — in which he lived. One of the greatest charms of the historical study of a language Kes ; in the picture which it exhibits of the kaleidoscopic changes in the standards of taste which prevail in civilized society from age to age. \ Rightly interpreted, language is a mirror of the minds and manners of those who speak it. It is at this point, perhaps, that the two studies of ' language ', in the technical sense in which universities are apt to use the term, and ' literature ' seem most to meet and merge, so much so that for a moment the interests appear one and the same. And yet, in general, the aims, methods, and point of view of the pure philologist are so different from those of the pure student of literature, that a foolish and 24 INTRODUCTORY mischievous belief has arisen that these two great studies are in hostile opposition to eacli other. This view naturally finds most adherents among those who know least, or at any rate understand least, of either Literature or Philology. It is perfectly true that there is a conception of literature which seems remote from all human life and activity, and it is difiBcult to believe that such a conception, or the kind of study which is naturally based upon it, can appeal to, or interest any healthy and normal mind. It is unfortunately also true that there is an equally dismal and sinister hobgoblin which masquerades under the title of English Philology, a:nd from this bogey, ' holy souls ' at all times recoil with loathing and abhorrence. These two monsters, sham ' Literature ' and dead ' Philo- logy ', may well be opposed to each other — very likely they are — but then they are equally unrelated to, and out of touch with, everything else in the world of realities, except the dreary minds which have conjured them up, and find therein a melancholy pleasure. The invitation which a student of the history of a language utters to the companions of his voyage of discovery should be : 'Together let us beat this ample field, Try what the open, what the covert yield ; The latent tracts, the giddy heights explore, Of all who blindly creep, or sightless soar ; Eye nature's walks, shoot folly as it flies, And catch the manners living as they rise.' This is a terribly high ideal to aim at, and one most diflBcult of attain- ment, but it is the true one. It means that the study of language is one line of approach to the knowledge of Man, and that feet is one we must never lose sight of. It cannot be denied that, even in a more or less light-hearted study such as the present work, there is a certain amount of dry detail to be gone through, which many may find very dull. But let these believe that ' even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea ', and that the ' horrible pit, the mire and clay ', through which for a time they must pass, is only as a Wilderness in which they wander awhile — not for forty years — but which leads to the promised land, ' a good land and a large, a land flowing with milk and hpney '. This is the reward of a first-hand study of the subject itself. It is not always given to those who merely read books written about it. To 'catch the manners living as they rise' is not easy when we attempt to do so through the language of generations which are dead and gone. Language as a whole, in all its aspects, its words and idioms, its coarseness and reticences, its pronunciation, and the very tones of voice, language in its completeness, is the most perfect mirror of the manners of the age. But how difficult to call up all this from the printed page, how more than diflBcult to convey to others some impression of those fragments which it may have been our good fortune to discover. As we steep ourselves in the English of successive ages, we may gradu- ally gain a sense of the spirit and genius of each, and feel the slow, almost imperceptible change which creeps on from age to age. Wherein pre- cisely do the peculiar spirit and genius of each generation consist ? We IDEALS OF LINGUISTIC STUDY 25 may set forth the vocabulary, the turns of phrase, the clichds in vogue ; we may give an account of the inflexions, and describe the pronunciation of each period ; but in none of these things severally or combined does the genius of the age completely reside. Of course, it is too subtle for our analysis, and if we can dimly perceive it, we cannot, so to speak, decant it, and say ' here it is for all to taste '. All we can do is to select some of the most obvious and least subtle aspects of language, the mere husks which contain part of the vital principle, and attempt to bring them before the reader. CHAPTER II DIALECT TYPES IN MIDDLE ENGLISH, AND THEIR SURVIVAL IN THE MODERN PERIOD Although this book is concerned primarily with Modem English, and more particularly vsrith the colloquial forms of speech, it is necessary to the intelligibility of the rather complex questions arising out of the com- posite character at once of Modem Literary English, and of Received Spoken English, to take a preliminary survey of the main types of English which were spoken and written prior to the establishment of one of these as the sole medium of literary expression, and the recognition of the same type as the Received Standard of the Spoken Language. And first it is desirable to understand what we mean by the chrono- logical labels which, for the sake of convenience, we attach to the lan- guage of different periods. When we speak of Old, Middle, and Modem periods, we must not be understood to imply that each of these has a perfectly clear-cut boundary which demarcates the English of each from that which goes before, and that which follows. Such sharp divisions do not occur in the history of a language. Language is always changing, always in process of becoming dififerent from what it was before. Just as the succeeding generations of mankind overlap, so that at any given moment there may exist, side by side, the old, the middle-aged, and the young, so do the characteristic features in the speech of each generation overlap and intermingle. Thus, at any given moment, we have the speech of the mature and eflFective generation, the central type which represents the average for the time being; but there is also heard the old generation which is passing away ; and, forther, that of the rising youth who hold the promise of the future. There are no sudden breaks with the old tradition, but a gradual, continuous, and unperceived passage from what was to what is, and yet again foreshadow- ings of what is to be. We speak habitually of periods of Transition, as when the English of the twelfth century is called First Transition, that is from Old to Middle English, or when that of the fifteenth is thought of as the transition from Middle to Modern English. But in reality each period is one of transition, and if, in looking into the language of the past, we seem at times to get an impression of an abrupt and sudden change, it is because our record is imperfect, and our analysis not subtle enough, so that the sense of gradual development is lost. As a matter of fact, the more minutely we study the documents from which our knowledge of the history of English is gained, the greater becomes our feeling of continuous development, and, consequently, the more reluctant are we to chop English up into periods, and affix labels to CHRONOLOGICAL DIVISIONS 27 each. It should be understood that whatever test we may take in decid- ing such a question as — when does the Modern period of English begin, and the Middle English period end ? and however we may answer the question, there is always this mental reserve, that, so far as our available evidence goes, this or that feature, which we choose to take as characteristic of Modern English, is not proved from the written documents to have existed before such and such a date. That it may have existed in actual speech much earher, no sane person will deny ; that it must have existed some time before it was sufficiently recognized to be recorded by the scribes, is certain. Bearing these considerations in mind we shall realize that the chrono- logical divisions which it is convenient, and indeed essential, to make are merely rough approximations to the actual fact. We may make such a rough-and-ready division as the following: Old English, from the earliest period down to about 11 50; Middle English, which we may further subdivide into the Early, Central, and Late periods, from 1 1 50 or so down to about 1400; Modern English, from the early fifteenth century to the present day. We should further distinguish Early- Modern, from 1400 or so to the middle of the sixteenth century ; and after that it is often convenient to distinguish late sixteenth-century, seven- teenth-century, eighteenth-century English, and in the same rough way we may consider Present-day Enghsh to begin towards the end of the eighteenth century. It is proposed to give, as briefly as possible, an account of the main characteristics of those dialectal types which are represented in varying degrees in the London Enghsh of the fourteenth century, more especially the language of Chaucer. We shall then examine the leading features of fourteenth-century London English, emphasizing the different Regional constituents of this dialect. The Middle English Dialects. Considering the speech of England as a whole, from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries inclusive, we are able to distinguish four main types, clearly separated from each other by different treatment of the older system of vowel sounds, and by different developments in the accidence, principally in connexion with the inflexion of verbs and pronouns. The roughest and most general classification of the M.E. dialects is into Northern — including the speech of the Scottish Lowlands — Midland, South- Western, and South-Eastern, of which the Kentish dialect is the most marked and best represented in written documents. Midland may be further divided into East and West Midland, and each of these again varies in the northern and more southerly areas. The Southern group of dialects, while they all possess certain characteristics in common, are divided by definitely marked features according to their easterly or westerly situation, and we should further distinguish the central Southern dialects of Berkshhe and Hampshire. The speech of the latter county, about which we know something in the M.E. period, shows on the whole the features of the west, but shares with the more easterly areas certain characteristics not possessed by the former. The dialects of Hereford- 28 DIALECT TYPES IN MIDDLE ENGLISH shire, Worcestershire, Shropshire, and Oxfordshire seem to have been mainly Southern in character, but to have had also certain traits which we generally associate with Midland. This group is best regarded as South- r West Midland. The most important dialects for our present purpose — the making of Standard English— are those of the South (Central and Western), the South-Eastern (Kent and Essex), and the East Midland, especially the southern parts of this area — SufTollc and Norfolk. The Northern dialects have had very little direct influence upon Standard English, and those of the West Midlands still less. (A list of some representative M.E. texts, arranged according to dialect, will be found in the Bibliography, p. 6i.) A few words are necessary concerning the pronunciation of M.E. It must ever be borne in mind that we are dealing primarily with sounds and not with Utters. The Old English system of expressing vowel sounds was considerably modified by the Norman scribes. Sometimes sounds which had undergone little or no change since the O.E. period were expressed by a diflferent spelling in M.E. Other sounds which had changed considerably were still written in the same way. Finally, some sounds which had come to be pronounced quite differently were gradually expressed by a new spelling, which shows that a change has taken place in the pronunciation. M.E. spelling, though used according to method and custom, is not by any means perfectly consistent. It is to a certain extent phonetic, in that there is often a genuine attempt to express the sound as accurately as possible, but scribal custom soon hardens, and we must not expect to find minute shades of sound carefully distinguished. On the other hand, occasional lapses of the scribes from fixed habit may give us a valuable revelation of a change of sound. We may lay it down as a general principle that the alphabet as used by M.E. writers has what is called the ' continental values ' — that is, the letter a (in the South and Midlands) represents roughly the same sound as in Italian or French, long or short as the case may be ; e represents either the sound of e in French di, or that in bete ; / represents the vowel in French vite ; o sometimes the vowel in French beau, sometimes approximately that in French corps ; u never by any chance stands for the vowel in the Mod. 'Eng.tune, nor for that in English but, but either for the vowel in Mod. French /a«e, but, &c., or for the long vowel in Mod. Eng. spoon. This latter sound is more often written ou after the middle of the thirteenth century, according to the French habit. As a rule such combinations as eu, «, ai, au, and sometimes ou, represent real diphthongs, that is two distinct vowel sounds, those which the letters of the combinations severally express. Length of vowel is often expressed by doubling the symbol, as goode, saaf, and, by a few scribes, by marking the length above the letter. In this book long vowels in Old and Middle English words will always be marked in the usual way — a, i, &c. As regards consonantal symbols, ff&nd^, both inherited from O.E., repre- sent indifferently the '/A '-sound in this or that in /Aink ; « and v are used indifferently for the ' v '-sound ; gh, h, and sometimes g, represent either the sound oich in German ach, or that in ich ; j, a modification of an O.E. THE VOWELS IN EAST MIDLAND 29 letter, generally stands for the sound ofj/ m yacht, but in many texts'in the fourteenth century y is used for this sound ; r is to be pronounced pretty much as in present-day Scotch wherever it is written ; wh represents the sound of voiceless w, as in the Scotch pronunciation of which, white, &c. We now proceed to indicate the chief characteristics of the various MJ;. dialects both as regards sounds and accidence. East Midland. 1. O.E. ie becomes a, or when lengthened, a : — O.'E.glaed, M.E.glad, O.E. saet, M.E. sat, &c. ; lengthened in :— O.E. f^der, M.E. fader '' 'father'. 2. O.E. se becomes, according to its origin, either [e] with sound of Mod. French ^/e, or [1] with sound of Mod. Fr. 5e'te. The former occurs in M.E. seed, sede ; O.E. sxd ' seed ', the latter in M.E. techen, teachen, • O.E. txcan ' teach '. JVote. The O.E. symbol ae represented the same vowel as the Mod. Eng. sound in hat, mad, &c. It occurred in O.E. both long and short. The O.E. long x had two distinct origins. (3) x. represents a Primitive O.E. vowel of very frequent occurrence. This vowel remained practically unchanged in the West Saxon dialects until the close of the O.E. period. In all the other dialects. North, Midland, and Kentish or S. Western, it became e and is so written in the earliest records. We may refer to this sound as %\ Examples of this are: — W. Saxon sxd 'seed', non-W.S. sed\ W.S. Pret. PI. sxton ' they sat ', dxron ' they bore ', sprsecon ' they spoke ', &c., non-W.S. siton, beron, sprecon, &c. The existence of the latter type in words of this class in a M.E. text shows that it is not in an ideally pure W.S. dialect, though it does not fix it as definitely E. Midland, without other considerations. The proof of whether the Sthn. [e] or the non- Sthn. [e] exists in any given text cannot always be established with perfect certainty. The best proofs are (i) rhymes in which words which had this x in O.E. jrhyme with other words of a different class which are known to have either one or other of the two if-sounds; or (2) the occurrence of the spelling ea which is never used for the tense [e]. Thus if rede ' council ' should rhyme with bede, ' prayer ', it would establish the Southern t3rpe of pronunciation of rede, O.E. rsed, as bede, O.E. (ge)bedu, had the long slack [i] in all dialects. Again, such a spelling as weaden ' weeds, garments ', O.E. gewxde, which occurs in An£jen Rivrfp, also proves the Southern type of pronunciation. Such a rhyme as dede with jede, see extract B {i) below, shows Midland type, a.sjede, O.E. ge-eode, has always a tense e. {b) The other O.E. se sound had a different origin, and a different fate. As regards its origin, it was developed in O.E. itself, before the historical period, from a long a vowel, when this was followed by either -i-, or -j- in the next syllable, Thus O.E. tsecan ' teach ', fr. *takj.an, cf. O.E. tacn 'sign'; O.E. dxlan 'to divide ', dxl ' a part \ fr. *daljan, *ddli, cf. the unaltered O.E. ddl ' a part ' (our dole) ; O.E. Ixdan. ' lead,' fr. *lddjan, cf. 30 DIALECT TYPES IN MIDDLE ENGLISH lad 'path', 'course'; Iseran 'to teach', fr. *larjan, cf. O.E. Mr 'doctrine, lore ', &c., &c. The se of this origin we may refer to as se^. This x remains in every O.E. dialect except Kentish, where it is early, though subsequently to the change of the former se just considered, changed to e. In M.E. this characteristic difference between Kentish and the other dialects is preserved, and while the latter have the slack [e] in words of this class, Kentish and South-Eastern have [e]. This is well shown in the late fourteenth-century writings of Gower, a Kentishman. This writer, who, as we shall see, is on the whole remarkably free from pro- vincialisms, habitually expresses the tense [e], whatever its origin, by t'e, and very conveniently for us, frequently writes di'el 'part'; he also . rhymes techen ' teach ', with sechen ' seek ', where it is certain that tense e is intended, as the latter word could have no other pronunciation. East Midland, then, agrees with all M.E. dialects except the Southern, Saxon dialects in having the tense sound for ge\ and with all the dialects except Kentish, in having the slack sound for se'. (3) O.E._y, which had the sound of French u in lune, &c., becomes f in East Midland as in the Northern dialects. Examples : — (short y) O.E. i^Ayll, M.E. Ml, O.E. irycg 'bridge', M.E. 3ngge, O.E. synn 'sin', M.E. simie, &c. ; (longj') O.E. /yr 'five', M.E. /ir, O.E. Aydan 'to hide', M.E. Azden, O.E. \ge)mynd 'mind^ memory', M.E. mind. Note that the letter _)/ is often used in M.E. for long or short t, and occurs often in the above words, but it never implies anything but the t sound. Note also that in some areas of the E. Midlands the old_y sound appears as f. See further on this below, under Kentish and South-Eastern. (4) O.E. eh becomes I, always tense when it represents O.E. eo in East Midland. Examples :— O.E. eorJ>e ' earth ', M.E. erj>e, O.E. Aeorle ' heart ', M.E. herie ; O.E. ceosan ' choose ', M.E. cAesm, O.E. heold Pret. Sing, of Aealdan 'hold', M.E. Mid, O.E./eoll Pret. Sing, of/eallan 'faU', M.E. fell, &c., &c. (5) O.K. ea before r and another cons, becomes se in late O.E. and in M.E. appears in E. Midlands as ar-. Examples: — O.E. earm 'poor', later xrm, M.E. arm, O.E. heard, hxrd ' hard, bold ', M.E. Aard, &c. ; ea before // becomes all, O.E. eall ' all ', M.E. all. Bokenam, however, still has such belated forms as sAerp 'sharp', j/erd 'yard', perhaps through Essex influence. (6) Southern O.E. eald, Late O.E. (Sthn.) xld, appears as aid in the Midland and Northern dialects already in O.E. This form becomes old in M.E. in the Midlands, through the change of a to d. Examples : — O.E. (Sthn.) eald, xld, Midland aid 'old', O.E. Southern beald, bxld 'bold'. Midland bald, M.E, Midland bdld, O.E. Southern ceald, cxld 'cold', Midland ca/(/,~ M.E. Midland cold, &c. Norf. Guilds have the exceptional helden, inf. and Bokenam held imperat. See the Southern and Kentish treatment of this sound below. (7) O.E. te. This diphthong, both long and short, is typical of the Southern, West Saxon dialects in O.E. In all the other dialects it appears as fin the corresponding words already in the OE. period. From the point of view of the Midland and other non-Saxon dialects, therefore, including Kentish and South-Eastern, the starting-point is e. This e remains in Midland in M.E. See, however, under Southern below, the EAST MIDLAND INFLEXIONS 31 fate of Old English (W. Saxon) fe. Examples of this in Midland M.E. are : — O.E. (non-Sax.) ermpu. West Saxon iermpu ' misery ', M.E. Midland ermjie ; O.E. (non-Sax.) heran ' hear ', West Saxon hteran, M.E. Midland heren, O.E. (non-Sax.) lesan ' release, redeem ', West Saxon liesan, M.E. Midland lesen. Points afiecting the Accidence in East Midlands. yfl (8) Pres. Indie. 3rd Pers. Sing, ends in -ej> — come/> 'comes', ^akej> ' takes ', penchep ' thinks '. In the more northerly area (Lincolnshire, and even in Norfolk) the Northern ending -es often occurs, but, further south, this form gains ground slowly, and in the fifteenth century very few examples are found in Suffolk and Essex sources. (9) Pres. Indie. PI. ends in -en, or -e — we hope{n) ' hope ', we sej/e{n) ■*f ' say ', we mdke(n) ' make '. (10) Imperat. PI. ends in -ep — comep 'come', lokep 'look', &c. (11) Pres. Participle ends in -end{e) — rennendie) 'running', touchend(e) ' touching '. In the northerly area of Lincolnshire, the typical Northern -and often occurs (Handlyng Synne). Even Norf. Guilds have -and at least once, by the side of the usual -end, and occasional -jfng. The ending -ingt -yng is found occasionally quite early in the fourteenth century, and finally becomes the sole form. (12) The Fem. Pers. Pron. sche, she, scho, &c., is found quite early — even Peterfaorgugh Qysaji. {c. 11 54) has scse. This form is Northern , ■•■ in origin, and usurps the place of the O.E. heo, M.E. he, heo, &c., &c. ; of. the Fem. Pron. in South- West and Kent below. (13) The Pers. Pronouns in the PI. are he, and the Scandinavian /« ' they ', and gfradually, though later,/«>, &c., 'their', ■ixApeim 'them', take the place of the O.E. hie, heora, heom, &c., M.E. I&, he, here, hem. The Scandinavian forms apparently pass into Midland fr. the North, and the Nom. comes first. With the exception of Orm (1200), however, who has/«y, even this form is not much in use before 1300, after which date it apparently becomes almost, though not entirely, the only form in use. Norf. Guilds still have he by the side of the usual pey, &c. Orm has Dat. PI. pejjm by the side of the old hemm, and hem seems to be the typical form until the fifteenth century (Bokenam). The typical Possessive PI. is here, only Orm haMing pejjre (by the side of Aeore) before the fourteenth century. Early in this century Robt. of Brunne has occasional /«j/r, by the side of the much more frequent here; Norfolk Guilds (1389) appear only to have here, but Bokenam in the next century has both the English and Scandinavian forms. Compare this with the state of thiftgs in South- West and South-East. ii4) Pres. PI. are, aren of Verb 'to be' ; also ben. 15) Loss of O.E. prefix ^«-, M.E. z-,j/-, in Past Participles, and reten- tion of -» at the end of strong P. P.'s. This latter, however, is not universal : — cumen,forhodyn ' forbidden ', tolde ' told ' ; cf. Southern t'cume. Hold, &c. The following short extracts from E, Midland texts give some idea of the dialect. The numbers attached to certain forms refer to the above 3? DIALECT TYPES IN MIDDLE ENGLISH statements of the dialect features, and the words so numbered illustrate the feature described in the paragraph with the corresponding number. It will be seen that in most cases there is a certain admixture of forms which do not belong strictly nor solely to E. Midland. This is rather disappointing and disconcerting to the student, who must remember that the speech of one area dovetails into that of another, as do the areas themselves. Specimens of S. Midland. A. From the Bestiary, circa 1220. V (a) Wiles ^at weder is so ille at times the weather I 14 "43. b. BS , Se sipes ^at am on se fordriven ships that are dnven about on the ,3 4 sea 15^ hem is de'S, and lef to liven hateful to them is death, and dear 9 13 g to live biloken hem, and sen ^is fis ; they look around 13 9 an eilond he wenen it is they think (' ween ') it is an island Serof he aren swl^ fagen, they are very glad thereof, 13 «3 9 , And mid here migt 'Sar to he dragen with their might towards it they draw Sipes on festen at anchor 9 And alle up gangen go (i) Dis devel is mikel wi'S wil and magt 9 13 I So wicches haven in here craft their 9 3 He do? men hungren and haven 'Srist he causes men to hunger and to V 3 5 have thirst And mani o'Ser sinful list. many other sinful desires B. From Robert of Brunne's Handlyng Synne, c. 1303. X (a) Fro ))at tyme ban wax Pers A man of s5 feyre manors pat n5 man myjt yn hym fynde 4 _3 But to ))e pore bo))e meke & kynde; A mylder man ne myjt nat be 4 Ne to pe pore more of almes fre And reuful of herte also he was, 2. b. pat mayst J)ou here lere yn }>ys pas. learn 6 (b) Pers stode and dyd beholde 6 How j)e man Jie kyrtyl solde I And was jiarwith ferly wrope wrapped up pat he solde so sone hys cl6J)e ; He myjt no lenger for sorow stande, 4 _ II But jede home ful sore gretand. weeping SOUTHERN DIALECTS 33 {c) Blessyd be alle pore men 8 13 For God almyjty loue)) hem ; And weyl ys hem j)at pore are here well !•) 14 4. 4 ^pey are with God boj)e lefe and dere I And y shal fonde, by nyijt and day endeavour To be pore, jyf ))at y may. 13 4 ((/) Vnto a cherche b6)>e )>ey jede ^ 2 a For to fulfylle hys wil yn dede. I 2 a 15 (e) pe porter had hys speche I5re lost 7 _ _ I IS And heryng also, syn he was bore. Characteristics of Central Southern and South-Western Dialects in M.li. (i) O.E. SB remains as a front vowel, written x, ea, or e in the M.E. texts of the South, of the twelfth century and in those of the first half of the thirteenth, a being written only occasionally ; from the beginning of the fourteenth century we find either a exclusively, or a-spellings with a certain sprinkling of ^-spellings. This means that the original Southern type was gradually eliminated, even in the West, and its place taken by Midland forms. Thus Holy Rood Tree [c. 11 70) generally has se, occa- sionally e, once ea, and there is no doubt that all these spellings imply the same sound, probably something between [e] and [x]. This text only has a after w — in water. The Lambeth Homilies {c. 1190) has always e — efier, wes, feder, ewe's, O.E. xfkr, wses, fxder, cwx'S ' said ' ; Moral Poem (Egerton M.S.), c. 1200, has e; the Metrical Life of St. Juliana (Glos. 1300) has a few e-foims, speA 'spoke', O.E. sprxc,jef' gaye', but mostly « — wai ' what ', O.E. hwxi, quad, jaf gave ', O.E. gkf, was, glade, O.E. glded 'glad', &c.; Robt. of Glos. (c. 1330) writes both a and e; Trevisa (1387) nearly always a, pat, blak 'black', O.E. hlxc, schal 'shall'. Late O.E. sc&l, &c., but creftes, O.E. crxftas. St. Editha (Wilts., c. 1430) has a alone. This test is therefore only applicable to the early M.E. period, and then needs to be used with caution and combined with other tests. See the treatment of O.E. Ss in Kentish below. We may note here, as we shall not devote a special section to the dialect, that the texts written in the Southern part of the W. Midland area — Oxfordshire, Worcestershire — St. Katherine, St. Juliana (prose), Lajamon, Harleian Lyrics (Heref. 1300), and Piers Plowman, which all have many typical Southern traits, as well as other more typical Midland features, frequently have e as well as a. This may be owing to the Southerly situation of the counties whence these texts emanate, but it may also be an inheritance from O.E., since in a portion of the Mercian area as had become e already in that period. (2) (a) 0.E, *', which normally remains in W. Saxon ajone of all the D 34 DIALECT TYPES IN MIDDLE ENGLISH O.E. dialects, or in those areas over which this speech-influence extended, becomes [1] when it survives into M.E., and is written either as (in very early texts only), e or ea. The best proofs of the existence of this type in M.E. are the spelling ea, and rhymes of words of this class, with words whose vowel was of a different origin, but which are known to have had the [e] sound. It is pretty certain that the area over which the Southern type of this sound extended in Late O.E. and in M.E. was far wider than the original South- Western area of Wessex. On the other hand, the so-called x- area seems later tff have been restricted, and whereas, for instance, there are apparent traces of this sound in Southern West Midlands (St. Jul. Prose Life, Ancren Riwle, Harleian Ljrics, &c.), yet the evidence, even of the true Southern texts of the later period, shows that the other type with tense \e\ was also in use. Thus Metr. St. Jul. by the side of brep rhyming with dip, rede with lede ' lead ' the metal, O.E. br§ep, deap, rsed, lead, also rhymes rede, O.E. rxd, with sede ' said ', and drede, O.E. dried, with neode where in each case the rhyming word must have had tense e, and St. Editha rhymespere, O.E. pser ' there' -withy/ere, Adv. ' together '. Cf. O.E. gefira ; here ' bier ', O.E. iaer, with here ' here ', O.E. Mr. On the other hand, Metr. St. Jul. rhymes brep 'breath' with dep 'death', O.E. brxp, deap, ride with Ude ' lead ' vb., O.E. Ixdan, where the x=.3^ (see under E. Midlands above, 2 (3)). (3) O.E. sb" remained as the slack long vowel [i] throughout the Central Southern and South-Western areas. (See remarks under E. Mid- land 2 (3) above, and under Kentish, &c., 2 (3) below.) (3) O.E. y remains and is written u, or when long sometimes ui, or uy. In part of the Southern area O.E. y becomes i aheady in the O.E. period before the ' front-consonants ', O.E. cc, eg, and perhaps sc, written ch, gge, sch in M.E. The present writer showed that this tendency was particularly strong in Devon, Dorset, Somerset, and Wilts., weaker in Hants, weaker still in Glos. See Short History of Eng., § 158 (_/). There is also a strong probability that O.'E.y was unrounded to z in part of Devon, independent of the influence of following consonants. The occurrence of i- forms in Southern texts, therefore, does not necessarily show impurity of dialect. The Southern area of the W. Midlands, whose dialect is represented in such texts as Lajamon, Ancren Riwle (' Morton's text'), St. Jul. (Metr A St. Katherine, Harl. Lyrics, and Piers Plowman, preserves the sound 5^]! both long and short, with great fidelity and con- sistency — huyden ' hide ', fur, fuyr ' fire ', murMe ' mnth ', cunne ' kin ', luper ' wicked ', sunne ' sin ', rug ' back, ridge ', &c. &c. (4) O.E. eo seems to have become first of all [1^] in German schon, and then [y] in a very large area of the South, South- West, and West Midlands. The sound, in texts from this wide area, is at first written eo, according to the O.E. scribal tradition, and then u, ue, or 0. There are traces of this as far East as Surrey (Owl and Nightingale) and Hampshire, and Moral Ode (Egerton MS., Hants) writes duere ' dearly', suelfer 'silver'; Usages of Winchester (1389) still vintes/urpe, O.'E.feorpa ' fourth ' ; four- teenth-century forms of Hants Place Names in Hundred Rlls. have Dupe ' deep ', O.E. dedp, and Nuiher — O.E. tuoper 'lower'. The «, 0, or eo forms aje further found in St. Jul. Metr. Life (only eo, generally e, never «), Robt. OLD DIPHTHONGS IN SOUTHERN ENGLISH 35 of Glos., Trevisa, St. Editha, and as late as 1447-50, in the letters of Shillingford, Mayor of Exeter. The texts from the South- West Midlands, Lajamon, St. Jul. (Prose), Harl. Lyrics, &c., all have these forms in vary- ing degrees of frequency. The development of O.E. eo into e. on one hand, or into u on the other, is one of the great dialectal tests between East and West (not between South and Midlands), and it would be rash to assign any text which has only e in words which had this diphthong in O.E., to an area farther west than the borders of Hampshire. Examples ■are horte ' heart ' ; Horned, O.E. geleorned ' learnt ' ; 65n inf. ' be ', O.E. 6eSn ; swore, O.E. sweor 'neck', &c., &c., Owl and Nightingale; clupej> 'calls', O.E. cleopep, lume ' limbs ', O.E. leomu, brust ' breast ', O.E. breast, in Robt. of Glos. ; suppe ' after ', O.E. seoppan, luver, O.E. leofor ' dearer ', luef ' dear ', O.E. leof, pueves ' thieveS ', O.E. peofas, &c., in Trevisa ; vrthe = urthe ' earth ', O.E. eorpe, dure ' dear ', O.E. dear, bade ' to offer ', O.E. beodan, in St. Editha. None of these texts is perfectly consistent, however, and e-spellings are fairly frequent in all, which perhaps shows that the easterly type was coming in, at any rate in the written language. (5) O.E. ea followed by r -1- another consonant. The earliest South- western texts, such as the Lambeth Homilies and others down to and into the thirteenth century, preserve the typical Southern erm, herm, O.E. earm, derm, hearm, haerm, but the Midland type arm, harm, &c., takes the place of these later. In this particular, as in so many others, the South- West Midland texts adhere to the Southern type. Similarly, before -II we find all instead of Southern as// or ell very early. Thus, for instance, St. Jul. (Metr,) has hard, harm, warm, uallep ' falls ', alle. The South- Eastern translation of Palladius, however (Essex c. 1420), still preserves e in hervest, herd ' hard ' ,yerdes, &c. (6) The O.E. combination eald in O.E. eald ' old ', beald ' bold ', ceald ' cold ', wealdan ' to rule, wield ', healdan ' hold ', appears in the early Southern texts in the typical forms -eald-, -add-, -eld-, &c., which all = [i/rf], but the Anglian type, O.E. did, M.E. old, gets in very early, and as early as the twelfth century this substitution is beginning. In the thirteenth century and later there are only a few scattered survivals of the Southern type, such as wselde in Moral Ode, welde in Prov, of Alfred, and so on. St. Jul. (Metr.) has only old, holde, &c. The South-Eastern dialects preserve the Southern form later, on which see below. (7) O.E. u in the Southern M.E. dialects. Already in O.E. we can distinguish, in the various Saxon texts, two dialectal types in the treat- ment of this old diphthong. In the later language some texts write y as hyrde ' shepherd ', earlier hierde, sylf ' self, earlier sielf, scyld ' shield ', earlier scield, hyran ' hear ', earlier hteran, &c. Others write t : hirde, silf, scild, hiran. The former type appears as with u or ui, uy when long ; in M.E. when retained the latter is written i. Thus M.E. hurde and hirde, sulfzxiA si^, schuld axiA schild, huyre(n), hutre{n), or hureiri) by the side of hire{^), are all typical Southern forms, as distinct from hirde, scheld, heren, &c., which occur in all the dialects other than the South- Western. The Southern conditions are more faithfully preserved in the treatment of the original short diphthong than in that of the long, and many texts, which in other respects are quite South- Western in type, have only traces D 2 36 DIALECT TYPES IN MIDDLE ENGLISH of ui in the verb ' to hear ', and many more examples of e. St. Jul. (Metr.), Robt. of GIos., and TreviSa adhere most faithfully to the Saxon types both in long and short, though all have some e- forms. St. Editha has only e, though otherwise very Southern in character. St. Jul. (Metr.) has hurde (Pret.), but bikue from O.E. Eifan; bizite 'obtaine', but }elde ' pay ' Inf , W. Saxon gieldan. The South- West Midland texts of the thirteenth century have certain traces of the «- forms. Points connected with, the Inflexions. (8) The 3rd Pers. Sing, of the Pres. Indie, of verbs is universally •e}', -ip, or -p, and we do not find the -es, -s endings as we do in E. Midland texts. A very curious exception, louys ' loves ', occurs in St. Editha (2228), and there are a few other -f forms in this text. (9) The Pres. PI. Indie, normally ends in -ej> or -tp. Tliis Southern peculiarity is shared by the dialect of the Prose St. Jul., and also by the Herefordshire (Harleian) Lyrics, though the latter has some examples of the Midland -en. (roj The Imperat. PL ends in -e/> and -i/>, as in E. Midland. (ii) The Pres. Participle ends in -ind{e). The later -z>^ participles develop rather later than in E. Midland. The South-West Midland, texts, while exhibiting examples of the Southern -inde, have also the Midland -ende. (12) The Fern. Pers. Pron. Nom. is always, in the South, some form derived from O.E. hed. The E. Midland and Northern she, sche forms are unknown, except for the quite exceptional sse in Robt. of Glos., and a few examples in Trevisa, who generally uses the typical heo, hue. Robt. of Glos. has ^0 frequently, also heo, and St. Jul. (Metr.) has he, heo. Other forms of these in Southern texts are the unstressed ha, while he, hee, hoe appear in St. Editha. (13) The Pers. Pronouns of the PI. are Nom. hi, heo, the unstressed ha and a (Lamb. Homs., Moral Ode, Saules Warde, Owl and Nightin- gale, Robt. of Glos.), and the weak a in Trevisa. St. Editha seems to have only the Scandinavian forms, J>ey, J>at, pay, and this is the first appearance of these forms in the South. The Possessives are hor(e) (God Ureisun, St. Jul. (Metr.), and Robt. of Glos.), heore (Lamb. Homs., Moral Ode), the weak eore (O. and N.), here (Robt. of Glos., Trevisa, and St. Editha), her, hure, hurre (St. Editha). Ace. and Dative heom (Lamb. Homs., Moral Ode, O. and N.) ; hem (St. Jul. (Metr.), Robt. of Glos., St. Editha) ; hom (Robt. of Glos., St. Editha) ; ham (Lamb. Homs., God Ur., and Trevisa). (14) The Pres. PI. of Verb 'to be' is normally hlop, befi, bup. Usages of Winchester has the two last, Robt. of Glos. has 3^, Trevisa the last, St. Editha has the Midland ben and arne. The South^West Midland Harleian Lyrics has both Southern bup, and Midland aren. (15) In O.E. the particle ge- is prefixed commonly to the P. P. of verbs, both strong and weak, when uncompounded. The P. P. of Strong Verbs ends in -«. In M.E. in the South and South-West Midlands the prefix is generally retained, being written i- oxy-. All Southern texts SPECIMENS OF SOUTHERN ENGLISH 37 from the earliest M.E. to St. Editha write ychose, yslawe ' slain ', yfounde, &c., &c., with loss of final -«. Ancren Riwie, St, Jul. (Prose), St. Katherine, and Harl. Lyrics generally retain the prefix j*-, but adhere to the Midland type in conserving also the -n in strong P. P.'s, e.g. ikumen, &c. The prefix is often used in the Pret. in O.E. and in Southern M.E., and indeed may be used before any part of a verb, often with no particular force, though it also has the function of making intransitive verbs transitive. (16) Infinitives end in -an and -ian in O.E. In M.E. these become -en, ' or -e, and -ien, ie respectively. The latter type is often written merely -y, or -i. It is typical of the South, both East and West, but disappears before the encroachments of the -an type in E. Midlands. Examples : O.E. lokian ' look ', M.E. lokie, loki, loky ; to msteni, and somony ' to summon ' both occur in Robt. of Glos. This suifix is also used with Vbs. of French origin. The loss of the final -n in the Inf. is a typical Southern feature. Extracts illustrative of Southern Bialect. * Note that in the South and South-Western area, initial /- is often, though not with complete consistency, written v or u, implying a voiced pronunciation. (a) From Moral Ode {Egerton MS.) (Hants, area 1200). Muchele luwe he us cudde, wolde we it unders^onde 9 pat vre eldrene misduden we habbet vuele on honde 6 Die¥ com in ))is middenerd J)urh Jie calde deofles onde And synne and sorje and jeswinch a watere and ec a londe 3 39 Vres formes faderes gult we abigget alle ' S IS Al his ofsprung after him in herme is bifalle. 3 7 z a 2 a purst and hunger, chule and hete, eche and al uneljie purh died com in J)is middenerd and ojier vnisal]>e. Miles, vue/e — uvele, ' evil', OS,.yfel. middenerd = O.E. (W. Sax.) middangeard 'earth' (late O.E. -gerd). The ending -e]> is written -et in this text in habbet, abigget ' purchase '- cAule = W. Sax. ciele ' cold ' (late O.E. cyle, whence chule). Diet, instead of de}, as the other MSS. have, may be the result of Kentish influence in the scribe, v and « are interchangeable, hence vre = are 'onr'; vres = tires, gen. Line j. ' the guilt of our first father '. Note the loss of h in uneljie, lit. ' unhealth ', ' sickness '. (b) From Proverbs of Alfred (1200). 1 I pus quej> Alured: Wis child is fader blisse. 8 If hit so bitydejj Pat ))u hern ibidest pe hwile hit is lytel ler him mon-Jiewes % II panne hit is wexynde 38 DIALECT TYPES IN MIDDLE ENGLISH I hit schal wende bar o. I IS 4 pe betere hit schal iwurj>e 4 euer buuen eor))e. Notes. Line i. a written for v in Alnred, O.E. Alfred. 4. bem = O.E. beam ' child '; ibidest ' await, expect '. 7. = O.E. weaxan 'grow' (Late W. Sax. wexan). 8. = ' it shall turn then to '. N.B. In late W. Sax. weorpan often becomes wurpan, bnt this conld not rhyme With eor}e. iwurfe is from O.E. geweorfan, and the spelling shows the M.E. change of eo to [yj. This rhymes with eorfe, which shows that this word, too, had undergone the change in spite of the old spelling. (c) From Robert of Gloucester {c. 1298). I 4 IS _i. , __ (1) po ))is child was an vrjie ibore, his freond nome ))erto hede, Hi lete hit d5 to Glastnebury to norichi and to fede To teche him eke his bileue, pater-noster and crede. IS 5 pe child wax and wel ijiej, for hit moste nede. Lute jeme he nom to |)e wordle, to alle godnisse he drou3. (2) In chirche he was devout inow vor him ne ssolde no day abide 7 pat he ne hurde masse and matines and euesong and ech tide. 2 a (3) And J)e Normans ne cou))e speke j)o bote hor owe speche 2 a 13 13 2 b And speke French as hii dude atom ana hor children dude also teche I _ "3 So )>at heiemen of J>is lond }>at of hor blod come 69 2 a 13 13 Holde)> alle })ulke speche J)a hii of horn nome Vor bote a man conne Frenss me tel{> of him lute 69 237 Ac lowe men holde}> to Engliss and to hor owe speche jute. (4) be gode quene Mold II 15 pat quene was of Engelond as me aj) er ytold 12 IS I pa goderhele al Engelond was heo euere ybore Notes. (1) 1. 2. hi = 'they'. 1. 4. ipej, fr. O.E. gefeah, gefah. 1. 5. wordle = ' world ' shows metathesis of Id. (3) 1. I. vor = 'for'. (3) 11. 1-2. Note rhyme. 1. 2. atdm = ' at home', still so pronounced by many good speakers, 1. 5. me, indef. Pron. = 'one'. (4) 1. 2. = 'as one has told before'. 1. 3. goderhele, adv.= 'fortunately for '. heo = ' she ' . (d) From the Metrical Life of St. Juliana (Gloucestershire c. 1300). I 3 I (l) Swl))e sori was })is lujier man jiat he ne mijte hire })ojt wende I II To habbe conseil of hire fader after him he let sende. 16 , And fondede hire clene jiojt to chaunge J)oru vair biheste. SOUTHERN DIALECT 39 po hi speke uairest wij) hire, ))is maide hem jaf answere : — 6 ifi is 9 Icholle holde fa ichabbe itake ; je ne dof me ]>erof no dere ; 9 9 =a At 6 word je ne tume)) me nojt, Jier aboute je spillej) brej); 10 I 9 Do]) me wat pyne je woUef, uor I ne drede nojt pen dej). 13 16 pe hi seie })at }>is maide hire }>03t chaungi nolde, X Hire fader bitok hire })e justice to do wij> hire wat he wolde. (2) We ne scholia }>is foule wiche ouercome wi}> no dede 3 3if no fCr ne mai hire brenne, in lede we scholle hire bfede 3 3 • _ A chetel he sette ouer Jie fur and fulde it uol of lede 16 12 pis maide isei ))is led boili, heo nas no))ing in drede. 12 IS Anon so heo was ferinne ido, )>at fur bigan to sprede. Fram ))e chetel it hupte aboute, in lengjie and in brede. Sixti men and seuentene it barnde in ]>e place 3 Of lujier men ))at stode ))er bl: )>er was godes grace. s Amydde ]>e chetel J)is maide stode, al hoi wi))j)oute harm ; II 2 5 pat led ))at bolynde was, vnne)>e it ))03te hire warm. 10 10 • 12 (3) Ne sparej) nojt he sede, ac heiejj uaste jiat heo of dawe be. I 10 12 I Nabbe)> of hire namore reujie J)en heo hadde of me. 12 _ I Nolde heo n6))ing spare me of al })at ich hire b.'\d, Vnnejie ich dar on hire loke, so s5re icham adrad. 7 12 po J>is maide hurde fis, hire eien up heo caste, 6 xo « A, out ! out ! ]>e deuel sede holde)) hire nou uaste. (e) From Trevisa's translation of Higden's Polychronicon (1387). (1) par ys gret plente of smal fysch and of eeles, so {lat cherles in som 9 14 15 , place feedej) sowes wiJ) fysch. par bu}) ofte ytake delphyns and 3 se-calues and balenes (gret fysch as it were of whaales kunde) and 7 7 14 dyuers maner schyl-fysch among \e, whoche schyl-fysch buj) 9 13 moskles Jiat habbe)> wiji-ynne ham margery perles of a manere colour of hu^. 7_ (2) Lond, hony, mylk, chyse _ ))is ilond schal here J>e prise (3) Harold come vram werre of Noreganes and hurde ty))ynges hereof, and hyede wel vast and hadde bote veaw knyjtes aboute hym ; vor he IS hadde ylost meny stalword me m ))e raj)er 15 batayl and he had nojt ysent vor more help; and )>ey3 \ 40 DIALECT TYPES IN MIDDLE ENGLISH a hadde, men were wrofe and wolde haue wy))drawe, ham, vor hy moste haue no part of the prayes atte batayl of Noreganes. Bote Harold sent vorj) spies vor to aweyte and se )>e number and ))e string)>e of hys enymyes. Due William touk )>ues spyes and ladde ham aboute hys tentes and hys pauylons, and vedde ham ryjt realyche, and sent ham to Harold a;6. Notes, (i) 1. 4. schyl, fr. O.E. (W. Sax.) sciell ' shell ' ; this is the Sonthem i-type. (3) 1. I. chyse, fr. O.E. (W. Sax.) cuse, later cise ' cheese' ; the other dialects had eese in O.E., cAese in M.E. (3) 1. I. vram ^frarn ' from '. 1. 3- »'?«™ = O.E. feawe ' few '. 1. o. a = Ae, weak form, fey) = O.E. Jiedk ' though '. aile = ' at the ' 1. 10. fues, O. E. /eds ' these '. vedi/e =fedde ' fed '- (f) From Si. Editha (Wilts, c. 1420). 13 Bot he hurre-selff dwelte at Wylton_ stylle Wit hurre moder as y sayde jowe ere ; For hurre moder to serue was holyche hurre wylle 4 Wei leuer }>en ony other gret state to here; And also for he was norysshut vp in ))at place 3 IS And furste y-6rdryd he was ))ere }>ert6, And many miracles )iorow goddus grace For hurre werone done jiere also. When he hadde regnyd here syxtene jere FuUyche complete wit somewhat more And syxtene jere holde and somewhat more y trowe he were 3 >s When he was kyng furst y-kore 3 Bote of his deth and also his burynge ■5 Ychaue y-writon jowe herebyfSre And somewhat of his gode gouernynge ; And Jiat is cause })at y wryte here nomore. Note. \.\. he = 'she '. 1. 11. holde — - old'. Dialect Features of Kentish and Soutli-Easterii. (i) O.E. se is retained as a fronted [s] sound longer and more consistently in Kentish than in the more Westerly Southern dialects. But even here, and that as early as 11 50 (Vespas. Homilies), the Anglian a appears. Vesp. Horns, has cwed, O.'K.cwdep; /edme 'bosom', O.'E.feSm; weter 'water', but also was, fader. Laud Sermons {c. 1250) has efter, O.E. sefter; J>et, O.E. /as/, but spac, O.E. sprsec ' spoke ' ; hedde ' had ', O.E. Asefde, but habbep, haj>, O.E. hxff> ; wat, O.E. hwaet ' what ' ; water, O.E. waeter, and so on. Will, of Shoreham (1320) has a good number of e spellings : wet, O.E. Awxi; J>ei, schal 'shall ', creft, O.E. craeft, hep 'hath', weten, &c. ; on the other hand wai, schal, water, glas, &c. The total number of THE KENTISH VOWELS 41 a spellings is greater than those with e. Ayenbite (1340), the latest and on the whole the most typical example of Kentish, has eppel, O.E. xppel ' apple ', kuef ' what ', gled ' glad ', gles ' glass ', &c., but also occasionally a as in uader. (2) O.E. se' and as* have both the same (tense) «-sound in Kentish. See remarks on this sound under the E. Midland characteristics above. The spellings with ie seem to prove tenseness in both original sounds : Will. of Shoreham hasjier ' year ', Prim. O.E. gxr, O. Kentish ger, and Ayenbite has cltene ' clean which has O.E. *" (see E. Midlands 2). (3) O.E._y, as has already been mentioned (pp. 9, 30, 34, above), appears e in Kentish and South-Eastern. There is further reason to believe that this peculiarity occurred also in a large area of the E. Midlands. It is found in Suffolk Charters in the late tenth century, cf. also p. 7 8, below. Examples from Kentish texts : senne ' sin ',/eIJ>e or velj>e ' filth ', O.E. (Sax. and Angl.) fylj>e ; keppe ' family ', &c., O.E. cypke, werchen ' work ', O.E. wyrcan, merie 'merry', O.E. myrig, &c., &c. (4) O.iE. to never appears in Kentish as a rounded vowel («, oe, &c.), as in the West and South-West, but, especially the long eb, is either written ie,ye, io,yo, or e. It is rather doubtful whether the ie,ye spellings imply a diphthongal sound or whether they merely represent a tense e. The Vesp. Homs. writes bTen, O. W. Sax. beon ' be ' ; chiesen inf. ' choose ', O.E. ceosan, dier-, O.E. dear ' animal ', diofles, O.E. deoflas ' devils '. Laud Homilies has biej> ' are ', bt'en (inf.), but sterre ' star ', O.E. sieorra ; herte, O.E. heorte ' heart '. Will, of Shoreham nearly always writes ee or eiar eo : depe, crepe, feende ' enemy ', but has also soep, O.E. seop ' see ' (Western influence ?), by = bedn (inf.). Ayenbite writes herie, erpe, a,lsoyer}Ae,yerne 'run', O.E. eornan. For the long, dyeule, O.E. deofle, uryend, uriend 'friend', O.'E./rednd, uyend, 0^./ednd ' enemy ' ; diere, dyere ' dear ', O.E. deora, &c. By the side of these usual spellings, e and ee are also written occa- sionally. In view of the fact that most of the Kentish texts write te for tense /, as in hier, O.E. her ' here ', and hieren ' to hear ', Old Kentish Mr en, and also that they all often write ee for O.E. eo, it seems not improbable that the spelling means no more than tense [e]. In the writings of Gower ie is a recognized symbol for [e]. See remarks on p. 57. (5) O.E. -eall-, -earm-, -card- are written with ea, ae, or e, longer than in the South- Western. Vesp. Homs. has aelra, ddmihH; Will, of Shoreham earm.es ' arms ', pou ert ' art ', Aermy inf. ' to harm ', but also scharpe, harde; Ayenbite seems to have the Anglian -arm-, -ard-. (6) O.E. -eald- retains the front vowel of the old Southern type in Kentish, as against the Anglian -old- type, still more thoroughly than the combinations -earm-, -eall-, &c. Vesp. Homs. has sxlde ' gave ', ' sold ', O.E. sealde ; healde, inf. ' hold ', O.E. healdan ; Will, of Shoreham has cMld'coW, O.E. ceald, cxld; tealdeVtet., and y-leld, p.p. 'told', Late O.E. ixlde, &c. ; to Jklde ' to hold ', elde ' old ', Late O.E. xld, &c., &c. ; Ayenbite has ealde and yealde ' old ', chealde ' cold ', lealde ' told ', Aealde ' hold '. The typical Anglian forms with -old- do not seem to occur in the last text, nor are they at all frequent in any Kentish text. (7) O.E. ea in Kentish. The late treatment, at least in spelling, of this long diphthong deserves a few words, as it is typical. In most dialects O.E. ea became se in the Late O.E. period, and this e [ej in M.E., when 42 DIALECT TYPES IN MIDDLE ENGLISH it is often written ea—deap = [dej>\ &c. In Ayenbite, however, we get dyaf ' deaf ', O.E. deaf; dyaj> and dyeap ' death ', dyed ' dead ' ; lyaf ' leaf ', O.E. M/; lyas pret. ' lost ', O.E. -Ms, &c. Will, of Shoreham has traces of these spellings in lias pret. ' lost ', Senne-lyas ' sinless ', O.E. leas, but otherwise writes ea — deapes, reaue, &c. The Laud Homs. has diad- Uch 'deadly', diath 'death', be-liaue ' i^xih' , O.'E. ge-led/a, all of which occur frequently, by the side of occasional be-kaue, &c. Vesp. Homs. has deSMc, eadinesse, O.E. eadig-, xac, O.E. eac ' also ', bu^also gecas ' chose ', O.E. cms; ^rarf 'bread', O.E. bread; admodi-, O.E. eadmodig 'humble', &c. Whether ea, ia, ya all represent some sound like [»] or [i], or whether they really represent a combination such as [ ja], it seems impossible to say. a in brad can hardly represent anything but [je] or [i], and this may well have been the sound in all these words. If this were so, Kentish would only differ from the other dialects in employing a special graphic device. (8) Initial f- and/ often appear voiced in Kentish. This is particularly systematic in Ayenbite, where u (for v) is regularly written at the begin- ning of English words uolc ' people ', uor ' for ', uoul ' foul ', &c., &c., also before cons, uram, uryend, &c., &c. In French words /- is written : fauour ' figure ', flour ' flower ',/rut ' fruit ', &c., &c. Note zeals ' false ', &e., however. Initial s- is written z in English words, only before vowels, except in the old combination sw-, which is written zu zuyn, O.E. swin ' swine ', zuele ' sweet ', O.E. swe/e, &c., also zecAe, O.E. secan ' seek ', zenne ' sin ', &c., &c. Before consonants f is written in English words : streme ' stream ', strengpi ' strengthen ', and in French words s is written everywhere. All the earlier Kentish texts write j- ; as regards O.E. initial/-, Vesp. Homs. seems always to write/', Laud Homs. has occasional v — vai're ' fair ', O.^./seger ; uuluelden lit. ' fulfilled, filled full ', but more often/-, while Will, of Shoreham generally writes f-, but has also tiader ' father ', vedep ' feeds ', velp ' filth ', &c. Thus Kentish, apart from Ayenbite, does not use the voiced sound for initial f- nearly so commonly as South- Western, while the latter is far behind Ayenbite in the use of the voiced sound for s-. Points connected with the Inflexions in Kentish. (9) The 3rd Pers. Sing. Pres. Indie, ends in -ep, -k as in the rest of the Southern area. An exceptional -j form, leles, occurs in Vespas. Homs. however. (10) The PI. Pres. Indie, ends in -ep as in Southern generally. (11) The Imperat. PI. ends in -ep, -p as in Southern generally, and E. Midlands. (12) The Pres. Part, ends in -tnde (with occasional -ende) as in South- western. (13^ The Fem. Pron. Nom. is usually hi, never sche, &c. (14) PI. of 3rd Pers. Pronoun. Kentish agrees with the rest of the Southern in having no p- or tk- forms. A characteristic Kentish or South-Eastern form his is in the Ace. PL (= ' them ') in Vesp. Homs., Shoreham, and Ayenbite. This is also found in some of the earlier E. Midland texts, e.g. Genesis and Exodus. SPECIMENS OF KENTISH 43 (15) The characteristic hiep, PI. Pres. Indie, of lien ' to be ', is found in Ayenbite. (16) The statements concerning the prefix t- in verbs, especially the P. P., and the termination -e, without -n, which are made above with regard to South- Western, apply on the whole to Kentish. (i 7) The -ie, -y endings in Inf. of Vbs. are very frequent in Kentish as in South- Western. Illustrative Extracts from M.E. Kentish Texts. (a) From the {Vespasian A. 23) Kentish Sermons {c. 1150). 3 3 (1) An jiesser beo^S bedeles and la^ieres to berie archebiscopes and biscopes, prestes and hare 5egeng. Ac Jiah we fif nasmmie 6 14 _ 3 9 alle hit on godes wille, and elc of ham JestrenS and fulfelej) 3 14 3 I 10 o&e. Of Jiesses fif cejjen and of hare bedeles we habbe}> jeu 16 10 I I jesed. Of J)e folce we siggej> })at hit cum)) fastlice, fram midden- 7 "5 "5 3 . ardes anginn alse fele alse deade beo^S alse fele beo^ to berie 16 I I I icome, wat frend, wat fa, and elce dejie })icce ))ringe^. 14 3 3 (2) pan seied ham god J)e gelty mannen 3e senejden an jeur 3 ecenesse, and je scule birne an mire ecenisse. 3^ senejden alse lange alse 50 lefede and ^e scule birne alse longe as ic II 3 lefie. Wite^S into ece fer, be is jasarcod mine fo, and his jegeng. Son hi wr^e^ abroden of his Jesecjie. (b) From the Laud Homilies {c. 1250). II 9 (1) Nu lordinges bis is be miracle ))et })et godspel of te dai us tel)). ac 9 ^ 8 great is be tokeningge. Se lepras signifiej) ))o senuuUe me; ji lepre 3 19 3 9 bo sennen. pet scab bitokneb bo litle sennen, si lepre bitoknej) \o 7 1 4 15 7 Id 16 grete sennen bet biedh diadliche. . . . Nu ye habbeS iherd be miracle and wet hit bitokned. No loke we yef we biej> clene of 7 1 ]>ise lepre, fat is to siggen of diadliche senne. I 14 I (2) And bi bet hi offrede gold jiet is cuuenable yeftte to kinge, scawede bet he was sothfast Kink. And bi bet hi offrede I ' 6 14 Stor bet me offrede wylem be bo ialde laghe to here godes I * H sacrefise, seawede bet he was verray prest. And be )>et hi I 9 " 14 I 7 offrede Mirre bet is biter bing, signifieth )>et hi hedde beliaue I 7 7 '' , ' Jiet^he was diadlich ))et diath solde suffri for man-ken. 44 DIALECT TYPES IN MIDDLE ENGLISH (c) From William of Shoreham (1310-20). Z I (1) Onnejie creft eny })at stat Ac some crefte)> J)at halue And for siknesse leche creft And for ))e goute sealue Me make]). 6 For wanne man drawi)» into Sideward to Wei oft his bones ake]>. And be a man neuer so sprind 3ef he schel libbe to elde Be him wel siker Jierto he schal 7 And his de)>es dette jelde To gile. Jet meni jong man wenej> longe Hue And leue}) wel litle wyle. (2) Leue dame, say me now I Wy heji god forbode hyt 50W pet je ne mote _ II Eten of al ))at frut ])at hys Here growynde in paradys To joure bote? 10 We etej) y-hou quaj) cue, ywis Of alle }>e trowes of paradys I? ' And bej) wel gled; Bote J)ys trow mote we naujt take, For bojie me and mynne make God hyt forbede. (d) From, the Ayinbite (1340). 48 18 8 Aye ))e uondingges of Jie dyeule : zay )5is })et uolje)) : Zuete iesu bin h5ly bl5d/J)et )>ou sseddest ane })e rod/uor me S3 _ and uor mankende: Ich bidde be hit by my sseld/auoreye S 8 )>e wyoked uend: al to mi lyues ende. zuo by hit 16 ))is boc is dan Michelis of Nothgate, y-write an englis I of his S^ene hand ; )>et hatte Ayenbyte of Inwyt. And is of 3 , J)e b5chouse of saynt Austines of Canterbene. Holy archangle Michael Saynt gabriel and Raphael Ye' brenge me to bo castel 58 S 10 per alle zaulen varej) wel. CERTAIN TYPES OMITTED FROM SURVEY 45 s. Lhord ihesu almijti Kyng, ]>et madest and lokest alle J>yng, Me ]>et am })I makyng to Jjine blisse me ))ou bryng. Amen. 7 s s s Blind and dyaf and alsuo domb, of zeuenty yer al uol rond. 8 8 8 Ne ssoUe by draje to ))e gr5nd, uor peny, uor mark ne uor p5nd. We have now concluded our brief survey of the principal distinguishing features which characterize the Regional types that go to the composition of the dialect of London during the M.E. period, that is to say, the South- Eastern (especially Kent and Essex), the Central and more Westerly Southern, and the East Midland. The illustrative extracts from texts written in the various dialects furnish examples, in the actual living sentence, of most of our points, though possibly not of all. Outside the distinguishing marks of dialect, which are here selected as most typical, it will be observed that there is much that is common to all, and which belongs to the whole of English south of the Thames, and north, at least as far as Lincolnshire, in the East. We have omitted from our survey the Northern English, and Scotch dialects, and that large area, to the West, rather vaguely known as ' West Midland ' among students of Middle English. It is obvious that the dialects of these regions can have had no direct influence upon the speech of London, and as a matter of fact there are no typically Northern or West Midland elements in Literary or Standard Spoken English at the present day, nor were there any in ^he M.E. dialect from which these have sprung. It is hardly necessary to say that there are many features of grammar, sounds, and vocabulary which belong to English as a whole, which therefore occur in North, South, South-Eastern, East, and West Midland alike. There are also certain features, such as -s in the 3rd Pers. Sing. Present of verbs, which were originally Northern, 1 but which subsequently passed into the North Midland English as a whole, I in the first place, and later, from East Midland, probably through Essex, into London English. But, so far as the latter is concerned, these features are to be regarded as East Midland. See, however, pp. 334-7. below. There are many other points of considerable importance, besides those above discussed under the various dialect headings, which arise in the detailed and minute study of the texts from which our illustrative extracts are drawn, but are passed over in silence here, because they would take us further into the minutiae of Old and Middle English grammar than it would be permissible to go in a book of this kind. It is believed, however, that this omission will not impair the general argu- ment of the book, and the omission is deliberate. The Dialect of Loudon down to the Death of Chaucer. We now pass to consider the dialect of London itself, down to the close of the fourteenth century and the beginning of the fifteenth. It mast be assumed that the rea,der has grasped the foregoing statement 46 DIALECT TYPES IN MIDDLE ENGLISH and enumeration of the various dialectal features of the different regions dealt with ; at any rate, the tables and examples can easily be referred to, and the references given to the various points dealt with will reduce the reader's labour to a minimum. The abbreviations E. Midi., Sthn., Kt., refer to the dialect areas as treated above, pp. 29-43, &c., and the numbers to the particular points. Thus E. Midi. 6 refers to the paragraph above under the heading E. Midi, in which the O.E. Midland combination -aid-, which in the Southern O.E. dialects is represented by -eald-, later -xld; is dealt with. We may first give some examples of documents written in London, from the time of the Conqueror down to Chaucer. '^ Illustrative Specimens of the Dialect of London from the Conquest to Chaucer. (a) William the Conqueror's Charter (1066). From Liebermann's Gesetze d. Angelsachsen, vol. i, p. 486. Willelm Kyng gret Willelm bisceop and Gosfreg^ portirefan and ealle J)a burhwaru binnan Londone Frencisce and Englisce freondlice. And ic ky'Se eow jiset ic wylle j)ast get beon eallra jjsera laga weorSe jie gyt waeran on Eadwerdes dsge Kynges. And ic wylle ))£et aslc cyld'^eo his fasder' yrfnume £efter his faeder dsege and ic nelle ge}>oIian |)£et anig man eow Snig })rang beode. God eow gehealde. (b) Proclamation of Henry III (1258). From Patent Rolls. Printed Ellis, Early English Pronunciation, Pt. II, pp. 501, &c., and Emerson's M.E. Reader. Henri Jiurj godes fultume King on Engleneloand, Lhoauerd on Yrloand, Duk on Norm' on Aquitain' and eorl on Aniow Send i^etinge to alle hise h51de, ilffirde and ileawede on Huntendonschir' ))Kt witen je wel alle bast we willen and unnen fast, J)a;t vre rSdesmen alle ojier )>e moare dffil of heom bast be5)) ichosen ))ur5 us and J>ur3 ))ast loandes folk on vre Kuneriche habbe)> idon and schuUen don in }ie worjjnesse of gode and on vre treow))e, for \% freme of })e loande, ^urj jie besijte of fan toforen iseide redesmen. beo stedefsest and Uestinde in alle ))inge abuten aende. And we hoaten alle vre treowe in ))e treow)>e jiast heo vs ogen }>Eet heo stedefaestliche healden and swerien to healden and to werien \b isetnesses Jiaet beon imakede and beon to makien )>ur5 }>an to foreniseide rsedesmen Sferijmrj ))e moare djel of heom alswo alse hit is biforen iseid. And )>aet sehc ^er helpe Jiast for to done bi )>an ilche o{)e ajenes alle men. Rijt for to done and to foangen. And nMin ne nime'of loande ne of ejte wher))ur3 J)is besijte muje beon ilet 6J)er iwersed(on onie wise.) And jif oni, ober onie cumen her onjenes, we willen and hoaten })set alle vre treowe heom healden deadliche ifoan. And for ))aet we willen \7e.\. )>isbeo stedefasst and lestinde, we senden jew }>is writ open iseined wif vre seel, to halden amanges «ew ine hord. Witnesse vs seluen aat Lunden' ]>ane Ejtetenjie day on fie monfe of Octobr'. In J)e two and fowerti5))e jeare of vre cruninge. And in ))is wes idon astforen vre isworene redesmen. And al on bo ilche worden is isend into asvriche oj)re schire over al basre kuneriche on Engleneloande, and ek Intel Irelonde. (N.B. PI. Name, Hartford (Earl of) among signatories.) SPECIMENS OF LONDON ENGLISH 47 (c) Adam Davy (c. 1307-27). (1) His name is ihote Sir Edward Jie Kyng Prince of Wales, Engelonde jie faire J)ing.'- Me matte ' Jiat he was armed wel B6))e wij) yrne arid wi)j stel, And on his helme bat was of stel A coroune of gold laicom hym wel. Bifore J>e shryne of Seint Edward he stood Myd glad chere and mylde of mood, Mid two Knijttes armed on eijier side pat he ne mijt ]>ennes goo ne ride Hetilich hii leiden hym upon' Als hii mijtten myd swerde don. (2) pe pursday next ]>e beryng of our Lefdy Me Jioujht an aungel com Sir Edward by ; pe aungel bitook Sir Edward on honde Al bledyng ^e foure forber clawes so were of ))e Lombe. At Caunterbiry,_ bifore fa heije autere, J)e Kyng stood, Ycl6))ed al in rede murre ; he was of ))at blee red as blood. God, ))at was on gode Friday don on Jia rode So turne my swevene night and day to mychel gode. Tweye poynts ))ere ben fat ben unschewed For me ne worjie to clerk ne lewed; Bot to Sir Edward oure Kyng Hym wil iche shewe filk metyng. * /2«^ = ' creature '. ' Me mette = ' I dreamt '. ' This phrase is very like ou. ' laid into him '- (d) Extract from ' A petition from the folk of Mercerye ' (1386). Rolls of Parliament, vol. iii, p. 225, &c. ; Morsbach, Engl. Schriftspr., p. 171. And yif in general his falsene^se were ayeiasaide as of vs togydre of the Mercerye or othere craftes or ony conseille wolde haue taken to ayeinstande it, or as tyme put of mynde bath be vsed, we wolden companye togydre how lawful so it were for owra nede or profite were anon apeched for arrysers ^ ayeins the pees, and falsly many of vs that yet stcmden endited and we ben*' openlich disclaundred, holden vntrewa and traitours to owre Kyng. for the same Nichol said bifor Mair Aldermen and owre craft bifor hem gadred in place of recorde that xx or xxx of vs were worthy to be drawen and hanged, the which thyng lyke to yowre worthy lordship by and euen Juge to be pr5ued or disproued the whether that trowthe may shewe for trowthe MQonges vs of fawe or elles no man many day dorst be shewed. And nought donlich vnshewed or hidde it hath be by no man now, but also of bifore tyme, the moost profitable poyntes^tof trewe gouemaunce of the citee compiled to- gidre bi longe labour of discrete and wyse men wythout conseille of trewe men : for thai sholde nought be knowen ne contynued in the tyme of Nichol Exton outerliche were brent. (e) From Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale. 'Ye, goddes armes,' quod this ryotour, 'Is it swich peril with him for to mete?'' I shal him seke by wey and eek by strete, I make avow to goddes dignejaones! Herkneth, felawes, we three been al ones ; 48 DIALECT TYPES IN MIDDLE ENGLISH • "^ Lat ech of us holde up his hond til other, And ech of us bicomen 5theres br5ther, And we wol sleen this false traytour Deeth ; He shal be slayn, which that so many sleeth, By goddes dignitee, er it be night.' Togidres han thise three her trouthes plight, To live and dyen fch of hem for 6ther,v As though he wei?6 his owene yboren brother. ^ And up they sterte al dronken, in this^rage, And forth they goon towardes that village, Of which the taverner had sp5ke biforn, And many a grisly ooth than han they sworn, And Crlstes blessed body they to-rente — ' Deeth shal be deed, if that they may him hente.' Whan they han goon nat fully half a myle Right as they wolde han troden over a style. An old man and a povre with hem mette. This olde man ful mekely hem grette. And seyde thus, 'now, lordes, god yow see!' The proudest of thise ryotoures three / Answerde agayn, 'what? carl, with sory grace. Why artow al forwrapped save thy face? Why livestow so longe /in so greet age ? ' This olde man gan loke in his visage, And seyde thus, 'for I ne can nat finde A man, though that I walked into Inde Neither in citee nor in no village, That wolde chaunge his youthe for myn age; And therfore moot I han myn age stille, As longe time as it is goddes wille. Ne deeth, alias ! ne wol nat han my lyf ; Thus walke I, lyk a restelees caityf, And on the ground, which is my modres gate, I knokke with my staf, bothe edy and late, •^' And seye, "leve moder, leet me in! Lo how I vanish, flesh, and blood, and skin ! Alias whan shul ray bones been at reste ? M5der with yow wolde I chaunge my cheste. That in my chambre 15nge tyme hath be, Ye ! for an heyre clout to wrappe me ! " But yet to me she wol nat do that grace, For which ful pale and welked is my face. But, sirs, to yow it is no curteisye To speken to an old man vileinye. But he trespasse in worde, or elles in dede. In h61y writ ye may your-self wel rede, "Agayns an 51d man, hoor upon his heed. Ye sholde aryse ; " wherfor I yeve yow reed, Ne dooth unto an old man noon harm now, Namore than ye wolde men dide to yow In age, if that ye s5 long abyde; And god be with yow, wher ye g5 or ryde. I moot go thider as I have to go.' (f) From Chaucer's Persones Tale. Wherfore as seith Seint Anselm : ' ful gret angwissh shul the sinful folk have at that tyme ; ther shal the sterne and wrothe juge sitte above, and DIALECT OF EARLIEST LONDON DOCUMENTS 49 under him the horrible put of helle open to destroyen him that moot biknowen , hise sinnes, which sinnes openly been shewed bifom god and bifom every creature. And on the left syde mo develes than herte may bithinke, for to harie and drawe the sinful soules to the pyne of helle. And with-inne the hertes of folk shal be the bytinge conscience and with- outeforth shal be the world al brenninge. Whider shal thanne the wrecched sinful man flee to hyden him ? Certes, he may nat hyden him ; he moste come forth and shewen him. . . . Now sothly, who-so wel remembreth him of thise thinges, I gesse that his sinne shal nat tume him into delyt, but to greet sorwe, for drede of the peyne of helle. And therfore seith lob to god: 'suffre, lord, that I may a whyle biwaille and wcpe, er I go with-oute returning to the derke lond, covered with the derknesse of deeth ; to the lond of misese and of derknesse, where- as is the shadwe of deeth ; where-as ther is noon ordre or ordinance, but grisly drede that evere shal laste.' . . . . . . And therfore seith Seint lohn the Evangelist : ' they shuUen folwe deeth, and they shul nat finde him, and they shul desyren to dye, and deeth shal fle fro hem.' . . . For as seith seint Basilie : 'the brenninge of the fyr of this world shal god yeven in helle to hem that been dampned ; but the light and the cleernesse shal be yeven in hevene to hise children ; right as the gode man yeveth flesh to hise children, and bones to his houndes.' The first document is given here chiefly on account of its intrinsic historical interest. It does not prove very much from a linguistic point of view. The form is to all intents and purposes Old English, and, like most other documents written in the eleventh century, is no doubt very archaic from the point of view of the English then spoken. It is the conventional Late Old English of the scribes, showing, it is true, some signs of departure from that of the classical period, but still giving no true pictiure of the changes which time must already have wrought in uttered speech. As regards dialect, the charter is certainly Southern English, and such forms a.sjir/'-{tmme) and wxran (Sthn. 2 a) are charac- teristic of what we are accustomed to call West Saxon. We have, unfortunately, no reliable knowledge of the differences and points of agreement between the English of Wessex and that of Middlesex. Probably there were more of the former than of the latter. The forms ealle, eallre, and gehealde could not occur in a Northern or Midland dialect, though they might just as well be Kentish as ' Saxon ' (Sthn. 6, Kt. 6). The fact is that all O.E. documents of the later period, with very few exceptions, are written in a common form which in all essential features is W. Saxon — though this particular charter has only two abso- lutely test iorais—jirf-, wxran — so much so that it is now commonly assumed that after ^Elfred's time the prestige of Wessex in Government, Arms, and Letters, was such that the dialect of that area became a literary Koivfi in universal use in written documents. That this was true of official London documents this charter, so far as it goes, is a proof. The fact that x is retained in fxder, fixt, dxge, Sec, tends to show a W. Saxon character, since. « was typical in these words in Kent (Kt. i) and in part of the Mercian area. On the other hand. Late Kentish scribes often write the letter as for the e-sound. But the form kySe is certainly not Kentish, for this dialect would have kej>e (Kt. 3). The written dialect of London, then, in the eleventh century was definitely Southern in character, and South -Western, rather than South- 50 DIALECT TYPES IN MIDDLE ENGLISH Eastern. It may be asked whether the actual speech of the metropolis at this period is represented by this charter. It is largely a question of probabilities, but it is highly probable, if not absolutely certain, that this document— apart from chronological inconsistencies with the spoken language, to which allusion has already been made — does represent the type of dialect which was actually spoken in London when it was written. If that be so, the speech of London in the eleventh century was Southern in character, and, more exactly, approximated to South- Western, having as yet, so far as our evidence goes, no purely South-Eastem features. Passing now to extract (b), the Proolamation of Henry III, which is nearly two hundred years later than the above charter, we notice a con- siderable difference in its dialect constituents, as compared with the latter. We now observe the characteristic blending of Midland elements with those which are typically Southern, and in some cases the Southern and Midland forms of the same word or grammatical ending both occur. Among the characteristically Southern forms are the following : — O.E. x preserved as < or « in xt, pxt, wes (Sthn. i) ; O.E. ie' written as in rxdesmen 'councillors ' (Sthn. 2 a) ; O.E. y preserved in sound, and written u in Kuneriche 'kingdom ' (Sthn. 3); O.E. -tald- written -eald- as dis- tinct from Midland -old- in to healdm = [helden]. This belongs to the South-East and Kent as well (see Sthn. 6 and Kt. 6). Its survival here may be due to Kentish influence. The frequent m as in heo, beop, treowe, Sec, may be more than a traditional spelling, which, indeed, is unlikely so long after the Conquest, and may represent the Western rounded vowel often written u (Sthn. 4). It is possible that this sound never reached, in London, the stage represented by South- Western «, but was simply unrounded to e previously. The spelling Hurtford ' Hertford ', O.E. Heor{o)i-, occurs among the signatures to the document, which is clearly a South- West or South- West Midland form, but this proves nothing concerning London speech. Other Southern features are the common use of the preiix i- in imakede ' made ' (Pret.), -iseid{e) ' said ' P.P., ilet ' hindered ' P.P.. iseened ' signed' P.P., igretinge ' greeting ', iion ' done ', ichosen ' chosen ', iUstinde ' lasting ', &c. (Sthn. 15); the Pres. Indie. PI. in -p as in bed}>, habbep (Sthn. 9 and 14); the Pres. Part, in -inde, ilestinde (Sthn. 11); the Inf. in -im, to makien (Sthn. 16). This last may also be Kentish (Kt. 17). The Southern PI. Pronouns heo, Juom, are not decisive as to dialect at this period, since even in E. Midland texts the /A-forms are not found so early as this. (See E. Midi. 13.) The Midland forms in the Proclamation are alle, halden (we should expect holden, see E. Midi. 5) ; the Pres. Indie. PL in -en, beon, cumen, •millen, halden, hoaien ' command ', unnen ' grant ', senden (E. Midi. 9) ; the P.P. of the Strong Vbs. chesen ' chose ', sweren ' swear ', and of the anomalous don ' do ' — ichosen, isworene, idon — retain the final -n (E. Midi. 15), though all these forms also agree with the Southern type in preserv- ing the prefix i-. The spelling wherpurj, where Southern texts very frequently write wer- {w- for O.E. Aw) and Midland texts more often wh-, seems characteristic of London documents, both official and literary, during the whole M.E. period, though, as we shall see, the spelling v>- is fairly common later on. THE DIALECT OF ADAM DAVIE gi The only Kentish or South-Eastem elements in this text appear to be iwersed 'worsened', O.E. gewyrsed, where y is best explained as the original O.E. sound from earliest "toursi-, and xnd ' end ', where ae is a curious scribal survival of a Kentish spelling not infrequent in some O.E. texts which show Kentish influence in other respects also. Other O.E. dialects usually write ende. There seems no reason to doubt that this interesting document repre- sents pretty fairly the London dialect of the period, allowing for the scribal archaisms of spelling. We now come to a specimen of London English written during the » first quarter of the fourteenth century, taken from the so-called Five Dreams of the monk Adam Savie. From a literary point of view these ' poems ' are of small interest, and they show no poetical talent of any kind. For the purposes of the student of the history of our language, however, they are of the greatest value, far more so indeed than many of the M.E. ' Set Books ' often prescribed for young persons at our univer- sities, and certainly the literary interest is hardly less. The Southern element is still considerable, but the Midland element is larger than in either of the texts hitherto examined by us here. It was impossible to choose short extracts which should show all the dialectal features contained in the poems, and we shall therefore base our statement upon an examination of the work as a whole and not confine ourselves to the forms in the extracts given above. The most typical Southern phonological feature is perhaps the retention of the long 'slack' [s] for O.E. »', which is proved by the rhymes weren (O.E. wSeron) with eren ' ears ', O.E. earan, and of drede, O.E. dried, ' doubt, lear ' with rede ' red ', O.E. read. On the other hand the spelling Siret- ford, where the first element can only represent a non-W. Saxon or non- Central Southern stret ' street ' (W. Saxon strxf), and the rhyme drede with nude ' meed, reward ', which points to the E. Midland or South-Eastem \dred'\. This shows, as we have seen before, that the same word was current in both types. Another very typical South- Westernism is the i in the verb shilde (Sthn. 7) ' to shield ', instead of the Midland or S.E. shllde, and this type is represented more frequently than the former, as in stel ' steel ', Aeren ' hear ', ^elde vb. ' yield ', W.S. gieldan. O.E. y in Davie shows apparently only the E. Midland type : synne ' sin ', Caunterfer)/ {O.E. byrig), yuel ' evil '. O.E. y/el JE. Midi. 3). O.E. eo is always written e, except the S.E. form fo bun (Kt. 4). Otherwise leue ' dear ', O.E. led/a, derworp ' precious ', O.E. dear. The Pres. PI. has the Southern -e/> in willefi (Sthn, 9), but the verb ' to be' has ben (E. Midi. 9). The Pers. Pron, PI. hij, hit is the only form of the Nom., and this is about the last time we meet it in London documents. (See the forms of Pers. Pron. PI. in E. Midland and Southern.) The form ich instead of E. Midland ic or ?' ' I ' is typical of the Southern dialect at this period. The characteristic Southern p.p. with i-, oty-, occais—y&nowe, ihote,ychosen, ywonden ' wound ', and the first two of these are specially Southern in the omission of final -«. This feature is also found in bore, write 'written', where, however, the prefix is lost, and in awreke ' avenged '. We see, then, that in Davie's time the Midland elements were gaining E 2 52 DIALECT TYPES IN MIDDLE ENGLISH ground, though many purely Southern features still lingered which, as we shall see, disappear later on, or are reduced to a minimum. The next specimen, which was written in Chaucer's lifetime, shows a form of English practically identical with that of the poet. The general appearance of the document (Petition from the folk of Mercerye) is very much more modern and familiar to the average reader of the present day than anything we have so far discussed. The reason is that London English had by this time practically settled down into a definite blending of the various dialectal elements, and these (that is, the Regional elements) have not altered much since in their distribution. Compared with Davie, the most striking points are perhaps the use of tfui instead of hij, the consistent Pers. PI. in -m (no forms in -ih), the loss of »'- in the P.P.; the usual retention of final -n in this part of the verb — ben, sionden, &c., though be is used instead of bm. Compared with the English of to-day, putting aside difiierences due to normal sound changes, there is very little difference to indicate — we have here, to all intents and piu^oses, the exact ancestor of Modern Standard English. The form shewe is a different type from that which has produced Mod. show, but this is probably not a regional feature, and the same is true of togydre compared with together, and ayein compared with again. Incidentally, we may note how near the spelling is to that of the present day, but we must not be deceived into supposing that it represented the same pro- nunciation as our own. The similarity merely shows that it was really the M.E. official scribes who fixed the chief features of English spelling which have lasted down to our own day. It cannot be too often insisted that the English fourteenth-century spelling of the official documents, and of the Chaucer MSS., which was virtually continued into the next century, and taken over with no vital changes by Caxton, and %o handed on to us, was already unphonetic, and no longer represented adequately the facts of pronunciation in Chaucer's day. We now pass to the language of Chaucer himself, and this, from the importance of the subject, will demand a rather special treatment, though we shall endeavour to make our remarks as brief as possible. We may say generally that the dialectal type found in Chaucer's writings, especially in his prose works, agrees very closely with that of the official London documents of his day. The dialect of the poetry contains more purely Southern and South- Eastern elements than that of the prose works. The language of the latter, therefore, presents a greater contrast to that of the earlier London documents than does the language of the poetry, and, consequently, Chaucer's prose is nearer in actual dialect to Caxton, and to the English of a still later date, than his poetry. It need not surprise us that there should be this difference between the prose and poetry of the same writer at this period. In the first place, the language of English poetry is always slightly archaic — at any rate it has always been so until quite recently. Now, to be archaic in speech in Chaucer's day meant that the writer or speaker made use of more Southern elements than was the actual contemporary usage in either spelling or writing business documents. We must take it that many Southern forms still lingered on in the speech of the older generation, LANGUAGE OF CHAUCER 53 • and though obsolescent, they were perfectly familiar to every one. A freedom in the use of dialectal variants was obviously a great convenience to a poet, since it increased the number of his rhymes, and sometimes made his versification more supple and varied. It is also probable that the actual Court speech of Chaucer's time was rather more Southern in type than that of the people, or than that of the official scribes. It is certain that various Southernisms crop up from time to time in private letters, and even in literature, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which shows that this element lingered on in the usage of many who spoke and wrote Standard English. Another point is that Chaucer's poetry shows a far larger number of Kenticisms — especially in the use of e instead of E. Midland i for O.E._j/, in such words as kesse ' kiss ',/esi ' fist ', Sen'e ' bury ' {veTh),/uIfelle ' fulfil ', /ery ' fiery ', &c. — than is found either in the London documents of all kinds before his day, or in the official documents written during his life- time. This may be explained to some extent by the fact that Chaucer lived for several years at Greenwich, but also perhaps from these Kenticisms being in vogue in Court English. At any rate the use of «-forms by the side of /'-forma in the above and many other words was tolerated in the best English throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Many of these forms are fixed in our language to-day, but many others, now no longer used, are continually cropping up, as occa- sional variants, in writings for nearly two centuries after Chaucer's death. This feature need not therefore be considered a personal pecuHarity of the poet. When it is remembered that the «-forms obtained not only in Kent, but also in part of Essex, and Suffolk, and, to judge by the Norfolk Guild Records of 1387, also to some extent in Norfolk, it is not surprising that they should gain ground at a time when the Regional influence upon Standard English was predominatingly Eastern. It is curious that in the word 6ufy we write the Southern but pronounce the S.E. type, and this latter form seems to preponderate greatly even in official documents. In Chaucer's poetry a considerable number of words of this class occur at least once in the <-form, some with e and i, some with e, i, and u. The 2-forms taken all round are the most frequent, the «-forms the least ; indeed there are fewer of these than in the official documents. Among the <-forms, now lost, which occur in Chaucer's poetry are — hem ' busy ' (we still write the Southern type and pronounce the E. Mid- land), also iist'e; shette 'shut', also an /-form; thenne 'thin', also thinne; dreye 'dry', and dryt; kesse 'to kiss', and kisse; lest 'list', vb. (over thirty times), and Usi 'desire', vb. (over fifty times); meri, myrie, and murie ; melle ' mill ', and mt'lle ; knetie and km'iie ; fulfelle and fulfille ; fer, firy ' fire, fiery ' ; /est ' fist ', and_/?f/. Among the «-forms which are now lost are — iuriA 'birth', and dt'rih; hulde, and bilde 'build'; murthe ' mirth ', also mirthe ; put 'ipit ', and pit (three times each) ; /urst a.nA first. Evel, O.E.y/el, ' evil ' (' Kentish '), the prevailing form in Chaucer, is not necessarily lost, see p. 207. This list is given with some fullness because we shall find nearly all these forms occurring much later. Besides the Southern features ahready alluded to, we must note the extremely frequent retention of the prefix >- in Past Participles. We pass now to the E. Midland features of Chaucer's dialect. 64 DIALECT TYPES IN MIDDLE ENGLISH (i) The O.E. combination -eald- always appears as -old-,, except in three cases — Midi inf., helde Pres. Ind. PL, and behelde inf. We should probably put these very exceptional forms down to Kentish influence, as it seems very doubtful from the evidence of the purely Southern texts whether they, would survive anywhere but in Kent at this period. (2) O.E. (iSax.) ie, non-Sax. e (see above, Sthn. 7), is often e by the side of », so that we get sheld (n.) and shUde (vb.) ' shield ', and shilde, Keren 'hear' (always), herde 'shepherd' (al ways), j/eiifeB 'yield, pay', and Vilden, yeve ' give ', 2.ndyive ; yf and yif ' if, yii ' yet ', appear still only with the Southern forms. Feipe ' boast ', W. Sax. gielpan, appears only in the non-Southern form. (3) O.E. (Sthn.) ed ■'r g Qx h becomes e in Anglian in O.E., and this is later raised to i before g (later ^) and h. In Chaucer we get eyen ' eyes ', O.E. eagan, egan, as the usual written form, but occasionally J/w*, and the rhymes show that the latter was the form intended ; similarly, in spite of the spelling heighe, O.E. heah, ' high ', heye, &c., we also find hye, and the rhymes generally point to this as the pronunciation ; O.E. tuah ' near ' is written neye, neyh, and ny(e), but the word does not occur in rhyme. Our present forms are derived from M.E.J?*, hye, nye, and these can only be Midland forms. (4) O.E. se' is shown by the rhymes to have had both the Southern pro- nunciation [1] and the Midland and Kentish [?]. Chaucer, therefore, used both types, and, as it happens, the Southern type predominates in rhyme. This does not necessarily prove that Chaucer heard or used this tjrpe in ordinary speech more than the non-Southern type. The frequency of its occurrence may be due to the exigencies of rhyme, or at least to convenience. (5) Another test of the original type in use is found in the spelling of the shortened form of this vowel. The shortening of Southern si produced &, which, together with all ie-sounds, later took the Midland form a and was so spelt, whereas the Old non-Southern «-type when shortened underwent no essential change in spelling. The word dradde, p.p., &c., is frequent in rhymes by the side of dredde, the former being more frequent. Therefore Chaucer used both forms, and, while still retaining the original Southern, occasionally at least employed the non-Southern form. The following are chief words with the unshortened vowel : (a) those which rhyme both with [e] and [i] — dede ' deed ', drede, &c., vb. and n., ' doubt ', &c., euen ' evening ', rede vb. ' counsel ' ; {6) those which rhyme always with [i] — beheestes, seed, ihreed ' thread ', weete ' wet ', where. (6) O.E. K always appears as e. There is no trace of a rounded vowel. (7) The Pers. Pronoun PI. thet is the only form of. the Nom. The old Southern hij, &c., has disappeared. (8) The Fem. Pronoun she is the only form used. (9) The P. es. Indie. PL usually ends in -e or -en, very rarely in the Southern -eih. (10) The P.P. of Strong Vbs. usually retains the -n of the ending. -e is rarer. (11) The PL Pres. Indie, of Vb. 'to be' is usually ieen, more rarely 6e, occasionally am. The Southern iiih also occurs occasionally. A word or two upon Chaucer's position in regard to Literary English CHAUCER NOT THE CREATOR OF LITERARY ENGLISH 55 may not be out of place. This is frequently misconceived, though less so now, even among those who are not professional students of English, than formerly. To put it briefly and bluntly, Chaucer did not create the f English of Literature, he found it ready to his hand and used it. He used it far better than any English poet before him had ever done, and than any who came after him before Sackville and Spenser, for the simple reason that he was the first English poet of real genius who ever wrote. In saying this we are considering only poets since the Conquest, and will not discuss the intrinsic value, as literature, of Old English poetry. Chaucer was hailed with one voice by his contemporaries, as the supreme singer of all who had yet appeared in English ; and by his immediate followers he was worshipped 'on this side of idolatry'. Except for a period during part of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when men were so rash as to attempt to patronize him, all true lovers of poetry have turned to Chaucer again and again, with a delight which is ever renewed, for they find in him a gaiety, a tenderness, and a humanity which have never been surpassed, the fragrance of the wood- land in spring, and a magic which resides only in the music of the greatest poets. In this sense Chaucer was, as the discerning, if dis- reputable, Hoccleve said, 'the firste finder of oure faire langage' — not that he invented or created it, but that he did with it what no one had ever done before. There is no mystery in the instrument which Chaucer uses — that had been gradually becoming what it was in his day, during the centuries of law-giving, and preaching, and chaffering, and gossiping, in court, church, and palace, in market and tavern, which had passed in London since the Conquest. The only mystery is that which surrounds every great poet. Who shall say why this particular kind of genius should arise just when and where it does ? No amount of grammatical investigation will explain Chaucer, any more than it will explain Spenser, or Milton, or Keats, or Swinburne. Neither literary historians, nor gram- marians, have yet explained why such a poet is just what he is, nor, probably, will the students of the japes and pranks which heredity plays upon mankind be able to do so. But if Chaucer neither created the English of Literature by vamping diverse dialectal elements together, as some have thought, to make himself more widely intelligible, nor yet per- verted it, as others have maintained, by introducing new and foreign elements into its vocabulary, it may be asserted that, without any question, he certainly did give to that mixed dialect in which he wrote a prestige, a glory, a vogue, as a literary medium, which neither the most industrious of versifiers devoid of genius, nor the most punctiliously exact scribe in a Government office, could ever have given it. The dialect of London would, in any case, have become, nay, it was already becoming, the chief form of English used in writings of every kind, and that from the pressure of political, economic, and social factors; but there can be no doubt that the process was greatly hastened, so far as pure literature is concerned, by the popularity of Chaucer — as shown by the number of MSS. of his writings in existence, and, afterwards, by the number of printed editions, as well as by the frequent expressions of reverence for him scattered through literature, and by the irresistible impulse among poets to imitate his style, his turns of phrase, and his actual grammatical forms. 56 DIALECT TYPES IN MIDDLE ENGLISH But we must return from this digression to the immediate and more prosaic business before us, and sum up briefly the main purport of our narrative in this chapter. We have attempted to set forth first some of the main distinguishing features of the chief dialectal types of Middle English which are found blended in the dialect of London during the same period. We have illustrated each type by short extracts from repre- sentative works covering between three and four hundred years. We then approached the language of London itself, through the rather scrappy remains of the earliest period after the Conquest, and examined the dialectal features of a few documents written in London from the time of the Conqueror down to Chaucer. We found that London English was, in its earlier phases, of a definitely Southern type, and more particularly of a Central, rather than an East Southern type. We witnessed the gradual appearance of more and more East Midland elements, and of some South Eastern, or Kentish, peculiarities. The E. Midland ele- ments gain ground more and more, sometimes being used alongside of the corresponding Southern elements, sometimes exclusively, instead of the latter. By the end of the fourteenth century we found that London speech had become predominantly E. Midland in character, and that the purely Central Southern elements were very greatly reduced, though still in excess of what they are in Standard or Written English at the present time. We noticed further that certain Kentish features had become more frequent than in the earlier documents, and that in some cases Chaucer makes greater use of these than we do at the present time. There we leave London English then, at the end of the fourteenth century, rapidly approaching to our own speech so far as the general character of the dialectal elements is concerned, which make it up. But it still differs from our own usage, not only in the relative proportion of the different elements, but also as to the specific distribution of the types among particular words. We cannot close this brief survey of the English dialects of the South and of the E. Midlands down to the close of the fourteenth centiwy with- out glancing at the language of the three best-known writers among Chaucer's contemporaries — Gower, Wyclif, and the author of Piers Plowman. Each of these men has strong claims upon Ojir interest. Each wrote voluminously and each exhibits in his writings different phases of the social or religious Ufe of his age. They come from three widely separated areas of England, and their training and experience of life was ^different. Gower was a native of Kent, Wyclif of Yorkshire, ■ William Langland of Shropshire. It is natural to inquire how far the language of these writers shows signs of conforming to a common literary type, or how far each preserves a strictly Regional dialect. The position of Gower in this respect is particularly interesting. If the reader compares the language of Gower's Confessio Amantis with that of the Ayenbite, written in Kent about fifty or sixty years earlier, he will at once note the absence from the former of most of the typical Kenticisms. Gower, born c. 1325, died 1408, was a Kentish country gentleman, a member of a Kentish territorial familyj but the dialect of his gigantic English poem, with a few notable exceptions which we shall note directly, is practically that of Chaucer, that is to say, the London dialect. One LANGUAGE OF GOWER 57 feature, the ending -ende, which is his chief fonn of the Pres. Participle, is distinctly E. Midland, the Kentish form and Southern form generally being -inde, which was also the London form before Chaucer. (Cf. remarks on Davy above.) Chaucer, however, has gfiven up this in favour of the new forms in -ing. Gower is in this respect archaic. The forms of the Pers. Pronouns are not those of Ayenbite (see p. 44, ante), but scht (occasionally scheo) for the Fem., and/« in the Nom. PI., while the typical Kent hise. Ace. PL ' them ', is not found, hem being used as by Chaucer. The Pres. PI. Indie, of verbs ends in -en as in London, instead of the Kent and Southern -ep. Gower has no trace of the Kent spelling dyup, &c., with j/a for O.E. ea (see above, Kt. 7). For old eo he often writes I'e, which, however, is not altogether on a footing with earlier Kent t'e, ye (see Kt. 4), but quite clearly implies simply a long tense [e] sound. This spelling, therefore, though hitherto chiefly found in Kentish, as a re- presentative of old eo, is in Gower merely a convenient graphic device, which in words like hriest, O.E. hrmt, 'breast', lehield 'behold', O.E. behield, represents a typical E. Midland type, possibly by this time current also in Kent, but quite in accordance with the London type. Short eo as in O.E. heorte, &c., is always written e, herte, &c., as in E. Midland and in the London dialect The spelling dradde ' feared ' instead of Kent or E. Midland dredde is Southern and has the retention of the shortened form of W, Saxon se' rather than of the Anglian /; and the rhyme brep, O.E. brxp ' breath ' with de^ proves quite clearly that the former word retained the Southern type of the long vowel, and ladde 'led', by the side of the Kent ledde, Late Saxon ISedde, shows the non-Kentish a for earlier se. This Midland a is the regular form in Gower, in all words which formerly had ae. All these are non-Kentish features, whether they be Saxon or F- Midland, and they are shared by Chaucer and the London documents. Gower has no trace of the typical initial z- and v-, for s-,/-, which are so characteristic of Ayenbite. Now for the other side of the picture, the purely Kentish features ot Gower's dialect. We must not attach too much weight to the fact that the poet has many examples of e for O.E._y, since, as we have seen above, these are very common in Chaucer's verse, and fairly frequent in other London documents. Besides, Gower has both i and u /orms as well — as^r ' fire ', pt'U, gilt ' guilt ', Mde ' hide ' vb., O.E. hydan, sinne'wa.' ,filU '611', pinne 'thin', first; also gulie,gulteless, hull ' hill ', O.E. hj/ll, purst ' thirst ', O.E. pyrsi. The is-forms, however, appear to predominate in words having the short vowel — 5este, bregge ' bridge ', hell ' hill ', kertell, O.E. cyrtel, ' kirtle ', keste ' kissed ', merie ' merry ', pet ' pit ', O.E. pytt, senne ' sin ', /erst. Most of these forms occur, however, in Chaucer, several are found, much later, in the writings of persons who apparently spoke the Standard English of their day, and some survive at the present time. Much more important than these forms is the un- doubted use by Gower of the specifically Kentish tense [e] in words containing O.E. se' (see above, Kt. 2). This is proved both by rhymes and by the spelling of these words with t'e — e.g. teche from O.E. txcan * teach ' from *takjan, rhyming with beseche, and diel ' part ', O.E. dxl, from *dali. Thus those essentially typical Kenticisms in Gower, which are not found also, to some extent at least, in London speech of the fourteenth century, are reducible to this simple peculiarity. 58 DIALECT TYPES IN MIDDLE ENGLISH 1 The results of this brief examination are remarkable, since they prove ' that in the fourteenth century already, a Kentishman did not necessarily write in his native dialect, but adopted the London form of English. This fact is capable of two interpretations. One is that people of a certain . social standing in the shires in the neighbourhood of London already spoke, with certain provincial modifications, the Court dialect, and there- fore used it in their writings. The other is that the literary Jise of the London written form was already becoming established among the better educated, although they still retained their provincial forms in actual speech. Possibly the truth, in the case of Gower, lies between these two suggestions. Concerning the author of the remarkable work known as the Vision of Piers Plowman much has been conjectured, where nothing is known with certainty. Such details of his life as are asserted by recent writers, even his name — William Langland — are based upon statements which occur scattered through the poem itself, and are believed to be of an autobiographical character. How far they are really intended to refer to the author, and, if they do, how far they are reliable, is a pure matter of conjecture, like much else in the so-called literary history of the early period. That the poet lived in the South- West Midlands seems certain — apart Horn other arguments — from the dialect of his work ; that he had been bred up as an ecclesiastic, and knew the ins and outs of the lives of the monks and clerics of his day, seems equally certain from the character of the poem itself. Who his father was, whether he was married, whether he was a priest or only in minor orders, or not in orders at all, and other details regarding which many cobwebs have been spun, are speculations which have engaged many earnest minds, but they seem to have no bearing upon the literary merit of his work, and they certainly have still less from our present point of view. That he spent some part of his life in London, if we could be sure of it, would be of importance for us, and still more so to know in what world he lived. When we turn to the poem itself, which exists in three versions and innumerable manuscripts, we find small traces of any London influence upon the language. The dialect is rustic and archaic, and the metre is alliterative, and unrhjrmed. The main dialectal features — allowing for differences between the versions and manuscripts — are distinctly Western, and are coloured with that suggestion of Southernism which we are accustomed to find in texts written in Shropshire or Worcestershire. O.E. _y very commonly appears as » or ui—buggen ' buy', huiden ' hide '. O.E. to is still so written — as in eorJ>e by the side of erthe, beoth by the side of beth. The old Fern. Pronoun he'shs' is still used by the side of she, and the PI. Pronoun heo ' they ' occurs as well as ihej/ and J>ey. In the Possess, and Dat. only here and hem are found. In verbs the prefix i- is often retained in P.P.'s ; the Pres. Indie. PL, while generally ending in -en, often has the Southern -eih. The Pres. Part, is always in -yng. The PI. Pres. of ' to be ' is ben, beth, beoth, and aren. The old combination -an- usually appears as -on- after the Western manner. The blend of Southern elements with those of Midland character is typical of the dialect of the area from which the poem emanates, and there appears to be no reason DIALECT OF WYCLIFS TRACTS 59 for supposing that this apparent mixture does not represent a genuine spoken dialect. A thorough investigation of all the manuscripts of the three versions of Piers Plowman would be a long and tedious task, but it is one which ought to be undertaken. It is probable that from such an examination a pretty clear view of the precise dialect of the original would emerge, and further that this dialect would be found to show the characteristic blending of Southern with W. Midland features which is sometimes mistakenly supposed to be due to the influence of various scribes, but which is none the less a genuine dialectal type, just as much as in the mixed dialect of London itself. Probably, if Worcester or Shrewsbury or Oxford had been the capital of England, Piers Plowman would play the same important part in the history of English that the works of Chaucer actually do : it would represent what would in this case be the ancestral dialect of Standard Spoken and Literary English. As it is, however, the language of Langland has no historical relation with these,. types, is quite unaffected by the London English of his day, and agrees with this only in such features as have a wide Regional distribution. Wyclif, who was born circa 1320, died in 1385. He was, therefore, a contemporary of Chaucer, though rather older than the poet. A North- countryman by birth, Wyclif lived many years in Oxford, where he was Fellow of Balliol in c. 1345, and Master of Balliol 1361. From 1374 to 1384 he was Rector of Lutterworth in Leicestershire. His writings, apart from the translation of the Bible which bears his name, are very voluminous. A large collection of sermons and contro- versial treatises is edited by Thomas Arnold, Oxford, 1871, under the title Select English Works of John Wyclif (^ vols.). A very brief account of the language of this remarkable man must suffice here. The following remarks are based upon an examination of Vol. Ill of the Select Works. The first thing to say is that on the whole the language is very Midland in character, and has hardly any purely Southern, and apparently no Kentish features. The reader should compare the language of these tracts with that of Chaucer's prose. Although the treatises in Arnold's edition are taken from various manuscripts, written no doubt at different periods and in different places, and possibly in no case giving Wychf's own dialect with perfect fidelity, the various treatises seem all to agree to a remarkable extent in the main characteristics. Perhaps the first thing that strikes the student is the extreme frequency of i in suffixes, -is, -ij>, I -id, and occasionally -in, where Chaucer usually has -«, -ep, &c. With the"' exception of -in, these forms of the suffixes enormously predominate over any others, though -es, &c., and more rarely -us do occur. So far as our evidence goes, therefore, we are apparently justified in assuming that Wyclif said byndip, &c. The vowel system on the whole agrees with that of Chaucer, except that whereas the latter has all three forms u, i,e, representing O.E._y, Wyclif, in the volume under consideration, seems to .._have_ji. and this East Midland or Northern form only — synne, birien '"Bury ', bisi, gilti,Julfillip, siche ' such '; and so on. The omy exception appears to be werse, biit this may be otherwise explained than as corre- sponding to W. Saxon wyrse ' worse '. O.E. eo is always f, and there seems to be no example of hurte ' heart ', or haid ' held ', O.E. heold. 6o DIALECT TYPES IN MIDDLE ENGLISH These two points alone seem to rule out much South- West Midland influence, such as we might expect to find from a residence in Oxford. On the other hand the Southern i for O.E. ie occurs in ptte, O.E. jiei, fei sillen 'sell', O.E, siellan, sillan, silf, O.E. sielf, siY'seli'. The Inf. of the verb ' to give ' is jeve, which is Midland or S. Eastern or Northern, in place of the Southern jzo* ; in 3rd Sing, both puij> andjluejf occur. Mon ' man ' and con ' can are rather Western than Eastern. Turning to the accidence, we find _^ei always for the ^rd Pers, PI. Nom.; in the Possess. Aere, hore, hor, which are the usual forms, but occasionally J>er ; in the Dat. Acc. hem and hom. Thus Wychf agrees with Chaucer in having Jjei, but differs from htm in having ber. This must be put down either to E.Midland or Northern influence. The Fem. Sing, is always sche, and incidentally we may note the interesting Possess. hern ' hers ', used absolutely — 'pe child was hern pat wolde have it on lyve, and not hern pat wolde have it deed', p. 310. The verbal endings are : — 3rd Pers. Sing. Pres. Indie, in some of the pieces -ip, -ep, in others -is, -s, &c. ; for instance Fifty Heresies, Twenty-five Articles, and Seven Deadly Sins all have the latter type, while the Church and her Members, and Wedded Men have the former. The -s forms point to the North or * North-East Midland; the PI. Pres. ends in -en with extraordinary regularity, the -n being very rarely omitted. A few examples of -ep occur in Tract XXI — 'pay lovep Goddis care', &c., p. 247. The P.P. of Strong Verbs is generally -n after the Midland fashion. The prefixj/- does not occur. The PI. Pres. of 'to be' is almost invariably ben or been, bep being very rare (see p. 247, Tract XXI). The Pres. Part, of verbs ends in -ynge. There are certain indications of Northern influence. A rather striking one is the writing of u and oi for O.E. 5, both common Northern spellings indicating a quite different development from that which this sound had in the South and Midlands, namely, towards a sound closely resembling, if not identical with, French a — ^the sound in fact which in the South is generally expressed by u or ui. The examples I have noted in Wyclif are mut, O.E. mot, ' must ', pp. 342, 343 ; sunner ' sooner ', p. 344 ; and soip-' tme', O.E. sop, pp. 343 and 345. The Pres. PI. schewis 'shows' — her werkes shewispis wel, p. 175, and doubtless there are other examples — is a striking Northern feature, espe- cially as it is surrounded on the same page by Midland Pis. in -en. The Scand. pnen P. P. ofjiuen occurs, rather pointing to Northern or E. Mid- land, though the form occurs in Gower. To sum up this very brief sketch of Wyclif s literary dialect: he adopted, no doubt, the form of English current in the University of Oxford in his day, a form which differed from the surrounding Regional dialect to some extent, in that the most typical provincialisms were eliminated in favour of a more Easterly type approximating more to that of London. At the same time certain Northern peculiarities certainly clung to his speech, as they do to that of certain members of Oxford University in our own day, and some of these occasionally slip out in his writings. In point of prose style we must count Wyclif among the great masters — perhaps the greatest of his day and. before it. There is nothing stilted or creaking in his sentences, which are those of a skilful and competent writer, with an instrument REPRESENTATIVE TEXTS 6i that he thoroughly understands, adequate for all his wants. He reminds one of Latimer by the nature and force of his prejudices, but he is a more polished writer, without that excellent bishop's violence, and occasional vulgarity of thought and expression. Cristes lore and his apostles twelve He taughte, and first he folwed it himselve. Thus the fourteenth century closes without anything like a general acceptance of a uniform type of English among writers whose native dialect was not that of the metropolis or of the surrounding shires. It appears, however, from the works of Wyclif, that the type of speech, uttered and written, in vogue in the University of Oxford was definitely influenced by a more Easterly dialect, and we must suppose that this influence was exerted through the medium of London. SHORT LIST OF MIDDLE ENGLISH TEXTS IN VARIOUS DIALECTS. Sast Midland. '^Peterborough Chronicle (Laud MS.), 1121-54. Ed. Plummer, Ormulum, c. 1200. Ed. Holt, 1878. Bestiary, c. 1250. See O.E. Miscellany, Ed. Morris, E.E.T.S., 1872. Genesis and Exodtts, c. 1250. Morris, E.E.T.S., 1873. Rodt. o/Brunne's Handlyng Synne, c. 1300. Furnivall, Pt. 1, 1901 ; Pt. II, 1902. Norfolk Gilds, 1389. L. Toulmin Smith, E.E.T.S., 1870 (in English Gilds). (Bokenam's Lives of Saints, c. 1430, is chiefly dealt with as Early Modem English in this book. It was edited by Horstmann, Heilbronn, 1883.) Southern. Lambeth Homilies, before 1200. Morris, in O.E. Homilies, E.E.E.S., 1868, Pt. I. Moral Ode, Trinity MS. before 1200 ; Jesus MS. 1250 (both in O.E. Misc.) ; Egerton MS. 1200, in Morris's O.E. Homs., I. Wooing of Our Lord, c. 1200; also God Ureisun and Satules Ward of same date, all in O.E. Horns., I. jOwl and Nightingale, 1246-50. Ed. Wells. '^ Proverbs of Alfred, 1250. O.E. Misc. Robt. of Gloucester, 1298. Wright, Rolls Series, 2 vols., 1887. St. Juliana (Metrical Life of), 1300. Cockayne, E.E.T.S., 1872. Trevisa (Translation of Higden's Polychronicon), 1387. Vols. I and II, Babington; III and IV, Lumley, 1865-86. Rolls Series. Extracts are given in Morris and Skeat's Specimens, II. Usages of Winchester, 1389. In Toulmin Smith's English Gilds. (The Life of St. Editha, c. 1420, is regarded in this book as Early Modern English. It was edited by Horstmann, in 1883.) Kentish. Vesfasian Homilies, c. 1150. Morris, O.E. Homs., I. Kentish Sermons (MS. Laud), before 1250. Morris, O.E. Miscellany. William ofSkoreham's Poems, 1307. Conrath, E.E.T.S., 1902. Ayenbite of Inwyt (' Remorse of Conscience '), 1340. Morns, E.E.T.S., 1866. Some of the chief texts in the London Dialect before Chaucer are illustrated above, pp. 46-9, with references for each extract. CHAPTER III THE ENGLISH OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY The student of English literature, and the student of the history of our language, will naturally take very different views of the fifteenth century. For the former, at least as regards poetry, this age will appear one of the dreariest in our annals — ' The builders were with want of genius cursed' — and from the conventional dullness of Hoccleve and Lydgate he turns to Scotland, and finds something to cherish in the very genuine poetic gift of the versatile and humorous, if rather sumptuous, Dunbar. In prose there are competent and solid, if hardly entertaining, writers, such as Bishop Pecok, Sir John Fortescue, and Capgrave, and there is Sir Thomas Malory, the glowing pages of whose Morte d' Arthur redeem the century from the chill dullness which generally surrounds its literature. This noble work, which breathes the spirit and fragrance of Romance, makes alive the Knights and Ladies of the age of Chivalry which had already faded, and by the side of this world of heroes and champions, the figures of the earlier romances seem mere puppets and shadows. Caxton, the first English printer^ occupies of right a place apart in the literary history of his day. His fame rests upon his activities as a printer, and the sound sense which he showed in the selection of books to print, rather than upon his productions as a writer and translator, though these are by no means contemptible. Much nonsense has been written about Caxton's creation of a dialect, and still more about his creation of a prose style. After what has been said in the former chapter it is unnecessary to explain here that Qaxton did not concoct an artificial medley of dialects in which to, clothe his translations. Language does not grow up in that way. As to the other claim, it could hardly be made by those who were acquainted with Caxton's writings, and with those of some of his predecessors and contemporaries. In point of beauty and dignity of style, Malory is incom- parably Caxton's superior, while in ease and raciness the latter is at least equalled by some of the anonymous writers of what are practically ofiScial documents, such as the directions for the funeral of an English king, of which we give a specimen below (p. 89), and the account of the creation of the Duke of York (afterwards Henry VIII) a Knight of the Bath. Both of these entertaining, and often picturesque, pieces of English prose are contained in Vol. I ol Letters and Papers, &c., edited by Gairdner. We shall have more to say later on concerning Caxton, from the point of view which more immediately concerns us here. For the student of the development of the English language, apart from its use as a means of literary expression, the fifteenth century is one of extraordinary interest. LINGUISTIC IMPORTANCE OF PERIOD 63 The reasons for this are chiefly the following : — (i) There is a large increase in the number of persons who can write, and therefore in the number of piurely private documents which have come down to us. As a result of writing being more widespread, and consequently, freed from the shackles of the professional scribe, we seem during this century, almost for the first time, to overhear, as it were, real people actually speaking. That is to say, we find a great variety of spell- ing, and, what is more, new varieties of this, which often show such divergence from the convention of the scribes that it becomes plain that what we are accustomed to regard as the Middle English system of pronunciation has undergone, or is undergoing, very remarkable changes. (2) On account of the sound changes whose existence is indicated by these occasional departures from the old speUing, on account of the modi- fication in the inflexional system which the written documents show, and by reason of the whole complexion of the sentence, we are constantly forced to admit, in reading fifteenth-century documents, that Modern S English has begun. (3) During this century the use of Regional dialect in writing, both in . private and public documents — ofiicial and purely literary — gradually dies , out, and that variety of English whose rise we discussed in the last chap- ; ter, comes slowly but surely into practically universa:l currency. This is traceable before the introduction of printing. (4) Lastly, printing is introduced, and a new era opens, bringing con- ditions hitherto unknown, and providing facilities for the spread of London English, whose predominance, if it were not so already, is henceforth absolutely assured. These are important points, and must be dealt with successively in some detail. They may serve us as headings for our present treatment of the subject of this chapter. We must first, however, say something concerning the general character of the various classes of documents upon which our knowledge of fifteenth-century English is based. We may dis- tinguish (i) ofiicial documents ; (2) works which have some pretensions to be literature ; and (3) private letters. The first may again be divided into Public documents — Records, Instructions to Ministers, &c., De- scriptions of Historical Events, like those just alluded to in Gairdner's Letters and Papers, &c. ; and Private documents such as Wills, and Inventories of Property. English Rules for Monastic Orders and Monastic Chartularies should, perhaps, be ranked as Private Ofiicial Documents. In works of literature proper, we naturally distinguish between com- position in Prose and Verse. Passing to the Private Letters, which in many respects are the most valuable of all for our purpose, we may distinguish between the more conventionally written missives of highly educated persons, such as Bishop Bekinton, Judge Paston, and John Shillingford, and those of comparatively uneducated people such as the Cely family {Cely Papers), Edmond de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk (in Ellis's Letters Illustrative of Eng. Hist., Ser. Ill, Vol. I), and Margaret Paston, the judge's daughter-in-law. It is rather difficult to classify Gregory's Chronicle (late fifteenth century), which is hardly a work of literature, and not quite a private diary. 64 THE ENGLISH OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY A further division is necessary according to dialect. From this point of view we may distinguish : documents written in the London or Literary dialect ; those, at the other extreme, written in a more or less pure form of Regional dialect ; and those which are, in the main, in the London dialect, but which show some provincial influence. A classification of this kind cuts right across the other, based upon the nature of the documents. It would be easy to select writings of each genre in all of the three dialectal categories just given. The poems of Hoccleve and the prose of Caxton represent the London dialect among works of literature proper ; so do not only, as we might expect, the oflScial documents written in London, but also many from widely separated parts of the country — e.g. the English Registers of the Abbeys of Godstow (1450) and Oseney (1460), both near Oxford; the English Wills and Charters in the Chetwynd Chartulary (Staffs, c. 1440-90); the Coventry Leet Book (from 1420); the Ordinances of Worcester (1467); Ordinances of the Gild of Tailors of Exeter (1466); various documents of an official nature, written in Ireland by Irish Lords to Henry VII (1484-93). All these appear to be written in a form of English hardly distinguishable, on the whole, from that in use in London at this period. Among private letters written in this common form, may be mentioned those of Bishop Bekinton (1442), of Sir William Paston the judge (1425-30), and many others from Kings, Queens, Princes, and Ministers of State, printed by Ellis. Coming to writings in various more or less pure Regional dialects, we may mention here the Life of St. Editha (Wilts, c. 1420, in verse), the English version of Palla- dius on Husbandry (Essex c. 1420), the poems of Bokenam (Suffolk c. 1443), Awdeley's Poems (Shropshire c. 1420). In prose, literary writings in pure dialect are rare in this century, but in the private letters of the Cely family (1475-88), a wealthy middle-class family, we apparently have a pretty pure example of the Essex dialect ; and the fifteenth-century Btu-y Wills are in many cases fairly cloEe to the language of Bokenam. The Letters of Margaret Paston (1440-70), which I have examined in detail, are also, on the whole, in the dialect of Suffolk. Finally, we come to the large class of writings, very fully represented in fifteenth-century English, which are, to all intents and purposes, in Common English, as we may perhaps now call it, but which, nevertheless, show certain deviations from it, due to the influence of Regional dialect. This influence varies very much in extent, and some of the works men- tioned in the preceding group might perhaps be included here, such as the Letters of Margaret Paston and some of the Bury Wills. Among poets Lydgate, 'the Monk of Bury', though undoubtedly a highly cultivated person, shows distinct E. Midland,, we might say East Coast, influence. This Eastern influence — from Norfolk and Suffolk — is traceable in a certain number of prose writers of this period who belong by birth to these counties. Thus it occurs in the language of Capgrave (died 1464), who lived most of his life at Lynn, and in Thomas Gregory's Chronicle, the author of which was Lord Mayor of London in 1451-2, and died in 1467. He was a native of Mildenhall in Suffolk, and of an armigerous family. In the language of Sir John Fortescue (supposed to have died 1476) we may perhaps note slight traces of South-Western SURVEY OF THE SOURCES 65 influence. Sir John was the son of a gentleman of Devonshire, and was at one time Lord Chief Justice of England. The Regional influence in his Governaunce 0/ Englandis so slight, however, that he would perhaps be more suitably included among the writers of Common Literary English. Rather more definite in his divergence from the London type is Bishop Pecok, whose Repressor (1449) is sometimes said to represent the 'Oxford type' of English. Reginald Pecok was a Welshman by birth, was a Fellow of Oriel in 1417, Bishop of St. Asaph in 1444, and of Chichester in 1450. ,^ Passing to private letters, the most remarkable are perhaps those of John '' \ Shillingford, Mayor of Exeter in 1447-50. He fought the Bishop and ' Chapter of Exeter in the interests of his city, and his letters are written to his friends at home, describing his fortunes on a visit which he paid to London, to urge his case with the Chancellor in person. He was of gentle birth, had evidently received an excellent education, and was a man of self-possession and breeding. He was able to crack jokes and cap Latin quotations with the Chancellor, and he writes a style at once shrewd and humorous. His letters are remarkable as showing the spread of the :, Literary Standard in his day among persons of education and standing, for they approach very closely to that Standard, and exhibit but few provincialisms. A number of Lincolnshire Wills of this period show strong Regional influence in vocabulary, verbal forms, and occasionally also in the sounds, so far as these can be inferred from the spelling. Such are a few of the sources of our knowledge of the various forms of English current in the fifteenth century. We now pass to consider in order, and in more detail, those general characteristics indicated above, of the language of the period, and also the documents from which our knowledge of it is based. (1) Deviations in Spelling from the Scribal Tradition which throw light upon Pronunciation. The comparative frequency with which these occasional spellings occur in the fifteenth century is, no doubt, primarily due, as has been pointed out, to the spread of the art of writing beyond the circle of the profes- ^ sional scribe, and the increasing habit of using the art in familiar private ^ <• correspondence. On the other hand, while these 'lapses ' in spelling are commonei: in documents of this latter class, where the writers are more off their guard than they would be in inditing works of more formal and ' permanent character, these occasional 'phonetic.' spellings are by no '* means confined to private letters, .but occur to a greater or less degree in | writings of all kinds — oflBcial records, wills, and.,exeP. in literary com- positions in both prose and verse. Even in the printed books of Caxton, usually so conservative and con- ventional, certain peculiarities creep in, here and there, which are certainly unconscious adaptations of spelling to suit the sound. The question arises how far these indications of pronunciation imply that this, which, to judge from the ordinary scribal spelling, has shown but little sign of change for several centuries, has just begun now to move in the direction of Modern English. How far are we entitled to regard the F 66 THE ENGLISH OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY fifteenth century as a great landmark in our linguistic history, a period of transition and change ? This question needs great caution in answering. A very large number of the spellings which appear to herald a new speech-era can, as a matter of fact, be shown to occur, here and there, several centuries earlier, in the full M.E. period, though they are far rarer and much harder to find. In such cases, the new pronunciation can hardly be claimed to have only just begun at the moment when we first find frequent instances of its expression, in the spelling, in the fifteenth century. It is probable that a more thorough and minute examination of the varieties in M.E. spelling would reveal stronger proof than we have at present, of the existence in this period, of the development of certain sound changes which we have up to now assumed to be much later. It is wiser, therefore, in those cases where we are not sure, to leave the question of the period at which the change began open, and content our- selves with the knowledge that it is at least as early as the date at which the spelling gives sure and frequent indication that such and such a new sound is intended. It may, of course, be argued quite reasonably, that if a spelling occurs only once or twice in M.E. records, whereas it is comparatively common in the fifteenth century, this shows that in the latter period the sound change had been completed, and a definite new development reached, while in the former period the change was only beginning, and the un- easiness shown by the varieties of spelling merely indicates that the old sound had begun to be modified in the new direction, so that the scribe felt that the old speUing was no longer adequate. It is true that the M.E. scribal vagaries suggest rather a more or less deliberate and tentative groping after a phonetic rendering, than the unconscious and spontaneous rendering of a specific sound in a more or less natural way, which is the impression very often made by the fifteenth- century departures from tradition. On the whole, therefore, it is probable that the appearance of so many graphic expressions of a new form of pronunciation in the fifteenth century is misleading in so far as it suggests a sudden development. The fifteenth century is probably no more an age of transition than every age is such. Many sound changes had already come about, or at least had begun long before. [By the fifteenth century the new sounds were definitely established, their incompatibility with the old spelling was obvious, and the fact that a larger number of writers were endeavouring to put down their thoughts upon paper or parchment, writers unshackled by tradition, leads to the new pronunciation being more often expressed in the spelUng than heretofore. To come now to closer quarters with the facts, we may say generally, that light is thrown by the occasional spellings of the fifteenth century, and, as we shall see later, also by those of the sixteenth century, upon the following points of pronunciation :—(^) (r) the quality, and (2) quan- tity, of vowel sounds in stressed (' accented ') syllables ; [B) upon the treatment of old vowels and diphthongs in unstressed syllables ; (C) upon the loss of consonants when final, or before other consonants, in cases Where several consonants occur in a group ; (Z?) upon the development WHAT THE SPELLING TEACHES 67 of so-called parasitic consonants, after others, cliiefly at the end of words ; (i?) upon many other consonant pronunciations. We shall briefly illustrate each of these points here ; the fuller treat- ment and illustrations will come in their proper place in the chapter which deals with Changes in Pronunciation. -4 (i) Indications as to the Quality of Vowels. (fl) -M.E. tense / is often written with t or y, which had the sound [i] of Mod. Eng. 'ee ' in »zgg/:— Shillingford : myte 'meet', dyme 'deem', _ &c. ; Margaret PastoiTi agryed ' agreed ', symed ' seemed ', wypyng -^ ' weeping ', &c., &c. ; Gregory's Chron. : slyves ' sleeves ', siypylle' steeple ', &c. These spellings show that the Mod. sound had already developed out of the old e, which had the sound of French /in ^ (b) O.E. tense 5 is occasionally written u or ou, implying the sound [ii] as in Mod. boot: — Palladius: must, M.E. mdsie ; Margaret Paston: xr After ' thereafter ' written hrefter, when the old §e has first been shortened and then eliminated. This process of„' reduction' of the .vowels in unstressed syllables con- tinued during the whole M.E. period, and in the fifteenth century we find numerous spellings which suggest a pronunciation not very unlike that of the present day. Indeed, in some cases a form, apparently from an unreduced type, is now pronounced habitually, through the influence of 68 THE ENGLISH OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY the desire to speak ' correctly ' and ' according to the spelling ' so common since the early nineteenth century. The M.E. process of 'reduction' whose results are reflected in the fifteenth-century spellings included the unstressed vowels in Scandinavian and Norman-French words, and affected every vowel and diphthong in this position. The following are a few examples which illustrate {a) mere uncertainty how to write the vowel of the unstressed syllable, (6) more or less definite methods of recording a specific sound. {a) The following examples of indecision in writing the vowel in an unstressed syllable are all taken from the Cely Papers, but the same thing is found more or less in all the fifteenth-century texts. Middle English -en: — (i) Written -en: — /aken, wretten P.P.; (2) Written -yn : — wryilyn, lynyn ' linen ',gevyn P. P., hosyn, &c. ; (3) Written -on : — happon, hofton ' often '. Middle English -el: — (i) Written -el:— fardel, stapel; (2) Written -yl: — myddyl, saddyl, cradyll, stapyl; Written (3) -al: — stapal; (4) Written -ul: — stapul. Middle English -er\ — (i) Written -er: — heller, fader ' father', mother, &c. ; (2) Written -yr : — bettyr, nwmbyr, ovyr, dowtyr, &c., &c. ; (3) Written -or : — mannor ' manner ', sumor, oclobor, &c. ; (4) Written -ar : — dynar ' dinner ', manar ' manner ', finar ' finer ' ; (5) Written -ur : — brocur ' broker '. This variety and hesitation point to an ' indeterminate ' vowel, as it is often falsely called ; that is, the sound [s], which we now have in the second syllable oi father, and in many thousands of unstressed syllables, whatever is written. (i) As illustrations of the treatment of unstressed vowels which appears to be quite clearly and definitely expressed by occasional spellings from several sources, we take two points. (r) Rounded Vowels are unrounded. French u [y] as in Mod. French lurte is written i, y, or e, implying probably a sound closely resembling our vowel in the second syllable ol pity. Examples : — Palladius : moister ' moisture ' ; Shillingford : commyne ' common ', fr. commune ; M. Paston : repetacion ' reputation ' ; Cely Papers : aventer ' adventure ', the venter ' venture ', condyle ' conduit ', byskitl ' biscuit ' ; Gregory : condytte, comyners, comeners; Letters and Papers (1501): mynite 'minute' in sense of a ' note '. The above speUings represent a pronunciation pretty much the same as our own in the words conduit, biscuit, minute. M.E. and u unstressed written a : — Cely Papers : abedyensses ' obedience ', sapose ' suppose ', apon, appon ' upon ' ; Shillingford : apon (also Letters and Papers, Gregory, Fortescue, &c.). (2) Diphthongs are simplified, oi and «' often written e, y : porpys •porpoise', Gregory; toorkes 'turquoise'. Bury Wills (1501); Synt Stevyn, Sent Paull, curtessy, certyn, Shillingford; M.E. seint, curteisie, certein; Syn Lenarde, Syn John, wjmtayne, M.E. meynteyne, &c. ; Sent Stephin, Rewle of Sustris Menouresses. The examples are enough to establish the reality of the sound changes suggested by the spellings, and in the following century indications pointing in the same direction become still commoner in unstudied writing. Present-day pronunciation confirms the indications of these CONSONANTAL LOSS AND GAIN 69 early spellings as regards «, though oi is sometimes restored in unstressed syllables through the influence of the conventional spelling which later became fixed. C. Occasional Spellings which reveal Losses of Consonants. (i) ZoM of final consonant. M. Paston: — «if j: ' next ', ^«j'io« ' hus- '1 band ', hunder ' hundred ' ; Cely Papers : — My Lor ; Gregory : — Braban ; Official account of entry of Catherine of Aragon (1503): — uprigh. (2) Loss of consonants in groups, before one or more consonants. Archbp. Chichele (i 4 1 8) : — Lamhyth ' Lambeth ' ; St. Editha : — twolthe ' twelfth ', twolmonth ' twelvemonth ', bleynasse ' blindness ', whyssonweke ; Shilling- ford : — myssomer ' midsummer', Crichurch ' Christchurch ' ; M. Paston: — Wensday, morgage, Quessoniyde ' Whitsuntide ' ; Gregory : — Wanysda y ' ' Wednesday ', halpeny, sepukyr ' sepulchre'. (sY'lSzwy'c/" consonants between vowels. St. Editha : — senty ' seventy ', swene ' dream ', earlier sweven, pament ' pavement ' ; Caiton : — pament. D. Addition of Consonants. (i) Finally, generally after 1, r, n; also after s. Palladius : — Spaniald 'Spaniard', cf. Fr. Espagnol; St. Editha: — jaylardes ' jailors ' ; Margaret Paston : — wyld ' will ' ; Short Eng. Chron. (1464) : — Lymoste ' Lymehouse' ; Gregory : — loste ' loss ' ; Capgrave :— ylde ' isle ', lynand ' linen '. (2) Development of parasitic consonant between other consonants. St. Editha : — sump tyme for sum tyme ' some time ' ; Cely Papers : — Mon- gwmbre for Mongumry ' Montgomery ', rembnant ' remnant '. Some of the tendencies expressed in these examples have left survivals at the present day : e. g. the loss of final -d in lawn, earlier laund; accre- tion of final -/ after -«, margent, a poetical variant of margin. Both loss and addition are very common in Vulgar Speech (Modified Standard). We shall see most of these forms in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in use in the English of the politest persons. The loss of consonants in groups still belongs tp the best speech ; thus [wenzdz, weskst] are more common among good speakers than the rococco [we?stko«t, wednzd/]. We shall find many examples of such losses or assimilations of consonants in groups in the sixteenth, seven- teenth, and eighteenth centuries. E. Various Consonant Pronunciations. (i) The combination written -si-, -sci-, or -ti- pronounced ' -sh- ' [J] as at present. Margaret Paston : — sesschoTis ' stisuyns', conschens 'conscience; Cely- Papers : — prosesschon ' procession ', fessychens ' physicians ', restytuschon \ 'restitution', &c., &c.; Letters and Papers (i5oi):—towA«rf, French huissiers ' ushers '. In the last instance we actually retain a phonetic spelling of the word. (2) Final -ing pronounced -in, as with many speakers at present. Margaret Paston :—w;:y/>'« (Noun), kepyn (N.), gidyn 'guiding' (N.), 70 THE ENGLISH OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY hangyn (Pres. Part.); GKgoxy.—blasyn 'blazing' (Pres. Part.), Ay/ry" ' herring '. (3) Miscellaneous, -b- for -/- between vowels -.—Jubiter, Bk. of Quinte Essence {1460-70); jeberdy 'jeopardy', Cely Papers; juberte, Cr. of Knt. of Bth. -/- lost before -f- -.—beha/'behaW, Bp. Bekynton (1442); before -k- :— fawkyner ' falconer ', Cely Papers ; Fauconbryge, Gregory. -r- lost in combination -rs- : — wosied qwischons ' worsted cushions ', Will of Joan Buckland (Lines. 1440) ; passell, Cely Papers. -gh- not pronounced in middle of word before -t- or finally ; this is shown in Margaret Paston's omission of any symbol for the original sound in myl 'might', kawt 'caught', and also by such spellings as howghe ' how ', wright ' write ', ought ' out ', &c., &c., when she would not have written the letters -gh- if they had represented any sound. Further, smyht ' smite ', Rle. of Sustris Menouresses. A- initially where it does not historically belong : — herand ' errand ', hotight ' ought ', hese ' ease ', Margaret Paston ; hasche ' ash tree ', Gregory. (On all these points see Ch. VIII below.) We have now illustrated some of the principal spellings found in fifteenth-century, or very early sixteenth-century documents, which are new departures, and suggest a different pronunciation from that usually held to be normal in M.E. These spellings are scattered through dozens of letters and other documents, and some of them might pass for slips of the pen, were they isolated. Many of them occur, however, in several documents of this period, and all of them are found with much greater frequency in writings of the sixteenth century, and are further confirmed 'much'^ later, either by writers on pronunciation, by later (seventeenth and eighteenth century) spellings, or by survivals in our own day. When a writer departs from the traditional spelling in the manner showil by the above examples, we can hardly doubt that this eccentricity records some fact of pronunciation ; when we get confirmation of the kind just stated, we do not doubt at aU. Many of the pronunciations thus expressed are now obsolete, old- fashioned, or vulgar. The influence of the archaic system of spelling, insisted upon by the early printers and by their successors, has been too strong. We shall have occasion to see later how comparatively recent many of our present-day ' restored ' pronunciations are. Other pro- nunciations again, such as the loss of -/- before certain consonants, as in half, walk, &.C., are accepted facts, and at present no one has ventured upon a restoration ; perhaps the lettered democracy of the future, seeking 'the genteel thing', will introduce this, among other novelties, into our speech. (2) Modern English begins at least as early as the second half of the fifteenth century. Nothing is more difficult, as has already been urged repeatedly, than to fix upon a date for the beginning of a new era in speech ; indeed this can only be done approximately. All we shall endeavour to show here is that although some of the points of development adduced in support of the view may be considerably older, the net result of an examination BEGINNINGS OF MODERN ENGLISH 71 of English speech as a whole during the fifteenth century leads us to the conclusion that before the close of that century, not to attempt more particular definition, the. Jfadern Period of ourr language had begun. One of the surprises of a close study of the history of a language is the early date at which certain features occur in the texts — often far earlier ' than we should expect. Another surprise is the lateness of the occur- rence of certain other features, which survive, here and there, much longer than we perhaps thought possible. In order to enjoy both kinds of astonishment it is clearly necessary to make not only a fairly minute study — since what is new in speech and just coming in is but infrequently, and only by scattered examples, discoverable in the written records, while the obsolescent is often equally hard to come by — biit we must also take a rather wide sm-vey in point of time, and roam over the written records of several centuries. The rewards of such a labour are the pleasant surprises just referred to, and a gradual gain of a sense of the continuity between the earlier and later periods. For the purpose which we have in view — to establish the modernity of fifteenth-century English — ^it is useful to take present-day English as a point of comparison, ai d to inquire how far some of the most characteristic features of our actual language are found already in the century we are now considering. It is also useful to indicate the points in which present-day English differs from that of the fifteenth century, since it is by no means suggested that the two forms are identical in all respects. In our brief analysis of Early Modern English, we confine ourselves primarily to London writings, and to those works produced either in the East Midlands or the South of England. Our examination will deal chiefly with the Pronunciation ; the Acci- dence during the greater part of the century is still rather M.E. in character, and only a few points are here dealt with. English Pronunciation in the Fifteenth Century. The following are some of the chief differences between the pronuncia- tion of vowels in the M.E. period and that of the present day : — (i) M.E. a, in bdke{^n) ' to bake ',/dme ' fame ', &c., &c., has become [ejl. (2) M.E. a which had the sound of French a mpalie, &c., has become [sej as in M.E. bak, present-day back, fat, adj., fire. &c. (3) M.E. f- = [e] tense has become [I] as in M.E. fSlen—feel, seed, sede — seed, &c., &c. (4) M.E. P = [e] has also become [i], M.E. hete — heal, mile— meal, &c., &c. (5) M.E. i has been diphthongized to [az], M.E. wif—wi/e, blind — blind, &c., &c. ' (6) M.E. u has been diphthongized to \au\, M.E. hous = [husj — house, M.'E./oule—foul, &o., &c. (7) M.E. it has been unrounded to [a] as in M.E. dust = [d«st], present-day dust = [dast], &c., &c. (8) M.E. d tense has become [u] as in M.E. mdne — moon — [mun], M.Y.. /ode— food = [fud], &c. 72 THE ENGLISH OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY (9) M.E. au, which was a genuine diphthong [au], has been monoph- thongized to [5] written au or aw, as in came, hawk, &c., &c. (10) M.E. ai, ei, both pronounced [at] in the later period, have become first [ae], then [e], then [ej, and finally, in Standard English [ef] rain, day, vein, &c., &c. (11) M.E. [y] written u or «z' has become [m, ju], e.g. iune, /ume, suit; after /, r, the older [ju] has generally become [ii], e.g. lute (also [ljut]),y?«?'/, rude, &c., &c. (i 2) M.E. [ y] has been retracted to [ii] and then unrounded like other short a-sounds to [a], t.%. judge, bundle, rush (the plant), cudgel, &c., &c. (13) M.E. -er has become [a(r)], M.E. herte— heart, ^[.'E. /er—/ar, &c., &c. (14) M.E. wa- has become [wj-] in was, swan, swallow, &c., &c. The above list of changes is formidable enough, but it makes no pretence at completeness. It will, however, serve our turn for the moment. Of the above changes, Nos. 3, 8, and 13 were shown, p. 67, above, to be expressed in fifteenth-century spellings. In 3 and 8 it seems certain that the full present-day stage had already been reached. As regards 14, wosse = ' was ' in Cely Papers leaves small room for doubt. It is extremely probable that the same may be said of Nos. i, 2 — such spellings as iegen for began, and /end ' found ', M.E. /and (Paston Letters), point to a fronting in the former case, while credyl ' cradle ' in Bokenam, teke = tdke,/eder M.'E./ader ' father ' in Paston Letters, and ceme ' came ' in Cely Papers seem to indicate the same process for the long vowel. The process involving M.E. P (No. 4) began very shortly the shifting of the vowel in No. 3. Cf. p. 209, below. The spelling ^a««« ' guns ' in Paston Letters seems to show that short a, No. 7, had at least started upon the path which was to lead to the present sound, if it had not fully attained it; the spelling sadanly 'suddenly' in Fortescue points in the same direction. If this be so, then No. 7 must have taken place still earlier. No. 5, the diphthonging of long / is more than hinted at by the spellings bleynd ' blind ', t/iyeld ' mild ', in St. Editha, though it is improbable that the present sound had been reached. The diphthonging of «, No. 6, is suggested by the spelling sauthe ' south ', Reg. of Godstow, Zachrisson, E. St. 52. 309. The spelling awffer ' offer ' in Cely Papers is sometimes regarded as an inverted spelling showing that aw no longer necessarily indicated a diphthong, which would be impossible in this word. The only sound apparently which it could represent here is [5]. If this is so then No. 9 also is a process already complete among some speakers in the fifteenth century. The monoph- thonging of ai (No. 10) is suggested in an undated letter of Marg. Beaufort (i443-i6°9). who writes sa for say. This lady was the mother of Henry VII. Apart from spellings in regard to Nos. 5 and 6, it must further be pointed out that if we once admit that old [e] had become [l], and that [o] had become [u], we must perforce assume that some change had affected the old [1] and [u], since if these had remained unaltered down to the period by which the new [1, u] developed, the latter would have been identical with them, and the subsequent history MODERN VOWELS AND THE EASTERN DIALECTS 73 of both would have been the same. This, however, has not happened. Hence we must suppose that the change of [l and u] was actually earlier than the change of [fed] to [fid] and of^mone] to [mun(e)]. But while this is certain, we have no definite evidence as to how far the diphthonging had gone, nor what was its precise character in the fifteenth century. The certainty is merely that these sounds had changed from their original form and started upon their new career. Thus of the fourteen typical vowel changes which distinguish present- day English from that of the M.E. period, all but one are shown, by the direct evidence of occasional spellings, by inference drawn from other facts, or from both sources, either to have been completed, or at least to have begun, before the close of the fifteenth century. The change in No. i"i, so far as our evidence goes at present, cannot be proved to have started. On this point see p. 244, below. It must be insisted upon that it is by no means proved, because a pro- nunciation is shown with considerable probability, or in some cases with certainty, to have existed at a given period among certain groups of speakers, that this pronunciation was universal. On the contrary, a change generally starts in one area, or among a class of speakers, and spreads to other areas and classes. Many of the above changes had*! probably not yet spread, in the fifteenth century, to the Court dialect, ; that is, to the ancestor of present-day Received Standard ; others certainly had not. In most cases the novelties of pronunciation are made probable by forms taken from the Paston Letters, or the Cely Papers, and though this may be a coincidence due to our possessing in these documents a consider- able body of more or less phonetically-written English, which it is difficult to match in documents known to have been written in London, the fact remains that our earliest evidence for many of the modern sound changes, or their inception, comes from the East Midlands or South-East. We shall see, however, that London English and Standard English show increasingly this Eastern influence, and we are entitled to say that in the popular speech of the South-East and South-East Midlands we find in the fifteenth century the germ of those changes which we regard as characteristic of Modern English, although, in some respects, the best London English was rather more archaic, so far as our evidence goes. This may, however, be illusoiy, and the more faithful adherents of scribal tradition who are the writers of the official and literary documents in London English, being more lettered persons than the Celys, and even than most of the Pastons, may conceal beneath their conventional spelling with its infrequent lapses into phonetic rendering, changes as remarkable as those made manifest by the less careful writers of Essex and Suffolk, and as remarkable as some of those which they themselves do reveal to us in their weaker moments. It is significant that, in discussing the above changes, we are forced in each case to use a phonetic notation in order to make the sound change clear. In all the cases under review there has been practically no change in the received spelling since the M.E. period — none at any rate which records the very considerable changes in pronunciation that have occurred. The only exceptions to this are a few words hke /ar where the -ar- spelling has been fixed in place of M.E.y&r. But even this 74 THE ENGLISH OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY class of words is not consistent, and we write Derby, hearth, &c. Wiien we find the constant individual departures from the convention, in favour of a more phonetic rendering, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centu- ries, it is clear that the English persistence in clinging to an outworn system of spelling, one which private writers were constantly infringing, must be put to the credit, or the reverse, of the printers. For about 450 years these worthies have dictated to us how we are to spell, in the same way that fashionable ladies are said to have their fashions prescribed for them by their dressmakers, who allow their customers small voice in the matter. Some may think that it is a good thing to have a thoroughly unphonetic spelling such as ours, and consider that any attempt to alter it would be a mistake. Others have an uneasy feeling that our system is inconsistent and misleading, and they therefore found societies for amending it — according to principles which it is often difficult to under- stand. It is impossible to say at present whether any of the numerous groups of reformers will win, or whether we shall insist on sticking to our old and familiar muddle. No spelling reformers have hitherto succeeded in this country. Those of us, however, who prefer our present system, bad as it is, because we know it, rather than a new system which is only very faintly phonetic in character, would do well to remember that our bad old spelling is chiefly defensible on the ground of custom, and not for any pretended historical merit. We should remember that it is the printers who have imposed it upon us. Had Caxton and his followers been more enterprising, it is highly probable that our spelling would have been less widely divorced from the facts of pronunciation than is actually the case. The Vowels in Unstressed Syllables. We have already indicated (p. 67, &c.) some of the more remarkable facts under this head which are observable in the fifteenth century, and the whole subject will receive a fuller treatment later on (Chap. VII). Enough has perhaps been said, and sufficient examples have already been adduced, to show that by the fifteenth century at any rate, not only was the habit of reducing vowels in unstressed syllables fully developed, but in many cases it seems certain that the results were already practically identical with the state of things with which we are familiar at the present time. Changes in Consonant Sounds, Isolative, and in Combinations. The changes indicated on p. 69, &c., above, are suflSciently striking, and it is unnecessary here to enter more fully into this matter, as the Consonants will be discussed in detail in their proper place (Chap. VIII below). It is enough to point out that such usages as the ' dropping ' of initial aspirates, the addition of these where they do not belong, the interchange of initial w and V, the loss of / before -k, &c., the pronunciation of ' jA' in such words as procession, the loss of d in Wednesday, the addition of a final consonant in such forms asylde for isle, and a dozen other practices which are proved by abundant evidence to have existed in the fifteenth century, are all very modern in character. Some of these are now NOUNS AND PRONOUNS 75 vulgarisms, but none the less real for that; others have been lost, even arriong vulgar speakers, through the influence of ' education ' ; others may now be regarded as slipshod, though not vulgar, by the precise ; many are part and parcel of the natural speech of the most meticulous. Points in Englisli Accidence of the Fifteenth Century. (i) Nouns. The most^_modern feature in the inflexion of Nouns in this period is the use of such a construction as — t>e,,erle of Wyltones wyf, which is found already in St. Editha, instead of the old loxmpe erles wyf of Wylton, which survives now in the well-known song The Bailiffs daughter of Islington. The ' group inflexion ', as it is called, is by no means common in the writings of the fifteenth century, but that it occurs at all proves that it was in use, though probably it was still felt as collo- quial, and it is usually avoided, often by omittijngjhe possessive inflexion altogether, as in without my brother Roaf assent (Ld. Hastings in Paston Letters, iii, p. 108, c. 1470), Even in the middle of the next century many writers dodge the ' group possessive ' in one way or another (see p. 318). There is a very modern-sounding construction in the Creation of Duke of York Knight of the Bath (1494) — sett in like matter as therle of Suffokis, and in the account of the Reception of Catharine of Aragon (1501) we find the Archehishoppe of Cauntreburys barge. Other par- ticulars of the Inflexion of Nouns in fifteenth-century English will be recorded in due course (pp. 314-24). They are rather of the nature of survivals than of modernisms, such as the old uninflected Feminine Possessive Singulars — -ure ladye belle, &c. (Shillingford), the innumerable Pis. in -en (or -yn, &c.), and such a mutated PI. as geet ' goats '. (2) Personal Pronouns. Whereas Chaucer and those of his con- temporaries who write London English still adhere to the old,_EngljshJg^ .hernias the exclusive forms of the Possessive and Dative PI., the fifteenth- century literary and official writings in this dialect show an increasing use of their, ther in the Possessive and theim, them in the Dative. The former _^ is practically extinct in literary, and presumably in colloquial, use by the end of the century, though isolated instances occur as late as the middle of the next century, ^^ai^, and_Jhe unstressed em, are far commoner, and indeed the latter under the disguise of 'em is very common iiiHeed, even in the lofty style, far into the eighteenth century, and is in frequent colloquial use at the present day. The form hem is very rarely found with the initial aspirate after the end of the fifteenth century, except in the form 'hem, and it is pretty clear, as the subsequent writing with the apostrophe shows, that speakers and writers using em thought it was a reduced form of them. Another modernism in the forms of Pronouns, though' it occurs much earlier here and there, is the loss of the initial lip-consonant in who, which is found written ho and hoo in Siege of Rouen, Letters of Mary Paston, Gregory, Creation of Duke of York, &c. A very common sui vival from M.E. usage in the fifteenth century is tho, thoo, the old PI. Nom. of the Def Art. used in the purely demon- strative sense ' those '. See, on all these and other points, the treatment of the Pronouns in Chap. IX. 76 THE ENGLISH OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY (3) Verbal Endings. In London documents of all kinds the 3rd Pers. S. Pres. Indie, ends in -jth, or -ith, almost without exception. The Pi. usually has the typical Midland -e«. or -in, -yn, but towards the end of the century the final -n becomes more "and more rare, so that we get our present flexionless form. The Southern PI. in -eth, -ith crops up with fair frequency apart from purely ofiScial documents, and indeed continues to be used occasionally far into the following century. The Pres. Part, is always either -ing, -y.ng, or occasionally -etig. The Southern prefix^-- or «- falls into desuetude in the Past Part., and the Southern endings without, and the Midland ending with, the final -« both occur in Strong Vbs. as at present, though the distribution of these forms is not fixed. The distinction between Sing, and PI. Pret. of Strong Vbs. of certain classes is lost towards the end of the century, and whereas Chaucer has fond ' I found ', &c., s.n^/unden ' we found ', Caxton uses the Sing, type fond for both numbers. (3) The Passing of Begional Dialect in Written English. We have seen that it is still possible during the fifteenth century to find, both in works of literature proper, in private letters, wills, &c., and even in ofiicial documents, the influence of Regional dialect. As has been said, there are still a certain number of writings of this period which represent a more or less pure form of Regional dialect, and there are others which show traces of the author's native dialect while being, in the main, according to the London type of English. We must be careful not to over-estimate the rapidity of the spread of a common form of Literary English. Many dialect features may still be traced in works written in nearly pure London English, such as Shillingford's letters. Writers on Modern English dialects, therefore, will do well in future to search diligently in the documents of the fifteenth century, and even later, and not to give up all hope of finding, after the fourteenth century, ancestral forms of the dialect which they are describing. This habit, which is far too common, has the unfortunate result of leaving a gap in the history of the dialect of some five hundred years! It is true that by the fifteenth century, in the huge area covered by the Midlands as a whole, there was spoken, or at least written, a type of English which, apart from certain rather minute points, often rather scattered, and hard to discover without a painful examination of the docu- ments, was fairly uniform. This Midland type, in its broad outlines, agreed pretty much with London English, and when we consider more par- ticularly the v^ large body of documents of all kinds written in the East Midlands, the differences between the written speech of this area and that of London appear at first sight so trifling, that some recent writers have been, rather too hastily perhaps, led to believe and to teach that dialectal differences had disappeared from written English, at least by the middle of the fifteenth century. A more careful examination of the sources, however, shows that this is far from being the case, even in the East, and although it appears that the language of most of the documents which we possess from this period has been, to some degree at least, SURVEY OF PROVINCIAL WRITINGS 77 influenced by London English, a considerable amount of dialectal diver- gence exists in points of detail. In the following brief survey of the question, we shall attempt to show both the survivals of Regional dialect and the influence exerted by the London dialect. In considering London English at this period, it must be borne in mind that the distribution of the competing dialectal elements was not yet finally fixed. It is evident that many Southern features now lost co-existed in the speech of the metropolis with those of E. Midland and South-Eastern type. The appearance of such features in a docu- ment therefore does not necessarily show direct regional influence. The precise blend of the various dialect elements varies within certain limits from writer to writer, and each of these blends represents an existing mode of speech. Again, in examining E. Midland, or South-Eastern texts, we come across features which we are justified in considering as characteristic of these areas, although many or all of them may be found also in London English of the period. The differences between E. Midland and London English in the fifteenth century are comparatively slight, since the latter was becoming more and more E. Midland in character, and at this time was distinguished from pure E. Midland chiefly by the survival of certain purely Southern features which did not normally occur in the speech of Norfolk or Suffolk. We may put it in this way : — ^there were few typically E. Midland features which did not occur in London speech, but this contained also many others (Sthn.) which were unknown to the E. Midlands. We begin with two texts in which the Regional dialect is pretty strongly marked, Bokenam's Lives of Saints {c. 1443), which the author definitely tells us is written in the speech of Suffolk, and the Life of St. Editha, written in the monastery of Wilton in Wiltshire about 1420. Bokenam's is naturally a typical E. Midland text, and, as in other texts from this area, we find several features which, absent from earlier London documents, gain more arid more ground during the century in the speech of the capital. The combination -er- is generally so written, but a certain number of -ar- spellings are found, more than occur in the London documents of this period so early in the century: VMnyfully, warkys, garlondys. O.E. slack X sometimes rhymes with tense e: — teche with siche, dene with sene ' seen ', and wene. This treatment of x^ is regarded as typically Kentish or South-Eastern in O. and M.E. It is interesting to note its spread to Suffolk. There are indications, however, already in M.E. that this feature was shared by E. Midland. It is apparently still alien to London speech. Bokenam, like other E. Midland writers, often has e for old i. We must distinguish two classes of words : words of two or more syllables, where the sound occurs in ' open syllables ', that is at the end of a syllable, when a single consonant intervenes between the following syllable. In this class it is possible that lengthening has taken place, and that we should regard the vowel as e, e. g. pete ' pity ', wrelyn ' written ', queknyn, inf. The other case is where e for i occurs in ' close syllables ', that is before double consonants, or combinations of consonants, or in words of 78 THE ENGLISH OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY one syllable ending in a consonant, e. g. mmstralsy, smet, &c. The first class offers some difficulties in interpretation, and views differ as to the origin of the change. (See discussion, p. 2 26, &c., below.) On the whole, it seems at present more likely that both classes can be brought under one heading — the lowering of i to e. If this view be accepted, we may zAAflekerynge (where e should be short in any case), and merour ' mirror ', a common form in Early Mod. Eng. Both types of words occur with e frequently in E. Midlands in M.E., and become increasingly common in London English in the fifteenth and following centuries. Those words where the vowel was certainly short have now been eliminated from Standard English. Bokenam shares with other writers from Suffolk, Essex, and to some extent from Norfolk, the characteristic use of e for O.E.^, generally considered South-Eastern, to which frequent reference has been made (see pp. 9, 41 (3), &c.). Examples of the long vowel are mende ' mind ', &c.,/eer ' fire ' ; and of the short, ier/A, ' birth ', kechyn ' kitchen ', wers/ ' worst '. It may be noted that the spelling^/-* also occurs, but the word rhymes with cAere, thus showing the pronunciation. The long e- forms are not common in London English, though as we have seen the ?-forms are very frequent. By the side of these, other spellings with t,jf occur in Bokenam. The Pronouns do not differ from the usage of London English. The P. P.'s of Strong Verbs generally end in -j/n (with -n according to Midland usage). Turning to St. Editha, we find, as might be expected, far more differences from London English. The very characteristic Western a for old eo is frequent — vriAe ' earth ', Aulie ' held ', O.E. AeolS, dure ' dear ', O.E. deor. A couple of examples occur of the typical South- western unrounding of lo a — siarm for ' storm ', and crasse for ' cross '. This South- Western feature penetrated into Received Standard English in the sixteenth century, and became for a time a fashionable habit in the seventeenth (see p. 240); it has left a few survivals in Mod. Eng., e.g. sirap by the side of sirop, &c. We find non-South- Western here ' hear ' instead of Autre as we might expect, but this need not be attributed to the indirect influence of London English, as the form seems to have been characteristic of the South- West Midland speech of Oxfordshire, Worcestershire, Herefordshire, &c. The old Southern [e] for se" has disappeared, as is shown by the ihymts J>ere—jifere, here ' bier ' — here, &c. Short e (or « ?) for older i- in open syllables is fairly common — leuynge, pety, cete ' city ', weke ' week ', iAeke ' thick ', &c. It is doubtful how these forms should be explained (see p. 207, &c.). Western on, om for an, am occur in nomlycAe ' namely ', mon ' man ', 6onk ' bank ', iAonk ' thank '. Past Participles very commonly have the Southern ending without -Hjj^SfMe, ychose,yc5re, &c., and, as we see from these examples, the Southern prefix y- was frequently preserved. The Southern inf. ending in :y is found in to correcty. The Pers. Pronouns preserve the old Southern ionaycAe ' I ', and the archaic Southern forms of the Fem. Ae, Aee for ' she '. The Midland Nom. Y\.pey, &c. seems the only form, and this may possibly be attributable to the influence of the predominating type, but in the other cases of the 3rd Pers. PI. the th- or /-forms are unknown in this text The unstressed suffix -es, &c., often appears as -us, after the manner ESSEX DOCUMENTS 79 of South-West Midland, by the side of -ys and -es. In the Pres. PI. of Vbs. -yth occurs by the side of the Midland -e. St. Editha still retains the original distinction between Sing, and PI. in those classes of Strong Vbs. where this existed: dref—drevyn (earlier drivon) ' drove ', satte — seton ' sat ', borst — burst, brake — brekon. Sec, &c. These two texts illustrate respectively the Eastern and the Western types of English. There is a considerable group of Eastern documents belonging to the fifteenth century, of which some account may be given. The doggerel translation of Palladius on Husbandry possesses the characteristics of the Essex dialect. It resembles Kentish on the one hand, and E. Midland on the other. As regards the treatment of O.E._y, this dialect normally has both u and e forms. Thus, in Palladius we find curnels ' kernels ', brustels ' bristles ', busely, &c., also bresid ' bruised', wermes' worms', bey 'buy'- By the side of these this text has many, perhaps a predominating number, of the !-forms, after the manner of the London dialect. Here, as in the Suffolk documents, e for t is frequent. Typi- cally South-Eastern is the preservation of e (O.E. x) in bledders ' bladders', ed^fes^'iSSit^ ', wex ' wax ', sedness, yerd. The Pres. PI. generally has the Southern sufiix_-f/>5, and the prefix y- occurs generally in Past Part. The Cely Papers, from which various examples have been taken to illus- trate fifteenth-century pronunciation, are also written by Essex people, but about fifty years later than Palladius. They are chiefly remarkable for the admirable freedom of the writers from scribal tradition, and give, on the whole, the impression of being the work of very uncultivated persons, and they perhaps illustrate Class, rather than a Regional dialect. They have several features which become increasingly common in the London dialect as the fifteenth century advances, and in the following century. Among these features, in addition to the numerous e for i spellings — contenew, sweffte ' swift ', weilnes, medyll, &c. — we find a large number of -ar- for -^r-forms — starlyng ' sterling ', sarten ' certain ', desarve ' deserve ', hard ' heard ', &c. ; wo- for wa-, as in wos ' was ', &c. ; loss of r- before consonants, passel for ' parcel ' (see also p. 70, above) ; misplacing of initial h-, howllde ' old ', hayssched ' asked ', &c. For the rest, the final -n of Strong P. P.'s is often omitted — wrefe, spoke, undoe, &c. ; and the prefix j/- is common— y-wreten,y-yeuen, &c. The/' younger Celys constantly use -s in the 3rd Singular Present, but thel[ father and uncle have yth, &c., far more commonly. The -s suffix is coming in, presumably from the Midlands, in the more northerly areas of which it had long been in use. A typical letter from one of the Cely family will illustrate the general character of this collection of papers. From a letter of Richard Cely the younger (1481). Cely Papers, pp. 58, &c. Riught uteriy whelbelovyd brother, I recomend me hartely onto you thankyng you of auU good brotherhod that je have scheuyd to me at all tymms. ... I met Roger Wyxton athysayd Northehamton and he desyryd me to do so myche as drynke w' hys whyfe at Laysetter and after that I met w* Wylliam Dalton and he gave me a tokyn to hys mother, and at Laysetter I met w* Rafe Daulton and he brahut me to hys mother and ther I delyvyrd 8o THE ENGLISH OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY my tokyn and sche prayd me to come to brekefast on the morow and so I ded, and Plomton both ; and ther whe had a gret whelfar, and ther whos feyr oste and I pray yow tKanke them for me Syr and je be remembyrd whe thaulkyd togydyr in hour bed of Dawltonys syster, and je ferryd the con- dyscyons of father and brethyrn, byt Je neyd not. I saw hyr, and sche whos at brekefaste w' hyr mother and ws sche ys as goodly a jeung whomane as fayr as whelbodyd and as sad as I se hany thys vij jeyr, and a good haythe. And I pray God that hyt may be impryntyd in yur mynd to sette yowr harte ther Syr. Hour father and I comende togydyr in new orchard on Fryday laste and a askyd me many qwestyonys of gyu, and I towlde hym auU as hyt whos . . . and of the good whyll that the Whegystons and Dawltons hows (='use'?) to yow and how I lykyd the Jeunge gentyllwhoman and he comaunded me to whryte to yow, and he whowlde gladly that hyt whor brohut abohut and that je laborde hyt betymys. . . . No mor to yow at thys tyrae. Jhesu kepe you. Wrytyn at London the iiij"'« day of Juyn. per yur brother. Rychard Cely. Margaret Faston, whose letters cover the period from 1440 to 1470, thus ending about the time the Cely Papers begin, is a Norfolk lady, socially far above the Celys, but very much their equal in education ; she writes a slip-shod style, and evidently sets down as far as possible the forms of her ordinary speech. Her language has a curious resemblance to that of the Celys. One feature distinguishes her dialect both from theirs and from that of London, namely, that except in the word such, she seems to use no a-spellings for old y, writing either i, y — lytil, hyrdyllys, gyrdill ; or e — beryid, hey, mend ' mind '. A very large number of cases of e for old I are found in this lady's letters — weie 'know', turetyn P.P., Trenyte, chene ' chin ', Beshopys, Welyam ' William ', preson ' prison ', &c., &c. The iSpelling -ar- for old -er-, as has been already noted, becomes more fre- quent after the year 1461. These spellings are less frequent on the whole in the letters of Mistress Paston than in those of the Cely family. Margaret Paston uses -yn, -e (Midi.), and occasionally the Southern -ytA in the Pres. PI. The language of the Suffolk Wills (Bury Wills and Inventories) of the last quarter of the fifteenth century calls for little remark from the point of view of Regional dialect. These documents present the typical £. Midland EngUsh of the foregoing, and it is hard to say that any features here observable are alien to London. The interesting collection of fifteenth-century Lincolnshire Wills and Vows of Celibacy (Line. Dioe. SocumeutB) deserves to be mentioned, and demands a far closer study than is practicable here. The influence of Official London English is seen in the frequent use of -ylA in the 3rd Sing. Present, by the side of the local -ys or -es, which occurs in Itgges (Will of Richard Welby, 1465). The form y«rj/ with « 'first' must also be due. to this influence (W. of Sir T. Comberworth, 1451). North Midland features are seen in awes ' owes ', sdwle ' soul ', the use of gt'ff ' give ' instead of give or yeve, the spelling qwhite ' white ' and such ele- ments of vocabulary as at ' that ', to gar pray for, kirk ' church ', quye 'cow', all from Comber worth's Will. The Agreement between Earlings Abbey, Lines., and the Vicar of Reepham (1509) contains the Scandina- vian words laithe ' barn ', ihack and thackyng ' thatch ', &c. It seems that WRITERS WITH SLIGHT TRACES OF PROVINCIALISM 81 the remoter a district from the metropolis, the weaker the influence of London English in written documents, even when these are based upon official models. The Lines. Wills really belong to that large class of documents surviving from this period, in which the intention is clearly to write the official dialect of London, but in which the lapses into the Regional dialect of the writer, in isolated forms, are fairly frequent. We may now leave the consideration of writings which possess a con- siderable provincial flavour, and pass to those where this occurs only here and there, in isolated words and forms. In the Ordinances of Worcester (1467) the lapses are very rare, and on that account we placed them in our general enumeration above (p. 64) among the documents in pure London Official English, but such forms ss/uyre ' fire ', pui/s ' pits ', brugge ' bridge ', huydes ' hides, skins ' — all containing original O.E._f — call for mention here, and we may perhaps regard hur ' their ', O.E. Aeora, as an example of a typical Western u for O.E. eo. Most remarkable, perhaps, of all the private letters of this period, in the fidelity with which they adhere to the Landoiutype, are those of John Shillingford (i 447-50). Here, if anywhere, we might expect to find an almost pure Regional dialect. Shillingford had apparently lived in his native Devon continuously ; most of his letters were not official reports, but private missives written to his friends at home, and yet, on the whole, he consistently avoids the forms of his local dialect and writes Standard English. His vowel spellings, his verbal forms, and his Pers. Pronouns are generally those of London English. Fortunately, however, for our knowledge of his native speech, that is the Devonshire dialect, he lifts the veil occasionally and drops into provincialisms. The following are the chief: The retention of the old South- Western type in Aurde 'heard', « for O.E. eo in durer ' dearer ', the shortened form of West Saxon se' in radde ' read ' ' advised ', unrounding of o in afietymes ' oft-times ' (see remarks on p. 78 in connexion with St. Editha), and the very frequent retention of the prefix y- in P. P.'s, which, though common in Chaticer (see p. 53), was by this time dying out in London. The points noted concerning the vowels (except radde) are certainly pretty broad provin- cialisms, judged by the London Standard, and they, no doubt, indicate Shillingford's natural pronunciation, not only in the words quoted but in the whole of the classes to which they severally belong. We have, natur- ally, no means of knowing how far the excellent Mayor, having mastered another manner of writing, was able to adhere, in speaking, to the tj^e which he records, on the whole so faithfully, on paper. We may, perhaps, conclude from the above forms that he spoke with a pretty strong Devonshire accent. Less provincial still, as we might expect, is the language of Bishop Fecok's Repressor for over much blaming for the Clergy (c. 1449), which, written with the best intentions, led, together with other works from his pen, to its author being very much blamed by the clergy, and ultimately to his being tried and condemned for heresy. Pecok's style in the above book is clear and sound, although the philosophical argument which pervades it makes it rather tough reading. The dialect may be generally described as more or less colourless, and contains few deviations from the 82 THE ENGLISH OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY current London written English beyond the absence of the more character- istic Easternisms. For instance, Pecok has practically no «-forms (for O.E._y) — I have only noted ungerd ' ungirt ' in Vol. I — he uses a prepon- derance of ?-forms in this class of words — wirche 'to work', girdele ' girdle ', itrihe, Uried, kind, and a few a-forms such as buried, duller. The Verbal forms are the normal Midland type: he uses /// (as in Chaucer) for the Pret. of /all; he still distinguishes between the Sing, and JPI. in Str. Vbs. — brake — breken, &c. ; he has no j/- prefix in Past Par- ticiples, and these in Str. Vbs. sometimes end in -en, or occasionally -«« — sungun, foundun, writun, &c., though more commonly in -e. The Pronoun of the 3rd Person in the PI. is thei, her, hem. He differs from London English in having no their, them, &c. Among provincialisms we should probably reckon diphthonging before -sch — waische ' wash ', aischis, fleisch ' flesh ', — and the interesting form svoope ' soap ', O.E. sape — waish- ing with oyle and swope. The form swope will occupy our attention again later on (p. 307). As last examples of the class of writers we are at present considering, that is those who use what is practically London official or literary English with a certain provincial flavouring, we will take the Monk of Bury {firca 1370-1451) and a letter of Edmond de la Pole. The language of Iiydgate is indeed hardly distinguishable from his contemporary Hoccleve, or from the official London Eng. of the period, except for the occurrence of rather more e-forms for O.E._^. Thus Lydgate, by the side oi fyres, mirth, mynde, kynde, bysynesse, and fuyre ' fire ', writes also vnkende ' unkind ',felthe ' filth ', sterid ' stirred ', besynesse. He also has a certain number of «for zspellings, which, as we have seen (pp. 77-78), are common in the Suffolk dialect of Bokenam, and in Essex — velenye, merour, glemer- yng, wedow. Like Chaucer, he uses both the Southern and E. Midland forms of O.E. §&■ in his rhymes — breth — deth, but also drede — spede (Vb.).- Seeing the unsettled state of London English at this time, in the first and last of these particulars, it is rather doubtful whether they ought to be ascribed in Lydgate to special E, Midland influence, as both are found in Chaucer and other London writers — though it should be noted that the Southern breth, &c., with [e] predominates in Chaucer's rhymes, whereas it is rarer in Lydgate — and they were clearly current in London speech. The e for i forms are more doubtful so early in the century, and they seem to be absent from Chaucer's English. It may, perhaps, be said that Lydgate shows Eastern influence more by the absence of purely Southern forms which at this period still abounded in London English, than by the use of any typically E. Midland forms which are not found in the latter. Edmond de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, was born about 1473, and exe- cuted for high treason in 1513. This ill-starred and iiliterateTibbleman had the misfortune to spring'from the ' sceptred race ' of York, his mother being the sister of King Edward IV. The following letter, written from the Continent to an unknown corre- spondent, in or before iflo fi, is a fitting close to our short survey of writers who depart from London English undefiled. Such definite dialectal peculiarities as it possesses are clMxIyJELMidland, but its chief interest lies in its illustration of how a man of the writer's quality might AN ILLITERATE NOBLEMAN 83 write his mother tongue at the beginning of the sixteenth century. If the Earl spoke at all as he wrote, his must have been a queer lingo, due, no doubt, partly to a residence of some years abroad, away from English speakers. ' Cosen I deser yov to chohove (show) to my lord my cosen that yt void pies hem to remember I kame to hem for the loyef and strouste (trust) I had to hem a bovef (above) ale hedder (all other) prenses, ver for I povt (put) my boddy yn ys hand, ver apone he gavef me ys chavfcondet to com ynto ys land, as vane I spake with heme he piroihes me as he vas a nobovle mane ys land chovld be free fore me, and noe (now) I have bein here~ohe yeer and a haalvf and hame as ner nove (now) of my departeng hennes as 1 vas the frerst Hae. And also yov came to me and desored me to povt my matter yn my lord my cosen hand, and he void point me a dae ef he . . . a nend be teven (between) K. H. and me, vel ef nat my lord my Cosen promissed me be ys letters be sent John dae last passed hie void geevf me lessens (Ucense) to de parte ys land ver yt plessed me ; and thest have yov promes me for my lord my cosen wches (wishes) I have foufeled at the deser of my lord my cosen. Nove my day ys passed and a cordeng to my lord my cosen I deser of yov yovr.Jesens as yov be come of nobovele boveld (noble blood) and as yov be a trove jengtelman I deser yov to ch . . . yovr s . . . fochet to let me depart ascordeng to my lord my Coson letters and to yovr promes that yov have mad me. I strest (trust) my lord my Coson vele (will) nat beevef my her yn thest danger ef ys Heines come heyder; wches I thoke vele ef I vare yn ther handes I vare bovt as a mane hone done (undone). As ale (all) for be kaves (because) of my lord my Coson yn to hem for schol . . . (shelter?) ys . . . And also has done at my cosen deser that I void nat do at ther der I strest my lord my cosen vele remember my goot hart that I have had and vele have to heme as nat to leev me her as a man leftf. Also ef yt pies hem to set me a dae of to ore iij monthes so I be yn some severte (surety) ver yt pies heme. I hame conten or and ef yt pies my lord my Coson that I mae be with hem and be at my lebertte I vel be glad to bed hes pleser. And to bed ys plas a yer or to thake chevf fortovn as pies God to send to heme, my parte I hame vele content to thake for Affter thest manner as I ame a cerstene man I vele nott bed to dee for yt, ver for Cossen as yov be a trove Jengtilmane do fore me as I hau geve yov kawes and thet I be not lost thovrt (through) the promes and chavef condded (safeconduct) of my lord my Coson and your profer for my good veil.' (Ellis's Letters, Ser. Ill, Vol. i, pp. 127, &c.) It cannot be denied that the Earl must have been a very tedious corre- spondent, that he lacked charm, and that he was not very successful in^ expressing his ideas on paper with complete clearness. The style and diction of the above is typical of the rest of his correspondence collected' by Ellis. We notice e for O.E. y, e for i, initial v for w, and initial h- in-: serted where it has no business, features which are fairly common in the other E. Midland writers we have considered. All these things are common in London English before the end of the century, and increasingly so in the next century. They are found among writers of all classes, but some, especially the misplacement of h-, ani..z> for..j:«,.Appear to be more frequent among the less cultivated and less highly placed. It must be admitted with regard to several of the sources considered above, as representing what we may call Modified London English, that G 2 84 THE ENGLISH OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY not a little doubt arises as to whether we should not be better advised to regard them as representing a definite type of London speech. The difficulty appears mainly in respect of those texts and documents which have a distinct E. Midland or South-Eastern tinge. We have more than once emphasized the fact that these elements occur in undoubted London English, and it is largely the degree to which they are present which inclines us to classify a document as pure London, or as Modified London. It seems likely that there were at least two types of English actually spoken in London, one strongly tinged with E. Midland and South-Eastern characteristics, the other possessing less of the former, at any rate, and more of purely Southern features. If this view were accepted we could regard all but the above documents, apart from the Western traits which some possess, and the North-East Midland of others, as representing actual types of Spoken London English, and group them as under the Eastern type of this dialect. The English of the official documents, and on the whole of Caxton, would occupy a central position between these two types, possessing several of the features of both, but in different relative proportion. (I am inclined to hazard the hypothesis that the spoken language of the Court and upper classes belonged rather to the Squtbfiai type, of London English, that of the lower, and to a slightly less extent perhaps, that of ' the middle classes, to the Eastern type. We turn now to consider' some of the poetry, official records, and private documents actually written by Londoners in London during the fifteenth century, among which we include the writings of the Kentish Caxton who definitely adopted London speech as his basis. We begin with Hoccleve or Occleve, supposed to have been born about 1370 and to have died about 1 450. Hoccleve was a merry companion, given, according to his own account, to haunting ale-houses and frequenting more or less disreputable company. He was a clerk in the office of the Privy Seal 'for his sustinaunce ', and the money so earned he dispensed, like Villon, ' tout aux tavernes et aux fiUes '. As a poet he lacks inspiration, but is not without a versifjdng skill of an imitative kind, and here and there a robust animal vigour of character. He gives, besides, a valuable picture of certain phases of London life. But his best claim to be remembered is his piety for Chaucer's memory, and the fact that one of the MSS, of his works (Harleian 4866) contains what is considered the best portrait — a kind of miniature — of his great predecessor. The passages referring to Chaucer which are quoted below are not without a certain dignity, and a pathos which is not all convention. The spelling of the Hoccleve MSS. is very conventional, and there are but few spellings which indicate a change from the M.E. vowel system, . though we may mention the form musien, which points to the important change of O.E. to a. The language agrees in the main with that London type seen in Chaucer's writings, though there appear to be far fewer «-forms for O.E._y. This class of words generally has the i-type — bisynesse, kt^tte tyh), filihe, piltes, schitte 'shut', fist; mankynde, tyre, mynde, drpe (Vb. Inf.), kji/ie (Inf.), tilde, &c. By the side of these we have unscMe (Inf.) ' to open ', velthy ' filthy ', mery, beried, ihemel ' thimble ' O.E. pymel, and further suche, burdon cusse (N.) on analogy LONDON ENGLISH 85 of Vb. cusse, and iAursMk. O.E. s?, to judge from the rhymes, occurs both in the Saxon and non-Saxon types : — dede ' deed ' and rede ' coun- sel ' both rhyming ■with heed ' head ', rede (Vb.) with lede (Vb.) ; on the other hand, sireei and weei ' wet ' rhyme mth/eei, and dede and rede with forbede (O.E. forbeddari). The rhyme speecke and ieeche is ambiguous, since x^ in brede ' breadth ' also rhymes with spede ' speed ', the vowel of which was certainly tense. This looks as if Hoccleve may have used the Kentish-South-Eastern tense pronunciation of x' (see p. 41, No. 2). The E. Midland merour and wretyn. Image ' lineage ' occur. M.E. -er- rarely occurs with the spelling -ar-. Note, however, astarte rhyming with herte, merle. The Pers. Pronouns in the PI. zrej>ey, thei, here, hir, &c., and hem usually, though I have noted ihemsdle. The Pres. Indie. PI. ends in n (never -ih) ; the P. P.'s of Strong Vbs. have both -e and -en — knowe, and with the prefix^-, i-. Hake, ifalle; but standen, waxen, &c. The prefix /- is used also in Wk. Vbs. — ifiynchid, yput. In unstressed syllables -i- (->•-) is very frequent before consonants — puttith, iokyn, synkyn (Inf.), werAys ' works ' which rhymes with derk is, fUist, &c., &c. These -i- spellings become more and more common as the century advances. The following brief specimens, taken from the Regement of Princes, illustrate Hoccleve's language sufficiently, and contain the well-known references to Chaucer, so often quoted scrappily at second-hand. lines 1958-81. But weylaway ! so is myn herte wo That ))e honour of englyssh tonge is deed Of which I wont was hav conSail and reed. O maister deere and fader reuerent ! Mi maister Chaucer, flour of eloquence Mirour of fructuous entendement, O vniuersel fadir in science ! Alias ! ))at )iou thyn excellent prudence In J)i bed mortal myhtist naght by-quethe ; What eyled deth ? alias ! whi wolde he sle the ? O deth ! Jiou didest naght harme singuleer, In slaghtere of him ; but al })is land it smertith ; But nathelees, yit has j)ou no power His name sle ; his hy vertu astertith Vnslayn fro )>e, which ay vs lyfly hertyth With bookes of his ornat endytyng, That is to al ))is land enlumynyng. Hast ))ou nat eeke my maister Gower slayn, Whos vertu I am insufficient ffor to descryue? I wote wel in certayn, ffor to sleen all bis world J)ou haust yment ; But syn our lorde Crist was obedient To J>e, in feith I can no ferther seye ; His creatures mosten (le obeye. 4978 The firste fyndere of our faire langage 4982 Alasse my fadir fro Jie world is goo 86 THE ENGLISH OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY On Chaucet's portrait. (Harl. MS. 4866 has the best portrait according to Fumival.) Al-))ogh his lyfe be queynt,* |)e resemblaunce Of him haj> in me so fressh lyflynesse, pat to put othir men in remembraunce Of his persone, I haue heere his lyknesse Do^ make, to ]>is ende in soth fastnesse pat ))ei ))at haue of him lest j^ought and mynde, By J)is peynture may ageyn him fynde. 4992-S. The language of Sir John Fortescue would appear to be a model of propriety, and to be quite free from those occasional provincialisms which we observed in his fellow Devonian, Shillingford. His vowels are of the normal London'type, and call for very little remark. O.'E.y is repre- sented by both t and u, but ^-forms are very scarce, meryer being the only one there noted. On the other hand, he has a few examples of e for i — wech ' which ', lemiled, openton, contenually, &c. He usually retains the old spelling -er-, but has hartes, warre. He occasionally uses the old forms of the Pers. Pron. her, hem, but more commonly ihair, thaim, and, of course, they always. In the Pres. PI. Indie, of Vbs. he has never -th, but always the Midland -en, -yn, or -e. In the P. P. of Strong Vbs. -en, &c., is more frequent than -e, and no Vbs. of this class have the prefix i- ory-, though I have noted ibltssed. It would almost seem as if Fortescue had deliberately avoided even those Southernisms which were still in use in London, such as Pres. Pis. in -th, and affected rather the Eastern type of London English. A more Southern type is found in the Bewle of Sustris Menouxesses [circa 1450). Here we find, alongside of pretty frequent -yn, &c., also very commonly -yth, &c., in the Pres. PI., and the prefix i- fairly often retained, though not generally in Str. Vbs. The PI. of the Pers. Pro- nouns is />ei in the Nom., but knows only her(e) and hem in the Possess, and Dat. We pass now to Cazton. The language of London was not wholly natural to Caxton, who was a Kentishman. Nor was he of the knightly class to which, in the previous century, the Kentish Gower had belonged, to whom the speech of the Court and its denizens was familiar. This is why, perhaps, we feel in reading Caxton a certain constraint and lack of ease. The style of the Prefaces is less high-flown than that of the trans- lations themselves, but it is wanting in fluency and elegance, while that of the latter is too often pompous when it is meant to be courtly, and merely stodgy where it should be magnificent. Caxton was not an innovator. He followed entirely the scribal tradition in spelling, so that a novice reading him and comparing his writings with the English of, say, Margaret Paston or Gregory, might gain the impression that the language had jumped back into Middle English again as regards pronunciation. Yet, as we have seen, in these writers and many others, earlier and contempo- raneous, the development of several new features since the M.E. period, in fact, the beginning of the Modern system of vowel pronunciation, ' quenched. ' Do is P. P. = ' caused '. CAXTON'S ENGLISH 87 can be clearly traced. Of this Caxton lets us see next to nothing. His spelling, therefore, gives a very imperfect guide to the realities of English speech in his day, and conveys the impression that English was still much nearer to the M.E. stage than was actually the case. Even in the spelling of unstressed syllables, when the private documents of Shillingford — a quarter of a century earlier — and still more those of the Pastons and Celys, prove clearly by their spellings, that reduction of full vowels — shortening of long vowels, unrounding of rounded sounds, simplification of diphthongs — ^had already taken place, Caxton tells us practically nothing which we do not learn already from M.E. scribes, and though his varying spelling suggests, it is true, a hesitation how to ex- press the reduced unaccented vowel, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to formulate any definite laws for the treatment of unstressed syllables from his writings. The frequent spellings -id, -is, &c., in flexional sylla- bles may be noted. In regard to inflexional endings Caxton appears to be very much at the stage of Chaucer. Like Chaucer and other M.E. writers he has the Inf. in -en, though he omits the ending more often than is common in the full M.E. period ; he has the Midland -en PI. in Pres. Indie, of Verbs ; he has some very archaic forms of the Strong Verbs : e. g. bote, Pret. of to bite, and the P. P. seten of to sit; he retains the old Pret. oifind, fond (as in Chaucer), though he does not appear to distinguish any longer between the Sing, and PI. of the Pret. in Strong Verbs of this and other classes ; he uses, as does Chaucer, the archaic/iza^^/ as the Pret. ol fight, which represents O^./seht, Early M.E. _/H(5/, as distinct from the P. P. /oughten from earlier _/bA/i?« ; he uses, with retnarkable consistency, the suffix -en in P. P.'s of Strong Verbs, and the prefix y- hardly occurs. By the side otgave he uses also the older gaf, and he agrees with Chaucer in using the diflBcult fill as the Pret. of /all. By the side of their and them Caxton has, though less frequently than these, her and hem for the Possess, and Dat. PI. of the Pers, Pronoun. Coming to the dialectal characteristics of vowels in Caxton's English, it is perhaps surprising that well-marked Kenticisms are not more fre- quent. The most characteristic feature of Kentish and the South- Eastern dialects is the appearance of I for O.E. y. Of these forms Caxton has not more than are commonly found in London speech, and those which he does use can all be found in other writers of Literary or Court English of this period. From our present point of view, among the most interesting are seche 'such', knette 'knit', and shette 'shut'. Like Chaucer, Caxton, and many writers at a later date, use the South- western -on- instead of the Eastern -an- in lond, understand, &c. Among other specifically South- Western forms, which earlier were more common in the London dialect, and many of which Survived for a century after Caxton, we may note sil/e ' self, and perhaps under this head would come the vowel in Inf. gyue, and P. P. gjyuen, where Chaucer more commonly has the non-W. Saxon yeue,yeuen. There was a long hesitation regarding the forms of this word, the «-forms being perhaps the most usual during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and lasting even into the early eighteenth among good speakers. The E. Midland « for i occurs in Phelip, wreton (P. P.), to wete ' to know ', euyll, &c. M.E. -er- is generally 88 THE ENGLISH OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY so written, but we find warres, smarting, parill ' peril '. This feature, as has been said (p. n), is probably S.E. or E. Midland in origin, and probably got into London at this period, with increasing frequency, from the latter area. On the whole Caxton's English is distinctly more Midland in character than Chaucer's. We have unfortunately no means of testing whether O.E. «* had the Southern or Midland sound. His type of London English is distinctly of the Eastern brand, and nearer to that of Norfolk than of Kent or Essex, and still farther from the pure Southern of Surrey. With regard to Caxton's use of the London dialect, there are two interesting points to be noted. One is that he tells us in one of his Prefaces (to his translation of the Aeneid, 1482) that he hesitates, he ■•^ ' stands abasshed ' what form to use, which implies two things, first that Caxton did not naturally write without taking thought, as Fortescue or Shillingford did, in London English, and secondly, (and this follows from the first) that he did not habitually use the type of English in ordinary speech. The other point is that in the Preface to the Histories of Troy, he tells us that when he had finished this translation, he sTiowed it to ' my most redoubted Lady My Lady Margaret ' Duchess of Bur- gundy, ' sister unto the King of England and of France, my sovereign lord ' (Edward IV). ' Her good grace ' having seen the work ' anon she found a default in my English which she commanded me to amend' . It would be interesting to know on what ground this ' right high excellent and right virtuous princess ' found fault. Was it that she objected to the style ? (as well she might if she wanted an easy and flowing narrative). Or did she disapprove of Caxton's dialect? If the latter, it might mean either that he at first wrote in his native dialect, or that, having attempted the Court form of English, there were still too many broad provincialisms for a ' woman of her fashion '. This may well have been so, for in the same Preface Caxton says that he was born and learnt his English in Kent, in the Weald, ' where I doubt not is spoken as broad and rude English as in any place of England '. Another statement of Caxton's (Preface to Transl. of Aeneid) is worth recording. It is to the effect that the English used — he does not say where — ^when he wrote, was very different from that in use when he was born. Does this mean that English as a whole underwent a somewhat rapid change between 1422 or so and 1475 or so ? Or does it refer only to the London dialect, and mean that the dialectal elements had come to be differently distributed, and in different relative proportion, during that period.' We have no proof of the former ; in fact, there is every reason to think that English was developing then, as always, gradually and normally. As for the latter possibility, we do know that the E. Midland elements were gaining ground to the suppression of the Southern elements. The following dialogue from Jason is typical of the kind of talk which fills the volume. It is ' genteel ' to a fault, and so frigid and remote from reality, that it is quite unconvincing as a specimen of real colloquial English. It is certain that people did not speak to each other in this strain, even in the fifteenth century. Compare it with much of the dialogue in the Canterbury Tales, and the artificiality is felt to be not of an age only, but of all time. Caxton's style, when he tries the grand CAXTON'S STYLE : OFFICIAL ENGLISH 89 manner, is as bad as Euphues at its worst, except that Lyly sometimes drops his mannerisms, and makes his characters talk like human beings, which Caxton never does. Poor illiterate, stammering Edmond de la Pole, with his ' I strest my lord my cosen vele remember my goot hart that I have had — as not to leev me her as a man leftf ', touches us far more than the icy and mincing heroics of Caxton. From Caxton's History of Jason, from the French of Raoul Le Fevre, p. 82 (Furnival's Ed.), line 24, &c. Whan^ thenne she apperceyuyd that Jason retomed vn to his logyyng at thrs time she wente agaynst him and toke him by the hand and lad him into one of her chambres. where she shewd to him grete partie of her richesses and tresours. And after she saide to him in this manere Right noble and valiant knight all thise richesses ben alle onely at your commandement and also my body wyth all. wherof I make now to you the ghifte and present Ander furthermore I haue nothing of valeur but that ye shal haue at your abandon and will to thende that I may deserue honourably your grace. Thenne when the preu lason had vnderstande this that sayd is. he ansuerde to the lady sayng My dere lady I thanke you right humbly of your curtoysye And I declare vnto you that in no facion I haue deseruyd the hye honour that ye presente to me. Ha a gentill knight saide thenne the lady, hit is well in your power for to deserue all if it be your plaisir. In goode trouble madame ansuerde thenne lason if ther be ony seruice or plaisire that I may do vnto you I com- mande ye it and I shal accomplisshe hit frely and with goode herte. ' How fair sire ' sayd she thenne. ' wil ye accomplisshe my commande- ment.' ' Certes madame ' sayd he ' I shal not faile in no point if hit be to me possible. And ther fore declare ye to me your good playsyr and desire. And after that ye shall parceyue howe I shall employe my self therto. But enough of this. The next document of which we give a specimen is an account of the way to carry an English king to his tomb. Its meaning is clear and unambiguous, and its style perfectly business-like. It is an admirable example of an o£SciaI document of the period and of the type of London English in which these were written. The phonology and accidence are curiously like our own, and almost the only form which calls for remark is shilde ' shield ', which represents a Southern type as distinct from the Midland M.E. sheelde, from which our present form is derived. It will ; be noted that the -« of the Pres. PI. and of the Inf. of Verbs is entirely i absent. Funeral of Edward the Fourth (14S3). Here foloith the Ordenances which shalbe done in the observaunce at the deth and buryall of a annoynted king. When that a king annoynted ys deceassed, after his body spurged, it most be washed and clensed by a bishop for his holy annoyntment. Then the body must be bamed if it may be goton, and wrapped in lawne or raynes, then hosen, shertes, and a pair of shone of redde lether, and do over hym his surcote of clothe, his cap of estate over his hede, and then laie hym on a faire burde covered with clothe of gold, his one hand upon his bely, and a septur in the other hand, and on his face a kerchief and so shewid to his nobles by the space of ij dayes and more if the weder will it suffre. And when he may not goodly lenger endure, take hym away, 90 THE ENGLISH OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY and bowell hym and then eftsones bame hym, wrappe hym in raynes well trameleS in cordis of silke, then in tartryne trameled, and then in velvet, and then in clothe of gold well trameled; and then lede hym' and coffre hym, and in his lede with hym a plait of his still, name and date of our, &c. And if ye care'' hym, make a ymage like hym, clothed in a surcote with mantil of estat, the laices goodly lyeng on his bely, his septur in his hand and his crown on his hede, and so carry him in a chair opon, with lightes and baners, accompanyed with lordys and estates as the counsaill can best devyse, havyng the horse of that chair traped with dyvers trapers, or els with blacke trapers with scochons richely beten and his officers of armes abowt hym in his cottes of armes. And then a lord or a knyght with a courser traped of his armes upon hym, his salet or basnet on his hede crowned, a shilde, and a spere, tyll he come to his place of his entring.' And at masse the same to be offered by noble princes. [The rest of this very interesting document consists of an account of f' the rites observed at the funeral of King Edward IV.] Naturally, so brief an extract does not give quite a complete picture of the language of the period, and we will therefore conclude our examina- tion of ofiBcial London English with some particulars of two documents already mentioned — (i) the Creation of Henry Duke of York a Knight of the Bath (1494), and (2) the Beception of Catherine of Aragon (1501). In the following account notice is chiefly taken of points in which the above documents differ from present-day usage, or of those in which, while agreement exists with our present speech, it is interesting to find so early. As regards vowel sounds, M.E. -er- generally survives as such, even in cases where we now have the -ar- or some other type ; thus No. I has sergent, swerde, kerved, kerver ' carved ', &c., werke, but No. 2 has, on the other hand, Barmondsey, warning. O.E._^ is represented on the whole as at the present time, except yS i. e. put him in a casket of lead. ' carry. » interment. SKELTON'S ENGLISH 91 PI. Inflexional syllables very constantly have i orj> — Ayitgt's (Possess.), acti's (PI.), purposithe, fairyst (Superl.), hrokyn (P. P.). The consonant r was probably still strongly trilled in the middle of words before consonants, to judge by the spelling therell = ' the earl ', which suggests a pronuncia- tion like that heard from Scotchmen at the present day. Such are the main points which call for remark in these typical docu- ments, and we see that the distribution of dialect elements is approaching that of our own day. A few words should perhaps be said upon the language of literature proper at the close of the century, and we may take John Skelton's Magnyfycence as typical. Although Skelton lived until 1529, he must be regarded as a fifteenth-century poet. Few people read Skelton nowa- days except Professors of Literature, not even those wh6 attend their lectures, nor perhaps ever will again. ' Beastly Skelton Heads of tlouses quote ', said Pope, and this line — probably untrue in Pope's day, and an absurdity in our own — has possibly helped to preserve the poet's very name from decent oblivion, though the curious may have noted, tucked away in histories of English poetry, the couplet For though the dayes be nevir so long At last the belles ringeth to evensong, 1 which is worth remembering as expressing a thought that has been ex- pressed a hundred times in as many different ways, and also because it contains a Pres. PI. in -th. Skelton's English as represented by Magny- fycence, written about 151 6, is by no means uninteresting from our present point of view. It igj^tbe Southern^type of London English of the period, and exhibits that individuality in the use of dialectal elements which characterized the speech of cultivated persons, who were yet not provincials, at the end of the fifteenth century and much later. While in the main the language conforms pretty closely to the official London dialect, we find occasional divergencies from this. Thus praiy ' pretty ' preserves the Southern form of O.E. ae', shortened to &, and then becom- ing a, instead of the Midland of South-East «, the Southern wokys 'weeks' (W. Sax. wucu, fr. weocu), the Southern herdely ' hardly' with e, fr. O.E. heard, hserd, which in Midland became hard (cf, p. 33, No. i) ; the archaic Southern iche for 'I' Pers. Pron. ; the Southern prefix_y- in the P. Y.ywet, storm ybeten, and the Pres. PI. in -th—your chkes smelly th musty. On the other hand, the typical present-day distribution of 1" and e in mery, mirth, bysy (also besy), and i also in lyther O.E. lyper ' bad ' ; the Eastern * for i in glettering, and the occasional use of E. Midland -ys in the 3rd Sing. Pres. — lokys 'looks', reeky s 'reeks', by the side of the usual -yth, &c. These -s forms, which were all but unknown among the best London writers — and speakers — for nearly another hundred years, except when used in mid-sixteenth century and after, to save a syllable in verse, may have got into the poet's language at Cambridge. Skelton has, for the time, a fair number of -ar- spellings for M.E. -er-, and rhymes which indicate that he pronounced -ar- sometimes when he does not write it — harde 'heard' V.^., harte, swarue ' sv/eive', dark, barkeVh., but also herde,ferther, herke ' hark ' ; further enferre ' infer ' rhyming with > This couplet, which is by Stephen Hawes, is wrongly attributed to Skelton here. 92 THE ENGLISH OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY debarre, and herk rhyming with clarke. This peculiarity, already frequently alluded to as occurring in other writers, becomes more and more common in London English from the beginning of the second half of the century, and probably started in Kent and Essex. An interesting example of it in Magnyfycence occurs in the phrase — All is outofkarre, where the last word is from O.E. heorra ' hinge ', M.E. Aerre. The phrase means ' the times are out of joint ', and the idiom is exactly equivalent to the French Aors \ \ des gonds. In inflexional syllables Skelton makes frequent use of -ys, -yth, -yd, which, as we have seen, were before this time becoming characteristic of London English, as they have remained so of the Received Standard type of pronunciation to the present time. We shall conclude this survey of fifteenth-century English with an account of the language of Gregory's Chronicle. Some few particulars have already been given of William Gregory (p. 64). As to the work itself, it may have been completed somewhere about 1470, since it was continued after Gregory's death in 1467. The MS., according to Mr. Gairdner, is all in one hand, and that certainly of the fifteenth century. In some ways this work is the most interesting for our purpose of all those referred to in this chapter. It has an air of unstudied natural- ness about its forms and style, and we may take it to represent pretty faithfully the ordinary everyday speech of the better Middle Classes of London, comparable to that of Machyn about a hundred years later, but representing probably the English of a social couche superior to his, if distinctly below the standard of the Court. It is the most considerable document of its kind belonging to this age, and gives an extensive picture of colloquial speech in the Metropolis. The vowel system agrees on the whole with that of other London documents of the period, but certain features are more strongly marked than in other London documents. While from Gregory's origin we might expect the E. Midland elements to be very strongly represented, to the exclusion of most of the typically Southern, as a matter of fact, although the former element is quite definitely present, some very interesting Southern features also occur. This rather leads one to the opinion that 'the presence of the Eastern characteristics is not primarily due to 'Gregory's Suffolk birth, but to the fact that they were in use in the Middle Class London speech of the time, rather more frequendy than in that of the superior ranks. In other words, Gregory wrote the genuine London English of the class among whom he lived, and not a form modified by Suffolk dialect. Had he done the latter, he would hardly have made use of Southernisms which he could not have known from his native dialect, but which were in use in London. To begin with O.E. y, Gregory has comparatively few «-forms, and these are all known to have been in use in genuine London English — berriyd, sitryd 'stirred', lesely, and evylk, which, however, may be differently explained (p. 207). The j-forms greatly predominate — first, bylde, lyfie ' left ' (hand), byryd, syche ' such ', schyite (Pret.) • shut ', lytylle. There are but few »-forms — buryd, suche, muche, brusyd ' bruised '. I The M.E, combination -er- is written -ar- more frequently than in any I, other London text of this time, that I have examined — warn 'war', Wparkelty, star re, sargent, clargy, marcy, sartayne 'certain', sarmon, GREGORY'S PRONUNCIATION 93 sarvyce; but, on the other hand, -er- is also well represented — werre 'war', /erme 'farm', sterre, erthe, derke, herie, Clerkynwelle, ferther, kervyr ' carver ', Colde Herborowe, person == ' parson '. We know that the -ar- forms were coming into official London English about the middle of the fifteenth century, and that nearly all writers have some, but even at the end of the century they are not so frequent in any other document, official or literary, as here, and the Suffolk Wills of the third quarter of the century have but few, which is evidently due to the influence of official London English. We find more in the Paston Letters and the Ceiy Papers, and we are justified, I think, in regarding sarmon, &c., as having , started in the South-East andE. Midlands, and having passed into London through Lower and Middle Class English, of which they became a characteristic feature. Another feature found in nearly all London docu- ments to some extent, but peculiarly typical of the East (see Bokenam, Marg. Paston, Cely Papers, &c.), is e for i, but probably no other London document has so many of these spellings as Gregory. Of those which may be long we have^^r«o«, levyd ' lived ', wefe ' know ', lemytyd, levyn (Inf.) ' live ', letany, leverqys ' liveries ', wedowe, petefullyste, rever ' river ' ; almost certainly short are schelyngys 'shillings', pejon 'pigeon', pelory, denyr. Chekyns may come under this group, but may also be differently ; explained. The following interesting Southern forms occur: — dradde (P. P.), radde (Pret.), which are both found in Chaucer, praty ' pretty ', where a is a shortened O.E. »' (cf. p. 29(1); 33 (2)). Further : — schylde ' shield ',yldyste ' eldest ', sylle * to sell ', where we have the representations of Southern sa'eld, {eldest, siellan (cf. p. 35 (7)). Before -ng and -nch e becomes i: — Inglond, Kyngs Bynche, both of which words, however, also occur written with the traditional e. A curious Westernism occurs in schute ' shoot ' O.E. sceotan, which is found at least twice (cf. p. 34 (4)). The typical Eastern form is found in Scheter Hylle ' Shooter's Hill '. The combination -an- is often written -on-, not only before nd, mb, ng, which lengthe'nedt he vowel — lond, stonde, lombe ' lamb ', stronge, hongyd, longage ' language ', but also in /Aonie ' thanks ', ihonkyd ' thanked '. "The -an- spellings are also found--— ^;^^^, lambe, and land. The new pronuncia- tion of M.E. e is expressed by t and y : — h're ' hear ', Atrde ' heard ', dyre ' dear ', stypylle ' steeple ' (which may possibly be a Southernism for O.E. y (i?)), slyvys ' sleeves '. It is possible that the spellings becheler 'bachelor', usper 'jasper ',/elhem 'fathom ', indicate that M.E. a had already under- gone the modern shifting. Passing to consonants, we find loss of consonants in Brahan for ' Brabant ', Edwar the iiij for ' Edward ', Wanysday ' Wednesday ', halpeny, sowdyer 'soldier', Raffe 'Ralph*, Fattconbrygge, sepukyr ' sepulchre ', and Westmyster, a very common form here, and in other documents. A final consonant is added in patent ' paten ', losste ' loss ' ; n is intercalated in massynger, earlier messager, where we have kept the «. Old -ht- has become -ft- in unsoffethe ' unsought '. Initial wh is written w- in were/ore, weie ' wheat ', wile ' while '. Final -tA is once written/" in Lambeffe ' Lambeth '. The sound r was evidently lost before -S-, as is shown by the spellings mosselle ' morsel ', Ferys of Groby = ' Ferrers '. Final -ng appears as -n in blasyn sterre ' comet ', hayryn ' herring '. Interchange of v and w occurs in wery ' very ', and Prynce 94 THE ENGLISH OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY of Valys = ' Wales '. The Southern initial v- for /- occurs in a valle 'a fair. -t- between vowels is sometimes written -d- : — radyfyde, depudyd, dal- madyke. This records a genuine pronunciation which we later find de- scribed by writers on pronunciation, and regarded as a Cockney vulgar- ism. Other instances of the same process — voicing between vowels — are given (pp. 3 1 2-13). Rounding of a after v occurs in Syn Volantynys. In unstressed syllables Gregory shows the same tendency to put i ox y in flexional syllables which we have noted in all the London writings of this period, and in many others as well. He also reduces vowels and diphthongs generally in this position. Thus, for M.E. ei in seint he writes Syn before a personal name — Syn Lenarde, Syn John, where the stress falls on the name. He writes e in the second syllable of M.E. felow ' fellow ' in felechype. Unstressed syllables are sometimes lost altogether — cylsyns ' citizens ', unt hym ' unto him '. French « or ui [y\ is unrounded when unstressed : — comeners, comyners, condytte ' conduit*, contymacy ' contumacy '. Turning to the Accidence, Strong Nouns either take the PI. suffix ■ys — namys, howsys, eggys, Ireys, Sec, or merely -s — strangers; the only Wk. Pis. I have noted are oxyn and schone ' shoes '. Irregulars are kyne ' cows ', wemmen, bretheryn ; mutated forms— ^/f, tethe. Nouns expressing measure in time and space are frequently unaltered in the PI. — viijyere, iij fate, nijfethem ; also some old Neuters — hors, swyne, alle ihynge, schippe, sheppe ' sheep '. The Possessive Sing, of Nouns is commonly formed with the suffix -ys — kyngys, &c., or with -s alone — waterier ers ; another very common form in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, very frequent in I iGregory, is the addition of the separate particle _j'j after the Noun — Synt \ XEdmonde ys Bury, &c. This was doubtless the ordinary Possessive suffix in origin, but was frequently (or always) identified with the weak (unstressed) form of the Possessive Pronoun, and indeed is often written hys, his just as we still have it in our Prayer 'Book— for Jesus Christ his sake, &c. That this is a new formation, based upon the absolute identity in sound of the unstressed Possessive of the Pres. Pronoun {K)ys, and the Possessive suffix, is shown by such phrases — very common in all colloquial writingrs — as Jthe queene ys moder, side by side with the Queenys party. In group constructions this detached j'j is often used in the fifteenth century, and Gregory has my lorde ofWarwycke ys brother. Note the phrase fio schoo apon no man ys fate. When we should now inflect the group by adding the Possessive 's to the last word, e. g. the Duke of Norfolk's daughter, Gregory uses such constructions as the dukys daughter of Northefolke, or the lord^wyffe Nevyle 'Lord Nevil's wife'. The Possessive in -ys can be used absolutely — a cepture in hys hand of the quenys. Finally, we may mention the uninflected Possessives — on which see at length pp. 316-18 — which may be old Feminines such as Mary Mavdelyn Evyn, or old weak Pis. in -» as in Alle Halowe day, A frequent con- struction at this period is the expression of quantity without either inflexion or preposition between the two nouns, as every sacke wolle, which is like the German etn sack wolle, ein glas wasser, &c. The following forms of the Pers. Pronouns may be mentioned. The Possess. Sing, of the 3vd Pers. Sing. Masc. is very commonly written ys GRAMMATICAL FEATURES IN GREGORY 95 when unstressed — the Prynce was jugge (judge) ys owne sylfe, which is the natural pronunciation to-day, and is found recorded as early as the thirteenth century at least. The Neut. Sing, is generally J4y^ The 3rd PI. is Nom. l>ey, they, and the unstressed form the; Possess, hir, hyr, here, and (rarely) there; the Dat. and Ace. is generally -hem, with the weak form em — ax of em that felde (felt) the strokys, and, rarely, them. In the PL of the 2nd Pers._y« and you are kept distinct, the former being kept for the Nom., the latter for the oblique cases. The Relative Pronoun ' who ' is occasionally written hoo, and the Dat. and. Ace. home, showing thatw was not pronounced; the Gen., however, is written jji^flt according to the traditional spelling. There is in Gregory, as in several other fifteenth- century texts, a Dat. wham which must be an unstressed form with early shortening of the vowel in O.E. hwam. The now extinct PI. Demonstr. thoo ' those ', fr. O.E. pa the PI. of Def. Art., is frequent, also thasse,, . The Indef. Art. is a, which is often used in this century and later before \ words beginning with vowels — a Englyssche squyer. The emphatic oon, ' and, before cons., 00 ' a single, one ', are used as in M.E. The M.E. form everychone ' every one ' occurs, divided every chone. The now obsolete or vulgar who som evyr still survives. The Pres. Sing, of Vbs. ends in -yth; the PI. has commonly -yn, belevyn, deputyn, folowyn, &c., occasionally -e as hehote 'they promise', and at least once -yth(e), longythe. The Inf. very commonly retains the ending -en, or more usually -yn—procedyn, ben, beryn, setten, settynne, Sec, sometimes loses the -n as in to saye, to speke, &c. The forms answery, ymageny look ratherlite survivals of the old Southern Inf. (see p. 37 (16)). The prefix i- is occasionally used both in Weak and Strong P. P.'s — i-callyd, i-halowyde, igeve ' given ', i-knowe ' known ', &c. The ending of the P. P. in Strong Vbs. has both -yn and -e, the latter being perhaps more frequent — drawe and drawyn, geoe and gevyn, smete and smetyn, Jbunde a.ii&foundyn, &c., &c. At least one use of the prefix 2- occurs in the Pret. isot^ 'sang'. The old distinction between Pret. Sing, and PL seems to have vanished with the exception oifauht (Sing.) ' fought ', Vl. fought. So far as I can see, the type of the Pret. used in both Sing, and PL is that of the Singular, even more generally than at the present day, and not that of the P. P., so that Gregory and his contemporaries use bare, brake, bote ' bit ', and not bore, broke, bit, on the model of the P. P. As regards Auxiliary and Irregular Vbs., drust (with metathesis) is the Pret. of dare, ' shall ' has schalle in Sing., and both shulle and shalle in the PL ; ar is used as well as ben{e) in the PL Pres. of ' to be ' ; may retains the old PL rmmien as in Chaucer ; the Pret. of can is still couthe, the / not yet occurring in the spelling. The Pret. of ' to go ' is the archaic j/Mfe and_y5afe (O.E. ge-eode). A few piu-ases and constructions may be noted. ' On the morning of Candlemas day ' is rendered on Candylmasday in the mornynge, which to us is strongly reminiscent of the Christmas carol ' There were three ships came sailing by '. The old habit of putting one adjective before a noun and the other 1 after, where used predicatively, which with us survives only in a few 1 fossilized phrases — ' a good man and true ' — is seen in a pesabylle yere and \ a plentefulle. 96 THE ENGLISH OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY I have gone thus into detail concerning the language of Gregory, because his Chronicle appears to be a very genuine record of how people actually spoke in the middle of the fifteenth century, more so than any other London document we possess. The picture gives rise in our minds to both kinds of surprise referred to on p. 71. We are alternately astonished at finding certain pronunciations and forms so early in use, and amazed at the survival of so many archaisms. Gregory may well *■ be said to stand at the parting of the ways between the new and the old. In some ways he is more archaic than the classical language of Literature or of official writings, and in others he appears more modern. It is probable that the latter impression is largely due to the fact that his unstudied spelling and style reveal more of the truth regarding con- temporary speech. On the other hand, it must be remembered that he represents a social class different from any we have hitherto examined except the Celys, who are definitely provincials. It is often urged as a merit of popular and dialect speech at the present day by its votaries, that it is more conservative of ancient forms than Received Standard English, but this is a one-sided view. Vulgar, popular, and Regional speech may each and all preserve certain ancient features which Good English has lost, but that is not the whole truth. They have also lost other features which the latter has preserved. The fact is that innovations are found in all forms of English, but they are not the same innovations ; all forms of English likewise preserve certain old features, but they have not all preserved the same features. Gregory's value for us is none the less that he is the chief example, in the fifteenth century, of the Middle Class English of the capital. Doubtless the 'redoubted princess' who found fault with Caxton's parts of speech would have been equally down on Gregory'; but whereas Caxton ' amended ' his English, Gregory did not, for which we may be duly thankful. Caxton's English is a less true picture of the speech of his time than Gregory's because he slavishly copied the scribes, and apparently the scribes of an earlier day than his own. The result is that Caxton is in many important respects farther from the Spoken English of to-day than Gregory. Many of the latter's vulgarisms have become current even in the politest form of English, while much of Caxton's ' correctness ' was obsolete in his own day in any form of English whatsoever. We have now surveyed Literary English and London English from Chaucer to Skelton, and have glanced at some of the provincial forms during the same period. We may draw this long chapter to a close with an attempt to sum- marize the main general results which emerge from our examination. Already fairly early in the century, it is evident from the occasional spellings of the less conventional writers that the Middle EngUsh accented vowels have started upon that series of changes which has led to our present-day pronunciation. The vowels of unstressed syllables have been still further ' reduced ' since the weakenings which took place in Late O.E. and Early Middle English. We notice, on the one hand, a variety of tentative methods of expressing these vowels, which points at least to an obscuration of the earlier sound, and on the other a certain consistency, which points to ' reduction ' in a definite direction. TWO TYPES OF LONDON ENGLISH 97 Certain typical Modern alterations in the pronnnciation of consonants are observable. Turning to the question of Regional dialect and the Standard Language, it is clear from many indications that Regional dialect was still spoken, more or less by all classes. In the written language, we find an extendedJise_of_the_I^don_cUalect^in both private and official documents; but during the first three quarters of the century at least, the local and natural dialect of the writer breaks out here and there, in documents which conform on the whole to the London type. On the other hand, there is room for surprise that a quarter of a century before the introduction of printing, the Devonian Shillingford should allow his native speech to show itself so little in his letters, while the other and more important Devonian Sir John Fortescue has broken away completely from Regional dialect. In the early part of the century several works of Literature proper, both in prose and verse, preserve with very fair consistency the Regional dialect of the writers. As regards the character of the London dialect, fast becoming the recognized vehicle for all EngUsh which was written down, the South- Eastern, and especially the E. Midland, elements gain an increasing ascendancy, though many typically Southern features, or scattered forms derived from the purely Southern type of English, still linger. It seems that we can distinguish among the documents written in London at least two types of dialect — an Easterly and a more Southerly type. It is evident that both'Types were accepted and recognized in the speech of London itself, and poets (e.g. Skelton) found it convenient to avail them- selves of a latitude in the distribution of forms from both of these types, fully as great as that enjoyed by Chaucer. This latitude makes it difficult to assert that a given form which is clearly E. Midland in origin was not current in some type of London speech, atid it is probable that few of the typical Easternisms which we find in Lydgate would strike a Londoner of the period as strange. Thus the precise Regional dialect constituents of London English were not finally fixed in their present proportion and distribution during the fifteenth century, nor indeed for some time after the begiiming of the following century. As regards social dialect, while it is pretty certain that an upper and a lower class type of English were recognized, it is very difficult to be sure exactly where to draw the line. Some of the peculiarities of Gregory's English are undoubtedly described as London vulgarisms at a later date, but we cannot be quite sure that they were so felt at the time in which he wrote, since most, if not all of them, can be paralleled from the writings of persons far more highly placed than he. It may be said, however, that in Gregory we have a combination of peculiarities, which probably do not occur in the same mass, and with the same frequency, in writers of higher social status. The letters of Edmond de la Pole are not a fair sample of the speech of the higher English Nobility of his age, since they produce the impression of being written not only by a very ignorant man, but by one who has largely forgotten his native tongue, at any rate any decent method of putting it down on paper. Finally, we recognize the unsetded state of Literary and Standard Spoken English in the curious individualism which makes it necessary H 98 THE ENGLISH OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY to describe the peculiarities of so many separate writers. It is this, more than anything else, which makes us hesitate to claim for this century the existence of a definite Standard of Speech, or to say definitely where it is to be found. It would be interesting to know whether the conception of vulgarism in speech already existed, and if so, what particular vagaries ■were brought under this head, and by whom. No doubt there was a certain standard of ' correctness ', but this is quite different from the existence of an upper class dialect as distinct from a lower. We have quoted the rather vague statement of Caxton concerning the opinion which the Duchess of Burgundy took of his English, and have indicated that we may here have a hint of a social differentiation of speech, but this is quite uncertain. We have to wait till the following century for more definite evidence. After all, Gregory is our best hope if we ever expect to establish the existence of Class dialect at this period, meaning by the term a variety of London English, which may indeed have been partly Regional in origin, but which had come to be felt as an inferior variant of the language in vogue at the Court. CHAPTER IV THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE FROM HENRY VIII TO JAMES I Th^. sixt eenth ce ntury i s memorable for the student of the history of the languageTnot least, among many other reasons, because he now finds for the first time undoubtedevidence, in specific statement, of th^.. e^.- tence oLa^ standard of speec^.' The dialect^ ofj:he C ourt is definitely itated^toJmJhe^Bejt'for'm of English, the wTeTo De'^^tiired, and as far as possible to be usecTTn the writing of poetry, that is, for the highest possible purpose to which language can be put. During this century, too, English people began to think and write about their native language as a vehicle for literary creation. They dis- cussed at great length such questions as the fitness of English to be used for poetry ; the proper kind of vocabulary for a writer to use — whether ' old and homely ' native terms, or words derived from Latin — they dis- coursed much, and often tediously, upon the principles of English prosody ; they tried many experiments, some fortunate, such as those of Wyatt and Tusser, some dismal failures, such as those of Phaer or Stanyhurst, and some other ' painful furtherers of learning ' ; they thought much of prose style and played some strange pranks therewith ; they tried hard to amend and fix English spelling, and practically succeeded in the latter effort; lastly, they examined and attempted to describe the sounds of English speech. The. .accounts of -English pronuncia^tion which begin in this century opeiL.a new chapter in our investigations of the past history of our language, and one which from this time onward has to be taken into account. For the present writer it is a question open to discussion, though many will think this an impiety, whether this new source of in- formation has not been rather a curse than a blessing to English Philology, ^ and whether we have not been bamboozled for the last thirty or forty years by these early writers on English pronunciation, into all sorts of wrong ideas. But of this more later. We have said that definite references exist to a standard of English speech, to varieties, one of which is the best, while the others are to be avoided ; but this is not all, for it is distinctly suggested that there exist, and are recognized, not only Regional, but also Social varieties. And we are not left with mere statements of this fact ; we have a long docu- ment, the piarjr_qf_ Henry Maghyjij which is of priceless value in that it enshrines, not "a counterfeit presentment, such as we might find in comedies, of lower class speech, but the genuine thing, naturally and un- consciously set down "By a man who is obviously putting his own English on paper. We are fortunate in possessing many familiar letters of the H 2 TOO ENGLISH LANGUAGE FROM HENRY VIII TO JAMES I sixteenth century, which give a^picture of colloquial speech so far as this is possible in a written docuinent^ But none is perhaps so individual, or so abundant in revelations of the habits of speech of the writer and his class, as Machyn's Diary. It is true that many, perhaps most of the occasional spellings which we find so instructive in the writings of the diarist, can be matched from the letters of this period of persons of far higher rank, but the most characteristic peculiarities occur nowhere else so frequently, and some are not found at all among persons of more refinement and breeding. At any rate, the cumulative eflfect is consider- able, and leaves the impression of a distinct social dialect. We have plenty of material from which to estabBsIT a"compSffiSOn — letters from Henry VIII, Edward VI, Queens Mary and Elizabeth ; from great nobles such as Norfolk and Somerset; from statesmen like Cromwell and (■Burghley; ecclesiastics such as Wolsey, Latimer, Cranmer, Warham, Lee, and many others ; from courtier scholars like More, Ascham, and Sir Thomas Smith; from great merchants and men of affairs like Gresham ; from admirals and soldiers whose very names are enough to make any age illustrious, and whose deeds are among the chief glories of our race, such as Howard and Drake, Sydney and Raleigh. All these famous persons reveal in their letters certain individualities of origin, while conforming, in the main features, to the common well-bred English of the time. They all had opportunities, in varying degree it is true, of acquiring the Court form of English of their age, and many of their varieties are due, doubtless, to the different native dialects upon which the Court English was grafted. Machyn, however, is in a class apart ; his English is almost as different from that of the Courtiers as is the dialect of Robert of Brunne from that of Trevisa. To come to closer quarters, we may ask. What are the chief general characteristics of sixteenth-century Enjjlishj'^ The first point to be mentioneH is that Regional dialect disappears completely from the written language of the South and Midlands; both from Literature proper, and from private letters and documents. We shall look in vain in poetry for such distinctive Regional character as we saw in Bokenam in the preceding century, or in private letters, for even such slight traces of Regional influence as we found in Shillingford's letters. We are able at most to point here and there to a feature — generally connected with grammatical forms — which we may attribute to the writer's native county. On the other hand, while the literary dialect is in a fair way to being fixed, and while in private documents which reflect more faithfiiUy the colloquial conditions, and in works of literature, both prose and verse, where the language is more studied and deliberate, considerable, though by no means absolute, uniformity in the distribution of dialect elements is found, we discover a host of those revealing occasional spellings which, as we saw, were fairly common in the fifteenth-century documents. Evidence of the sort which we exhibited in the previous chapter, for the occurrence of certain sound changes in the fifteenth century, is confirmed abundantly, and is much larger in quantity in the age of Henry VIII and Elizabeth. Almost every private letter, and many literary works, contain a certain number of spellings which throw light upon pronunciation, and UNITY OF SPOKEN AND OF LITERARY ENGLISH loi it is evident that even at the Court such tendencies as that which added an 'excrescent' consonant at the end of words, e.g. for the nonnest ' nonce ', orfihan i ' grghaui^', vilde ' vile ', and so on, were certainly current among all speatersTTrom Queen Elizabeth herself downwards. It is rather important to point out that the same variety of spellings, by which is meant spellings which throw light on actual pronunciation, the same kind of fluctuation in the distribution of dialect types, and the same diversity in grammatical forms are found in printed books, whether prose or poetry, and that in the works by the most accomplished writers, as are to be noted in private, familiar, and more or less hastily written letters. We might attribute these 'slips' in the latter class of documents to the care- lessness of individual writers, but when the same kind of ' slip ' occurs again and again in letters written by very different kinds of persons, we are bound to infer that these ' slips ' in writing represent realities in uttered speech, and linguistic habits that were very widespread. When we further meet with the same peculiarities, both in speUing and in gram- matical forms, again and again in printed books, we must be convinced that the literary language is not a phenomenon apart, having an exis- tence independent of the spoken language, but that the former is in very deed identical with the latter, and reflects its various and changing character. This intimate relation between the highest tj^pe of colloquial English j and the English of literature cannot be too strongly insisted upon. The ' tongue which Shakespeare spake ' was the tongue which he wrote ; the makers of Elizabethan English as we know it in the imperishable literature of the period, were the men, illustrious and obscure, who were also making English history, that is, who were living and fighting; sailing strange seas, and discovering new worlds ; rufSing at Court, or deliberating in the councils of Church and of the State ; conferring and negotiating abroad with princes and prelates, and often, at the last, going ' darkling down the torrent of their fate', and dying joyfully and gaily, like Christian gentlemen, on the battle-field or ' the deck, which was their ' field of fame', or, by some strange reverse of fortune, by a no less splendid death upon the scaffold or at the stake. This unity of .the^coUoquJaL language and the language of literature will he illustrated later on, but as immediate proof that features which we should now consider .'vulgarisms', or too slipshod everi for -colloquial use, were in the sixteenthxentury current in Court English, and that they find their way into works of first-rate literary importance, we may mention that such features occur in Lord Berners' translation of Froissart, in Sir Thos. Elyot's Gouernour, in Bp.Latimer'sSermons before Edward VI, in Edward VI's First Prayer Book, in the works of Roger..,^cham, in Ljd}!, both in his dramas and in Euphues, that model of propriety in language, and in the First Folio of Shakespeare. These are the works of only a few writers from among the many that might be mentioned, but between them they cover practically the whole of the sixteenth century, and the ^thors must all be assumed to have been conversant with the English of the Court. These writers were all scholars as well as courtiers, but they are no less prone to introduce into their books, colloquialisms of the tj^ of sarmmi VS^^phant, and many others, than are the less bookish admirals I02 ENGLISH LANGUAGE FROM HENRY VIII TO JAMES I and men of business of the period to put these things into their private letters. It is thus clear that, the standards of refinement which in a later day forbade such forms to speech and writing alike, were unknown to some of the best scholars well acquainted, between them, with the standards of speech at every Court from Henry VIII to Elizabeth. The English of the sixteenth century, both in the printed works and in private letters, still shpws__considerabJe dialectal individualism. The Standard, as we have said, is not yet completely fixed. While the more pronounced features of Regional dialect are absent, there remains con- siderable variety of usage among writers belonging approximately to the same social stratum. Since this variety is found both in published works of Literature and in private correspondence, we are entitled to argue that a rather large degree of latitude existed in the Standard Spoken English of the period, and that if we assume that the unstudied language of private letters gives a true picture of the actual speech of the writers, the variety in forms found in literary works is also an indication of the variety existing in speech, since the kind of variety found in Literary English is identical with that found in the private letters. When we are able to compare the private letters with the literary compositions of the same writer, as for instance is possible in the case of Queen Elizabeth herself, we find that the distinctive features are the same in both. This circumstance is a further proof of the identity of the EngUsh of Literature with the Spoken Standard of the Court. Considerable latitude of usage, we have said, is tolerated in both, and the same kind of latitude. We shall later study in more detail, the variety upon which we are insisting, but we may briefly indicate some of the points at once. First, there are different types of pronunciation in the same words : — e. g. hide, teste ; than and then ; whan and when ; give and giv{e^ ; sowne and sound; bankeite and banquet; fader and father; moder and mother; stop and stap; hott, hoate, and what 'hot'; which spellings show-(i) a pronunciation similar to that of the present day, {2) one with a long vowel, (3) one with a short vowel but with an initial w ox wh; one (pro- nounced as now in on-\y) ; wone (pronounced, as one is now, with an initial W-); othe and wothe ; other and wother ; earth and year th. Finally, we may mention the remarkable variety in the distribution of - Vowels. M.E. er is so spelt in ferther, Herre ' Harry ', ferre ' far ', kervers ' carvgrs ', sterre (chamber), _/&rw« ' farm ', herd ' hard '. It is written -ar- in warres, darknes, hard 'heard' (more frequent than herd), harold ' herald ', marre, parells ' perils '. Southern er for O.E. -eard, &c., appears in {wood)yerd, smert ' smart '. O.E. y appears in all forms: — myche, kychen, myrtle; such, busynes, busylie; stere ' stir '. ^t ' shut '. The old combination -a»i^ or. -o»^ has the latter form in Eylond, landed, Umdyng. e for i occurs in open syllables : — in sus^gn^on, prevye, shreven P. P., delygence ; in a close syllable : — in sence ' since '. The following words, to judge by the spelling, show shortening of the vowel before two consonants in Bridwell, Flet Street, backhowse ' bakehouse ' ; and in close syllables before f, in ttrett ' street ', botts 12 2 ENGLISH LANGUAGE FROM HENRY VIII TO JAMES I ' boats', sweti. Among isolated forms may be noted wyry for ' wherry ' (see similar form as regards vowel, in Latimer), faft' left ', thether, whan, than, 'when, then', yearthely 'earthly', a common form in the period (cf. the rst and 2nd Prayer Books of Edward VI, &c.), and the interesting spelling Guees for Guise, which shows that ee stood for the same sound as at present. The spelling strayngers (very common) may either indicate a real diphthong surviving from M.E. before -ng- [ndz] or that ay and a both had the same sound, which is more probable. Unstressed Syllables. ^ The inflexional endings havp' very commonly -*-: — horssis, crossts; extendyih; commendyd, provi^d; hosyn, rysyn 'risen', Sc. -«', ai become e or i: — chapplens, councell, certyn, ther 'thsii', palice. The ' murmur vowel ' for et is probably indicated by the spelling curtosye. Old oi appears as -a- in iurkhas ' turquoise '. ^ pronunciation identical with that of the present day is indicated, in orrynge ' orange '. Unstressed -a- is written i in ambassiter ; French u is t or e, cf. volup- tious, somptious, mmptiously, commynicacwun, commen Vb. ' commune '. The endings -en, -on, -in are evidently levelled under a single sound to judge by the varying spellings — opeyn ' open ', tokyn ' token ', cusshons, cusshens, latten 'Latin', waggans 'wagons'. These spellings rather suggest a ' syllabic -n ', as in present-day button, in all these words — that is, for all vowels + « finally. ' Consonants. gh before t had no longer any sound, or it could not have been written, as we have already seen in these or similar words, in whight ' white ', therabought, to wright ' write '. wh- had the sound of w- as at present in the South of England, and the spelling is confused in ixye ' why ', where ' wear '. The ' fronted ' or ' palatalized ' type of O.E. i occurs in archebysshop- riche, bisshopriche. French -qu- is pronounced k in btmketts. " The metathesized form axed ' asked ' is used. * The old form Putnethe occurs twice on the same page, but Putng/ two pages earlier. The spelling Pumfrett ' Pontefract ' shows a pronunciation which still survives, though perhaps now obsolescent. Hankyng ' hanging ' suggests a pronunciation still heard in provincial English. / is lost before / in vaughtyng ' vaulting ', which form also shows the 'gk ' had no sound. k is lost in combination with other consonants in Worsopp ' Worksop ' ; b is lost after / in tremlyng ' trembling '. On the other hand, d is already added after -« in roundyng in the eare, earlier rowne-. Initial h- is omitted in the French-Latin word armonye ' harmony '. Initial h- is never written wh- (apparently) as by many writers of this period : — hole ' whole '. GEORGE CAVENDISH 123 ITouns. Nouns ending in 3/^ generally keep this before the Possessive suffix in the Singular: — selfs. Before the PL suffix •/-sometimes remains, as '\Tilyfs,bea£e_s^; but sometimes becomes »: — staves. T'he »-forms some- times occur in the uninflected cases — love 'loaf, on hys lyve. Weak Pis. :— ^ojyw^Miose ', Allhall^day (twice). Invariable Pis. '.^xv/oote thyke ; vi of the teste horse. Irregular Pis. : — childeme, brethern. Uninflected Possess. Sing. : — Our lady mattens (old Fem.) ; my hart Mode. Group Possessives : — Kyng Herre the Vlllths sister ; Ayenst the Kyng and my lords commyng; my lord of Shrewsbutys servaunts ; therle 0/ Shrewsburyes (absolute) ; but the abbots of Westminster (absolute). Pronouns. The Neuter Sing. 3rd Pers. is hyt. The 2nd Vets. ye and you are used indifferently for the Norn., especially in addressing one person. "TEeTief. Art. elides the vowel before a following vowel : — therle, &c. Verbal Endings. The 3rd Pers. Sing. Present is almost universally -yth or -ith, but me semys occurs. The PI. generally has no ending, but the Southern -th occurs in them that hath. The Weak P. P. pact ' packed ' may be noted. Among Strong Verbal forms we may note geve instead of give, P. P. gevyn. The M.E. Prets. hild ' held ', fiU ' fell ', as in Chaucer, survive. The Prets. spake and spoke, sang, iiias/stiuds.', stale 'stole ', drove, and shew ' showed' (analogy of knew) may be noted, anlcf^he P. P. lyen ' lain ' (asln the Prayer Book) and shrevfft ' shriven ', Auxiliaries. The only points which call for mention are : — the P. P. byn ; was used in PI., walls whiche was ; wol ' will ' by the side of wyll. We now pass to consider the language of a far better known writer, namely Hugh Latimer (f. 1491-1555), so far as this can be gauged accurately from the versions of his sermons that have come down to us. The style is much more colloquial, and more touched with provincialisms than the other~works we have hitherto dealt wiih, and this aTSelt these sermons were preached before King Edward VI. Latimer was the son of a yeoman farmer in Leicestershire, who, as he tells us, ' had no landes of his owne, onely he had a farme of iii or iiii pound by the yere at the vttermost, and here vpon he tilled so much as kepte halfe a dosen men. He had a walke for a hundred shepe, and my mother mylked xxx kyne. . . . He kept me to schole, or elles I had not bene able to haue preached before the kinges maiestie nowe.' At the age of 14 Latimer went to Clare Hall, Cambridge, and graduated B.A. at 18, having been elected a Fellow of his College while still an undergraduate. He became M.A. 124 ENGLISH LANGUAGE FROM HENRY VIII TO JAMES I at 22, and at 24 (151 4) was Professor of Greek in the University, being ordained priest the same year. In 1S30 he preached before Henry VIII at Windsor, ' when his raaiestie after ye sermon was done, did most familiarly taulke with me in the gallery '. When Cranmer became Arch- bishop of Canterbury in 1533, Latimer gained a powerful fnend at Court; the following year he preached before the King every Wednesday in Lent, and in 1535 he was consecrated Bishop of Worcester. In 1539, however, unable to swallow the Six Articles, he resigned his See. After being imprisoned, and apparently only escaping death for heresy by the King's death, he was oflfered for a second time, but declined, the See of Worcester. During this and the following year he preached before King Edward at Whitehall and at 'Paules'. He retired to Lincolnshire in 1550, where he remained, preaching much, until, early in Mary's reign ' a pursiuant was sente downe into the countrey to call him vp '. As he passed through Smithfield he remarked that 'Smithefield had long groaned for him', but his death was destined for another place. In 1555 he was burnt at the stake in Oxford, as Foxe says ' upon the Northe syde of the Towne, in the Dytch over agaynst Baily College '. Such, in brief, was the life and ' dolorous death ' of Bishop Latimer, whom some will venerate as a saint and apostle, and others detest as a wrong-headed and dangerous heretic, whose teaching was wellnigh fatal to the Catholic faith in the Church of England. His worst enemies, however, must admit his sincerity, and his cheerfulness and courage at the last; and few will deny that he possessed a copious flow of invective, and a ready, if a rude and coarse eloquence. The following notes are based upon Arber's Reprints (i) of the Seven Sermons before Edward VI, and (2) from the Sermon known as ' the Ploughers '. Vowels. O. and Early M.E. 0*, which, as we have seen, probably became [u] in Late M.E., is frequently written u and ou : — mttst, blud, shufyng ; blonde, gould ' gold ', 6oune (N. Fr. 6dn) ' boon '. The u of must was probably short in the unstressed position, and that of 6lud had been shortened before a final consonant. M.E. 0' initially is sometimes written wo-, and Ao becomes who- : — sucA a wone ' such an one ', whomlye ' homely ', whore, whoredoms; on the other hand, we also find holsome ' wholesome ', horynge. M.E. -er- is far more often so written, but there are some important •ar- forms : — swarumg ' swerving ', parson ' clergyman ', harde ' heard ' (also herd), clarhe, maruel (and meruel), clargy (and char gy), far uentlU (uTid/eruen/lie) ' fervently '. On the other hand we have her/es ' hearts ', mercie, herken, sterue ' starve ', swerd, sweard ' sword ', leartie, ferme ' farm ', sermon, Personage ' parsonage '. O.E.J' appears in all three forms, sometimes in the same word: — slurred — sterryhg — styrred 'stir'; the words which so far as I have noted have only « are : — busie, suche, burden, buyldynge ; those which have i or y are: — synne, sinners, myntes, myniyng, fyrst, gilty, hyl 'hill'. Both listed axiA luste 'list' Vb. occur. The latter may be influenced by the Noun lust. BISHOP LATIMER 125 M.E. i appears as e — in close syllables — sence (very common) ' since ' (also since), Chechester ; in open syllables— ^re«z« ' privy ', preson (oftener prysori), thether ' thither '. ' M.E. e is written _ye, which may indicate an [i] sound in : — /Aye/e ' thief ',/ryendes,prj/es^e'pnest'. The word devil is written both deuyl and dit^l, the latter indicating a pronunciation with short t which we know to have existed later. The spelling /rra^ 'pretty' apparently stands for the Southern form. i for e occurs in oppridon ' oppression ', irimbk ' tremble ', and whirry ' wherry '. The spelling clausset ' closet ' implies a lengthened vowel, and shows that au no longer expressed a diphthong. Diphthonging of before -Id, which we know occurred, is expressed in ioulde, soulde, oulde. The consonantal J/- is developed before initial I in yearth 'earth ',yer ' ere '. A long vowel is suggested by the spellings wourse ' worse ', Loordes (supper), woorde * word '. A short vowel is shown in wailer ' water '. Vowels in Unstressed Syllables. The interesting form unscripterlye shows the treatment of -ure when unstressed, which is vouched for later by the writers on pronunciation and so often expressed by the spelling at this time, before, and after. The spelling rightuous may owe its « to virtuous. The endings -es, -eih, -el, -en, Sec, are nearly always so written, but deuil ' devil ' alternates with dettel, euyl with euel. Loss of an unstressed vowel occurs, initially, in poticaries, leauen ' eleven ' ; medially, in Deanry. Consonants. Omissions, d is lost before -ns- in (asshe) Wensdaye ; after «- before -sh- va/rensheppe; p after m before /, temted; /"after / before p — halpeny. Hoise 'hoist' has not yet acquired the final -/; faut 'fault' has not yet restored the / through the influence of a supposed etymology direct from Latin; the /is, however, inserted vafaulse. b is not yet added in my at, ye, also that, the. Initial wh- for h- occurs in wholie, by the side of the Noun hole ' whole '. In ones, onse ' once ' we have the only form ; the won- spellings do not occur. Nonns. The Pronoun his constantly occurs after a Noun, instead, of the Pos- sessive suffix. It is always written his, never, apparently, is — on a man his tiptoes, the kingehiswisdome, another his heeles, the king hisfoole. The suffix -s is oiriltted when the next word begins with j- : — Robin _ Hood seruant, for his country sak&,/or conscience sake • also when the word in the Possessive case-relation ends in -s : — horse feete. ASCHAM'S GRAMMAR 129 The Weak PI. housen ' houses ' is found, but eyes occurs instead of the older eyne, &c. The PL of woman is wemen and woomen. The PI. of child has both chyldren and chylderne. Yere is invariable in /ouriene yere olde. Adjectives and Adverbs. The mutated Comparative lenger is used, but also longer and stronger. The Comp. willtnger and the Sxyptrl. formesi may be noted. Tkrowlye occurs for ' thoroughly ','and the l^d verb hedlynge'\ie&&.ong' is interesting as preserving the old adverbial ending, seen also in our present darkling. The suffix was much commoner in the sixteenth century than it is now. Pronouns. Youjssidye are used indifferently in the Nom., both in addressing one or several persons. On one occasion ye is used as if for variety in a sentence in which j/om has akeady occurred three times. The Masc. he, hym are used instead of it, of a bow. The words _/9w« and none used as Pronouns take a, Singular Verb — fevoe or none hath yet atteyned, &c., unless hath here as a PI., which is possible. (Cf. below, under Verbal Endings.) Verbal Endings. The 3rd Pers. Sing. Pres. generally ends in -eth, but Ascham has an , unusually large number of -s endings, though not so many as Latimer. J These often occur in the same sentence as the -eth-iatxas. The PL Pers. generally has no ending, but some -j-forms are found, e.g. : — the ends haue nothyng to stop them, but whippes so far back, &c. The -j-forms both in 3rd Sing, and in the PL may be due to Ascham's native Yorkshire dialect, or the former perhaps to Cambridge influence. The Auxiliaries doth and hath are used fairly often with a PL subject — as wild horses doth race ; where one hath learned to singe, vi hath not. Weak P. P.'s, such as mard ' marred ', cockerde, show the loss, as in present-day English, of the vowel of the suffix. The P! P.'s of Strong Verbs have -n in those words where we now have the ending, otherwise apparently noT^except m gotten sxiA foUghten. Strong Verbs. In the Pres. both gyueth and gmeth are found, and both forms occur also in the P. P., where, however, the ^^«-forms are overwhelmingly more frequent. The Prets. quod (and quotfi), dame ' climbed ', draue ' drove ', and the P. P.'s gotten, holpen,foughten, clouen may be noted. The old (Eastern) form leese and lease ' lose ' occurs in the Inf. and Pres. Auxiliary Forms. The chief points are that be is more frequent than are in the PL, and that the P. P. form be is used by the side of the usual ben, bene. The use of is with a PL subject must be due to the writer's native dialect: — howe many kindes there is of it. K 130 ENGLISH LANGUAGE FROM HENRY VIII TO JAMES I Idioms and Constructions. We may note the peculiar use of certain prepositions in the following : — to shoote in a bow (= with a bow); to playe of instruments (cf. French jouer or toucher du piano). The idioms as weake as water ^TiAjnijikidat (in the modern sense). A curious phrase from the Modern point of view is all man seeth it = ' every man '. The expression put case ' supposing ' is used by Ascham as by Latimer. We next turn to another academic writer, also a Cambridge man, and contemporary and friend of Ascham — Thomas Wilson, author of the Arte of Rhetorique, from which the following forms are taken. This work was published in 1560, again in 1567, and in 1585. Vowels. M.E. er appears as -ar- with some frequency -.—farre, starres, swarue, darth ' dearth ', farmer, clarkes, but also clerkes, verlet ' varlet ', ierre 'jar, discord ', &c. O.E.J' seems to have the same distribution of the various forms as at present. The common e for i occurs, apparently, only in grennittg ' grinning '. In open syllables we find Hue, giue instead of the geue or yeue forms so common at this period. Woorke ' work ' has evidently a long vowel. Vowels in Unstressed Syllables. One of the most interesting forms is tnannering 'manuring', where the weakened vowel of the second syllable shows that Wilson accentuated the word on the first syllable. The form volupteous is due either to the normal unrounding of French u in the suffix -uous, or to a substitution for this of -eous, as in righteous. The spelling spanell ' spaniel ', the dog, shows an assimilation of French -ni- at -nj- (for -gn-) in espagnol, which still survives in uneducated speech in this word. A precisely similar pronunciation is the now vulgar Dannel for Daniel, which is recorded as ' correct ' in the eighteenth century. Wilson adheres to the old spelling of -ail, -ain, in battail, baraine ' barren '. On the other hand, -oi- is simplified in turcasse ' turquoise '. Consonants. wh- for initial ho- appears in whoredom, wholy. An interesting assimilation of -nf- to -mf- with -mph- is seen in imphants ' infants '. A final -d is added after -n in gallands ' gallons '. The excrescent -t after ^ which we saw in Ascham's form grafte, which we still retain, is not yet added in Wilson's graffe Vb. He writes banqueting as at present, and not with -k as so many of his contem- poraries do. THOMAS WILSON— LYLY 131 Nouns. Wilson uses the Weak Pis. peason, sisterne 'sisters', bretherne, shone 'shoes'. He has the old Possess. Sing, in w%j \v instead of/ as at present). He uses Invariable Pis. after numbers— /to ihiriy winter, three thousand pounde. Verbal Endings. It is characteristic of Wilson's grammar that he uses the -j-endings in 3rd Pers. Pres. Sing, with great frequency, more often indeed than'SsSiam, especially in less solemn and stately passages. This peculiarity is also found in a letter of his of 1602 published in Ellis (2. 3. 201). It is true that towards the end of the sixteenth century these forms are fairly frequent generally, But the group of Cambridge men whose language we have been "studying are distinctly ahead of most good writers in this respect. Wilson makes use of the Northern and N.E. Midland -s in the 2nd "Pers. Sing. Pres. — thou sleepes, places, wattes, &c., alongside of the -est form. After some we find -s — soTne speakes, some spittes, &c. (I have noted sixteen forms in -s after some on one page, 220.) Strong Verbs. The chief forms to note are : — ^Inf. chase ; Prets. forgot, begot, gotte, quoth, rz^(also rodi), and the P.P.'s ouerloden and stroken 'struck'. A typical writer of the later sixteenth century, who enjoyed among his contemporaries a fame which we may think disproportional to his merits, and who by his vogue and influence is of great historical importance, is John Lyly. We have only the most shadowy notions of the facts of his hfe. He must have been born about 1554, and Anthony k Wood says that he was a Kentish man born, and entered at Magdalen College, where, according to the Oxford Register, being then described &s plebeit filius, he matriculated in 1571 at the age of seventeen. He took his M.A, in i676> '*t which time', says Wood, 'as he was esteemed in the University a noted wit, so afterwards was he in the Court of Queen Elizabeth, where he was also reputed a rare poet, witty, comical, and facetious'. He obtained a post of some sort in Burghley's household, had plays acted at Court, and aspired to the post of Master of the Revels, in which ambition he was unsuccessful. In the latter part of his life he sat in the House of Commons for various boroughs. Lyly left at least eight plays, and a tract taking the side of the bishops in the Marprelate Controversy, but his fame and influence rest mainly, the former perhaps exclusively, at the present time upon the two works Euphues Anatomy of Wit, 15^9, and Euphues and his England, 1580. His relations with Burghley do not seem to have been altogether happy, and a rather servile and long-winded letter to the latter exists, in which, with much characteristic verbiage, Lyly appears to repudiate some sort of accusation brought against him. For some reason Lyly did not find favour with Elizabeth, whom he petitioned on at least two occasions, asking for reward, or, ' If your sacred Ma*'e thinke me unworthy, and that after x yeares tempest, I must att the Court suffer shipwrack of my K 2 132 ENGLISH LANGUAGE FROM HENRY VIII TO JAMES I tyme, my wittes, my hopes, vouchsafe in yo" neuer-erring judgment, some planck or rafter to wafte me into a country, where in my sadd and settled devocion I may, in euery corner of a thatcht cottage, write praiers instead of plaies ', &c. ' I feare ', he says, ' to comitt the error I dis- comende, tediousness.' And much more in the same strain. Possibly the Queen thought that he had committed this error; at any rate she seems to have taken no notice of this or of a later petition, and, as has been said, he received neither the oflBce he coveted nor other preferment at her hands. At the present time probably many will find the wit of Euphtus laboured and far-fetched, its eloquence turgid and vapid, the moral reflections lacking in profundity, the dialogue unreal and stilted, the style with its elaborate antithesis and balance, its ceaseless flow of images drawn from a more than dubious Natural History, its ever-recurring and often intricate alliteration, insufferably tedious, the portrayal of human character unnatural, and the situations devoid of verisimihtude. It would be difficult to rebut any of these strictures, and yet there are passages here and there where the blemishes disappear for a moment, where the thought is filled with good sense, and in which the style attains real grace and freedom of movement. To say this is not, however, to admit the extravagant claims made for the author. Lyly brought to a greater pitch, and employed more systematically than his predecessors, a manner, the beginnings of which at its worst may be seen in Caxton, and which at its best exists already in Lord Bemers. It is preposterous to assert that Lyly gave to English prose style any graces of which it was incapable before. Neither the illustrious translator of Froissart, nor Cranmer, or whoever composed the English of the incomparable prayers and exhorta- tions of the two first Prayer Books (1549 and iggz), would have had anything to learn from the author of Euphtus. But, though we may dissent from, we cannot afford to ignore the judgement of Lyly's con- temporaries upon his work. As, for example, the encomium of Webbe (not perhaps a very discriminating critic of EngHsh Prose or Poetry), in his Discourse 0/ English Poetrie (1586), where he says that 'Master lohn Lilly hath deserued moste high commendations, as he which hath stept one steppe further therein then any either before or since he first began the wyttie discourse of his Euphues, Whose workes, surely in respecte of his singuler eloquence and braue composition of apt words and sen- tences, let the learned examine and make tryall thereof thorough all the partes of Rethoricke, in fitte phrases, in pithy sentences, in gallant tropes, in flowing speeche, in plaine sence, and surely in my iudgment, I thinke he wyll yeelde him that verdict, which Quintihan giueth of bothe the best Orators Demosthenes and Tully, that from the one, nothing may be taken away, to the other, nothing may be added' (D. of E. P., Arber's Ed., p. 46)- With Lyly the saying le style c'est t Homme seems completely verified. We find the same absurdities and affectations in his plays, even in his private letters, as in Euphues. We feel that in ordinary life he must have talked like that at last, and if he ever spoke in the House the country gentlemen must have writhed under him. We open the plays at random and we light on such a passage as this, in Sapho and Phao : ' Of acomes LYLY'S STYLE 133 comes oakes, of drops flouds, of sparkes flames, of atomies elements. But alas it fareth with me as waspes, who feeding on serpents, make their stings more venomous : for glutting myself on the face of Phao, I have made my desire more desperate. Into the neast of an Alcyon, no bird can enter but the Alcyon ; and into the hart of so great a ladie, can any creepe but a great lord ? ' That might have come straight out of Euphues. And yet with all Lyly's absurdities in prose, it would be foolish to deny that the man was a true poet who wrote such songs as ' Cupid and my Campaspe ', or that (also in Campaspe) in which occur the lines : — who is't now we heare None but the larke so shrill and cleare; How at heavens gates she claps her wings, The mome not waking till she sings, or that in Sapho and Phao beginning : — O cruell Love ! on thee I lay My curse, which shall strike blinde the day ; Never may sleepe with velvet hand Charme thine eyes with sacred wand, &C. Nor should we forget that Shakespeare, though he made fun of Lyly's prose, condescended to copy his lyrics, while Polonius's advice to his son is more than slightly reminiscent of Euphues. We must now address ourselves to the more prosaic task of examining in some detail the forms of English employed by this writer. The follow- ing account is chiefly based on the two parts of Euphues, with some additional forms from the Plays. Vowels. M.E. er. The ar spellings are not very numerous, and several words appear both with er or ear, and ar : — hari and he^ (the phrase neither art nor heart leaves no doubt of the pronunciation intended) ; deserts and desarts ; warre, farre, farther, harken, quarrellous ; on the other hand, vertue, swerue, clearkes. The spelling fiirre ' far ' is curious. O.E. J/ has the three forms distributed as now, so far as they occur, except creple, creapk ' cripple ', which in view of the author's origin we are tempted to regard as a survival of Kentish dialect, though the form occurs in fourteenth-century London documents. The spelling- g for. ;'_ only occurs in sluuering ' shivering '. The e in hether, hetherto 'hither', &c., is to be otherwise explained. (Cf. p. 226, &c.) Instead of e, a appears in droff^es ' dregs ', and hauenly ' heavenly ', which may point to a front pronunciation of old a. M.E. 0^ is written ou in iloud ' blood '. The M.E. spelling -aun- is largely preserved — aunswered, graunt, chaungyd, glaunces, graundfather, daunger, straunge, graunge. The new diphthonging of before / is expressed in mould, souldtours, rowle ' roll '. Vowel Lengthenings, &o. These are shown in the following spellings : — woorth, woord, retourne, toossed ' tossed ',foorth, woont 'wont' ; old length is preserved in cloath, ihreede, ihreade, hoal 'hot', tnsteed{e). 134 ENGLISH LANGUAGE FROM HENRY VIH TO JAMES I Vowel Shortenings. Hotle ' hot', beheaddest. The following show shortenings after raising of e to J : — sillye, thrid ' thread ' (N.), diuell, deuilles ' devil ', M.E. devel. Unstressed Vowels. Confusion of original sound is shown in destany, musition, Italionated, dyot ' diet '. Old oi is written ey in torteyse, also ioriuse (in Mother Bombie). French » is written t in the second syllable of venterous. Consonants. Addition of a final -d after -» occurs in sound-sA ' swooned ', round-'mg 'whispering'; after -r in visard; of / after -« in margant, mar gent ' margin ' ; olb after -m in lornbe ' loom ' ; of/ after -m in mushrompe. Loss of final consonant is seen in yron Mowk, to clyme 'climb', strick-\y. Final -rfis lost before an initial d in next word in ole drudge = ' old '. Final -/ is not yet added to the old hoise ' hoist ' (cf. the P. P. Msed^. Initial qu- [kw] becomes c [k] before o in from voting of ye scriptures — ' quoting '. The older banket is found, by the side of banqueted. Intrusive -«- is seen in messanger. The artificial learned spellings dampTtabk, to condempne, accompt, solempn Tsa^j be noted. A few isolated archaisms are worth recording : — retchkss ' reckless' (as in Article XVII of the Prayer Book, where it is spelt wretchkssness), euets ' newts ', O.E. efete, still heard in provincial dialects, chekin ' chicken '. Nouns. Possessive Singulars without a suffix, when the Noun ends in -s : — Appolos Musicke, Euphues feature. The use of his after the Noun instead of the suffix — Philautus his faith, Fidus his loue. This usage is extended to the Fem., which takes hir, in Juno Mr bedde, by the side of Junos brauerie. ~ ""*■' The Plurals are, on the whole, as at present, but the Invariable appk — to bring forth apple, evidently in a collective sense, is noteworthy. The word newes is used with a Singular Vb. — Other newes here is none. The form sheeve ' sheaf ' is derived from the Oblique case type. Adjectives. Double Comparatives, as is typical of this period, occur, e. g, : — the more jitter, more swifter, more sweeter, &c. The Elizabethans had no compunction in adding the Superlati^SJiffix to words of three syllables — delicate st. The irregular Comparative badder occurs in a sentence where it is contrasted with better. In this case, worse would have spoilt the alliteration. The old mutated elder is used as the ordinary Comparative of old — You are too young . . . and were you elder, &c. GRAMMAR OF 'EUPHUES' 135 Pronouns. The forms of the Personal Pronouns are pretty much as at present, and only the following remarks fall to be made. You is used for all cases, both Sing, and PI., but thou, thee, thy (thine before vowelsj are "used in affectionate address in the Sing. Ye also occurs in Nom. PI. The Possessive Sing, of the Neuter \%Jiis — then shall learning hatce his hire, whose hloud is in his chiefest heate, &c. The Indefinite Pron. any takes a Possessive sufiSx when used abso- lutely — my fortune should he as ill as anies. One, in the sense of ' one man ', is also inflected — ones loynes = ' one man's ', The Indef. one is used as at present — to cut ones meate. Verbal Endings. The 3rd Pers. Sing, in Euphues hardly ever ends in -s, apparently, but nearly always...in -eih, except the irregular forms dares (Pret. Pres.) and giues. The PI. as a rule has no ending, that is, it represents the old Midland type, the final -n being lost. There is, however, at leatt one example of the retention of the latter — they loaden. I have noted two examples of the old Southern PI. — 'pleasaunt sirroppes doth chiefliest impart a delicate taste ', and whose baches seemeth. In the Plays, while the 3rd Sing, in -th is the normal form, especially in the more solemn passages, -s is quite frequent in the songs and blank verse portions, for the sake of the metre, and in the more colloquial parts of Mother Bombie — e.g. This happens pat, &c. Plurals in -s also occur in the Plays, as in the passage quoted above from Sapho and Phao — of acornes comes oakes. Strong Verbs. These, on the whole, are as at present, but the following forms may be noted : — The old Inf. leese ' lose ', by the side of loose, and to strick, by the side of strike. The Prets. .s/ro^e ' struck ', wan (and wonne), quoth, and flang. The Vb. give has only give, given, in Inf., Pres., and P. P., no geue forms. Among P. V!%,forlorne (Adj.) occurs by the side of lost, the real P. P., strooke, stroken, and stricken, striken ; meaten ' measured ', and melten 'melted'. The Auxiliaries call for no special remark, except to point out the use of art with you in the Sing. — art not you instead of art not thou. This is the same kind of tendency which later produces the construction you was, so common in the eighteenth century. Constructions and Idioms. We may note the use of was after there in Impersonal constructions — there was all things necessary. The Negative follows the Verb imme- diately in / meane not to follow them. The still-familiar expression straight- laced occurs, and the phrase Philaufus came in with his spoake (i. e. in the conversation), equivalent to our ' put his oar in '. The expression Euphues whom thou laydst by the wals (= 'shelved', 'gave up') recalls at once 136 ENGLISH LANGUAGE FROM HENRY VHI TO JAMES I our phrase to go to the wall, and the very old expression which occurs in O.E. poetry — e.g. dugu8 eall gecrong — wlonc biwealle in the Wanderer. We may fittingly conclude these brief studies of the language of typical writers and speakers of Court English during the sixteenth century with an account of the English of Queen Elizabeth herself. The materials for the following statement are drawn from various sources, of which the chief are letters of the Queen, from the third -quarter- .oL the century onwards, written to various people, and published in different collections (see Bibliography), and the volume of Translations made by the Queen in 1593, from classical authors, published by the Early English Text Society, under the quaint title of Englishings. A few early letters from Ellis's collection have also been used. In collecting forms to illustrate the Queen's English, I have avoided all letters not reprinted from the originals in her own handwriting ; and, as regards the ' English- ings ', have taken forms only from the Metres of Boethius, and the trans- lations of Plutarch and Horace which are all in Queen Elizabeth's own hand. A very characteristic habit of the Queen's is the frequent use of i for M.E. e, and this is seen in her letters as early as 1549. So persistent is this mode of spelling that any document purporting to be written by Elizabeth which shows no example of it might safely be rejected as spurious. Vowels. The -ar- spellings. These are very common in the Queen's writings, and are found already in the early letters. The following is a com- plete list of those I have noted from all sources : — disarued, desarue, hartiest, kartely, hart, desart, sartted, the Cars (the Kers of Femyhurst), swarue, justice-clarke, hard ' heard ', marcy, darkness, stars, wark ' work ' (also work), defar 'defer', parson 'person'. On the other hand, -er- spellings occur also, chiefly in the early letters: — servant, serues,preserue, deserued, herde ' heard '. The spelling learning is ambiguous. O.E. y. With i: — litel, gilty, bisy, styrring. The spelling ivel may come under this head, or it may be the Queen's way of writing the type evil. With M we have much, stur ' stir ', slurred put ' stirred pit ', /urst, busy, husinis. Only one e- form seems to occur, and that is dubious in origin — wesh- ing ' wishing ', and should perhaps be placed in the following group. e for i. The only forms are bellowes ' billows ', rechis ' riches '. I am doubtful whether to include weshing here or to take it as representing the Kentish form of O.E. wyscan. TJuroundiiig of 3I.E. 6. The form stap occurs — I pray you stop the mouthes. It is interesting to find this form at this period. As noted above (p. 78 (St. Editha)) the unround- ing of is characteristic of the South- West, where it is found in the first quarter of the fifteenth century. These forms became current in fashion- able speech in the seventeenth century, when they are ridiculed by Vanbrugh in the well-known character of Lord Foppington with his QUEEN ELIZABETH'S PRONUNCIATION 137 often-quoted cliche stap my vitals, and many other forms of the same class. In Standard English a few of these forms have gained permanent footing, such as strap by the side of strop, plat (in Biblical language) by the side of the now usual plot (of land). It seems at the first blush a plausible surmise that the gallant and accomplished Raleigh, with his broad Devon speech, may have helped to make such forms fashionable at Court. In any case, this is one of the few examples of the influence of Regional dialect upon Standard Spoken English, dating from the Modern Period. (See, however, p. 340, below.) The Baising of M.E. e^ We have already seen plenty of examples of the spelling t for e from the fifteenth century onwards, and the writers on pronunciation make it clear that old [e] was pronounced [i] in Standard English as early as the first quarter of the fifteenth century. It is desirable, however, to give fairly numerous examples from the writings of so important a speaker as the Queen, and, indeed, I know of no other writer in whose works so many of these spellings can be found. The following are instructive : — hiresay ' hear- ', kiping, briding ' breeding ', yrted ' freed ', besiche, spidye ' speedy ', hire Inf. ' hear ', dides ' deeds ', spich ' speech ', sAipe 'sheep', &c. All these represent M.E. tense [e]. It should be noted that the same spelling also occurs in spiie Vb. ' speak ', and bequived ' bequeathed ', where i stands for M.E. [i] from O.E. e lengthened in the open syllables. The Queen is not perfectly Consistent, however, for she also writes deapest, stake ' seek ', behaved ' believed ', which all have M.E. [e], and «ff(f,and sede 'seed', which may represent either the Southern type with M.E. [i] or the E. Midland type with [e]. The spelling shild probably stands for [Jild], from the E. Midland M.E. scheld, and not for the Southern M.E. sthild. The spelling whir ' where ' establishes an [i]-sound in this word, which is described later also by writers on pronunciation. The explanation of this sound in this word is, doubtless, that it has been influenced by here, which has e\ Monophthonging of M.E. Diphthong ai. This, I think, is proved by the spelling agane ' again ' in a letter of 1553, by ganesays, pant, panter 'paint', 'painter', in the Translations, and by the ' inverted spellings ' maid Vb. ' made ', and maike Vb. 'make '. The spellings dainger, daingerous to my mind point in the same direc- tion and probably indicate a pronunciation with [i]. The Queen also occasionally retains the M.E. spelling daunger. Murmur Vowel between Long Vowel, or Diphthong and following -r. This seems to be shown by such spellings as / desiar ' desire ', fiars ' fires ', hiar ' hear '. Such spellings are not uncommon in the sixteenth century, and curiously enough desiar occurs in a letter written by the Queen's mother, Anne ^oleyn. 138 ENGLISH LANGUAGE FROM HENRY VIII TO JAMES I Other Vowel Spellings. We are not surprised to find a diphthongal spelling in faule ' fall ', fauleth, and stauhe ' stalk ', since we saw these spellings in the former century. Whether this was still pronounced as a diphthong is very doubtful. (See pp. 251-3.) The spelling ou and u for O.E. and Early M.E. o, as we shall see, is found several centuries earlier (cf. p. 234). Queen Elizabeth has several examples : — blond, floude, louke ' look ', boutes ' boots ', boukes, houke, ' hook '. The form must is probably short, and arose in the unstressed position. We must not omit to mention the sptYLmg /orttune with tu for the earlier French « [y]. I regard this form as representing M.E. fortHne with the original French accentuation, on the second syllable. The other type, accented on the first syllable, had htcomt /ortin by the middle of the fifteenth century. Vowels in ITnstressed Syllables. The suffixes -ed, -es, -est, -ness are constantly written -id, -is, Sec. : — preventid, acquaintid, &c. ; -ed is rarer ; scusis ' excuses ', practisis ; expertist, largist,fullist, hottist, &c. ; kindnis, wekenis, happinis, darkenis ; also witnis ; bestoiih, burnith. The ending -er is often written -ar, implying probably the pronuncia- tion [ar] : — sisiar, bettar, bordars, murdar. The ending -en is written -in in heauin. Where we now have the ending -tour, -or is written, in behavor. The M.E. diphthong ei is written a in vilanous, and e in the for ' they ', a very common spelling with Queen Elizabeth. The tendency to join a consonant after a weak syllable to the following syllable, when this is stressed, is shown in my none witte = ' mine own '. The vowel of the Superlative suffix is lost in carefulst, thankfulst. The unstressed forms the and ther 'they, their' are frequent in all Elizabeth's writings. Consonants. Loss of Consonants, t is lost after another Cons, before -f in attemps, accidens; after _/ before n in off en 'often'. b is lost between m- and -/- in nimlest ' nimblest '. / is lost before -k in stauke ' stalk '. Addition of Consonants. A parasitic / is developed finally in in middest (cf. also Amidz if), and/or the nonest. The parasitic nasal is seen in messanger, earlier messager. Other Consonant Changes. The nasal [q] ' w^ ' in the suflSx -ing occurs once written -n — besichen ' beseeching '. The same sound at the end of a stressed syllable occurs twice written -nk — brinkinge of me up, our drinkers up. The old voiceless w, formerly written hw, and then wh, was apparently not pronounced in the Queen's English, since she writes wick ' which ', QUEEN ELIZABETH'S GRAMMAR 139 and evidently used the voiced sound in this and other words beginning with this consonant, as all Southern speakers do at present, unless they have been subjected to Scotch or Irish influence. M.E. 0' (from O.E. a) when initial is written wo- in won, worn ' one, once ', and ho^ is written who- in wholy ' wholly '. The former is the ancestor of the type now in use, and it is interesting to note that won occurs also in a letter in the handwriting of Henry VIII, written in 1544, which shows that this type was current in Court English at this period, although the other type, pronounced as in o«-ly, seems also to have survived much later in good English (see pp. 306-7). The arbitrary character of present-day spelling is shown by the fact that we write one and pronounce [wan], while although we do not pronounce wA- in whole we yet write it thus. Queen Elizabeth also writes hole by the side of the wh- spelling. To pronounce [v] for voiced ' -fh- ' [tS] is to this day an individual peculiarity which is heard here and there, and Queen Elizabeth apparently had it, and betrays it in the spelling bequived for bequeathed. The metathesized form of old -sc- occurs in axed ' asked '. Flexional -s, both as a Fl. and as a Possessive ending, is often written -z, generally after voiced consonants, as in quarelz, equalz, Russelz (Possess.), Godz tuition, lordz, &c. The spelling -Iz for -is is also commoner in the Letters and the Trans- lations — -fitz Vb., hartz, dartz. The old (English) type withj/- instead of the Scandinavian type with g- survives 'm/oryet/ullness. Nouns. The traditional change of -/- to -»- between vowels still survives in Hues, a typical Possess. Sing, of this period. A ' group-possessive ' occurs in ' I shulde . . . long sithens have appeased my lorde of Bedfords mynde therin ' (1553). Among noteworthy PI. forms we may note oxe — a hundred oxe, and thanke — ' the two gentilmen I trust shal receaue your thanke '. News, is-used as a Sing, in This last newes; as a PI. in how grate /ul such newes were. A curious construction with sort is seen in ' ^few sort of outlawes fils up his traine'. Adjectives. The only point I have noted is the inflected PL in clirristz days (clearest). Personal Pronouns. There is not much to note beyond the fact that the Queen never uses thou, &c., in the Sing. — alvia.ysyou(e), and that by the side olyf the old spelling hit is extremely frequent — I have counted twenty-eight examples in twenty-one letters, and the form is also found in the Translations. The unstressed forms of the PI. Pronouns of the 3rd Pers. have already been mentioned. 140 ENGLISH LANGUAGE FROM HENRY VIII TO JAMES I The Indefinite Article. It is worth noting that fli before a word beginning with a vovvel occurs three times in a letter of 1549 — ' a encreasinge of ther ivel tonges, a bridinge of a ivel name, so ivel a opinion '.^ Verbal Endings. ^ The chief points of interest are the endings of the 3rd Pers. Sing. \J- Present, and of the PI. Present. Concerning the former it must be /'^ ^ recorded that the ending -sjs very common inthe later letters, and in ■ ''' „-'^'*' the Translations. In the 'lattefrinaeed, "this Is the"moSt'ffequent form, j< the -/A ending being comparatively rare. In the early letters the ^- forms V \ ^\ \ also occur, but in nothing like the same proportion as in the later ones \\?in.d the Translations. The Auxiliaries hath and doth seem only t& occur in this form, and f, hardly ever with -s, though I have noted jiour Grace has — in a letter \ . ' As regards the Pres. PI. we find, besides forms with no endmg, others in both -th and - j : e. g. the (' = they ') ar most deceued that trusteth most in themselves ; the (they) breakith, &c. ; all our subjectes lakes after ; small Jlies stiks fast for wekenis; your commissionars telz me; sild(= seldom) recouers kings ther dominion; as the hunters rates ther houndz, and kipes, &c., &c. See also pp. 339-41, below. Strong Verbs. There is little to note under this head except that although geue ' give ' occurs, the usual type is giue, gyue. The P. P. is geuen and giuen, and the curious and archaic type j/eouen is found in a letter of 1595. We have now examined, in some detail, the English of some typical per- sonages of the sixteenth century, who between them coverthewhole century. They spring from various classes and were engaged in different pursuits, but all of them, from the circumstances of their birth, their fortunes, and their occupations were brought into contact, in varying degrees, with the Court, and with the highest and most distinguished society of their age ; all of them by virtue of their opportunities and their education were certainly acquainted with the best type of Spoken English of the day, and in spite of occasional lapses into a native form here and there, they may be taken as individually and collectively exhibiting the Standard English of daily life and of literature. From our brief survey we learn the existence of a certain latitude in the choice of type, both in pronunciation and in the use of grammatical forms. It seemed worth while to make, on this account, ' this study of the speech of individuals, which brings home to us how considerably greater then than now was the possible variety in the speech of persons of approximately the same social entourage. We learn also from the occasional spellings cited above, many impor- tant and interesting facts concerning the development of sound change in English, and concerning the distribution of varieties due to dialect of one kind or another. AN ELIZABETHAN COCKNEY 141 We now turn to consider the English of an entirely different social stratum from that whose language we have hitherto examined in this century. Henry Maohyn, the Diarist, seems from his own words to have been a simple tradesman, possibly an undertaker, with a taste for pageants — especially for funerals (as was natural)-^and for gossip. Of the great persons whom he mentions, he knew no more than their names and faces, scanned as they rode past him in some procession, and an occasional piece of gossip picked up, one is inclined to think, from some other spectator among the crowd. Machyn's work is a priceless monument of the English of the Middle Class Londoner with no particular education or refinement. We shall find therein, naturally, much that is common to the speech of the higher orders, but also certain marked features which distinguish his English from theirs; certain things, also, which are definitely stated to be Cockneyisms at a later date, although they have now passed away ; and other things which we know from personal experience, or from compara- tively recently extinct tradition, to have been typical vulgarisms fifty or so years ago. The English of Henry Machyn, Citizen and Merchant Taylor of London. Vowels. M.E. er. The following occur with -ar- : — clarkes (passim), Harfford (Hereford), sarvand, the yerle of Darbe, fardyng 'farthing', harold, armyn ' ermine ', hard ' heard ', hari, sarmon, parson, Garnsey, farm, Barmsey ' Bermondsey ', sward ' sword '. The -^r-spellings include the following : — clerk, serten, Bernard castyll, servandes, serjants, lernyd, (Cole)^«ri«r. M.E. i is written e (a) in the following two-syllabled words, in open syllables : — denner, also deener '. dinner ', cefe ' city ', ^ressun ' prison ', ve/ell ' victuals'', pelers ' pillars ', peie ' pity ', wedew. zf/ fdow ' widow ',Jebett 'gibbet ', leved ' lived ', veker ' vicar ', velyns ' villains ', vesitars, consperacy, sterope. (b) In the following words of three or more syllables: — leverqy 'livery', pelere ' pillory ', Necolas, prevelegys, menyster. (c) In the following the vowel is certainly short : — deleverd ' delivered ', chelderyn, Recherd, essue ' issue ', Eslyngion ' Islington ', prensepulles, stiver, red = rid ' rode ', beliefs, hes ' is ', ennes of the cowrtt. The list under group (a) is larger than in most if not all other London writers or writers of Literary English whose language we have considered ; group (c) is considerable, and if, as is probable, we are entitled to put (b) under the same head, i. e. of short % lowered to e, the list becomes very large. The list in group (a) probably illustrates the lengthening and lowering of i- in open syllables, which is characteristic of the Northern dialects of M.E. and is also found in E. Midland — Robt. of Brunne, &c. O.E._y occurs in all three types, the distribution of which is not precisely as at present : — (a) With i : — myche ' much ', ymberyng days ' Ember days ', first, gylded Vb., rysses ' rushes ' (plant). 142 ENGLISH LANGUAGE FROM HENRY VIII TO JAMES I (b) With » •.—furst, buryall. (c) With e: — bered 'buried' (very frequent), besiness, mere 'merry', Crepulgate, heldyd ' built ', kechens. M.E. S unrounded :— ^the marow ' morrow ', ca^en ' coffin ', Basset 'Dorset'. "" M.E. au appears to be monophthongized : — ontt ' aunt ', a nobe = an atdb 'alb', commondyd (M.E. commaund-), hopene 'halfpenny' (earlier haul/-), agmentyd 'augmented'. That au had already become [3] is further made probable by the spelling caumplet ' complete ', which shows that the writer could not have considered au to represent a diphthongal sound. This [3] resulting from earlier au appears also to have been unrounded in drane ' drawn ', straberries ' strawberries ', agmentyd ' augmented '. Note the spelling sarter ' Salter ', which shows monophthonging of sault, then unrounding, the loss of / before /, and the use of -r- after a vowel to express mere quantity. The spelling Crenmer ' Cranmer ' shows the fronting of M.E. a. The spelling /raj/ for ' pressed ' points in the same direction. y is written for M.E. S in Qwyne, prych, fryndes, spykyng, bryJiyng, brykefast. By the side of weke ' week ', wike is also found. The form is, however, ambiguous. Early Modern & from » from M.E, o, or from M.E. &, is written a in Chamley ' Cholmondeley ', Samerset ' Somerset ', and suggests that the un- rounding of u had already taken place. The form Watton for ' Wotton ' appears to indicate that this change had come about, in the speech of Machyn, also after w-. The old diphthong ai can hardly have retained its diphthongal pro- nunciation. Such spellings as mayde ' made ', stayffes ' staves ', show that this combination of letters could be used without any idea of a diphthongal value, and the word mayor, which formerly certainly had a diphthong, is found written mere as well as mayre. The speUing. oy for M.E. 5*, O.E. a, is curious and occurs several times : — cloyth ' cloth ', boyth ' both ' (passim), hoyth ' oath '. Initially this vowel is still written in one, oon ' one ', but the form won also occurs. The Southern type, from an old «, is preserved in prate 'pretty'. The combination -ench appears as -ynch in Kyngbynche (twice). The combination wa- becomes wo- in wosse ' wash '. Vowel Shortenings. These are evidently expressed by the doubling of the final consonant in the following words -.^gott ' goat ',/ottman ' footman ', swett • sweat ', also swett ' sweet ', greit ' great ', heddes ' heads ', meti ' meet ' (passim). Vowel Iiengthening. This has already taken place in guard, where the doubled vowel can have no other meaning. In this case, either the r has already been weakened, or the lengthening occurred earlier than the loss of r. It is pretty certain that aa here does not imply [a] but [»]. MACHYN'S GRAMMAR 143 Unstressed Syllables. There is the evidence so common since the fifteenth centuiy of the levelling of the vowels in unstressed syllables under an indeterminate sound which the writer found it hard to express : — Rochaster, Wynchaster, but Lankoster ; Just«s a pesse, Cheyfife Just«s ; prograsse, company, Crystynm«s, secretary, where the italicized letters probably all stand for [s]. The family name Seymour is written Semer = [sim3(r)]. Initially where unstressed & is written a in apone ' upon ', is written in the same way in apinions, e in aronyous ' erroneous '. The ending -y is often written e, e. g. lade ' lady ', Darhe ' Derby ', fete ' pity ', galere ' gallery '. French « is written e in mysseforten ' misfortune ', j/ in ««;yf 'nephews', venterer ' venturer ', also written venlorer. Old long vowels are shortened in unstressed syllables — this is probably a survival of the normal M.E. shortening in wyldfulle = ' -fowl ', grey- hond ' greyhound ', M.E. -hund. The diphthong oi is written _y in Gaskyn ' Gascoigne ' ; at is written e in palles, M.E. pallais or pallets. Loss of Syllable. Initial vowels are lost in posiyll ' apostle ', salt ' assault '. An unstressed syllable immediately following that with the chief stress is lost in Barmsey, i. e. Beorhmundesey ' Bermondsey '. Tbe Consonants. A peculiarity of frequent occurrence in Machyn is the confusion of v- and W-, so that the former is used for the latter and vice versa. Examples of w- for v- : — wacabondes ' vagabonds ', wergers, waluw ' value ', imte ' view ', welvet ' velvet ', wettelle ' victuals ', walans ' valance ', woyce ' voice '. Examples of v- for w- : — voman, vomen, veyver ' weaver ', Volsdke ' Woolsack ', Vestmynster, Vetyngton ' Whittington ', Vosseter ' Worcester ', Voderoff (Pr. N.), also written Woodroffe. Loss of Consonants. (a) Finally : — llyne ' blind ', Egype. (b) Initially, w before = \y\:—Odam. for Woodham. (c) Medially, in combinations : — / + s becomes -s Wyssun ' Whitsun ', d lost after -/- before / [dz] — Oil Jury = ' Old Jewry '. rf + j is lost: — Wostreet ' Woodstreet ', Lumbarstrett ; «(^ becomes -nf- —grane- faiher ; -nds- becomes -ns — granser ; -rnm becomes -rm Yrmongers. The combination -pb- is simplified to -b cuhard 'cupboard'; -nkt- becomes -nt santtuary. Loss of -1- before consonants : — This occurs before -«- in swone P. P. ■ swollen ' ; before -m- in rente, ream ' realm ' ; before -h- in Northfoke ; before -p- in hopene ' halfpenny ' ; before ^/'in Baf Ralph ' (this is perhaps 144 ENGLISH LANGUAGE FROM HENRY VIII TO JAMES I from a French form Rauf, as safe from sauf); before g [dz] in sawgears ' soldiers '. Loss of -r in combination with -s : — Woseter, Vosseier ' Worcester ', Basset ' Dorset ', Masselsay ' Marshalsea ', Cosseletts, Loss of -V- between vowels : — Denshyre ' Devonshire'. In an unstressed syllable, before another cons., -«- is lost in sune elaw ' son-in-law '. Addition of Consonants. jFinal -d- after -1 : — Sak^fe ld for Sackville. This may, however, be partly suggested by the suffix -field. Development of a parasitic -«- before [dz] is seen in messenger, Selenger from Se{nt) Leger. The Misplacement of an Initial Aspirate. This is dropped in the following words : — alffe, alff ' half, alpeny ' halfpenny ', Amton courte, elmet ' helmet ' (frequently), arnesse ' harness ', alters ' halters ', ard ' hard ', yt ' hit ' Vb., AUallows, ede ' head '. In Comnyll 'Cornhill' the loss is normal in the unstressed element of a compound, and the same is true of Lussam for ' Lewisham '. k is im- properly added initially in : — hanswered, haskyd, Sant Andrews hundershaft, Halesander • Alexander ', harme ' arm ' (of the body), harmes (in heraldry), here ' ear ', hoathe, herth ' earth ', hetten ' eaten ', hevere ' every ', Hambrose. This addition, as in present-day vulgar speech, only occurs in stressed words ; thus we find hat for at, at the end of a sentence — a grett dener as I have be hat, and has for as when this stands in a stressed position at the beginning of a sentence. The above is the largest list of 'dropped aspirates' in words of English, not Norman-French^ origin which I have found in any document as early as this. The addition of h- is commoner, but nowhere, I believe, so frequent as in Machyn. Initial wh- was evidently pronounced simply as w- by Machyn, as is shown by the spellings wyped, wypyd 'whipped', wyche 'which', watt ' what ', warff ' wharf, and the inverted spelling whent for went. Old -gh- = [x] is written -th- in Luthborovo ' Loughborough '. Initial th- [f] appears as/- in f rust 'thrust', Frogmorton 'Throg- morton '. Final ng in the suffix -ing is written -yn in standyn — The Queen grace standyn in the gaUre, also syttyn, rydyn, syngyne ; on the other hand we get evyngsong ' evensong ',ymberyng days =ymberen ' Ember days'. The combination -rth- [rtS] is occasionally written -rd-—fardyng ' far- thing'. The initial lip-glide is expressed by w- in won ' one ', by the side of one, oon. The phrase good ons occurs, which suggests our ' good 'uns '. An initial front-glide before a front vowel occurs inyerle ' earl '. This may possibly be a Kentish form (cf. p. 41 (4)). Voicing of Consonants. This occurs finally (before the PI. suffix) in drynges 'drinks'; medially before suffix -yd in hundyd ' \iwa.ltdi' ; further as a combinative change MACHYN'S GRAMMAR 145 before -6 in saghoites 'sackbuts'; medially, between vowels In elevant ' elephant '. Nouns. The Possessive Singular is fairly frequent without any suffix — e. g. the Kyng grace, his ^rodurjwrse, my lord cardenall commj/ng, a hossear sune ' hosier's son ', ynys father stede. Some of the above have a normal loss of -s before a word beginning in s-. The following uninflected Possessives may be regarded as old Femi- nines : — Lade Mare grace, my lady grasys, &c., ' my lady's grace ', &c., the qtten y/iftrV tfiough in the last instance the loss of suffix may be due to tR5"fSnowing S-. The use oiys instead of the regular Possessive suffix after a noun is seen in the penter ys nam. The following Group Possessives are found, showing omission of the suffix : — the bishop of London palles ; the duke of Somerset dowther. The following instance occurs of Group Possessives in which ^f ' his ' is used instead of the Possessive suffix after the last noun : — the nuiv byshope of Lychffeld and Covenireys wyff. The older construction instead ' of the Group Possessive occurs : — master Godderyke sune the goldsmith. The -s is omitted of Godderyke before following s-. As regards Plurals, the only noteworthy points are the use of the invariables — sturgeon and C gret horsse, and a curious collection of names of animals : — mottuns ' sheep *, velles ' calves ', swines, samons. The voice- less/before the PI. suffix occurs in beyffes 'beeves', and wyeffes 'wives'. Similarly we find/ in the old Dat. Sing, a-lyffe 'alive' from on life. Frououus. There is not much of note to record regarding the Pers. Pronouns. The weak form_^f of Possess. Sing. 3rd Pers. Masc. is very frequent. In the 2nd Pers. Y\.youe seems the only form in the Nom. The form hytt ' it ' is still found, but is rare. It does not seem to be determined by strong stress. Yi is the usual form. Her ' their ' occurs at least once, cp. p. 328 below. Emphatic Pronouns. The yonge French Kyng has proclaymed ynseyllff Kyng of Skotland. Isyn- written for ym-, or is it by any chance a late surviv^ of the O.E. hine, rare already in Early M.E. ? She lepyd into a welle and drownydyr seyllff. Relative Pronouns. 'Who' is spelt wo, a curious form, as we should have expected ho. Can there have been a real pronunciation with w- at this period ? We find as used as a Relative : — the goodlyest collars as everyoue saw. A fairly frequent construction with the wyche, foHowed by a Pers. Pron. or a Noun, recalls a modern Cockney vulgarism with which : — the funeral of my lade Bravone the wyche she ded ('died') in chyld-bed; the wyche he dwelt in Lumbar sirett; the wyche the Quen grace was ther. An interesting example of the omission of the Relative is found : — This ij day ofMarchwas consecratyd at the byshope of London palles master Founge byshope ofYorke, was byshope of San Davids. Impersonal Pronoun. The Possess, of om is found in the form oneys ere ' one's ear '. 146 ENGLISH LANGUAGE FROM HENRY VIH TO JAMES I Indefinite Article. The form without the nasal is sometimes used before a vowel : — a arme, a orayson, a elevant (' elephant '). Definite Article. The forms her thuder 'her other', her thodur ere cut, &c., presumably stand for /he with the elision of the vowel before a following vowel, which is very common at this period and much later. It is curious to find the Article used after a Possess. Pron. Verbal Endings. I have few examples of Machyn's form of the 3rd Pers. Pres. Sing. From the form of his work this part of the Verb would natiirally be rare. But cf. specimen, and p. 333, below. There are, however, a few examples of Pres. Pis. in -s : — coftiys, lys ' lie '. There is little to note concerning Auxiliary Verbs. Ar \s used in Pres. PI. ; the P. P. is be, as well as bene, byne, and the shortened byn. In unstressed positions weak forms of have without the aspirate occur : ' If my lord mer, and my lord Cortenay ad not ben ther '; and a shortened form of the Inf. occurs in ' he told them that he wold not a savyd ', &c. Do is used as now in negative sentences — ' the chyld dyd not spyke.' Strong Verbs. The following forms are worth notice : — Preterites — gc^f (where y apparently expresses length), begane (with long vowel on analogy of Pret. of give ?), / say ' I saw ' (corresponding to Chaucer's sey), sluw ' slew ', druw ' drew ' (apparently phonetic renderings of the normal descendants of the O.E. forms slog and drdg), red ' rode ' (from the P. P. type, with the characteristic lowering of ;' to e) ; the P. P.'s gyffen, drane (with mono- phthonging followed by unrounding from draun), swone ' swollen ', seiie ' seen ', and the phonetically-written syne. The word choose appears in two varieties — chttysse' {Inf.) and chusse. It is probable that these both represent the same form with [y], which must perhaps be regarded as a descendant of the Western t)^e with [y] spelt K. On the other hand, since y in Machyn's spelling seems to be used occasionally as a sign of length, these spellings may both stand for [tjiiz] from M.E. chosen, O.E. c{e)dsan. The spelling loysse ' lose ' may represent the ancestor of our present type with [ii] from old tense 0. The great value of Machyn's Diary is that it lets us into more secrets of contemporary speech than does any other work of the period — indeed we have to go back a hundred years, to Gregory, to find a collection of spellings and forms which throw such light upon pronunciation. Machyn is obviously inferior to his predecessor both in social standing and in education. The latter fact has turned out to be of inestimable advantage to students of English, since the Diarist is marvellously emancipated from traditional spelling. The former circumstance makes him a priceless guide to the lower type of London English of his day. His lack of literary education, combined with the absence of views regarding elegance and refinement, make him a high authority upon the ways of natural unstudied speech in the sixteenth century. EXAMPLE OF MACHYN'S STYLE 147 Among the chief features of Machyn's Class dialect we may men- tion : — the large number of cases of lowering of t to e, ; the cases of unrotmding of short 0, which are rather in excess of those found in writers of higher standing; the misplacement, by omission and wrong insertion, of initial A-; the interchange of v- and w-; the excessive number of combinative changes in the consonants, which, although they may all be paralleled from the writings of persons of a higher class, do not occur in their written documents in such profusion as here ; the peculiar use of wAt'cA noted above, and the use of as as a Relative Pronoun. We conclude this chapter with a short specimen of Machyn's style. P- 139) ISS7' The xvj day of June my yong duke of Norfoke rod abrod and at Stamford-hylle my lord havying a dage hangyng on ys Sadylle bow, and by mysse-fortune dyd shutt yt, and * yt on of ys men that ryd afor, and so by myssforten ys horse dyd flyng and so he hangyd on by vn of ys sterope, and so thatt the horse knokyd ys brayns owt with flyngyng owt with ys leges. p. 146, last day of June. The sam day the Kyng grace rod ^ on untyng into the forest and kyllyd a grett stage with gones. The iiij of August was the masse of requiem for my lade prenses of Cleyflf . . . and ther my lord abbott of Westmynster mad a godly sermon as ever was mad, and the byshope of London song masse in ys myter, (and after) masse my lord byshope and my lord abbott mytered dyd (cense) the corsse, and afterward she was caried to her tomb (where) she leys with a herse-cloth of gold the wych lyys (over her) ; and ther alle her hed offerers brake ther stayffes, her *hussears brake ther rodes, and all they cast them into her tombe ; the wyche was covered her co(rrse) with blake, and all the lordes and lades and knyghtes and gentyllmen and gentill-vomen dyd ofier, and after masse a grett (dener) at my lord abbots, and my lade of Wynchester was the cheyff (mourner) and my lord admeroU and my lord Dacre wher of ether syde of my lade of Wynchester and so they whent in order to dinner. > hit. ' a hunting. ^ ushers. L 2 CHAPTER V THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES 'Men of the renascence', says Mr. Swinburne, in his tract on Shakespeare, 'could no more be expected to talk like men of the middle ages — whether contemporaries of Dante, of Chaucer, or of Villon — than like men of our own age. Each century or so, if we accept the convenient and casual division of manners and of styles by the rough and ready reckoning of successive dates, has its own natural conventions of life and art, from which none can entirely escape but by servile affecta- tion of an obsolete manner, or fatuous affectation of an unnatural style.' The student of English, who has some vital feeling for the genius of English speech as it was in the age just following Chaucer, and in the age of Elizabeth, discovers, when he continues his studies into the seven- teenth century, that he is gradually emerging as the century advances into a new world of language, and one more diflFerent from that which he is leaving behind him, than was this, at least to his perceptions, from those earlier periods through which his studies have led him. The ordinary reader has not time or occasion to saturate himself thoroughly in the style of the successive periods of Hoccleve and Lydgate and Skelton, of the Pastons and Celys ; of More, Elyot, and Lord Berners ; of Surrey, Wyatt, Latimer, and Fisher ; of Sackville, Sidney, Spenser, and Raleigh ; of Machyn, Ascham, Gabrjel Harvey, Sir Thomas Smith, Lyly ; of Bacon, Shakespeare, and Jonson. He is conscious, indeed, that where all is more or less remote and unfamiliar as regards turns of phrase, cadence, and the general movement of sentences, the style of the tlu-ee last is nearer to him than that of the writers whose names come earlier in the list, but he feels that in numerous ways theirs is not the English of his own day. It is difficult, perhaps, to be fully alive to the gradual changes which are coming over the modes of expression during a couple of centuries, when everything is more or less strange. It is different as we proceed into the heart of the seventeenth century. We begin to feel that we are getting into our own time as we leave behind us the great writers who were born, and did most of their work, in the sixteenth century, and with Beaumont and Fletcher, Carew and Walton, we lose more and more the feeling that we are reading the ' old writers '- Putting aside Milton, whose ' soul was like a star and dwelt apart ', and perhaps Sir Thomas Browne, whose style, in spite of its opulence and magnificence, never attains the easy familiarity of Suckling, we feel, when we read the prose of the men born during the first and second decades of the seventeenth century, and in some cases of those born in the nineties of the sixteenth, that all, though in varying degrees, speak like the people of our own age. This is specially true of Suckling (1609-42) and Cowley (1618-67). THE CHANGING ATMOSPHERE OF STYLE 149 After these men there can be no question that however much it may be possible to indicate here and there certain characteristic habits of style, tricks, mannerisms, or whatever we may call them, which adorn or dis- figure the prose writings of a particular generation, we have reached our own English in very spirit and substance. In order to bring home this gradual passage from something different to something which is the English of our own age in all its essentials, we must examine, side by side, a few passages from writers born between the middle of the sixteenth century and the end of the second decade of the next. We may take as a typical piece of late sixteenth-century prose a passage from A View of the Present State of Ireland, by Edmund Spenser (i552(?)-99)- ' And yet the rebellion of Thomas Fitz Gerrald did well-nygh stretch itself into all partes of Ireland. But that, which was in the time of the government of the Lord Gray, was surely noe less generall then all those ; for there was no part free from the contagion, but all conspired in one to cast of theyr subjection to the crowne of England. Nevertheless, through the most wise and valiaimt handling of that right noble Lord, it gott not that head which the former evills found ; for in them the realme was left, like a shippe in a storme amiddest all the raging surges, unruled, and undirected of any : for they to whom she was comitted either faynted in theyr labour, or forsooke theyre charge. But he (like a most wise pilote) kept her course carefully, and held her moste strongly even agaynst those roring billowes, that he brought her safely out of all ; soe as long after, even by the space of twelve or thirtene yeares, she rode in peace, through his only paynes and excellent enduraunce, how ever envye list to bluster agaynst him.' The next example is from Bacon's Essay on Friendship. Bacon was born in 1561 and died in 1626. ' How many things are there which a man cannot, with any face or comeli- ness, say or do himself ? A man cannot alledge his own merits with modesty much less extol them : a man cannot sometimes brook to suppUcate or beg ; and a number of the like. But all these things are gfraceful in a friend's mouth, which are blushing in a man's own. So again, a man's person hath many proper relations, which he cannot put off. A man cannot speak to his son but as a father ; to his wife, but as a husband ; to his enemy but upon terms ; whereas a friend may speak as the case requires, and not as it sorteth with the person. But to enumerate these things were eiidless ; I have given the rule, where a man cannot fitly play his own part ; if he have not a friend he may quit the stage.' The gentle Izaak Walton is a good representative of the seventeenth century. Born in 1593, six years before the death of Spenser, he lived well into the last quarter of the seventeenth century, dying in 1683. If his style lacks the brilliancy and sparkle that belong to the later generation which grew up and matured long before the end of his life, Walton is endeared to us by his genuine goodness of character, his love of the country, and the simplicity and sincerity of his writing. His failings, if they were such, certainly ' leaned to virtue's side '. Besides his enthusiasm, which we need not further refer to, for fishing, he was deeply attached to the Church of England, and had a distinct /f«f^a«/ for dignitaries. The following passage from the Life of Sir Henry Wotton exhibits the simple and unaffected graces of Walton's style : I go THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES ' He (Sir Henry) returned out of Italy into England about the thirtieth year of his age, being liien noted by many both for his person and comportment ; for indeed he was of a choice shape, tall of stature and of a most persuasive behaviour ; which was so mixed with sweet discourse and civilities, as gained him much love from all persons with whom he entered into an acquaintance. And whereas he was noted in his youth to have a sharp wit and apt to jest ; that, by time, travel, and conversation, was so polished, and made so usefiil, that his company seemed to be one of the delights of mankind ; insomuch as Robert Earl of Essex— then one of the Darlings of Fortune, and in greatest favour with Queen Elizabeth — invited him first into a friendship, and, after a knowledge of his great abilities, to be one of his Secretaries ; the other being Mr. Henry Cuffe, sometime of Merton College in Oxford,— and there also the acquaintance of Sir Henry Wotton in his youth, — Mr. Cuffe being then a man of no common note in the University for his learning ; nor after his removal from that place, for the great abilities of his mind, nor indeed for the fatalness of his end.' We pass now to the prose of perhaps the greatest Englishman born during the seventeenth century, John Milton. When Milton was bom, in 1608, Spenser had only been dead nine years, Shakespeare had still eight more years to live, Donne was a young man of 35, Marston and Fletcher ■were 33, and Beaumont nine years younger. Bacon was 47, Waller was a child of three. It is almost impious to say so, but it must be said that Milton's prose is not in the direct line of descent from the great writers his predecessors, nor do those of the following ages derive from him. In spite of its many splendours, and its massive weight, this style does not reflect the age, however much it may express the personality of Milton. It is magnificent and memorable, but it exists in solitary state, remote, and unrelated to the general current of English speech. Against Prelatry, Book II (vol. i, p. 221) : ' For although a Poet, soaring in the high Region of his Fancies, with his Garland and singing Robes about him, might, without apology, speak more of himself than I mean to do ; yet for me sitting here below in the cool Element of Prose, a mortal thing among many Readers of no Empyreal Conceit, to venture and divulge unusual things of my self, I shall petition to the gentler sort, it may not be envy to me. I must, say therefore, that after I had from my first years, by the ceaseless diligence and care of my Father, whom God recompence, been exercis'd to the Tongues, and some Sciences, as my Age would suffer, by sundry Masters and Teachers both at home and at the schools, it was found, that when ought was impos'd me by them that had the overlooking, or betak'n to of mine own choise in English, or other Tongue, prosing or versing, but chiefly this latter, the stile by certain vital Signs it had, was likely to live. But much latelier, in the privat Academies of Italy, whither I was favor'd to resort, perceiving that some Trifles which I had in memory, compos'd at under twenty or thereabout (for the manner is, that every one must give some proof of his wit and reading there) met with acceptance above what was lookt for, and other things which I had shifted in scarcity of Books and Conveniences to patch up amongst them, were receiv'd with written Encomiums, which the Italian is not forward to bestow on men of this side the Alps, I began thus far to assent both to them and divers of my friends here at home ; and not less, to an inward prompting which now grew daily upon me, that by labour and intent study, (which I take to be my portion in this Life) joyn'd with the strong propensity of Nature, I might perhaps leave something so written to after-times, as they should not wilingly let it die.' SIR THOMAS BROWNE 151 This is Milton speaking in prose, ' with his Garland and singing Robes about him ' ; it is not the speech of ordinary life, nor of ordinary people in any age. But even when Milton descends to a very different level and expresses such human feelings and passions as personal hatred, prejudice, and intolerance, his style is never that of the common man ; like his own hero, he is never ' less than Archangel ruined '. No less remarkable than Milton in possessing a prose style aloof from, and unrelated to, that which is typical of the age, is his near cbntempo- rary Sir Thomas Browne, from whom we quote three passages. Religio Medici, Pt. II, Sec. 11 (Ed. of 1659): 'Now for my life, it is a miracle of thirty years which to relate, were not a history but a piece of Poetry, and would sound to common eares like a fable ; for the world I count it not an Inne, but an Hospital, and a place, not to live, but to dye in. The world that I regard is my selfe, it is the Microcosme of mine own frame, that I cast mine eye on ; for the other, I use it but like my Globe, and tume it round sometimes for my recreation. Men that looke upon my outside, perusing only my condition, and fortunes, doe erre in my altitude; for I am above Atlas his shoulders. The earth is a point not onely in respect of the heavens above us, but of that heavenly and celestiall part within us : that masse of flesh that circumscribes mee, limits not my minde; that surface that tels the heavens it hath an end, cannot perswade mee I have any; I take my circle to bee above three hundred and sixty, though the number of the Arte doe measure my body, it comprehendeth not my mind : whilst I study to find how I am a Microcosme or little world, I find my self something more than the great.' From Vulgar Errors, Book III, chap, xxii : ' As for its possibility we shall not at present dispute ; nor will we aflfirm that Iron ingested, receiveth in 'the stomack of the Oestridge no alteration at all ; but if any such there be, we suspect this effect rather from some way of corrosion, then any of digestion ; not any liquid reduction or tendance to chilification by the power of natural heat, but rather some attrition from an acide and vitriolous humidity in the stomack, which may absterse and shave the scorious parts thereof.' From Hydriotaphia, chap, v : ' There is nothing strictly immortall, but immortality ; whatever hath no beginning may be confident of no end. All others have a dependent being, and within the reach of destruction, which is the peculiar of that necessary essence that cannot destroy it self; And the highest strain of omnipotency to be so powerfully constituted as not to suffer even from the power of itself. But the sufficiency of Christian Immortality frustrates all earthly glory, and the quality of either state after death, makes a folly of posthumous memory. God who can onely destroy our souls, and hath assured our resurrection, either of our bodies or . names hath directly promised no duration. Wherein there is so much chance that the boldest Expectants have found unhappy frustration ; and to hold long subsistence, seems but to scape in oblivion. But man is a Noble Animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing Nativities and Deaths, with equall lustre, nor omitting Ceremonies of bravery, in the infamy of his nature.' The first passage above quoted, and much of the work from which it comes, is the nearest approach which Sir Thomas Browne makes to a natural style in his great works themselves. The Epistles to Thomas 152 THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES Le Gros, and to Nicholas Bacon, and the Preface, to the Reader, of Religio Medici are, on the whole, free from the author's peculiar manner- isms, and while they lack the qualities which distinguish the best writing of the age, are not very different from the general run of such productions. Every element in this author's characteristic style is intensely individual : the vocabulary — a marvellous assemblage of costly incrustations — the word order, the whole structure and cadence of the sentence. The last chapter oiHydriotaphia is a veritable tour deforce; it soars to an almost incredible pitch of sustained eloquence, which never falters nor declines in intensity and volume, from the opening to the closing words. It is probable that whether Sir Thomas Browne's contemporaries enjoyed his style or not, it appeared to them nearly as bizarre as it does to us. It would be interesting to know, for instance, what Dryden, who was born about a quarter of a century later than Browne, and outlived him by eighteen years, thought of the style of Hydriotaphia. We may now with advantage pass to Sir John Suckling and Cowley, both of whom are contrasted by Dryden with the writers of the former age — Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher — as exhibiting the best qualities of his own, qualities to which the older writers had not yet attained. ' Shakespeare's language is likewise a little obsolete ', says Dryden in Essay of Dramatic Poesy (p. 8i), and again, ' they ' (the writers of the former age) ' can produce nothing so courtly writ, or which ex- presses so much the conversation of a gentleman, as Sir John Suckling ; nothing so even, sweet, and flowing, as Mr. Waller ; nothing so majestic, so correct, as Sir John Denham ; nothing so elevated, so copious, and full of spirit, as Mr. Cowley ' (ibid., pp. 34-5). We are not immediately concerned with die ultimate justness of this appraisement of relative literary values, but merely with the fact that Dryden wishes to emphasize the difference of language which separates the older writers from those of his own day. ' That an alteration is lately made in ours (our language), or since the writers of the last age (in which I include Shakespeare, Fletcher, and Jonson), is manifest' {Dramatic Poetry of the Last Age, p. 164). This will be manifest also to the reader who has studied the various specimens given above when he compares them with the short quotations from Dryden, and still more so when he considers longer passages of this great man. But, not to anticipate, let us first see how Sir John Suckling ' expresses the conversa- tion of a gentleman '. I take this to refer not merely to the dialogue of his plays, but to his writing as a whole, to the ease, the lack of stiffness, and the well-bred self-possession and naturalness which pervade all he wrote. Here is one of his letters to ' Aglaura ' : ' My dear Dear, — Think I have kissed your letter to nothing and now know not what to answer; or that, now I am answering, I am kissing you to nothing, and know not how to go on ! For, you must pardon, I must hate all I send you here, because it expresses nothing in respect of what it leaves behind with me. And O ! why should I write then ? Why should I not come myself? Those tyrants, business, honour, and necessity, what have they to do with you and I ? Why should we not do love's commands before theirs, whose sovereignty is but usurped upon us ? Shall we not smell roses 'cause others do look on, or gather them EASE OF SUCKLING AND COWLEY 153 'cause there are prickles, and something that would hinder us ? Dear, I fain would, and know no hindrance but what must come from you; and why should any come? Since 'tis not I but you, must be sensible how much time we lose, it being long time since I was not myself but yours' (Works, ii, pp. 197-8). The following is in a very different strain, and is taken from the Dis- course 0/ Religion (Works, ii, pp. 245-6) : ' The strangest, though most epidemical, disease of all religions has been an imagination men have had that the imposing painful and diflScult things upon themselves was the best way to appease the Deity, grossly thinking the chief service and delight of the Creator to consist in the tortures and sufferings of the creature. How laden with changeable and unnecessary ceremonies the Jews were, their feasts, circumcisions, sacrifices, great Sab- baths and little Sabbaths, fasts, burials, indeed almost all worship sufficiently declare ; and that the Mahometans are much more infected appears by . . . lancing themselves with knives, putting out their eyes upon the sight of their prophet's tomb, and the like. . . . Our rehgion teaches us to bear afflictions patiently when they fall upon us, but not to force them upon ourselves; for we believe the God we serve wise enough to choose his own service, and therefore presume not to add to His commands.' It is hardly temerarious to date the beginning of typical seventeenth- century prose from Suckling. In him we find, almost for the first time, the accents of that age which has given to succeeding generations the models of clarity, elegance, and urbanity. Dying in 1642, Suckling was 'taken away from the evil to '■ come ' ; but if he was spared the mortification of seeing the triumph of the , "' usurper and the martyrdom of the King, neither did he enjoy the frolics' of the Restoration, nor know the later perfections of English speech in literature and in its colloquial forms. From SuckUng we naturally pass to Cowley, and consider a passage from an Essay. 0/ my Self. ' It is a hard and nice Subject for a man to write of himself ; it grates his own heart to say any thing of disparagement, and the Readers Ears to hear any thing of praise from him. There is no danger from me of offending him in this kind ; neither my Mind, nor my Body, nor my Fortune, allow me any materials for that Vanity. It is sufficient, for my own contentment, that they have preserved me from being scandalous, or remarkable on the defective side. But besides that, I shall here speak of my self, only in relation to the subject of these precedent discourses, and shall be likelier thereby to fall into the contempt, than rise up to the estimation of most people. As far as my memory can return back into my past Life, before I knew, or was capable of guessing what the World, or Glories, or Business of it were, the natural affections of my Soul gave a secret bent of aversion from them, as some Plants are said to turn away from others, by an Antipathy imperceptible to themselves, and inscrutable to Mans under- standing. Even when I was a very young Boy at School, instead of running about on Holydays, and playing with my Fellows, I was wont to steal from them and walk into the Fields, either alone with a Book, or with some one Companion, if I could find any of the same Temper. I was then too so much an Enemy to constraint, that my Masters could never prevail on me, by any perswasions, or encouragements, to learn without Book the common Rules of Grammar, in which they dispenced with me 154 THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES alone, because they found I made a shift to do the usual exercise out of my own reading and observation.' With Cowley the new era is well on its way. This is no longer the diction of the ' last age '. It has all the grace of the seventeenth century in its middle period, none of the eccentricities of Browne, none of the soaring above human life and common modes of expression that is felt in the prose of Milton, none of the frigid didactics or haughty aloofness of Bacon. The style of Cowley's prose Essays has given to these works a perma- nence which their intrinsic interest alone would hardly have secured. It is familiar without overstepping the bounds of good manners, easy without lapsing into slovenliness, and it preserves stateliness without sacrificing intimacy. It is colloquial in the best sense. What Dr. Spratt afBrms of his conversation is true of his writings — ' In his Speech neither the pleasantness excluded gravity, nor was the sobriety of it inconsistent with delight.' in Cowley are found neither the lofty eloquence of Dryden's noblest passages, nor the pointed brilliancy of Congreve. The former was alien to the altogether slighter character of the elder poet, while the latter belongs peculiarly to the Restoration. " And this brings us to Dryden, whose style in ' the other harmony of prose ' we shall observe as he acts as our guide to the matter in hand — the development of English literary and colloquial style after the age of Elizabeth. In the Essay on the Dramatic Poetry of the Last Age (Essays, vol. i, p. 174, &c.) Dry4en says : ' I have always acknowledged the wit of our predecessors, with all the veneration which becomes me ; but I am sure their wit was not that pf gentlemen ; there was ever somewhat that was ill-bred and clownish in it, and which confessed the conversation of the authors. ' And this leads me to the last and greatest advantage of our writing, which proceeds from conversation. In the age wherein these poets lived, there was less of gallantry than in ours ; neither did they keep the best company of theirs. Their fortune has been much like that of Epicurus, in the retirement of his gardens ; to live almost unknown, and to be celebrated after their decease. I cannot find that any of them had been conversant in courts, except Ben Jonson ; and his genius lay not so much that way, as to make an improvement by it. Greatness was not then so easy of access, nor conversation so free, as now it is. 1 cannot, therefore, conceive it any insolence to affirm, that, by the knowledge and pattern of their wit who writ before us, and by the advantage of our own conversation, the discourse and raillery of our comedies excel what has been written by them.' It is necessary to note that, as Mr. Ker points out in the Preface to his edition of the Essays, Dryden uses Wit in the larger sense of propriety of language, and also in the narrower and stricter sense of sharpness 0/ con- ceit. In the above passage it appears to be used in the former sense. Dryden here advances several important propositions. The dramatic writers his predecessors did exhibit in their plays the actual speech of their age — ;the style ' confessed the conversation of the authors ' ; but it was not the conversation of gentlemen, not the best example ot the speech of their age therefore, but that of clownish and ill-bred persons ; DRYDEN'S TRIBUTE TO KING CHARLES igs the dramatic writing of his own age also expresses the ' conversation ' of the time, but now, being based upon a more refined and polished type of this, ' the discourse and raillery of our comedies excel ' those of his predecessors. Dryden proceeds : ' Now, if they ask me, whence it is that our conversation is so much refined ? I must freely, and without flattery, ascribe it to the Court ; and in it, particularly to the King, whose example gives a law to it. His own misfortunes, and the nation's, afforded him an opportunity which is rarely allowed to sovereign princes, I mean of travelling, and being conversant in the most polished courts of Europe ; and thereby cultivating a spirit which was formed by nature to receive the impressions of a gallant and generous education. At his return, he found a nation lost as much in barbarism as in rebellion; and as the excellency of his nature forgave the one, so the excellency of his manners reformed the other. The desire of imitating so great a pattern first awakened the dull and heavy spirits of the English from their natural reservedness ; loosened them from their stiff forms of conversation, and made them easy and pliant to each other in discourse. Thus, insensibly, our way of living became more free ; and the fire of English wit, which was before stifled under a con- strained melancholy way of breeding, began first to display its force, by mixing the solidity of our nation with the air and gaiety of our neighbours. This being granted to be true, it would be a wonder if the poets, whose work is imitation, should be the only persons in three kingdoms who should not receive advantage by it ; or if they should not more easily imitate the wit and conversation of the present age than of the past.' It results from the various remarks quoted from Dryden that he was conscious of great differences between the speech of his own time as reflected in literary works, and more particularly in dramatic literature, and that of the Elizabethans. This difference Dryden holds to be greatly to the advantage of his own contemporaries, and he attributes the improve- ment to the refinement and polish of the language of the Court under Charles II. The ' stiff forms of conversation ' had passed away. Dryden's complaint against the older writers is in reality threefold : their language is ' obsolete ' ; it was based upon bad models ; it has often a certain incorrectitude. The obsolescence of these writers, in so far as it existed, is not a reasonable ground of complaint, since it is inseparable from the normal development of speech. The other two charges are to a great extent part and parcel of the first. It is inadmissible that Shakespeare was not acquainted with the best colloquial English of his time, or that when he chose he could not make his characters speak Uke gentlemen. The colloquial convention had changed greatly during the century or so between Shakespeare and Dryden, and it is this difference between them that Dryden mistakes for ' clownishness ' in the older poets. In the same way Dryden's contemporaries speak of the ' rude unpolished strain ' of Chaucer, and Dryden himself cannot praise this poet's verse more highly than in comparing it to the ' rude music of a Scotch tune '. As for the ' incorrectness ', some of it no doubt, judged by the strictest standards, had a real existence, but as Professor Sir Walter Raleigh says of Shakespeare — ' the syntax and framework of his sentences have all the 156 THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES freedom of impulsive speech ', and again — ' He breaks through grammar only to get nearer to the heart of things.' Some of the constructions which fall under Dryden's censure are perfectly normal in the sixteenth century, as, for instance, Ben Jonson's Contain your spirit in more stricter bounds, which is a very usual form of the Comparative among the Elizabethans, and continued in colloquial use after their day (cf. p. 326, below). But it is not from the consideration of isolated features of this kind that the essential character of the language of an age is to be apprehended. This is the result of innumerable factors — vocabulary, the particular associations attached to certain words, the order of these in the sentence, the balance and cadence of the sentence, the peculiar movement, one might almost say the speed of the utterance. The general impression of the typical seventeenth-century style at its best is one of rapidity, lightness, ease, supple- ness, and grace. It is almost impossible to conceive that the dialogue , which we find in Sir Thomas More's Life, in that of Wolse/s Life by Cavendish, or in Eupkues, could have rattled and flashed along with the same swift inevitableness which is felt to belong to the dialogues of Dryden's best manner, to those of Otway, of Vanbrugh, or even of Mrs. Aphra Behn, and, above all, to those of Congreve (see examples on pp. 369, 397, &c.). In this connexion it is interesting to recall the views propounded by Bacon in his Short Notes for Civil Conversation, which no doubt were shared by many in his day. ' It is necessary to use a stedfast countenance, not wavering with action, as in moving the head or hand too much, which sheweth a fantastical light, and fickle operation of the spirit. . . . Only it is sufficient with leisure to use a modest action in either. In all kinds of speech, either pleasant, grave, severe or ordinary, it is convenient to speak leisurely, and rather drawlingly, than hastily ; because hasty speech confounds the memory, and oftentimes, besides unseemliness, drives a man either to a npn-plus or unseemly stammering, harping upon that which should follow ; whereas a slow speech confirmeth the memory, addeth a conceit of wisdom to the hearers, besides a seemliness of speech and countenance.' This passage appears to recommend a gesture and a manner of utter- ance as sober and slow-moving as the style in which the advice is couched. Precept and example are here become identical. These few sentences of Bacon have the atmosphere of his age, and certainly they neither lack anything of the leisureliness which he enjoins in conversa- tion, nor err on the side of sprightliness of movement which would correspond to the ' wavering with action ' in uttered speech. If we put these and similar passages of this age side by side with others from the later seventeenth century, the difference between the Elizabethan and the post- Revolution sentences in what we have called the general mode of movement at once becomes apparent. This characteristic movement will depend very largely upon the sentence structure, word order, and syntax ; to some extent also upon accidence, and upon the general habits of pronunciation. It is the subtle fusion of all these factors which gives to the language of an age its special flavour, character, and atmosphere. Only the grosser and more obvious LITERARY STYLE ROOTED IN THE COLLOQUIAL 157 of the elements which compose the whole submit to our analysis. There are hosts of imponderables which no philological microscope can focus. To the critics of Dryden's day there was only one test of supreme excellence in English style, and that was conformity to their own standards. What differed from these was suspect, and it was natural that, convinced that ' Well-placing of words for the sweetness of pro- nunciation was not known till Mr. Waller introduced it ', the men of the seventeenth century should feel, in reading diligently the works of Shakespeare and Fletcher, that a man who understood English would ' find in every page either some solecism of speech, or some notorious flaw in sense '. It is well to remember that Dryden, although he may i', try to justify his strictures by producing a series of examples of the supposed improprieties of the Elizabethans, is simply protesting against what is to him archaic and unfamiliar. However much we may be alive to the diflferences between the English of the age of Shakespeare and that of the age of Dryden, it is evident that Dryden himself and the men of his time felt these differences far more keenly. To be obsolete was to be inferior, and the charges of ' clownishness ', and the assertion that the ' wit ' of the earlier dramatic writers was ' ill- bred ', amount to no more than an insistence that the colloquial style, and with it the style of prose generally, had changed. This is perhaps the proper place to reiterate what was insisted upon in general terms in the earlier chapters, that the literary and colloquial styles of any age are most intimately related. The style of literary prose is alive and expressive, chiefly in so far as it is rooted in that of colloquial utterance. The general atmosphere of both is the same in any given age. It may be safely affirmed that a piece of prose which is genuinely typical of the period in which it is pro- duced, no matter how highly-wrought and finished it may be, will not sound strange when read aloud and judged by the colloquial standards of its own day. Dryden attributes the improvement of dramatic literature in his day to the polishing of conversation since the Restoration. It may be said that dramatic style necessarily aims at reproducing conversation at its best, and that the relation between this genre of literature and the col- loquial language is closer than that between the latter and any other form of writing. To recognize this is not to exclude the extension of the principle to other kinds of prose. We may make every possible allowance for differences which distinguish the various types of colloquial speech from each other, according to the occasion which calls them forth, and for those differences again which naturally divide the style of uttered speech from that of written prose, of whatever kind this may be, yet we must recognize that at a given period the language is everywhere one and the same — within the limits of the same dialect — and that written and uttered language, passing through the various gradations from the most familiar and colloquial to the most elevated and carefully finished, are all of a piece ; they all represent merely different ways of using the same instrument ; they breathe the same general spirit and atmosphere, and express, in divers tones, the same characteristic genius of the age to which they belong. This is why the changing genius of a language such as English may 158 THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES be illustrated by means of literary prose. If this has changed, it is because the colloquial language has changed first. Everything which is true of one is true of the other, allowing for the different conditions under which conversation and writing are severally produced. Dryden's account of the English of his age, although this refers primarily to that of literature, is applicable also to the colloquial language. The change in English style from the close of the age of Ehzabeth to the Restoration has been illustrated above from the more polished and deliberate types of literary prose ; the more specifically colloquial types will be displayed later on in their proper place, in the general survey of colloquial English. Passing on to the next generation after Dryden we come naturally to Swift, whose various treatises on the English of his own day and that of the age immediately preceding this, are very instructive. They consist (i) of a short article in the Tatler (No. 230, Sept 28, 1710); (2) a burlesque entitled A complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation, &c., known also by the shorter title of Polite Conversations ; (3) ^ Proposal for correcting, improving, and ascertaining the English Tongue, In a letter to . . . the lord high treasurer of Great Britain. This is dated Feb. 22, 1711-12. These three documents are all in the nature of an indictment of the fashionable English of the period, on various grounds : — that there is a great deal of deliberate affectation ; that this takes the form of ' corrupt- ing' the pronunciation — sometimes by leaving out vowels, so that awkward combinations of consonants are brought about — sometimes by dropping whole syllables and otherwise ' clipping ' words ; a further form of affectation is the use of what we should call ' slang ' words and phrases ; another is the persistent use of set words, tags, and phrases, so that conversation degenerates into a mere string of clicMs. The most elaborate of these articles is the Introduction to the Polite Conversations, which describes, in a vein of irony, some of the chief features of fashion- able pronunciation, as well as the various airs and graces of manner which distinguish the bearing of genteel persons in social intercourse. A much more serious document, though perhaps hardly more instructive, from the amount of light which it throws upon die actual habits of speech of the period, is the Letter to the Lord Treasurer. The great interest of this lies in the author's attempt to discover the causes of the corrupting tendencies which he censures, and to trace them to their different sources. Throughout these treatises Swift includes both writers and speakers under a common condemnation, referring specifically now to one, now to the other. Perhaps the first point in Swift's Z«Wer to the Lord Treasurer which will strike the reader who is familiar with Dryden's views concerning the English style of his own day compared with that of the Elizabethans, is the remarkable divergence between the views taken by these two great writers. Born in 1667, Swift was just a generation younger than Dryden. We have seen what Dryden thought of the Eliza- bethans as writers, and how superior to them he considered his own contemporaries. In contrast to this we find Swift saying of the former-^' The period, SWIFT'S OPINION OF COURT SPEECH 159 wherein the English tongue received most improvement, I take to commence with the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign, and to con- clude with the great rebellion in forty-two.' Now for Swift's opinion of the effect of the Restoration upon English style. ' During the usurpation, such an infusion of enthusiastic jargon prevailed in every writing, as was not shaken off in many years after. To this succeeded that licentiousness which entered with the restoration, and from infecting our religion and morals fell to corrupt our language ; which last was not like to be much itnproved by those, who at that time made up the court of King Charles the Second ; either such who had followed him in his banishment, or who had been altogether conversant in the dialect of those fanatic times ; or young men who had been educated in the same country ; so that the court, which used to be the standard of propriety and correctness of speech, was then, and I think hath ever since continued, the worst school in England for that accomplishment ; and so will remain, till better care be taken in the education of our young nobility, that they may set out into the world with some foundation of literature, in order to qualify them for patterns of politeness. The consequence of this defect in our writing may appear from plays, and other compositions written for enter- tainment within fifty years past; filled with a succession of affected phrases and new conceited words, either borrowed from the current style of the court, or from those, who under the character of men of wit and pleasure pretended to give the law. Many of these refinements have already been long antiquated, and are now hardly intelligible, which is no wonder when they were the product only of ignorance and caprice.' The function of the Court of Charles II then, in regard to English, was, from Swift's point of view, hardly that which Dryden attributed to it. After the courtiers and ' dunces of figure ', Swift passes to ' another set of men who have contributed very much to the spoiling of the English tongue ; I mean the poets from the time of the restoration '. The fault of these writers is alleged to be that they abbreviate words ' to fit them to the measure of their verses, and this tihey have frequently done so very injudiciously, as to form such harsh unharmonious sounds that none but a northern ear could endure : they have joined the most obdurate con- sonants without one intervening consonant, only to shorten a syllable ' It was maintained that words ' pronounced at length sounded faint and languid '. ' This was a pretence to take up the same custom in prose, so that most books we see nowadays are full of these manglings and abbrevia- tions.' S^ift gives instances of the fault complained oi—drudg'd, disturb' d, rebuk'd, fled^d. We may note in passing that the omission of the vowel of the suffix -ed had been in vogue for centuries, but if Swift is to be relied upon, there must have still been many in his day who pronounced the P. P. suffix in the above words as a separate syllable. The next cause — 'perhaps borrowed from the former' — which has •contributed not a little to the maiming of our language, is a foolish opinion, advanced of late years that we ought to spell exactly as we speak '. Swift naturally condemns phonetic spelling on various grounds. For us the most interesting of those alleged is that '. Not only the several towns and counties of England have a different way of pronouncing, but i6o THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES even here in London they clip their words after one manner about court, another in the city, and a third in the suburbs '. If all these varieties were reduced to writing it ' would entirely confound orthography'. The last source of ' corruption ' mentioned by Swift is a certain school of young men from the Universities ' terribly possessed with a fear of pedantry ', who from his description wish to be what we should call ' up to date '. ' They . . . come up to town, reckon all their errors for accom- plishments, borrow the newest set of phrases ; and if they take a pen into their hands, all the odd words they have picked up in a coffee-house, or at a gaming ordinary are produced as flowers of style, and their orthography refined to the utmost.' Such a ' strange race of wits ', with their ' quaint fopperies ' of manner and speech, exist in every age. Their mannerisms rarely pass beyond their immediate clique, and have no more permanence than foam on the river. Swift's indictment appears at first sight rather a grave one. It is not altogether clear whether he objects more to certain habits of pronuncia- tion, or to those tricks of spelling, certainly common in his day, which were supposed to represent those pronunciations. It is possible that Swift did not distinguish very clearly between soimd and sjrmbol, and included both under a common curse. When we remember the many peculiarities of pronunciation, eccentric as we should think them, which were prevalent during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, more particularly in the. ■^ypf dropping consonants in various positions (see pp. 296, &c.), we might suppose that Swift's criticism is directed against this mode of pronunciation, slovenly and slipshod as it would be considered at the present time. Some readers might be inclined to say, ' Here is Swift, a man of taste, refinement, and by no means unacquainted with the fashionable world of his day, but he censures the careless speech of his period. Is it fair to assume, in the face of Swift's strong disapproba- tion, that the best speakers really spoke in the manner suggested by the writers in the Verney Memoirs or the Weniworth Papers ? ' It may be well to inquire what it really is with which Swift finds fault. The few examples given in the Letter to the Lord Treasurer are really of no meaning, unless the strictures passed upon them refer primarily to the spelling. The Tatler article, however, gives a letter which is evidently intended to illustrate as many as possible of the ' late refinements crept into our language'. They do not amount to very much — to ha' come; I'd ha bro't 'ttm ; ha'nt dorit ' haven't done it ' ; do'i ' do it ' ; thai 's pozz ; to^imselfairs; their phizz' s ; the/upps; promis't; upon Rep. 'reputation'; incog; mob — vasttzA oi mobile — ; 'tis; 3a»/«-'rf, and a few more. Some of these, such as ha, do't, that's, &c., were already well-established forms, at least a century or a century and a half old. The really new, or comparatively new, abbreviations are rep, phizz, mob, pozz, plenipo, &c. The number of these truncated words which appear already in the latter part of the seventeenth century was never very large, and most have now become obsolete, mob being the only one which has passed into permanent and universal use. Pozz has vanished, rep still lingered in the phrase demirep in the middle of the nineteenth century, phizz barely survives, as a half-facetious word which amuses no one and which few now employ. SWIFT NO PURIST IN PRONUNCIATION i6i We look in vain among Swift's examples for what were indeed the characteristic pronunciations from the sixteenth to late in the eighteenth century, for instances of the dropping of consonants in the middle and at the end of words. Why does Swift not mention Lunnon, Wensday, Christnas, greaiis (for greatest), respeck, hounes (for hounds) ? How is it that the common habit of adding a ^ or / at the end of a word has escaped him ? Why does he allow such pronunciations as loft (for laugK), generald {general), varmint {vermin), and a dozen more of the same kind to pass without notice ? In Chapter VIII numerous instances are given of these and similar omissions and additions, and it will be observed that not a few are taken from the late seventeenth and early- eighteenth centuries. It is inconceivable that Swift should not have heard these pronunciations, yet they do not fall under his lash. Why not ? Because they were so widespread among the best speakers that to take exception to them would have been to fall foul of the English of all his contemporaries, his own included. Does not Swift himself rhyme vermin "•mtHa. ferment, thus implying either that he pronounced a / at the end of the form«7 or dropped one at the end of the latter ? Let the reader glance at the lists on pp. 2 1 7-20, and he will probably come to the conclusion that these things were so common, so much part of the fabric of English pronunciation in Swift's day, that he did not notice them, indeed that he himself shared the universal habit of his age. In the long, satirical Introduction to the Polite Conversations, he refers again to pozz and bam (bamboozle) and shortenings of that class, as in the Letter, and further to catit, han't, shan't, couldn't, isn't. Sec, where it is surely rather the spelling than the suggested pronunciation which is aimed at. He does, however, refer to four words whose pronunciation was different in his day from what it is in our own, and we must perhaps suppose, from the fact that these words are mentioned, that Swift did not himself pro- nounce them according to the manner usual to his contemporaries. These words are learnen for learning, jometry for geometry, vardi for verdict, and lard ior tdrd^ On the various points involved see~pp.""289, 303', 242, below. Probably lard was in any case going out of fashion. Swift is not a purist in pronunciation ; at any rate he is not bent upon reforming the fixed habits of his time, however much he may dislike the mere passing fashions which he regards as ephemeral affectations. He sees on the one side a rather vulgar slanginess, and on the other an equally intolerable preciocity. He is mainly concerned with propriety of vocabulary and diction, and he dislikes neologisms. It is evidently upon these grounds that Swift objects to the style of the dramatists of the Restoration. What he con- siders as ' a succession of affected phrases and new conceited words ' was to Dryden the embodiment of all that is gay, gallant, and polite, as it was exhibited in the easy and elegant conversation of King Charles's Court. It is apparently this very identity between the diction of literature and that of life which is condemned by Swift, or if, theoretically, he would not deny the necessity of this, he at any rate disapproves of those very models of colloquial English which Dryden most admires. To this extent then, and in theory, if not in practice. Swift represents the view of the academic pedant, and Dryden that of the urbane man of the world. M 1 62 THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES If we consider the general character of the English of the average printed books after the first decade of the seventeenth century, compared with that of a similar class of work in the preceding century, we observe a far greater uniformity of spelling and of dialect generally. Only rarely do we find, here and there, those occasional spellings which we have seen occurring with surprising frequency in books of all kinds, down to the end of the reign of Elizabeth, and even, to some extent, for the first few j\ars of the seventeenth century. The spelling and accidence of literary English, especially when printed, have gradually become crystallized, deviations from the recognized standard are more and more rare, and those trifling variations from this which do occur are of no importance, as a rule, in throwing light upon the changes of language. What is true of printed literature is true, in a general way, and with certain important exceptions, of the English preserved in the letters of the period. Whereas in the former century we found that such writers as Sir Thomas Smith, Barnabe Googe, Ascham, Cranmer, Lyly, and so on, often employ very instructive spellings in their private corre- spondence, and that they retain certain dialectal features in the forms and accidence, such things are increasingly hard to find during the seventeenth century among persons of the same type. Thus if we examine the con- siderable collection of letters contained in Ellis's nine volumes, we find that whereas on almost every page of the sixteenth-century letters several forms of great interest occur, these are remarkably rare later on. Ortho- graphy and grammar are uniform and stereotyped, aiid more than this ; the personages whose correspondence is presented to us, mostly highly educated oflScials, courtiers, and bishops, adhere with great consistency to the orthodox spelling. On the other hand, a priceless collection of letters for our purpose exists in the ^ Verney Memoirs, which cover practically the last three quarters of the seventeenth century. These four volumes are an inex- haustible treasure-house of material for the study of seventeenth-century colloquial English. The letters are principally those of Sir Ralph Verney, his wife (and later of his children), his sisters and brothers, his uncle Dr. Denton, his aunts and cousins, besides many other persons among the intimate friends of the family. There are a few letters from humbler persons, bailiffs and other dependants, but the vast majority are from people of the sajne social standing, men and women belonging to the class of country gentry," some of them, as in the case of several of Sir Ralph's sisters, living pretty continuously in the country — at Claydon on the borders of Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire — others, such as Lady Hobart, Mrs. Eure, Mrs. Sherard, and Dr. Denton, living principally in London. Dr. Denton, a member of an old Buckinghamshire county family, was a man of considerablov cultivation who was educated at Oxford, where he studied medicine, and subsequently became a fashion- able physician in London ; his opinions concerning both health and ' Less important only because less numerous are the letters in the Verney Paters {Letters ana Paftrs of the Verney Family, Ed. Brace, Camden Soc. 1853) to which reference is often made below. These come down to 1639, with which date the later collection begins. THE ENGLISH OF THE VERNEYS 163 other grave problems of life were greatly prized by all his family and friends, including his close relatives, the Verneys. A very large proportion of the letters in the Memoirs are from ladies, and it is from these that we obtain the greater number of tEose occasional departures from the conventional spelling which shed so much light upon current pronunciation. But these spellings are by no means confined to the letters of the ladies. Sir Ralph himself, his brothers, his sons. Dr. Denton, an3''Sr John Burgoyne, to mention no others, all now and then employ spellings of the same kind as those found in the letters of the femalecorresgondents, and the indications given by these spellings, thougHTess frequent, point in exactly the same direction as the spellings of the ladies, and suggest an identical pronunciation. Thus we are by no means justified in supposing that the ladies habitually used a more careless and slipshod mode of speech than the men of their family and class. If the Verney ladies spell phonetically, and in such a way as to imply what we should now call a careless and even illiterate pronunciation, this is because they read less than their menfolk, and were less familiar with the orthodox spelling .of prmteH" books. To spell badly was not a ground of reproach in the seventeenth, nor evenjn the eighteenth, century. It is not a plausible suggestion that the ladies of a family spoke other- wise than their sons and brothers, and indeed the evidence is all against such a supposition. Regional dialect does not appear in the letters of these Buckinghamshire ladies and their friends, and the characteristic features revealed by the Verney Memoirs seem to be those of the English of the age as spoken among the upper classes. There seems to be no reason for supposing that the pronunciations recorded, and the easy- going grammar of the letters, were not those in general use. As one reads these Memoirs one has a very vivid impression of reality, and no amount of study of the purely literary works of the period on the one hand, or of the contemporary writers on English pronunciation on the other, can possibly give such an insight into the actual pronunciation and the familiar, unstudied diction of the seventeenth century, as is to be gained from a perusal of these documents, written on the whole, as we have said, by persons of the same class, but various in character, tempera- ment, education, and the general circumstances of their lives. It might be said that the whole of the seventeenth-century colloquial English is here, in its various degrees of familiarity, and also of more studied utterance. The number of persons whose letters appear makes the col- lection truly representative of the age, and we can observe the differing modes of expression of three generations. Every mood finds expression, and almost every shade of temperament, and if none of the writers has the pen of a S^vign^ or a Walpole, the correspondence holds us by its intense human interest, quite apart from its value for linguistic and social history. These letters are genuine human documents, in which living men and women tell the story of their lives in the natural diction of their age, and, we must repeat, in the actual pronunciation of their age. We are in an altogether more attractive world than that of the litigious Pastons and huckstering Celys, whose correspondence is nearest to that of the Verneys in point of linguistic interest. It is worth noting that the fellings into which the writers in the Verney Memoirs often drop uncon- M 2 1 64 THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES sciously are in many cases identical with those employed by contemporary ■writers on pronunciation, such as Wallis and Cooper, in order to express the pronunciation they wish to describe. Another collection of letters covering about the same period as the Verney Memoirs is the Correspondence of Dr. Basire. This volume contains chiefly the letters of the Reverend Doctor himself, and of other more or less eminent clergy, and these are of small value for the light which they throw upon the pronunciation, but the letters of Mrs. Basire — formerly a Miss Corbet of Shropshire — are as enlightening as those of the Buckinghamshire ladies. The pronunciation exhibited by these letters shows the same general character as that of the Vemeys. A lin- guistic uniformity of this kind between, on the one hand, a group of persons chiefly belonging to Buckinghamshire, some of them residing in London, and on the other a lady of the same class belonging to Shropshire, but living most of her life in the North of England, goes far to confirm the impression regarding pronunciation which we gain from the Verney Memoirs; it also shows that in the latter part of the seventeenth century there was a Received Standard which had a very wide currency among people of a certain social standing. From the spontaneous deviations from the convention in spelling which occur in the letters of the Vemeys and of Mrs. Basire, it would be possible to reconstruct the pronunciation of the period with considerable minute- ness and no little certainty. The Standard thus reached is that which might be adopted were it desired to reproduce the pronunciation of the great .Restoration dramatists. If it be thought that the modes of speech of the Verneys arid Mrs. Basire are too careless and unstudied for the sparkling dialogue of the smart ladies and gentlemen of Congreve and Vanbrugh, it should be remembered that these characters are almost exact contemporaries of Sir Ralph and Lady Verney, of Lady Sussex and Dr. Denton ; that all these personages, real and fictitious, belong to the same class; that, allowing for the literary polish and brilliancy imparted by the dramatists to the conversation of the latter, they aU employ the same diction, grammar, and constructions. Passing on to about a generation later than the last letters in the Verney Memoirs, Sec, we find in the Wentworth Papers, documents no less important as illustrating the colloquial English of the Court circle during the first third of the eighteenth century. The best letters, from our present point of view, are those of old Lady Wentworth, who had been Woman of the Bedchamber to the Queen of James II, of her son Peter, and of her daughter-in-law Lady Strafford. There are many other letters in the collection which are of great value for the study of eighteenth- century English — as indeed is nearly everything which was written during the first three quarters of the century — but the above are the chief. The general character of these letters closely resembles that of the Verney collection. They are intimate effusions from a mother to her son, from a wife to her husband, from one brother to another. The style of the three characters mentioned is absolutely unaffected and natural, and is clearly as close as it is possible for that of written documents to be to that of everyday life. The spelling, even of Peter Wentworth — the ' Querry ', as he calls himself—is instructively remote from the conven- CHARACTERISTIC PRONUNCIATIONS 165 tional type, and shows that the pronunciation of the period was practically identical, in all essential features, with that suggested by the Verney correspondence. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance for our knowledge of seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century conversational English of the Verney and Wentworth letters. Those who have not made themselves familiar with these collections, or with others of a similar character, have missed the richest and most vital sources of information. JBoth the Verney Memoirs and the Weniworth Papers are freely drawn on in the later chapters of this book, but it will not be out of place to bring together here a few of the priceless gems of spelling which the former volumes contain. As full references are given later to page and volume, as well as to the writer, and the date, these are omitted here. The following forms are all taken from letters written between 1640 and 1688 : Vowel Spellings. ar for er : — sartinly, desarve, sarvant, sarve, presarve, divariion, larne 'learn', vartus ' virtues ',_>'ar« ' earn', marcy, &c., &c. M.E. - We may note, among the above, the pronunciation [esr] for ar.e (cf. P- 357j below); [5(r)da(r)] (cf. p. 299, below); the pronunciation of -ing as -in (cf. p. 289, below) ; -on ■=■ -in in reason, season (cf. p. 276, below). The next list we shall mention is one in which the pairs are said to have 'nearly' — aflSnem — the same sound. This probably means that the sound was really identical, but that Cooper, for some reason, was not quite prepared to admit it: — Eaton — eten; Martial — Marshal; Nash — gnash ; Noah's — nose ; Rome — room ; Walter — wa.fer ; carrying — carrion ; craven — craving ; doer — door ; pulls — pulse ; saphire — safer ; shire — shear; sex — sects; stricter — stricture; throat — throw t. We come next to a list of forms which belong to a ' barbarous dialect', and are therefore, according to Cooper, to be avoided, although many of these spellings, or others which imply the same pronunciation, are to be found in the letters of the Verneys or of Lady Wentworth. The most interesting are : — Bushop ; Charles ' Charles ' (cp. Mrs. Basire, p. 205, below) ; eend * end ' ; fut ' foot ' (= [fat], cp. sutt in the Verney Memoirs, p. 237, below) ; gave ' gave ' ; hild ' held ' (cf. p. 354) ; leece ' lice ', meece ' mice ' (S.E. or S.E. Midi.) ; ommost ' almost ' ; wuts ' oats ', hwutter 'hotter' (cf. p. 307); ap to 'up'; stomp 'stamp'; sarvice (cf. p. 219); tunder ' tinder ' ; yeri ' herb ', yerth ' earth ' (cf. p. 308) ;yeuseles ; yeusary. With regard to the two last, it is doubtful which pronunciation they are intended to suggest. If [jushs], &c., why not have written j/o«f/ifw ? If not this then is it [jys-] 1 If the former was condemned by Cooper, did he still adhere to the latter pronunciation ? Or is he condemning [jys-], which must have been very archaic by his time ? (Cf. p. 243.) Finally, a few examples from the comparatively small list of pronuncia- tions which. Cooper says, are used ' for the sake of ease ', concerning the propriety of which he offers no comment. Bellis ' bellows ' ; dander ' dandruff ' ; axtre ' axeltree ' ; ent ' isn't ' ; git 'get'; hundurd; hankercher; reddish 'raddish'; sez 'says'; shure ' sure ', shugar ; squourge ' scourge ' (cf. p. 307) ; vittles ; wasted. So we take leave of Cooper, a competent and conscientious observer, with very few fads. His work is by far the best of its kind we have met so far, or shall meet, perhaps down to Ellis and Sweet. It is true that he can tell us very Uttle that we cannot learn for ourselves from the Verneys and Wentworths, but his statements unquestionably confirm many of the conclusions which we are inclined to draw from the occa- sional spellings of these writers. If in some cases Cooper is at variance with this testimony, this must be put down partly to a want of familiarity with the speech usage of the circles in which Sir Ralph Verney and his family moved, partly to the natural tendency of a writer on pronunciation at that period to describe an ideally ' correct ' form of English. From this, the besetting sin of the schoolmaster and the professional gramma- rian in all ages, Cooper is, on the whole, commendably free. We must not forget to recognize that we owe to him the knowledge, or at least the accepted view, that M.E. a when lengthened in the Mod. period before -st and -th, &c., as in past, path, &c., was still pronounced [»] in 174 THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES the third quarter of the seventeenth century. (See pp. 203-5, on this lengthening.) We now come to Dr. Jones, author of the Practical Phonographer, published first in 1701, whose unprejudiced attitude to his subject, and the very copious examples which he gives to illustrate his rules for the relation of sound and symbol, render his book very valuable, Jones was born in 1645 at Pentyrch in Glamorganshire, and died in 1709, so that he represents the English of the latter half of the seventeenth century. He is older than Cooper, rather younger than Sir Ralph Verney and most of his sisters, and older than old Lady Wentworth. So far as we can judge, the pronunciation which Jones describes is not at all archaic, and his account of the distribution of vowel sounds and of the various treatment of the consonants agrees with the prevailing habit down at least to the end of the first quarter of the eighteenth century. We know but little, to judge from Ekwall's account in his very carefully annotated edition of the Phonographer, of the details of Jones's life and of his social experience. He was educated at Jesus College, Oxford, studied medicine, and became a qualified physician. Later in his life he was Chancellor of the Diocese of Llandaff. A minute observer, he is yet in no way com- parable to Cooper as a phonetician, and does not attempt to describe how sounds are formed. A sub-title of his book is ' The New Art of Spelling words by the Sound thereof, and of sounding them by the Sight thereof, Applied to the English Tongue '. He also professes to set forth ' English Speech ... as it is commonly used in England (particularly in London, the Universities or at Court) '. Jones's work is at once an elaborate spelling-book, and one that gives indications of the pronunciation. It proceeds by means of question and answer — thus : — ' When is the sound of a written waV ' When it may be sounded -ward &c. in the End of words.' The examples include athwart, backward, coward, eastward, Edward, forward, inward. North- ward, Windward, &c., &c. This evidently implies that Jones regarded [baekad, istad, edsd, forad, inad], &c., as the normal and usual pronuncia- tion, but at the same time recognized a pronunciation with [w]. He often gives additional information on words which are not covered by the question, as when he adds, after the above list, the statement that somewhat is sounded soniat (= [samst]). Jones's habit of recording alternative pronunciations is meritorious, and if his statements in this respect are reliable, we may perhaps draw the inference that a reaction had begun against the extreme negligence and independence from the written form, which characterized fashionable pronunciation firom the sixteenth century to far into the eighteenth. We must not, however, push this too far, since, as we have seen. Swift, who is censorious enough in certain respects, does not touch upon the main features which would now be considered as monstrous blemishes in speech. We shall return to this point later on. There are few writers of the sort from whom so much may be learnt as from Jones, and this is owing to his very remarkable freedom from bias in favoiu: of ' correctness ', and the thoroughness with which he com- piles his lists. He very rarely censures, and when he does so he merely VALUABLE INFORMATION FROM JONES AND BAKER 175 notes that such and such a word is ' abusively sounded ' in such a way — as when he tells us that appetite is ' abusively sounded appety '. A few examples may be. given of the kind of information, generally quite definite, which may Be gathered from Jones. (i) Among a list of words in which Jones says that / is not sounded, in many of which we still omit this sound, the following occur, in all of which we have now 'restored' /: — St. Albans, Talbot, falchion, falcon, almanac, almost, Falmouth, falter, Walter (p. 30). (2) The sound of ee (that is [l]) written i in oblige = [oblldz], (3) Jones gives a very much longer list than Cooper of words ending in -ture, in which, as he says, -ure is sounded -er. Among these are adventure, conjecture, departure, failure, gesture, jointure, mixture, nature, &c., &c. (p. 52). The list includes also all those words mentioned by Cooper. {4) ' Some sound daughter, bought, naught, taught, nought &c. with va.f, saying daufter, boft &c.' (pp. 54, 55). The au in daufter is prob- ably suggested by the orthodox spelling ; there is no lack of examples of dafter among the letter-writers (cf. p. 288). (5) ' The sound of written au, when it may be sounded au ', as in — Auburn, auction, audience, Atigust, aunt, austere, became, daunt, fault, fraud, jaundice, Pauls, sausage, vault. ' Which may be sounded as with an 0' (p. 79). Here clearly two possible sounds [5, 5] are indicated. While most of the words in the list, and all are not included here, are now pronounced with [5], several of them are almost universally pro- nounced [3], such as [bilsjz, sjszdz], while [i\ may be heard from some speakers in fault, vault. (6) ' The sound of written wo where it may be sounded wo.' Jones's list is a long one, and although it is certain that good speakers did omit the w- consonant in some of the words as late as the forties of last century (cf. p. 297), one wonders whether, even in Jones's day, its omission in other words in the list was not due to Regional dialect influence. This is the list -.—forswore, swole, swoVn, swop, sword, swore, wolf, Wolverhampton, worm, worn, worry, Wolverton, woman, womb, wonder, wont, word, work, worse, worship, worth, worthy, woven, would, wound. 'Which are', says Jones, p. 82, 'especially those of two or more syllables, sounded as beginning with 0.' (Cf. also p. 296, below.) The next book which we may consider is an unpretentious little work by William Baker — Rules for True Spelling and Writing English (2nd Ed.), Bristol, 1724. The author gives an instructive list of ' Words that are commonly pronounced very different from what they are written '. The grammar of this title does not inspire confidence in the general cultivation of the author, but most of the pronunciations he indicates are confirmed by the evidence of the letter-writers in the Wentworth Papers, or by the Verneys. Some useful light is shed upon the pronunciation of unstressed syllables. The tendency to reduce -on to -in (cf. pp. 275-6, below) is recognized in the forms sturgin, dungin, flaggin, carrin, cooshin, for ' sturgeon, dungeon, flagon, carrion, cushion '. Stomick is given as the pronunciation of ' stomach ', Izic for ' Isaac ' ; spannel, Dannel for ' spaniel, Daniel ' ; 176 THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES janders for ' jaundice ' ; hankercher for ' handkerchief ; mastee for ' mastiff', as in Jones. As regards consonantal pronunciations, Egip, poscrip occur with the loss of final -/; the disappearance of r before -s is shown in nus ' nurse ', pw 'purse', Usly 'Ursula', thusty 'thirsty', sasnet 'sarsanet'. The proper names Birmingham, Dorothy, Margaret, Katheritu are spelt Brumminjum, Dorraty, Marget, Katturn. Among other individual forms are sparagras, slqfter ' slaughter ', conster ' construe ', and crowner ' coroner '. We are told that i is not sounded in venison, and that medicine is pronounced medson. G- is not sounded in gnat, gnaw, nor k- in ktiead, knee, knife, &c. ; ' Words terminated in -re sound -ur as Acquire, aspire, fire, hire ', &c., &c. This pronunciation [aw], &c., probably existed early in the sixteenth century at any rate (cf. p. 300, below). The few examples show how informing some of these simple treatises by unknown writers may be, compared with the pretentious works of an earlier day written by men incomparably more learned, such as Sir William Smith, Richard Mul- caster, BuUokar, and Gill. During the eighteenth century the teaching of English pronunciation was a common means of livelihood; innumerable quacks flourished, and many of them published small manuals on their art. Their practice lay, no doubt, largely among the richer tradesmen's families in London, who, while they were able, so far as mere wealth could permit this, to cut some figure in the polite world, were afraid of rendering themselves ridiculous by their lack of breeding and their ignorance of the English spoken in fashionable circles. Dr. Johnson, as usual, has a pithy remark upon the rich retired shopkeepers who in his day were pushing their way in Society. ' They have lost ', said he, ' the civility of the tradesman, but have not acquired the manners of a gentleman.' Smollett, in chap, xiv of Roderick Random, gives an account of one ot thfe quack teachers of pronunciation, a Scotchman in this instance, and the picture is probably not overdrawn. The following is the young Scottish surgeon's impression : ' This gentleman who had come from Scotland three or four years before, kept a school in town, where he taught the Latin, French, and Italian languages ; but what he chiefly professed was the pronunciation of the English tongue, after a method more speedy and uncommon than any practised heretofore; and indeed, if his scholars spoke like their master, the latter part of his undertaking was certainly performed to a tittle ; for although I could easily understand every word of what I had heard hitherto since I entered England, three parts in four of his dialect were as unintel- ligible to me as if he had spoken in Arabic or Irish.' Unfortunately very few examples are given of this worthy's pronuncia- tion, and these not particularly enlightening : — caal for ' call ' ; I vaw to Gad ; and hawze for ' house '. It would be interesting to know what this Scotchman made of the English diphthong in vow, house, a sound quite new to him. Vanbrugh spells Lord Foppington's pronunciation of the English diphthong as au, so it is just possible that an affected pronuncia- tion [5] existed. THE TURN OF THE TIDE 177 We have seen that the writers on pronunciation of the sixteenth century and those of the next, before Wallis, are chiefly concerned, not to give a true picture of Enghsh speech as it actually existed, but to concoct a more or less fanciful form of language based largely upon their own conception of what English ought to be, a conception mainly deter- mined by the supposed • powers of the letters '. JY^t result of these eflForts at restoring ' true ' pronunciation was nil. T^e writers' descrip- tions were so wildly remote from reality that no one paid any attention to them. Natural tendencies appear to have continued unchecked in the speech of all classes, and a vague ideal of ' correctness ' was the last factor which determined what was fashionable and polite. This was settled rather by the convention of the moment in the Court and among the superior classes. These tendencies and their results are recognized by Cooper and Jones, especially by the latter, and, ,as has been said, their statements agree wonderfully, on the whole, with the truth so far as we can gather it from the unstudied familiar letters of the day. From the middle of the eighteenth century or thereabouts, there are signs of a reaction against what came to be considered too great a laxity. This reaction is represented, and was probably influenced to some extent, by Lord Chesterfield in the great world, and still more considerably by Dr. Johnson in the world of letters. It does not follow that these two extremes would agree completely, either in theory or practice. Lord Chesterfield's attitude to ' correctness ', in speech no less than in manners, has already been illustrated by quotations (cf. pp. 19-23). That of St. Johnson is well defined in the general remarks on pronunciation in the Grammar prefixed to his great Dictionary (1755). The vital passages are these : — ' Most of the writers of English Grammars have given long tables of words pronounced otherwise than they are written, and seem not sufficiently to have considered that of English, as of all Uving tongues, there is a double pronunciation, one cursory and colloquial, the other regular and solemn. The cursory pronunciation is always vague and uncertain, being made different in different mouths, by negligence, unskilfulness and affectation. The solemn pronunciation, though by no means immutable and permanent, is yet always less remote from the orthography, and less liable to capricious innovation. They have however generally formed their tables according to the cursory speech of those with whom they happened to converse; and concluding that the whole nation combines to vitiate language in one manner, have often established the jargon of the lowest people, as the model of speech.' ' For pronunciation the best general rule is, to consider those the most elegant speakers who deviate least from the written words.' The new trend in English pronunciation then, which Dr. Johnson favoured, and which with his enormous influence and prestige as a scholar, and a dictator in what was correct, he was able to impose upon his own circle, and upon others far outside it, was in the direction of the ' regular and solemn ' rather than of the ' cursory and colloquial '. We shall probably not be far wrong in placing the serious beginning of this reaction in the period in which these words were written. The age of Swift and Pope apparently did not regard 'deviation from the orthography' in pronunciation as a lapse from politeness, or from the speech of the 178 THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES ' best companies '. We have seen that Swift's attacks on the English of his day are directed against quite other features ; he neither pillories in his Polite Conversations the typical laxity of his period in this respect, nor scruples himself to take advantage of the prevailing usage in his rhymes. Pope has plenty of rhymes which show that he must have pronounced very much as did Lady Wentworth, and so we may believe did the ' Chiefs out of War and Statesmen out of Place ' who resorted to the poet's villa at ' Twittenam '. If Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, in her letters, does not spell like Lady Wentworth, with whom by the way she was perfectly acquainted, it is not that she spoke differently from this lady and her other contemporaries, but simply that she was a more bookish person and was better informed as to the conventional orthography. She has such rhymes as please — stays, fate — deceit, theft — gift, coquet — wit. j^ As to the age before this, that of Charles and James II, a society which is doubtless faithfiilly depicted in the comedies of Congreve, Wycherley, Vanbrugh, and Mrs. Aphra Behn, a generation which laughed 'k gorge ddploy^e ' at such pranks as that narrated in Grammont's Memoirs, of my Lady Muskerry at the ball, when the frolicsome Duke of Buckingham ran about squeaking like a new-born infant, and inquiring among the maids of honour for a nurse for my young Lord Muskerry — ' vastly pleasant burn me ' — such a world as this was not likely to spare time from more diverting pursuits to ' correct ' its speech after the model of the ' true spelling '. The great Dictionary of Johnson was greeted with some enthusiasm, though in a bantering tone, by Lord Chesterfield in Nos. too and loi of The World. ' I hereby declare ', says the writer, ' that I make a total surrender of all my rights and privileges in the English Language, as a freeborn British subject to the said Mr. Johnson, during the term of his dictatorship.' Lord Chesterfield has some remarks upon the prevailing uncertainty, in the spelUng of private persons, -down to that time, which are of some importance. ' We have ', he says, ' at present two very dififerent ortho- graphies, the pedantic, and the polite ; the one founded upon certain dry crabbed rules of Etymology and grammar, the other upon the justness and delicacy of the ear. I am thoroughly persuaded that Mr. Johnson will endeavour to establish the former ; and I perfectly agree with him, provided it can be quickly brought about. Spelling as well as music, is better performed by book, than merely by the ear, which may be variously affected by the same sounds. I therefore most earnestly recommend to my fair countrywomen, and their faithful or faithless servants, the fine gentlemen of this realm, to surrender, as well for their own private as for public utility, all their natural rights and privileges of misspelling, which they have so long enjoyed, and so vigorously exerted. I have really known very fatal consequences attend that loose and uncertain practice of auricular orthography.' It may be noted that Lord Chesterfield does not condemn the current pronunciation itself, but only the habit of expressing it in irregular spell- ing. It is improbable that his Lordship would have endorsed Dr. John- son's definition of the 'most elegant speakers' without considerable qualifications and reservations. THE SCOT ABROAD 179 A younger contemporary of Johnson's was James Elphinston, whose life covers the last three quarters of the eighteenth century and extends into the nineteenth. Elphinston was born in Edinburgh in 1721, the son of an Anglican clergyman, and was educated at the High School and at the University in that city. He lived chiefly in Scotland until he was 32, when he went to London. Here he taught school for about twenty-five years, and then returned to Scotland in 1778. He lectured upon the English language in Edinburgh and Glasgow and returned to London in the following year. Thence he removed to Hertfordshire in 1792, but returned to London — Hammersmith — in 1795, where he spent the remaining fourteen years of his life. Elphinston appears to have been in every way an excellent man, and to have occupied a respectable position in society. He was a friend of Dr. Johnson, who said of him, ' his inner part is good, but his outward part is mighty awkward '. The latter part of this estimate, as we know, agrees fairly accurately with Lord Chesterfield's portrait of the Doctor himself. In spite of the little peculiarities of his 'outward part', however, Elphinston was a very superior type of man to the Scotch teacher of English pronunciation described by Smollett. He was an accomplished French scholar and published a poetical translation of Racine's La Religion, which received the approbation of Edward Young. He also translated the Fables of F^nelon and Bossuet's View of Uni- versal History, made an Anthology of English Verse, and wrote some original poems and a translation of Martial's Epigrams. Of this last, Garrick said that it was ' the most extraordinary of all translations ever attempted ' ; Seattle that it was ' a whole quarto of non- sense and gibberish ' ; while Burns thought it worth while to devote an Epigram to it : O thou whom Poesy abhors Whom Prose has turned out of doors, Heard'st thou yon groan? — Proceed no further! 'Twas laurell'd Martial calling ' Murther ! ' The translation of Martial's Satire given in full by Miiller displays neither wit nor felicity of phrasing and versification. We see that Elphinston, although possessed of very indifferent literary gifts, was at least a man of commendable industry and varied activities. They are not exhausted by the above enumeration, which is given as a factor in our estimate of the author's qualifications for the task which concerns us here, of describing the English pronunciation of his day. This subject is dealt with by Elphinston in a series of works written between 1756 and 1790. Of these the most important is TTie Principles of the English Language, or English Grammar, which appeared in 1 765. The gist of the whole collection is given by Miiller in his book Englische Lauilehre nach James Elphinston, 1 9 1 4. The first thing which occurs to us with regard to Elphinston is that he was a Scot, not in itself a drawback in the ordinary affairs of life, but a fact which produces some misgivings in connexion with one who is to act as a guide to English speech in the second half of the eighteenth century. We should expect to find that a Scotsman who, like Elphin- ston, came to England for the first time when he was over thirty, would N 2 i8o THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES have his Scottish habits of speech pretty firmly rooted, that he would be censorious of Southern English, and would be often inclined to put down as vulgarisms some of the most widespread features of good speech in the South. This is certainly true of Elphinston's attitude to English. Further, because the London type is the only Southern type he really knows, he is naturally inclined to regard as vulgarisms peculiar to London English, many things which were by no means confined to London, and which, moreover, were not vulgar at all. Even at the present time a learned Scot who is unfamiliar with Southern English is very apt to look with great disapproval at what is alien to his own speech habit, and to regard agreement with the latter as the test of correctness and elegance. It is very difiScult for a stranger to appreciate the nice shades between different Class dialects, and just as Elphinston sets down as improprieties of speech pronunciations which were habitual among good speakers, so he also credits ' Manny Ladies, Gentlemen and oddhers ' with the mis- placement of initial h-, and observes concerning a ' yong Lady ' — ' So hamiabel howewer iz dhis yong Lady, dhat, widh her fine air, sweet hies, quic hears, dellicate harms, above all her tender art she wood giuv anny man a ankering to halter iz condiscion ', &c., &c. Which is supposed to represent the lady's pronunciation. In a translation of one of Martial's Epigrams Elphinston professes to illustrate the characteristics of London English. The interchange of w and V — {ve for we, wulgar for vulgar, &c.) — is at least as old as the fifteenth century, and was probably not confined to London, even in the latter part of the eighteenth. Wite for white, wen for when, &c., is character- istic of the whole South of England, and has been sq for centuries ; it has nothing to do with Class dialect, and apparently never had. Larn'd for learned in the eighteenth century was certainly not a vulgarism, nor in any sense a Regional peculiarity. Sence for since, efiox if, &c., were com- mon enough in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, in circles such as Elphinston in all probability never aspired, even if he desired, to enter. It is, however, possible that such forms were going out of fashion in Elphinston's time; Feller [fela] for fellow was certainly Pope's pronuncia- tion, and as it is still a perfectly good and natural form in colloquial speech, it is improbable that it was a vulgarism at the time the translation was written. Many of the other supposed inelegancies satirized by Elphinston, such as we was, come as a Pret., came and began as P. P.'s, and so on, are ' mistakes ' of accidence, which have no local habitat, but may occur anywhere. Many well-bred seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century speakers would have used such forms. Present Pis. in -s were common in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and are not infrequent in the Wentworth correspondence. On the whole, Elphinston's statements as to what is vulgar and characteristic of London English may be received with the greatest scepticism, and should never be accepted unless they are confirmed from other sources. His works are nevertheless useful in estabUshing the existence, in his day, of such and such forms and pronunciations. We must hesitate before accepting the author's estimate of their ' correctness ', or the reverse, in A RHETORICAL GRAMMARIAN i8i the speech usage of the time. At the same time, while we may exercise due caution in believing all Elphinston's statements as to what is or is not ' good ' English, especially when we know that a quarter of a century before him, at any rate, standards were quite different from what he repre- sents them in his own time, it is certainly probable that standards had actually changed, or were changing as has been said, in the time of Elphinston and Dr. Johnson, though probably not as much as both of them would have liked^ nor as much as Elphinston's statements sug- gest. As the knowledge and practice of a fixed spelling gain ground among the better sort of speakers it becomes increasingly difficult to check the statements of the writers on pronunciation, and experience has shown that their evidence on points of fact is frequently unreliable, and that what these gentlemen put down as an actual Pronunciation may be no more than an unrealized ideal of their own construction. The last of the tribe whom we shall mention here is John Walker. This writer formerly enjoyed a great reputation, and his pronouncing Dictionary was reprinted again and again, and indeed probably forms the basis of more than one of the cheap dictionaries at the present time. Walker was born at Colney Hatch — which had not then its present associations — in 1732. His family seem to have occupied a very humble position, and Walker left school early and was put to trade. He did not stick to this very long, but went on the stage, married a comic actress. Miss Myners, and is said to have achieved some success in the characters of Cato and Brutus. He left the stage in 1768, and set up a school in Kensington, but gave this up after two years. He now began to give lectures on elocution, and had a great success, especially in Scotland and Ireland According to the account of him given in the Dictionary of Nat. Biogr., Walker was invited by some of the Heads of Houses in Oxford to give private lectures on his subject at the University. He was acquainted with, and enjoyed the patronage of, Burke and Johnson. Boswell records a rather dull conversation between Walker and Johnson. He said he had only taught one clergy- man to read, ' and he is the best reader I ever heard, not by my teaching, but by his own natural talents '. To which Dr. Johnson replied, ' Were he the best reader in the world, I would not have it told he was taught '. Amongst other remarks. Walker observed that ' the art (of oratory) is to read strong though low '. Fanny Burney, in her Diary, under the date of Jan. 13, 1783, mentions meeting Walker at dinner. All she has to say of ' Mr. Walker the lecturer ' is that ' though modest in science, he is vulgar in conversation '. This may refer merely to the subject-matter, or the general bearing of the speaker, but it does not of itself inspire confidence in Walker as a guide to propriety in speech. Besides his Dictionary, Walker pro- duced a Rhyming Dictionary, Elements of Elocution, and a Rhetorical Grammar. The latter first appeared in 1785, and went into many editions. It is difficult, from the meagre facts given in the Dictionary of Nat. Biogr., to judge what opportunities Walker had for becoming acquainted with the politest forms of English, but we must suppose that he made the most of his chances for observing the conversation of Burke and Johnson^ and of such other members of their circle as he came i82 THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES across. It is only fair to say that, in spite of his early training on the stage and his profession of teacher of elocution — one wonders what sort of people sought his aid — Walker does not appear to inculcate an artificial and pedantic pronunciation. On the contrary, his remarks are generally sober, sensible, and, so far as we can test them, accurate. The style of pronunciation which he recommends seems to be a perfectly natural and easy one, and the Rhetorical Grammar is probably a much safer guide than the works of Elphinston. He is also a fairly minute observer, and a faithful chronicler. Thus he notes with approval the ' liquid k, vaAg' in sky, kind, guide, card, &c., that is [skja/, kjamd, gjaj'd, kjad], &c., a pronunciation which lingered on amongst old people far into the last century. (See p. 310, below.) He says that ' polite speakers always pronounce educate as though written edjucate, virtue as vertchew'. These pronunciations are the usual ones at the present day, [edjukeit, vXtjfi] being quite recent. A still older form of the first of these words was [edzTieit] (cf. treatment of unstressed Fr. u, p. 365). Walker has some interesting remarks on Indian, odious, insidious, &c. He says, in continuation of the sentence quoted above — ' if the general ear were not corrupted by being corrected^ we should hear Indian pronounced Injian, odious ojeous, and insidious insidjeous . . . but the speaker ought to avoid sinking the i and reducing Indian into two syllables as if written In-jan, odious as o-j'us, insidious as insid-jus. The i ought to be heard distinctly like e in these words as if written and divided In-je-an, o-je-us ', &c. Of all this it may be said that it is very greatly to Walker's credit that, although a teacher of elocution, he is able to talk of the ear being ' corrupted by being corrected '. Again, while the phonetic descriptions, and the notation employed to express the pronunciation, are those of a man totally untrained and unskilled in scientific phonetics, they yet leave no kind of doubt as to the pronuncia- tion referred to. Lastly, while we no longer say ' o/us ', &c., it is well known to many still living that good speakers born early in the last century used these and similar forms, and it is rather strange that Walker should have thought it necessary to warn his readers against Injun, ojus [ihdzsn, oudzas], pronunciations which most good speakers in his day must have employed, and to insist upon 'the i' being heard distinctly. Walker shows his superiority to Elphinston in not regarding as a 'vulgarism the 'sinking of the h' in while, where, &c., although he regards it as ' tending greatly to impoverish pronunciation ', and also as apt to produce confusion of meaning. Such a view is perhaps excusable in an elocutionist. An interesting observation on the part of Walker is that r has disappeared, 'particularly in London', in bar, bard, card, &c., _;;Ebich,are pronounced ssbaa^ &c. What is perhaps even more remark- able is thatlie'd'oes not Undfault with this, but merely notes that r ought to be strongly pronounced initially, but that in bar, bard. Sec, it must be nearly as soft as in London. Incidentally, we may note that the dis- appearance of ' r ' in these words probably implies, by this time, [a] as the vowel, and not [»]. With regard to the interchange of w and v ipind for wind, and weal for veal, &c.), Walker records that this occurs ' among the inhabitants of London, and those not always of the lower order'. A RELIABLE WITNESS 183 His statements touching the final consonant in the suflBx -ing are largely borne out by our informatibn from other sources, although he is inclined to limit the pronunciation -in to verbs whose root-syllable already contained 'ng\ such ^■s, fling, &c. See on this point pp. 289-90, below. Walker has some sound observations concerning the vowels in un- stressed words, such as pronouns and prepositions. Thus he says that you is pronounced ye in such a sentence as ' he had no right to tell you ' (=[tel i]), and that my is pronounced 'we' in 'my pen is as bad as my paper '—\xai pen, mt pepa], both of which forms of reduction are per- fectly in accord with the habits of eighteenth-century English. Walker also recognized the reduced forms of of, for, from, by, which he writes uv,fur [av, fa], &c., as distinct from ' m,four ', &c. On the other hand, '/o must always preserve its true sound as if written iwo, at least when we are reading, however much it may be suffered to approach to /« (= [ta]) when we are speaking '. The value and truth of Walker's account of the pronunciation of the latter part of the eighteenth century can best be tested by checking it, on the one hand with the various sources of information prior to his day, the private letters, the testimony of rhymes, and the statements of the earlier grammarians, and on the other, with what we know of the pro- nunciation after his time, especially what could be learnt from the speech of old people, mostly now dead, who were born early in the nineteenth century, and from the recollections of these persons concerning forms of speech still current in their youth among a yet older generation. Walker emerges very creditably from the test, and he must be placed among the most reliable and informing writers of his class, that is, with Wallis, Cooper, and Jones. He is a good and enlightened representative of the reaction already referred to, against the laxity of speech of the earlier generations. His tendency is towards a moderate 'correctness', and an approximation to the supposed pronunciation implied by the now fixed orthography, but he does not set out to 'reform' English speech by destroying everything that is traditional and habitual. He appeals con- stantly to the habits of ' our most elegant speakers ', that is, to a real type of existing English, and he must be held to mirror the usage of his day among refined and learned, and, though to a less extent perhaps, among fashionable speakers, with considerable fidelity. Since Walker's day, the ' correcting ' process has gone much farther and has unquestion- ably obliterated, in the speech of the general average of educated persons, the results of many tendencies which had existed for centuries. The process, as is shown in various places throughout this book, involves both isolated words and whole categories. \ At any and every period, no doubt, there may be found among speakers of Received Standard those who are purists and those who are careless and negligent speakers, giving full rein to the natural tendencies which make for change in pronunciation. If the seventeenth century had its Gill, the eighteenth had its Elphington and many others of the same sort, while the nineteenth had its Dean Alford, to mention but one amid innumerable ' reformers '. But while nd'one seems to have paid any attention to Gill, amoiig those who set the standard of polite English, from the middle of the eighteenth century onward, the general ideals expressed by Dr. John- 1 84 THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES son in the passage quoted on p. 177 have gained an ever-increasing assent. It is this gradual but undoubted triumph of the learned class, within which may be included the real scholars of whom Johnson is the type and chief, down to the humble and ignorant teacher of elocution filled with false and extravagant theories of ' correctness ', which is claimed as exemplifying the influence of Class dialect on the development of Received Standard (see also pp. 18-20). This influence is by no means confined to the introduction of ' Spelling pronunciation ', but includes also the intro- duction of other types, naturally developed, among different social strata. It is not always easy to distinguish between these two classes of forms. The present-day pronunciation of nature, &c., instead of [neta] may belong to one or the other (cf. p. 265). The same applies to the pronunciation oi gold. It is certain that the two forms [gold, gQld] coexisted, and that the rise of each can be explained by natural processes, but it is by no means certain that the final selection of [go»ldJ as the ' correct ' form was not determined by its apparent agreement with the spelling. During the lifetime of many who are still of middle age, numerous old pronunciations have been gfiven up by large sections of the community, while other sections adhere to them most obstinately. There are still many who consider as very offensive vulgarisms the modern pronunciations of waistcoat, of ten, forehead, landscape, handkerchief as [weistkout, jftsn, f5hed, laendzskezp, haendkaijif] instead of [weskat, 5fn, fon'd, Isenzk/p, hseijkatjzf], and there are perhaps as many more who use all these pro- nunciations habitually without a single qualm. Whatever may be the resistance of the present generation of middle-aged or elderly people to these innovations, it seems probable that they will appear as natural to our grandchildren or great-grandchildren as the now universally-received forms oigold, servant, oblige, nature, London, Edward, &c., do to us. It must be reiterated that all the 'reforms' in pronunciation and grammar which have passed into general currency in colloquial English during the last century and a half, have come from below, and not from above, in the first instance, so far as we can discover. This fact will be variously received and interpreted according to the peculiar social bias of the reader. One interpretation at any rate has been suggested in Chap. I, pp. 20-23, above. The reaction against the happy-go-lucky pronunciation and grammar of the Restoration, and of the early eighteenth century, is accompanied by a certain bias towards formality and stifihess which is traceable in the poetry and the literary prose, and, as we may well believe from the evi- dence before us, in the conversational style also, of the later eighteenth and early nineteenth century. It is a tendency towards the ' regular and solemn ' and away from the ' cursory and colloquial '. Pope and his generation still kept the sparkle, along with the ease of the seventeenth century. The later writers often lose the brilliancy of their predecessors, if they preserve the ease and grace of movement. Gray, and Walpole, and Goldsmith perhaps combine both qualities to a higher degree than many of their contemporaries. If we put a passage of the Deserted Village alongside one from Pope, taken almost at random, the different genius of the two ages is as perceptible as when we compare Congreve's dialogue with that of She Stoops to Conquer. It may be said, A SOLEMN AGE 185 probably with justice, that the younger writer surpasses the older ones in tenderness, humanity, and real feeling for nature, possibly in humour, and that he is their equal in his mastery of a supple and intimate style, free from literary affectation. But the swift thrust of Congreve's rapier, the epigrammatic finality of Pope's couplet, are no longer there. What the later age lost in keenness and glitter it may be said to have gained in sincerity and solidity. There were, however, not wanting, even among the contemporaries of Pope, those who foreshadowed the style and spirit of a younger day. The sweetness, naturalness, simplicity, and shrewd gaiety of Addison, Pope's senior by sixteen years, are perhaps nearer to the spirit of Goldsmith than to that of the age immediately following the Restoration ; while the sober decorum of Richardson, born only a year later than Pope, with his leisurely narrative and rather stiff and pompous dialogue, exhibits the correctitude of Middle Class propriety in speech and conduct. The formality of the conversations ra Pamela, which to us is almost ludicrous, is typical of a habit of mind and mode of expression which were gaining ground among our people, and held them for three-quarters of a century. Allowing for differences of genius, wit, and of social setting, it may be said that the recorded conversations of Johnson are on the same note, and we catch echoes of this spirit in the utterances, both trivial and serious, of Mr. and Mrs. Segrave. The later eighteenth century and the early nineteenth seem to have favoured a very serious turn of mind which expressed itself in a formal and solemn style. It is easy to find exceptions to this, as in the Diary and letters of the sprightly Fanny Burney, or the captivating letters of Cowper in his happier moments, or the irresistible mirth of Sheridan, but are not these in many ways less representative of their age than, let us say, Wesley's Journal, and Sandford and Merloni Miss Austen has left a gallery of imperishable portraits of human beings, drawn from the life if any ever were. But the conversation of her characters, even of those whose parts are most extolled, is singularly lacking in brilUancy, humour, pointedness, or charm of any kind. The charm, the humour, the magic lie in the author's handling of these rather second-rate though generally well- bred people, in whose conversation, which hardly ever rises above the com- monplace, and in whose self-centred lives, she contrives to interest us amazingly. We have here the representation of actual life and dialogue as the author knew it. There can be no doubt that this is the real thing, and that people really spoke like this in the closing years of the eighteenth century. Perhaps no books were ever written which embody the spirit and idiom of an age so faithfully as Miss Austen's novels. All the little pomposities and reticences, the polite formulas, the unconscious vulgar- isms, the well-bred insincerities, are here displayed. It is not Miss Austen who is speaking, it is the men and women of her day, each perfectly distinct, a complete and consistent human being. The characters reveal them- selves naturally and inevitably in their conversation, with hardly any commentary by their creator, who rarely troubles to pass a personal judgement upon them, or to see that they are very good — or otherwise as the case may be. We shall not go far wrong in supposing that the Bennets, the D'Arcys, and the Wodehouses, &c., pronounced their English very much according 1 86 THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES to the principles laid down by Mr, Walker in describing the utterance of ' our most polite speakers '. They undoubtedly pronounced ' kyard, gyearl, ojus, Injun*, to use Walker's own rough and ready notation, and almost certainly said ' comiri, goiti, singin' , shilliti ' ; some of them, Lady Catherine de Burgh in particular, probably said ' Eddard', 'fay',' chaney ', ' ooman ' ' woman ', 'neighb'rood', ' lanskip ', ' Lunnon ', ^ cheer ' for ' chair ', and possibly 'goold', ' obleege ', and ' sarvanl '. Many still living have heard the last echoes of these things in the mouths of their parents and grandparents. We can remember old ladies and gentlemen who spoke in this way in our child- hood, and whose conversation still preserved the decorums of the former age, its quaint mixture of eighteenth-century survivals, with the new ' correct ' forms of their youth. Unfortunately most of these are now ' &Uen asleep '. In this very imperfect account of the character and general tendencies of English speech during something like two centuries, a few important problems are touched on, and many more are omitted altogether from our survey. This period offers ample scope for investigation. It is no exaggeration to say that a proper history of the English of each of these centuries has still to be written. We want minute studies of such documents as the Verney Letters and the Wentworth Papers, and also of other similar letters and diaries of the same period, and if possible, of more recent collections covering the period from about 1740 to the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Apart from these, the well-spelt letters and diaries of such writers as Fanny Burney should be carefully examined for the sake of the colloquial and grammatical usage which they reveal, and much may be learnt incidentally from casual remarks scattered through biographies and memoirs (cf., for example, instances quoted, pp. 203, 215, 272, &c., from Leigh Hunt's Au/o- biography and Tuckwell's Reminiscences of Oxford). Many works which few scholars would think of investigating specially for such a purpose, con- tain priceless, if isolated, pieces of information as to the speech habits of our immediate ancestors. This is why the dutiful and painful philologist, who ' goes through ' large numbers of the orthodox ' sources ', may often miss some of the best things, unless he happens also to be widely read in English Literature. It is much to be regretted that during the last twenty or thirty years a series of observations into the speech of old people speaking the best English of the first half of the last century was not made in a systematic way. These old people, both by their own actual usage, and by their recollections of that of their own elders, could have shed a very valuable light on much that is now obscure. The present writer had the advantage of knowing, during his boyhood and early manhood, a considerable number of excellent speakers who were born between 1800 and 1830, and although he remembers accurately certain points of interest from the speech and recollections of this genera- tion, these are unfortunately all too few. It is remarkable that while the English of illiterate elderly peasants has often been examined, with the view of recording for posterity the rugged accents of the agricultural community, and even of the inhabitants of slum villages in colliery and PROBLEMS FOR THE FUTURE 187 industrial districts, it has not been thought, worth while to preserve the passing fashions of speech of the courtly and polite of a former day, and those whose good fortune it was to be in a position to record these at first hand have neglected their opportunity. Among the general problems still to be solved may be mentioned: — the precise extent and character of both Regional and Class dialect inilu- \ ence upon Received Standard during the seventeenth and eighteenth ; centuries ; the divorce of prose style from the colloquial language of the 1 day which may appear in any language from time to time, and which research might possibly show occurred among the latest Elizabethans and ! their immediate successors, and again towards the end of the eighteenth i century ; the precise linguistic results, if any, of the Civil Wars upon our r language, whether in conducing to laxity of pronunciation and grammar, or in modifying the diction of conversation or of literature; the beginnings ' of the reaction in favour of the ' regular and solemn ' style of pronuncia- / tion and grammar, and the progress of this movement in colloquial and / literary English down, roughly, to the Early "Victorian period ; the rise of I bogus pronunciations, based purely on the spelling, among persons who ; were ignorant of the best traditional usage ; the gradual process by which ■ many of these obtained currency among the better classes. It would be i desirable to run these monstrosities to earth, when it would probably i appear that many had their origin with the class of ignorant teachers of ^ pronunciation referred to by Smollett. Among special questions, it would be satisfactory to know with certainty approximately when the modern [d] sound in pai/i, last, &c., developed out of [se] and became generally current in Received Standard. The whole question of unstressed vowels is a virgin field for the young investigator. A small beginning is made in Chap. VII, below, towards a systematic collection of material upon which conclusions may be based. What was the attitude of the more sober ' reformers ' like Dr. Johnson in this matter ? Is it probable that he applied his principle of conforming pronunciation to orthography to the vowels of unstressed syllables ? If so, how far did he and ' those associated with him ' go in this respect ? If we may judge from his younger contemporary Walker, that generation probably did not pronounce fortune, future, &c., as 'fortin', 'futer', Hke the Verneys, the Wentworths, Cooper, and Jones ; but did they attempt to ' restore ' all unstressed vowels to the extent to which Mr. Bridges would like us all to do at the present day ? Perhaps Mr. Bridges can tell us. So far as the evidence now available carries us, it looks as if nearly the whole movement towards ' full ' vowels in unstressed syllables is an abso- lutely modern conceit, based entirely upon spelling. To this there are certain exceptions, such as the -ure, -une words whose present-day pronunciation may be explained as a purely phonetic development from a different type from that which produced 'fortin ', 'futer ', &c., and again, the interchange of [-3«] and -in, [-3/] and -it in ribhon, faggot, &c., appears tb represent two different speech-usages. (See pp. 276-8.) But all these and many other points await investigation. It would be an interesting inquiry how far the falling off in the quality of prose style among the generality of writers after the third quarter of the i88 THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES eighteenth century is related to social developments. An East Indian Director is said to have told Charles Lamb (of all men !) that the style the Company most appreciated was the humdrum, thus doubtless voicing the literary ideals of the rising class of bankers, brokers, and nabobs whose point of view was largely to dominate English taste for several generations. Horace Walpole lived and wrote on nearly to the end of the century, but his spiritj his gaiety, and the sprightliness of his style belong in reality to the early eighteenth century. Even Macaulay was unable to rate him at his true value. The letters of Gray are prob- ably better appreciated to-day than in the age which immediately followed his death. The peculiar quality of Sheridan's wit and raillery is assuredly nearer to Congreve in spirit than to Hook and Jerrold. But this is not the place to pursue a subject which is the business of the critic of Literature. If an appeal is made to pure Literature, in dis- cussing the changing spirit and atmosphere of Colloquial English, it is because of the principle so often propounded here, that the style of Literature is rooted in the life and conversation of the age. From these sources alone can prose renew its life from generation, to generation. When Literary prose style loses touch with the spoken language it becomes lifeless and unexpressive, powerless to ' strike the ear, the heart, or the fancy ', remote alike from human feeling and from the speech of man because it has never known real life and movement. CHAPTER VI THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION IN THE MODERN PERIOD I. The Vowels in Stressed Syllables. In the foregoing chapters we have taken a series of rapid surveys of the English of the Modern Period, not only of the pronunciation, but of other aspects also, century by century, from the fifteenth century onwards. lii the following portions of this book it will be our business to attempt to work into a continuous account the facts of development exhibited by our language throughout the whole period with which we are dealing. Of the various aspects with which we shall concern ourselves, pronuncia- tion is one of the most important, the one perhaps which demands the greatest amassing and sifting of detail in the elucidation of fact ; it is also the one which involves most care in the construction of a reasonable theory in the interpretation of the facts. It has been already said that the convenient practice of dividing English, chronologically, into Old, Middle, and Modern English is apt to be misleading, and to give the impression that our language has changed by a series of sudden bounds. Still more danger is there in conveying such a wrong view when we divide our treatment of the language, as has been done in this book, into centuries. It is therefore desirable to renew the warning previously given, and to re-state our con- ception of the History of English as a process of continuous development and change. If the previous chapters, which aimed at discovering what is characteristic of the language of each of a series of centuries, have led the reader to think too much of English as broken up into a number of brief, clear-cut, and distinct periods of development, in each of which a new set of tendencies and impulses arises, the following chapters may possibly act as a corrective. The student who constructs his picture of the unfolding of English chiefly from the long series of documents of all kinds, in which the language of each age is enshrined, is not likely to be misled into what one may call the spasmodic view of its history. To him the gradual and insensible passage from one phase of development to another is so manifest that he finds it ever more difficult to draw the line between period and period, and he becomes increasingly sceptical of the propriety of attempting to define the limits of each. But it.is one thing to be con- scious of the continual onward sweep of evolution, and quite another to be able to convey the sense of this. The realization of this linguistic deve- lopment comes slowly, from the prolonged study of a mass of individual 190 STRESSED VOWELS IN THE MODERN PERIOD facts and details, all of which contribute something to the picture which exists in the student's mind. In the present state of our know- ledge, it is difficult to see how we are to bring home to the reader this sense of perpetual and continuous development, otherwise than by pre- senting him with a considerable quantity of detail, together with certain generalizations based upon this. Let it never be forgotten that in tracing, by means of the sources of knowledge at our disposal, the history of a language, we have not and cannot have all the links in the chain of development. We know — approximately — the starting-point, and we know what is the outcome at the present time. But of the intervening stages, many are missing altogether, while at the precise character of too many others we can but guess. For instance, if we are tracing the change of M.E. a. in name into its present form, while we can easily construct theoretically the various stages of development, it is impossible to say exactly at what period each of them is reached. Supposing that already in the first half of the fif- teenth century we find M.E. a written e, what precise value are we to attach to this symbol in this period? How far has the sound gone towards its present pronunciation ? And so with all the other vowels ; we have divers hints of changes — from peculiar spellings, from rhymes, from statements of grammarians — and we must piece all these scraps of information together, compare, and check one with another, but when all is said and done, there are more lacunae in our picture than some scholars like to admit. In former days, when those great figures of English Philology Ellis and Sweet were in their prime, these men, and others who followed limpingly in their footsteps, believed it to be possible to construct, almost entirely from the accounts given by the Orthoepists, a fairly exact chronological table of vowel changes, and to say with confidence, such and such was the shade of sound in the sixteenth century, this or that other shade in the seventeenth, yet another in the eighteenth, and so on. As I have already indicated above, I cannot find any such sure foundation in the statements of the old writers upon which Ellis and Sweet relied, and when I compare these statements with the testimony of the other kinds of evidence, I become more than ever distrustful of the results which were formerly accepted so confidently, less inclined to be dog- matic as to the chronology of vowel changes. For one thing, quite recently, many scholars have been led to put back the beginnings of the modern vowel system, anything from one to two hundred years earlier than the date to which Ellis and Sweet assigned the rise of this. If this is justified, then it follows, since the formerly-received chronology was almost entirely based upon the testimony of the old grammarians, that these have misled us, and that much of the system of minute chronology derived from them crumbles. A single instance will suffice. Sweet, trusting to the Orthoepists, believed that far into the sixteenth century, and among some speakers well into the seventeenth century, M.E. a in name, take, &c., retained its old sound [d]. But we know now that as early as the first half of the fifteenth century this sound must have been completely fronted, and that before the end of the sixteenth it rh}rmed DIFFICULTY OF PRECISE CHRONOLOGY 191 with the M.E. / in seat, &c. Now this entirely knocks the bottom out of the delightfully simple old tables such as : — M.E, 1 6th c. 17th c. I 1 8th c. [*] [b] I [e] ■which satisfied most of us down to within the last few years, and if I had to be tied down to a definite statement on the chronology of this sound I should be inclined to construct, from the facts at my disposal, some such table as : — M.E. (13th and early 14 th c.) a late 14th c. 15th c. 1 6th, 17th, and i8th cc. [e] (among some speakers [i]) [i] But I should know that this was rather a dangerous table to make, because at least two and perhaps more of the stages which are here neatly packed into separate periods, certainly coexisted in the same period, and overlapped into the periods before and after that to which they are assigned. And this brings me back to the point which I set out to emphasize, namely, that a clear-cut and precise chronology is impossible in linguistic history, since, as was said earlier in this book, the periods overlap as do the generations of speakers. From this point of view it is obvious that some men must have been born in the M.E. period and have died in the Modern Period, just as they may be born in one century and die in another. Thus while Chaucer himself no doubt always spoke what must still be called M.E., he must have heard, before he died, younger speakers who were at least on the verge of Early Modern. He may himself always have pronounced [m3k(3)], and probably he did so, but it is, I think, certain that he must have heard the younger generation say [maek], possibly with disapproval as strong as that with which the present Poet Laureate hears the unstressed vowel in [jksfad] and so on. But whereas the vowel above indicated in make, was a novelty in Chaucer's old age, the unstressed vowels of which his illustrious successor com- plains have been in pretty common use for five hundred years or so. While then, in dealing with each sound change, we naturally ask — When did it start ? and attempt to answer the question, it is absurd to suppose that our answer, however carefully considered, is absolutely exact. We can give the earliest evidence known to us of a modification of the old usage, and of a move in the new direction, but we must never forget that there may be older evidence which our industry has failed so far to dis- cover, and that a sound change is nearly always considerably older than the earliest documentary evidence of its existence. Further, although we may be able to say that a sound change in a certain direction has begun, and is well under way by a given period, we can rarely say with certainty exactly how far it has gone. Any effort to do this must be tentative, and is based upon reasoning from all sorts of collateral evidence. (Compare, in illustration of this, the attempt to fix approximately the various stages of development of M.E. a on pp. 195, &c., below, .together with the inferences drawn from the history of other vowels.) In tracing the history of the English vowels I have followed the usual 192 STRESSED VOWELS IN THE MODERN PERIOD practice, and an excellent one it is; when dealing with the later periods of the language, of starting from the M.E. vowel system. But the term Middle English covers a long period which begins, roughly, towards the beginning of the eleventh century and extends, according to the view taken, down to about 1400, or twenty or thirty years later. It is not to be supposed that English pronunciation stood still, even within a single dialect, all this time. Even if we adopt the further divisions — Transition, Early M.E., M.E. Central Period, and Late M.E. — the limits of each of these will depend upon the feature which we take as the test. Thus while we have no direct evidence, from areas more southerly than Lincolnshire, before about 1420, of the alteration towards its present pronunciation of the a-sound which arose — ^in English words— about the middle of the thirteenth century, and which' we call ' M.K a ', we have unmistakable indications that one of the O.E. o-sounds — as in O.E. mona ' moon ' — had moved on far towards, even if it had already reached, its present sounds perhaps 100 to 125 years earlier, and this in the South-East. Therefore when we speak of • M.E.' sounds, we do not always refer to one and the same period. In the case of the vowel last mentioned, M.E, o (which is also O.E. 0, and further occurs in words borrowed from Norman French), this sound was certainly no longer pronounced in the old way, but had become almost, if not quite, [u] probably early in the fourteenth century, and in some dialects, perhaps, much earlier. With these qualifications of our terminology we may pass to some general observations on what is sometimes called 'the Great Vowel Shift '. From what has been said above the reader will be on his guard against supposing that the phenomena of which we treat in this chapter are new and sudden departures of the Modem Period. He will consider that the pronunciation which the old vowel sounds have now acquired is the result of a slow and gradual process, and of tendencies which un- doubtedly existed in English long before the various periods at which the changes can be shown severally to have come about. If we compare the M.E. vowels in stressed syllables with the corre- sponding sounds in the same words at the present day, it appears that all the old diphthongs, all the old long vowels, and some of the short vowels, have acquired a totally different pronunciation. But if we compare the two lists of actual sounds, the M.E. vowels and diphthongs, and those of the present day, we notice that, as far as we can judge, the contents of each list are not so very different. M.E. had, amongst others, the simple sounds [a, «, 1, 5], and the diphthongs \ai, aa], and so has the English which we speak. But they do not occur in the same words now as then. Where M.E. had & as in name we have the diphthong [ej] ; where MJE. pronounced [ii] as in hus, hous, we pronounce [aa] ; in the words in which [i] occurred in M.E., e. g. wif, &c., we now pronounce \ai\ \ and corre- sponding to M.E. [5] as in boon ' bone ' we now have [okJ. Again, we do not retain the diphthongs [at, au\ in our pronunciation of rain and cause, but have substituted for them [«, 5] in these and other words. On the other hand, our [a] as in path, our [u] in moon, our [i] in queen, our [5] in saw, are not survivals of the M.E. sounds, but have developed out of sounds entirely different. RELATIVE CHRONOLOGY OF CHANGES 193 Thus the new sounds never caught up the old sounds which, so far as we can tell, were identical with them, except in the case of M.E. a and M.E. e = [i], on which see pp. 1 94, &c., 209, &c., below. This fact has an important chronological bearing. It means that supposing we are able to ascertain, for instance, that not later than a given year, O.E. 5 in mona-, &c., had reached the [u] stage, it follows thattheCE. «inMjhad, before that stage was reached, been so far altered in pronunciation, that it was quite unlike the new sound which had developed in the word moon, and although this word and other words containing O.E. now have the same vowel sound that once existed in hiis and other words containing O.E. ie, there never was a time at which moon and house were pronounced with the same vowel. For if this had been so, they would be pronounced with the same vowel now. When once two originally different sounds become levelled, as often happens in the course of their history, under one and the same sound, the history of the sound in both is henceforth one and the same. We see an instance of this in the vowel [a], which occurs in the words nut, Mood, a,nd.jtidge. In the first of these words the O.E. and M.E. sound was [li], in the second it was [o], and in the last it was French [yj. The present sound developed probably in the sixteenth century, and its immediate predecessor was [ii]. This means that some time before the rise of [a] the three originally different sounds [ii, 5, y] had all, under certain circumstances, been levelled under one single sound [u]. This sound, no matter what its antecedents may have been, was unrounded at a given point, and gradually developed into the present vowel [a]. In such a case as this, it is evident that whatever the period at which the unrounding of old [ii] occurred, the various other processes whereby old [5, y] became [ii] must have already taken place. To return to our former hne of argument concerning sounds originally different which remain different, this is often of the greatest use in deter- mining at least the relative chronology of sound changes. With regard to the history of old 0, it has been already mentioned that this sound had apparently become [ii] as early as the first half of the fourteenth century. We must therefore assume that certain disturbances had arisen prior to that date in the old [ii] sound. Now, although this latter has now become the diphthong [a«], it does not by any means follow that any- thing like the present form had been reached before old had become [u]. All that we can say is that something had happened to a, that it had started upon that series of changes which was to result in our present diphthong. The same line of argument may be applied to all other vowels whose pronunciation has changed from what it formerly was, and which have either themselves taken the place of other vowels which have also become something quite different, or have had their old places taken by other vowels. . The old I in wi/, lif, bite, &c., has been diphthongized to \^, 107. 24 ; chesipk 'chasuble' 91. 4. In the sixteenth century I have noted es for, Rec. Cath. of Ar., L. and P. ii. 405. 1501 ; bend ' band', Bp. Knight (1512), p. 191 (twice); r^n^ ' rank ', Lord Berners, i. 295 (twice); axemyne, in the Letter of Thos. Pery to Mr. R. Vane (Ellis 2. 2), p. 142 ; and the same writer has exemynyde, pp. 142 and 145; Jenewery, i^g, cheryte, 156. Machyn writes Crenmer, 57, and cherete, 131. Wm. Faunte, Alleyne Papers — ' if you hed him ', p. 32, 159-, where hedis stressed. Mrs. Basire writes settisfie 135 (1654), Frencis 139 (1655), sednes 140(1656). The inverted spellings (a for e) occur in Wanysday ' Wednesday ', Gregory, 97 and 229; massynger, 124, and massage, 223, in the same writer ; zastyrday ' yesterday ' (z = M.E. 5) 1 . 81; and massynger, I. no, Marg. Paston ; while in the sixteenth century Sir T. Elyot writes mantion, 2. 316 ; and Machyn prast for ' pressed ',127. We are perhaps entitled to assume that when a writer puts a for e, he attributes a front pronunciation to the former symbol. Of the first group above {e for a), it might be contended that the forms from Palladius (Essex) represent not M.E. a at all, but the old S.E. type with e, though this particular ex- planation does not apply to wesshe. Heve for have may possibly be an unstressed form. Shillingford's She/iesbury may be from an O.E. South- western form with sceft- for earlier sceaft-. On the other hand, the whole collection may be perfectly genuine, in which case it would be established that as early as the fifteenth century a had been fronted in Essex, Suffolk, and possibly in London, though Gregory, as we have seen (p. 64), was by birth a Suffolk man. None of the English writers on pronunciation of the sixteenth century appear to throw any light, except Palsgrave ( 1 530), who hints at the existence of a pronunciation other than [a] :— French a is sounded ' suche as we vse with vs, where the best englysshe is spoken '. Some of the French writers on English assert that NEW SOUND OF a ADMITTED 199 English a is pronounced like e (' at least in Latin ", Tory, 1529); • e almost as brode as ye pronounce your a in englysshe' (Wes. 1532), Unfortu- nately, we do not know whether this refers only to long a or to a as well. Shakespeare rhymes scratch — wretch in Venus and Adonis (Victor, Shakespeare Pron., p. 208), and neck — back in V. &A. 593 (Horn, N.E. Gr., § 40) Publ. Pprs. 6, beck ' back ', 1485. Diehl (Eng. Schreibung und Ausspr.) mentions a few more occasional spellings — stren ' strand ', 1554 Machyn, 72 ; ectes ' acts', 1598 Henslowe's Diary, 137, 1. 13. The statements of the grammarians down to the second half of the seventeenth century are nearly as useless for our purpose as those of their predecessors in the former century. 3utler (1634) only tells us that a and a differ ' in quantity and sound '. This might mean that a was still unfronted, while a was fronted, or that a = [ae] and a = [e e]. Ben Jonson, however (Gr. 1640, but written twenty years or so earlier), notes a difference between French di and the English vowel in art, act, apple. He says : ' A with us in most words is pro- nounced lesse than the French h' This is, perhaps, intended to refer to a fronted vowel. Wallis (1653) has the grace to distinguish between ' guttural ' and ' palatal ' vowels, and among the latter he includes English a, both long and short, which he also denominates ' exile ', that is ' thin, meagre '. If these terms mean anything when applied to vowel sounds they must mean that the sound thus described is a front sound. We know, fortunately, from other sources that M.E. a was undoubtedly fronted long before the time at which Wallis wrote (cf. pp. 194-6, above, concerning M.E. a), and therefore this author's equation of the vowels in the pairs — sam — same, lamb — lame, bat — late, &c., as simply long and short forms of the same sound makes it pretty certain that the short vowel was [as]. Cooper (1685) is the first serious phonetician, and the most accurate observer we have hitherto met. He describes English a and says, ' for- matur a medio linguae ad concavum palati paululum elevato, in can, pass a corripitur ; in cast, past producitur '. This is quite unambiguous and can only mean [ae], and the analysis is identical with that which the best modern phoneticians have made of the sound, described by Bell and Sweet as the low front. Cooper's list of words containing the short vowel is : — bar, blab, cap, cat, car, dash, flash, gard, grand, land, mash, hat, tar, quality. It will be seen that this includes words where a occurs before -r, and the word quality which we do not now pronounce with [ae]. The explanation of this will appear later (cf. pp. 201-3). We need not pursue any farther the winding mazes of the grammarians in their descriptions of this sound, since it is clear that our present-day vowel is now fully recognized and adequately described. We may note in passing that Bachelor (18 19) warns his readers against a prevalent vulgarism in the pronunciation of a. He says (p. 22): 'Refinement should be kept within very moderate bounds with respect to this letter, as the real exchange of a for e is the result of ignorance or affectation, by means of which certain words will cease to be distinguished in pronuncia- tion.' He illustrates his meaning by a list of words showing how one vowel is passing towards the pronunciation of the other. Thus had is becoming like head, lad like led, man like men, and so on. ' The broad- 300 STRESSED VOWELS IN THE MODERN PERIOD est provincial tone ', he adds, ' seems to make a far nearer approach to propriety than the exchange of the (= these) sounds. ... It cannot be foreseen whether the fickle goddess of fashion will not one day authorise such an alteration.' She has not done so yet. We catch echoes of this vulgarism, springing, no doubt, from a desire for a bogus elegance, in the satires of Dickens and Thackeray, and we may still hear ' head' instead of had from a few would-be refined vulgarians, as well as from certain sections of Cockney speakers. We may now attempt a constructive theory of the course of events, which are somewhat imperfectly reflected by the facts which have so far been collected. It seems probable that the fronting of M.E. a began in the S.E. counties, notably in Essex, in the beginning of the fifteenth century, and that it spread during the first half of the century to Suffolk, and possibly to Norfolk. Only gradually did the tendency spread to London, and at first only among the proletariat or the middle classes. The forms in Gregory's Chronicle, if we take them as establishing that he had the fronted pronunciation, may be due largely to his Suffolk origin. The fronting was very gradual, so that a was not felt as an incongruous symbol for the sound. When we find ^-spellings, or rhymes of a-words with those containing e, we may reasonably assume that the vowel implied was fully front. From the lower and middle classes in London the new pronunciation passed during the sixteenth century to the upper classes, and even into the English of the Court. Among the latter sections of the community the fronted sound may quite possibly have been at first an affectation adopted from some feeling that it was more refined than the 'broader' [a]. This seems likely in view of the fact that even to-day, outside Received Standard and the dialects of the Eastern Counties (as far as Bedfordshire and Cambridge- shire ?), the sound is practically unknown in natural Regional and Class dialects. In any case, it was in all likelihood universal among fashionable speakers by the end of the sixteenth century. If the professed writers on English pronunciation are so slow to recognize and admit the existence of [se], this is due partly to their inadequate observation and incapacity for phonetic analysis, partly to their dislike of new departures in pronun- ciation, and their reluctance to admit these, especially when there was no traditional symbol ready to their hand to express the new sound. It was comparatively easy to admit the new [» or i] from old a because it was possible to liken the sound to French or Itahan or Latin e. Also a long vowel is always easier to recognize and describe than a short one. It was hardly possible to give any idea of [se] without some knowledge of the functions of the tongue in the production of vowels, such as Cooper and, to some extent, Wallis possessed. It seems likely that many old- fashioned speakers, even at Court, preserved the old sound well into the seventeenth century. If Shillingford's hendes really implies a front pronunciation of the vowel, he must have picked up the sound during his trip to London together with many other features of his English which are foreign to his native dialect (cf. pp. 65 and 81 above). It is hardly possible that [ae] should have existed in Devonshire in the fifteenth century, seeing that it is COMBINATIVE TREATMENT OF OLD a 201 foreign even now to the dialect of that county. The form can hardly be of Scandinavian origin — in Devonshire ! If we take St. Editha's cress = crass seriously, this was probably a foreign importation. While at the present time most English provincial dialects show more or less well- marked advancing or fronting of old a, except in the North, none would seem to have developed a full front vowel. Even the considerably advanced [a] of many of the forms of Modified Standard, especially as heard in large towns, is probably not a survival of the native Regional, but due to the influence of Received Standard. In the would-be refined English of certain classes in Edinburgh and Glasgow, vigorous efforts to attain an ' English accent ' have resulted in a front sound indeed, but in [e] instead of [se]. M.E. al becomes aul. In Late M.E. a followed by -/ is diphthongized to au. This happens only in stressed syllables, and only when these end in a consonant. There are many examples in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries of the spelling aul or awl. It is doubtful whether these spellings, at any rate by the end of the fifteenth century, do not express a sound very like our present sound [5] in hall, ball, all, salt, rather than the diphthong. The development of \au\ to [5] is discussed below (pp. 251-3). A few examples will suffice to illustrate the fflK-spellings. Giegoiy, Saulysiury, 102 (this must have been pronounced [saalzbz'rz'] with no vowel following the -I); Cely Papers, Tawbot 'Talbot', 46, fawkyner, 81, aull 'all', cawlyd, 74, schawl be. The last word must be the strong or stressed form. Our present-day shall [jael] is derived from the undiphthongized unstressed form, which is far commoner. Thos. Pery {ig^g), saume ' psalm ', Ellis ii. 2. 152; Sir Thos. Seymour, cawlle, St. Pprs. Hen. VIII, i, p. 773 (r644); Sir Thos. Smith, hawk, Ellis ii. 3. 15 (1572-6) ; Q. Elizabeth, yfe«/«, Letters, 49,/aulelh, Transl, 2 ; stauke ' stalk ', Trans. 26. It is unnecessary to multiply examples, as these may be found scattered about in most fifteenth- and sixteenth-century letters. Wherever, in present-day EngUsh, the combination -al- is pronounced [51], or when the / is no longer pronounced, as in talk, stalk, &c., [o], we may be sure that this vowel is derived from the earlier diphthong au. The change of this into [5] has been so regular that au, aw are regarded in English as the natural symbols to express this vowel sound. See p. 251, &c, below, for the history of au. M.E. a in the Modern Period after w-, wh-, qur, squ-. At the present time we pronounce a rounded vowel [o] in wand, wash, what, quantity, squash, &c. If we assume that the preceding [w, ly] rounded M.E. a before fronting to [se] had taken place, the change in sound is easy to understand. In this case the change was earlier than that of [a] to [ae] (cf pp. 196-200). If we place this in the fifteenth century in the South-East and in the following century in London English, the rounding after la. Sec, must be earlier still. This would put the development of the rounded vowel in this position rather earlier than the meagre evidence of 202 STRESSED VOWELS IN THE MODERN PERIOD occasional spellings would lead us to suppose. The Celys write wosse, whos, Sec, for was several times, and the same form occurs in Cr. of Duke of York a Knight of the Bath, p. 390; but this is not absolutely convincing, since the Auxiliary is usually unstressed, and the spelling may represent the reduced vowel. The first convincing spelling with which I am acquainted is wosse 'wash', Machyn, p. 230. In William Watson's Teares of France (1593) occurs the very bad rhyme songs — swans,vih\ch seems to imply a rounded vowel in the latter word. After that there is nothing until the seventeenth century, when Sir R. Gresham in Verney Papers, p. 106, writes Whoddon for Whadden in 1622. The grammarian Daines (1640) says that au is pronounced in quart, wart, swart, and thwart. This impUes the sound [o] with the lengthening of before r. The Verney Memoirs from 1642 onwards furnish numerous examples of o-spellings of a after w-, &c., and Cooper in 1685 gives war, warm, warder, watch, water, wattle, wrath as containing either the short vowel in of, or the long vowel in off respectively. Already in the fourteenth century I have noted a few instances of for a after w-, but always before -/, so that one is led to suppose that the latter consonant exercised some influence. The examples are : — swolwe- bridde, EarUest Eng. Pr. Psalter (1350), p. 180; swol} 'swallow' (N.), Allit.Poems, Patience, 250; ra/(7^«i/(Pret.), Patience, 363,1268. Chaucer in the House of Fame, 1035, rhymes swallow (Vb.) with holowe. The list of o-spellings in the letters of the excellent Verney ladies is a fairly long one. What ' -viYiaX' , V. Memoirs, iv. 87, 1662 ; wos 'was', 1642, ii. 67, 70, 71; wore 'war', 1644, i. 20X ; worr, 1688, iv. 449; warning, 1646, ii. 356; washing 'washing', 1661, iv. 21; woching ' watching ', iii. 433 ; Worik ' Warwick ', 1658, iii. 416 ; gtwrill ' quarrel ', 1674, iv. 226; quollity 'quality', 1683, iv. 273; quollyfications, 1685, iv. 275 ; squobs 'squabs', 1664, iv. 72. Waaler 'water', 1688, iv. 449, though representing the rounding of M.E. a, may be included here. Cooper indicates a rounded vowel \o\ in was, wasp, wan. The words waft, quaff, usually pronounced [waft, kwaf], though some speakers say [wjft, woft, kwof], have in the former case escaped the rounding. Unless this be a spelling pronunciation, which is unlikely, since wa- for most Englishmen stands for [wj, wo], these forms must represent a type in which M.E. wa- became [was]. The subsequent change in this vowel before ft is dealt with on p. 204, below. The Pret. swam [swaem] instead of [swom] may be explained by the analogy of began and other Prets. of this class. By the side of the rounded forms whose existence is fully established among the best speakers, by the above evidence, for the seventeenth century, Mulcaster, 1582, puts warde, wharf, dwatf warn, wasp into the same list as cast, far, clasp, grasp, Sec, as regards the vowel, Elementarie, 127, and some seventeenth- and eighteenth-century grammarians seem to suggest the existence of unrounded forms such as [waez, swaen, kwjeht/, kwaentih'], which again are either spelling pronunciations or dialectal variants. It looks as if we must assume the existence of a speech com- munity among which wa- became simply [wae] and not [wj], whose habits of speech have left some slight traces. It is certain, in spite of the ROUNDING; LENGTHENING, ETC. 203 Verney forms, that many eighteenth-century speakers said [kwsehh" and kwaentztz']. This is asserted by the writers on pronunciation, and is con- firmed by a statement made to me by a lady who died recently, aged eighty-six, that nearly eighty years before, a great-aunt of hers, then very old, corrected my informant for saying [kv/Atti, kw^nU't?], asserting that these were vulgar pronunciations. Further, in Leigh Hunt's Au(o- biography, p. i8o, it is recorded that John Kemble the actor(i757-i823) always said [kwselib']. The rounding does not normally occur in Received Standard English when wa-, qua-, wha- are followed by g or k. Hence we pronounce [ae] in wag, whack, wax, quack, quagmire. The Danish writer BerLram (i 7S3). whose observations are generally accurate, states, however, that a rounded vowel was heard in quagmire, and [kw^g-j may still be heard. If the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century unrounded forms of such words as wash, swan, wasp were not spelling pronunciations, that is, if wa- really developed into [wse-] and subsequently became [wo], then we must assume that the initial w, while not hindering the early fronting of the vowel, later unfronted it again before rounding. This would be a later process than that which, among a different set of speakers, rounded M.E. a direct, before fronting took place. The poets of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (e.g. Surrey, Wyatt, Sackville, Spenser, Shakespeare, Habington, Donne, and Herrick) do not, so far as I have got evidence, rhyme wa- with 0, but with a — e.g. want rhymes with grant, pant, &c., was with grass. Pope rhymes rewards — cards. Moral Essays, Epistle ii. 243. These rhymes would still be held perfectly sound, being traditional, and also appealing to the eye. These reasons would explain their occurrence at an earlier date, even if those who used them pronounced [wjnt, w^z], &c. Such rhymes prove nothing one way or the other. The absence of the rhymes wa — ] developed in the course of the eighteenth. In the same way hard became [haerd, hserd, hi2(r)d]. There is little fault to find with this, except as regards the approximate period of lengthening. This took place, in all probability, much earlier than is usually supposed. We shall see (p. 257) that d is lengthened in Warwickshire as early as 204 STRESSED VOWELS IN THE MODERN PERIOD 1420, when we find crooft for croft (Coventry Leet) ; also that the spelling marster for master occurs in the Cely Papers. This last form has been adduced to prove that r could have had no consonantal sound at this period before -s, but it also shows that the preceding vowel was lorig, in fact that a was already lengthened before -s + consonant. There is no reason for supposing that lengthening of a took place earlier before -s than before [f, ^], or that the vowel b was lengthened earlier before /than a was. If we draw what seems the natural inference from these facts we shall have to assume that, at any rate by the end of the fifteenth century, the vowel in path, glass, chaff was already long. Did this lengthening occur before or after the fronting of a ? Are we to assume for the six- teenth century [pa]?, glas, tjaf], or [paej), glaes, tjjef] ? The question seems open to discussion, and it may be well to argue it out. Let us assume that M.E. bap ' bath ' was lengthened direct in the fifteenth century, before the fronting of a, to ba}>. In this case what was its position with regard to the verb bathe, which had a long a in M.E. ? Either this latter vowel had already been fronted, or it had not. If not, then bap and bad must have had the same vowel, and this, as we have seen, was fronted in the fifteenth century and subsequently became [e]. The same fate would, therefore, have overtaken the same vowel in both words, with the result that there would have been no distinction in vowel sound at the present time between bath and bathe. But there is a dis- tinction. Let us assume, then, that when bap became bap, the old a in \baS\ was already fronted and had thus got far ahead of the new a. This assumption necessitates the further one that at a later period a fresh tendency arose to front a. But this assumption is not justified, apparently, by facts. We are compelled, therefore, to assume that bap did not become bap direct, but that the vowel had already been fronted before the lengthening took place, so that the development was [biJJj, bsej), bseji], . This offers no difficulty, since we know that [bS]?] did exist (from the testimony of the seventeenth-century Orthoepiste), and the only question which arises is, when did it come into existence ? If it be held, as it still is by some, that M.E. a had only reached the [je] stage by the sixteenth century, this would certainly be a difficulty, but we have established already {pp. 195-6) at least a very strong probability that by that period [i], or still more probably [e], had already been reached by the old a, so that, if that be so, the difficulty is removed. Incidentally it may be remarked that such a rh3Tne as past — waste, which occurs in Shakespeare's sonnet, ' When to the sessions of sweet silent thought ', is intelligible if we assume that the vowels in both words were long — [p»st — west] — but hardly so if we are to suppose [pafest — west] or even [west]. As regards the change from [pjest, bseJ), Eeft3(r)] to [past], &c., it is difficult to be sure of the approximate date of the change. The state- ments of the eighteenth-century authorities are very unsatisfactory. The chief argument against assuming a very early (say late seventeenth or early eighteenth century) retraction to [a] is the fact that this vowel seems to have been difficult for Englishmen at that time. Why, if the sound was a common one in our language, did it always become [5], written aw or au, in foreign words when borrowed into English ? THE VOWEL IN LAUGH, ETC. 205 We find spaw for Spa in the Verney Memoirs, ii. 23 (1641) ; iv. 120 (1665), and the habit survives in the spelling and pronunciation of Cawnpore, Punjaiib, brandy pawnee, and in the pronunciation [kobal] for Cabul, really [pandzab, pan/, kabal], &c. The old-fashioned and now vulgar pronunciation [v5z] for vase illustrates the same point. The word in this form must have been borrowed when [a] was unknown in EngUsh. Our present-day pronunciation [vaz] is the result of a com- paratively recent approximation to the French sound. Before r, a becomes -0 in some dialects ; cf. for instance Charlbury, Oxon., locally called [tplbrz"]. There was in the nineteenth century a hyper-fashionable or vulgar by-form [tjolz] of Charles. This used to be facetiously written ' Chawles '. The prototype of this form seems to occur in Mrs. Basire's chorls, 141 (1655). Cp. also Cooper, p. 173, above. The form is difficult to account for unless [a] had already developed from [se]. The Vowel in half, laugh, dance, &>€. Ii we assume that our pronunciation of these words goes back to a late M.E. haf. Id/, dance which became [hsef — hjef — haf], &c., there is no difficulty concerning them, nor one or two other words, such as calf. If, on the other hand, we insist on deriving our present forms from Early Modern forms with the diphthong au — haul/, caul/, lauf, daunse, &c. — as some scholars do, then we are put to all sorts of shifts to explain the present-day [a] instead of [5], That diphthongized forms haul/ caulf existed, no one doubts, but it is suggested that undiphthongized forms also existed, and that from these our present received pronunciation is derived. As regards laugh, laughter, there is no proof that [laaftar], &c., ever existed. In words of this kind there were two types, one in which the final [^J became [f], and in this type au did not develop ; but there was another type in which final [x] or this sound before / did not become [f] but retained its back character and then disappeared. In this type au did develop, and afterwards, quite normally, became [5]. Our forms laugh, laughter (in spite of the spelling which really belongs to the second type), and the earlier forms, so much in vogue right into the eighteenth century, slafter, da/ter, are derived from the first type. On the other hand, the received pronunciation of slaughter, daughter with [5] is derived from the second type. See p. 288, below, for early examples of the spellings laffe, &c., and p. 297 for ha/'hsXi'.^ M.E. e^ in the Modern Period. By common consent, the long tense ^ of M.E., no matter what its origin, was raised to [i] in the Early Modern period. Apart from present-day vulgar English of big towns, the new vowel sound has been preserved. In the degraded forms referred to, there appears to be a tendency to diphthongize [i] to something like [sz]. This tendency generally goes with a drawling habit of speech which seems incompatible with the preservation of any long vowel as a pure sound. The same speakers who pronounce [ha?', baz', maz] for he, be, me, &c., also diphthongize the vowel in boot, &c. (cf. 235, below). 2o6 STRESSED VOWELS IN THE MODERN PERIOD The first indications we get of the change of [e] to [t] are given by the occasional spellings of persons who write i,y instead of e. These spellings, so far as my knowledge goes, begin before the end of the first quarter of the fifteenth century. They are fairly frequent during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and are found even in the seventeenth century. The following examples will suffice : , Siege of Rouen, c. 1420 — hyre 'hear', 1. 23, hyrde 'heard', ap. Bokenam (1443) — besychyn, S. Marg. 92S; Shillingford (1447-50) mykely, myte 'meet', 6, hire 'hear', 9, dyme 'deem', 13, myve 'move', 60, from M.E. meve, meeve, pryving, pryved, 57, 'proving', &c., from M.E. preve. Shillingford's wyke 'week', 59, may = [wik], or it may represent an old form wike without lengthening. Si'ke ' sick ', 64, may be either M.E. seke, or an early shortening. Gregory (1450-70) — hire 'hear', passim, dyre ' dear', 116, stypyUe 'steeple', 149, slyvys, 160, 'sleeves'; the spelling Jf^^«, 162, 'sheep', no doubt expresses a shortening of the vowel after it had been raised to [i]. Margaret Paston (1440-70) — thir, 2. 142, 'there, in which', hyrafler 'here-', 2. 178, agryed, 2. i']^,priste 'priest', 2. 179, symed 'seemed', 2. 186, spyde 'speed', 2. i8S,syying, 2. ig2, dymeih, 2. ig^.sAype 'sheep', 2. 196, kype, 2. 197, wypyng ' weeping', 2. 226. Creation of Knight of the Bath (1494) — sien 'seen', 390, indied, 391, Letters and Papers, vol. i. Hymn to B.V.M. (before 1500) — wi, Quin ' queen ', /!r«" 'tree', wiri ' weary ', si ' see '. Anne Bolejoi in 1528 writes besyche, Ellis i. i. 306 and 307, and so does Thos. Pery in 1539, Ellis 2. 2. 148. The spelling Mons. de Guees for Guise in Cavendish's Life of Wolsey, p. 76, makes it quite clear what value the symbol ee had for the writer. Ascham has style 'steel*, Toxophilus, 112, and piuyshlye, Tox. 83 and 84; Roper's Life of Sir Thos. More, liver 'rather', xxviii. 16 (1556). As has been pointed out already, p. 136, Queen Elizabeth in her letters and in her "rranslations makes very frequent use of this spelling. The following list is rather fuller than that given above, and includes references. From letters to James VI (1582-1602) : — agreed, p. 11, hire&icj (Noun), 17, grivous, 19, tvel, 20, kipitig, 2^^, fried 'freed', 23, nideful 'need-', 27, kipe'\ss^', 53, besiche 'beseech', 53, spidye 'speedy', 53, hire (Inf.), 61; from Ellis: — briding 'breed-', i. 2. 157 (1549), dides 'deeds', i. 2. 147, hire, I. 2. 146. In the Translations, among other forms, we find whir 'where', p. 146. The habit of these spellings, then, is observable in the Queen's writings from her girlhood to the end of her life. It is unnecessary to prolong the list farther, and still less necessary to refer to the early Orthoepists, who for once seem all to agree, and all to be describing the real facts. It may be useful to observe that when the late sixteenth- and the seventeenth-century writers on pronunciation speak of the sound of ' ee ', they invariably mean [i]. How early did the sound change take place ? Since we have evidence of it in spelling as early as 1420 or thereabouts, it is probable that the present sound was fully developed in pronunciation considerably, perhaps fifty years, earlier. A thorough search through the late fourteenth-century texts might reveal examples of i,y spellings in these. It is probable that M.E. e was pronounced very tense, and slightly raised, like the vowel in LENGTHENING OF SHORT i 207 Danish se ' see ', which to English ears is almost indistinguishable from [si]. This point is reached before the full high position of the tongue is attained. It might, of course, be argued that the fifteenth-century spellings indicate only a very tense and very high [e], and that the full [i] sound is only reached in the following century. The exact chronology of minute degrees of sound change is not obtainable with absolute certainty, but the facts and inferences based upon them with regard to the history of M.E. P [i] (see pp. 209-13) all make, in my opinion, in favour of the view here taken, that [l] was probably fully developed from e' before the end of the fourteenth century. So far as my present knowledge goes, I see no reason for claiming any particular Regional dialect as the starting-point of the change, nor any Class dialect as the medium through which it passed into the English spoken in London, and ultimately into Received Standard. The sound change appears common to the speech of all areas and classes. The Vowel in evil, &'c. We have now briefly to consider a group of words containing M.E. ^ of Late M.E. origin. There are a few words in Received Standard English at the present day which have [i] spelt e or ee, about which there has been some dis- cussion. The chief words are evil, beetle, weevil, and week, the last three of which all have original t in O.E. In some dialects bitul, wi/ol, wicu appear as beotul, weofol, weocu. In M.E. these become betel, wevel, weke respectively, the e being due to monophthonging of eo to e, and the lengthen- ing of this in open syllables in M.E. Until recently these M.E. forms were accepted as the ancestors of the present-day forms. Evil, O.E. yfel, was regarded as the descendant of the Kentish type, O.E. efely M.E. evel. It has been pointed out, however, that M.E. lengthened e was slack, and would not produce [l] in the Earliest Modern, but at best [e]. It is pretty generally accepted now that in certain dialectal areas — not yet very precisely defined — O.E. « in open syllables was lengthened in M.E., and lowered to a tense [e] which would account perfectly well for the Modern forms of the above words. Evil is regarded not as a ' Kentish ' form, but as an E. Midland form from ivel, the vowel of which was lengthened to tense e in later M.E. (See on this question my Short Hist, of Eng., §§174 and 229, Note i, and references there given.) In present-day Standard English we usually retain the short forms of words with O.E. and M.E. i, as in live, give, written, shriven, little, to wit, privy, city, pity, stick Vb., &c., &c. As we shall see, however, the long forms with [i] were far commoner during the first four centuries of the Modern period than at present. 'Peety ' [pit?] iot pity was occasionally heard till quite recently, and ' leetle ' [lltl] is still used facetiously in the sense of ' very little '. There is some difficulty in distinguishing among the early spellings with e, those which really represent the long vowel, from those which are the lowered form of the short?, discussed pp. 226-9, &c. In the case of some words such as live, give, we know in other ways that the pronunciation [liv, giv] was current; in other cases the spelling ea or ee sometimes reveals the length. It is certainly possible that all three pronunciations [hv, lev, liv, g?V, gev, giv], &c., coexisted. 2o8 STRESSED VOWELS IN THE MODERN PERIOD The dialectal distribution of the late M.E. *-forms from earlier ? needs much more investigation than it has hitherto received. At any rate, the view that the lengthening (to e) of t in open syllables was a purely Northern process must be given up. It undoubtedly involved a consider- able area of the E. Midlands, and may even have spread South, and, to some extent. Westwards. The following examples, in so far as they contain a long vowel and are rightly classified here, must be regarded as having M.E. «*, which was raised to [i] very early, in these as in other words. Lydgate — wedewe, &c.; Coventry Leet {n2i) —previe , 131; Hen. V (Letters of Marg. of Anjou, &c.)^«k««P.P., 2 1 (this may, however, be M.E. e'); Wm. Fa.stoa—a6edyn P. P., i. 30 ; Bokenam— ^«/« ' pity ', Pr. 41, se^, Pr. 70, wreiyn, Pr. Marg. 41, weteth, Pr. Marg. 228, presoun, Pr. Marg. 289, iebet, Marg. 428, and Christ. 366, bedel, Pr. Marg. 349 (may repre- sent either M.E. bidel, or S.E. type bedel with lengthening), wedowe, Ann. 578, shrevyn, Elev. Thous. Virg. 415, quekyn Inf., Cecil. 782, 793, 796, leuin Pres. PI., Lucie 296; GregOYy^preson, 65, 81, levyd 'lived', 106, wele 'wit' Vb., levj/n Inf., 130, wedowe, 164, petefullysk, 199, rever 'river', 207; Shillingford — weket, loi ; Exeter Tailors' Guild — weke, 319, wekett, ^22, geven, 315 (perhaps M.E. e ", fr. O.'E. geo/en),dener, 315 (both long and short forms of e occur in this word, cf. Machyn ; dener being a case of the lengthened forms we are considering, dener of the lowering treated on pp. 226-9) ; Ord. of Worcester — geve, 388 ; Shilling- ford — prev yly, 6i, prevy seal, 63 ; Marg. Paston — levyn ' live ' Inf., petous, ii. 26, presort, ii. 84 (indeferently, i. 178, and levery, ii. 192, &c., are doubtful); Short Eng. Chron. — presone, 74, pra)ek, 75; Cr. of Knt. of Bath — shreven P. P., 390, gentilwemen, 393"; Caxton — to wete 'wit', Jason, 58. i3,wreten 'written', 15. 24; Sir Robt. Wingfield (15 13) — gevyn P. P., Ellis 2. i. 212 ; Bury Wills — wedow, 78, dener, 74, wedowed '-hood', 75 (1482), /«!« 'live', in (igop) ; Lord Berners — suspectously (?), I. 71, jebei, i. 36; Sir Thos. Elyot — weete Inf., i. 51; Will of R. Bradley (Leics. 1533), L. D. D. — levyfig, i6i. ig, geue, i6r. 27; Will of R. Astbrooke (Bucks. 1534), L. D. D. — I geue, 168. 11 ; Sir Thos. Seymour, St. Pprs. Hen. VIII. i (1544) — rever, 776; Thos. Lever's 2itna.—/orgeuenesse, 50; Machyn — deener, 138, ,£g^ ' city', 10, presuns, 18, Prevesell ' Privy Seal ', 37, pete, 43, wedew, 49, leoed, 67, veker 'vicar', 80 ; Gabr. Harvey's Letters — steekid, 2, steek ' stick ', 34 ; Verney Memoirs — letel, M. Faulkiner, ii. 55 (1642), leetle, ii. 355 (1645) and 384 (1648), reaver 'river'. Lady Hobart, iv. 137 (1666), /f^, Lady Hobart, ibid. 138. In the eighteenth century Lady Wentworth has — leved ' lived ', Wentw. Pprs. 64, 116, levin and leving 'living', 54, pety, 39, geven P. P., 40, 56, 64, lever 'liver', 42, wemen 'women', 113. We see that these forms were both fairly numerous and widespread formerly, and it is remarkable that nearly all should have been eUminated from Received Standard and Literary English. It is highly probable that many more of these forms, in documents of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries are concealed under the spelling i, in which case it is impossible to distinguish them from the unlengthened forms. Thus such a spelling as give may well represent either of the two forms [g?v, giv]. THE VOWEL IN HEAT, ETC. 209 M.B. f = [i]. This sound, which remained during the whole M.E. period, and for some time afterwards, quite distinct from e^ = [e] (see pp. 205-7), ^^^ various origins (for which see pp. 29, 30 ; 33-4, above). With the exception of the words 6reak, great, steak, all words originally containing this sound, unless shortening or other combinative influences have supervened (see p. 2 1 2), have in present-day Received Standard developed the vowel [1], so that the old [e] is now completely levelled under old [e]. Examples of words containing M.E. P are : — meat, eat, breathe, s^eak, steal; heat, teach, heath, deal (Vb.) ; clem; lecip, heap, east; also the French words yeast, beast, veal. Sec, &c. For the shortening of this vowel see p. 254. -.When e^ was raised to [i] (cf. pp. 205-7), ^^ ^^ first remained unaltered. At this point M.E. a and M.E. at, which, as we have seen (pp. 194-6), had by this time both been levelled under a single sound, caught up f; and thus the three originally distinct vowels were all represented by the single sound [i], which was tending more and more to become tense. Between this stage and the present sound the intermediate stage [e] must certainly be assumed. When was this stage of a fully tense vowel reached ? It seems likely that soon after M.E. e* became [1], P would take its place as a mid-front-tense vowel ; the tendency of Modern English being, on the whole, to make long vowels tense and to reserve slack quality for short vowels. We shall probably be within the mark if we place thej development of the new tense e at least as early as the first quarter of thai fifteenth century. This view is confirmed by the fact that in Gregory's' Chronicle (1450-70) M.E. helen ' conceal ', fr. O.E. helan, is written hyfyn (p. 146), where the M.E. vowel was certainly [e]. This is evidence that among certain sections of the community, at any rate, this new e had already been raised to [i]. Again, in the virulent Protestant tract Rede me and be not wroihe (1528) the rhyme cleane — bene ' been ' occurs. Now the latter word can only have had [i] at this time, since it contains M.E. e^. During the sixteenth century we find scattered spellings of this vowel with t, e.g. Machyn — -prych ' pceach', p. 13, &c., brykyng 'breaking', \o^,bryke-fast, 199, spykyng 'speaking', 35; Ascham has lipe Meap', Toxophilus, p. 89; Gabriel Harvey, Letters, 1573-80, has birive, p. 53; Q. Elizabeth has bequived 'bequeathed', Transl. 140 (M.E. quepe, O.E. cwMpan), besides spike Vb. The Queen also has sptch, but this no doubt represents the non-Southern form with f-. Skelton rhymes stepe — lepe. Ph. Sparowe,' 114-15] Surrey rhymes grene — dene (Tottel, p. 3). Spenser rh)mies seas — these in Heavenly Beautie, and streeme — seeme in Prothalamion, cleene with beene P. P., sheene (Adj.) and seene, F. Q. 2. i. 10; Shakespeare rhymes teach thee — beseech thee, V. & A. 404 and 406 ; but all of these poets have, more commonly, rhymes which suggest the [e] pronunciation (cf. p. 211). The grammarian Gill, in Logonomia (1621), mentions with contempt what he considers affected, effeminate pronuncia- tions with [i] of leave and meat, which he writes liv, mit. Thus the comparativdy early raising to [1] and therefore a still earlier ' tensening ' of M.E, P are completely established. 210 STRESSED VOWELS IN THE MODERN PERIOD But this is not the whole story. It is evident from rhymes and from the statements of writers on pronunciation that [splk] for speak and so on was not the only, nor indeed the prevalent, type in Received Standard during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Another pronunciation, with [e], in words of this class is recorded, and this seems to have been the more usual during this period. We must assume, therefore, that the [e] from earlier [e] was differentiated aniong different classes of speakers — whether in a Regional or a Class dialect I am unable at present to say — into two types, one of which retained the old [ej, while the other gradually raised this to [l]. It is unnecessary to discuss at length the often contradictory and never very clear statements of the English and French writers as to the precise quality of sixteenth and seventeenth-century English 'long «', but so much at least seems certain, that they refer to a mid and not a high vowel. We have come to the conclusion that this was tense and not slack, quite apart from their statements. If these were accepted literally they would generally tend to show that the vowel was slack. Even Cooper (1685) equates the quality of ' long e ' with that of the short in ken. On the other hand, Wallis (1653), and Sherwood in Cotgrave's Dictionary (1672), state that English ' long e ' has the sound of French e', that is, a tense sound. If these men are right, then Cooper is wrong, and it is not extraordi- nary that, good phonetician as he is on the whole, he should not have realized that there was a difference of quality as well as quantity between the vowels in sell — sail, tell — tale respectively, these being, amongst others, the examples he gives of ' long ' and ' short e '. Cooper shows cleariy that he did not appreciate the distinction of tense and slack, since he gives the pair win — wean \t — 1] as differing only in the length of the vowel. However, passing from this point, we may note that Cooper gives a longish list of words containing 'long «', words, that is, with 'ea pro e longa ', which includes the following : — beacon, bead, beam, lean (Vb. and Adj.), beat, bequeath, bleach, breach, break, deal, dream, Easter, eat, great, heal, cheap, heap, heat, heath, heathen, leaf, leap, clean, leave, mead (the drink), meal, meat, sea, seat, sheaf, sheath, speak, squeak, steal, stream, sweat, teach, weak, wean (Vb.), bean, wheat ; also the words of French origin : — appeal, beast, cease, cheat, conceal, cream, creature, deceave, defeat, disease, ease, extream, feast, impeach, preach, queasie, repeat, reveal, treat, veal. This is a pretty satisfactory list of words which had [i] in M.E., and it is perfectly certain, in my opinion, that in Cooper's pronunciation all these had the sound [e]. I am quite unable to see the force of the arguments of Jones, the recent editor of Cooper, and of Zachrisson, who seek, apparently, to prove that Cooper intended to suggest that all these words were pronounced with [i]. He definitely places them under ea ; immediately above comes a list of words like behead, bread, &c., in which he says ' Ea ponitur pro e brevis ', and our list, as stated, is headed ' ea pro e longa '. Of ' E' he says, ' Vera huiusce soni productio scribitur per a absque \ longum falso denominatur ut in cane, wane, age'. Further, in a list of words pronounced alike though written differently, ' Voces quae eandem habent pronunciationem ', &c., Cooper includes meat — mate. Surely if this means anything it means what we have already tried to establish, that M.E. a and M.E. e^ had both the same sound in the SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURY RHYMES 211 seventeenth century, if not much earlier, and further, if we can ever learn anything from the Orthoepists, we may learn that this sound was a mid and not a high vowel. Shakespeare rhymes sea with//ay,&c.(seep.248); Spenser, states — states, Heavenly Beautie, retrate (sic) — late, F. q! I. 8. 12; Habington — sea with pray, Castara, 134, with play, 89, with away, 91, and so on; Thames — streames, ibid. 21 ; and Suckling — cleane with Seine in ' I came from England into France '. Donne — but these rhymes are not quite conclusive — rhymes meat with great, breake with weake (Auct. of the World). Such a spelling as 'to spake to her' (1693), C. Stewkley in Verney Mem., iv. 464, leaves no doubt as to the type of pronunciation intended. Cooper's list, then, is invaluable, and may be considered reliable as showing that words of the class we are now considering were still com- monly pronounced according to a different type from that now in vogue in Received Standard English, although our present type was certainly already in existence, as we have proved above, and had existed before the end of the fifteenth century. Cooper himself seems to have known both pronunciations of wean. It is rather strange that the evidences of the [e] pronunciation of the old [i] words should be so comparatively rare as they are. This may be due partly to the dislike of the more fastidious poets for rhyming together words which are spelt with different vowel symbols although the sounds be identical, so great a hold has spelling on the literary imagination, partly also perhaps to the fact that the [1] type may have gained ground more rapidly in fashionable speech during the eighteenth century than we suppose. Still, such rhymes as great— cheat, sea— survey, gate — eat (Pope), dreame — name and speake — mistake (Swift, An Apology), shade — mead (Pope, Windsor Forest, 135-6 (17 1 3)), please — stays, ease — days, fate — deceit (Lady M. Wortley), &c., occur far into the eighteenth century. A thorough investigation of these rhymes from the early sixteenth to the end of the eighteenth century would be a laborious but repaying piece of work. In dealing with M.E. a, p. 104, above, I have shown the existence of the rhyme M.E. a with M.E. P before r, as early as c. 1420. This is the proper place to emphasize the fact that our modem usage with p] in heat, meat. Sec, is not in the nature of a sound change as some writers seem to suggest, but is merely the result of the abandonment of one type of pronunciation and the adoption of another, a phenomenon which, as we know, is of the commonest occurrence in the history of Received Standard Colloquial English. Had such a sound change taken place between the seventeenth century and the present day it must have involved all the words which had a and aiin M.E., and made, maid, and mead would all have been pronounced alike. It is possible that a tendency to make M.E. a and ai into [i] did actually exist in some Regional dialects, and, if Gill is to be believed, some affected speakers of Standard English in his day actually said [kipnj for capon. This tendency, however, must have been confined to a small and obscure community, and it has not affected Received Standard. It is not comparable in importance to the tendency to raise M.E. P to [i], and in the community among whom this latter process was carried oat, it is evident that this must have started before the descendants of the old a p 2 212 STRESSED VOWELS IN THE MODERN PERIOD and at had developed into the full [e] sound. Incidentally, this shows how early must have been the ' tensening ' of P. To make the matter more concrete for those unused to this kind of discussion, we may say that in the dialect from which is derived the present pronunciation of mead, this word must have been approaching that pronunciation before made and maid had reached the [med] stage and while they were both pronounced [mid]. The three words break, steak, great may be simply survivals of the type represented in Cooper's list, in which they all occur. On the other hand, great has been explained on the analogy of the old Comp. gretter, which was fairly common in the fifteenth century (cf. p. 325). The shortened form preserved [e], and the quality of this vowel may, it is said, have influenced that of the Positive by preventing so great a differentiation between the two forms as would exist between [grit — greta]. This explanation now appears to me improbable. Break and steak have been supposed to be loan forms from a South- West dialect. But the South-West dialects have had extremely httle influence upon Received Standard, in spite of Drake and Raleigh. Besides, while this might be a plausible explanation for the sixteenth century, the problem does not arise till the late seventeenth or eighteenth century in this case. It is simpler to regard all three forms as survivals of tiie older type. As a matter of fact these words were pretty widely pronounced with [i] in the eighteenth-century Received Standard, and break is still [brik] in Irish English and in many Regional dialects. Dr. Johnson said that Lord Chesterfield told him that great should be pronounced so as to rhyme with state, while Sir William Yonge sent him word that it should rhyme with seat, and that ' none but an Irishman would pronounce it gratt'. (See Boswell's Lt/e of/., Oxford Ed., ii, p. i6r.) The Change of -er- to -ar-. A number of words in Mod. Engl, which formerly had -er- are now pronounced with [a], and this irrespective of the fact that some are still written -er-, e. g. clerk, others -ear-, e. g. heart, while others are written -ar-, e. g. Aart, starve, far, carve, star, and so on. On the other hand, a larger number of words which formerly had -er- in the spelling retain this spelling, as clergy, mercy, person, swerve, &c., or are written -ear-, as learn, early, search, and are pronounced [a]. We have here the survivals of two types, differentiated in Late M£. from one original type — one type which preserved -er- unaltered, until by a series of changes this vowel developed into present-day [a], the other type in which M.E. -er' became -dr-. This has normally become present-day [a] ' when the r is followed by a consonant as in starve; or is final, as in star, but has remained short and is fronted to [se] when another vowel follows the -r-, as in tarry. Our task now is to trace the rise and history of the M.E; -ar- type, and to give some account of its distribution in the Mod. Period. The phonetic process is most probably one of simple retraction of [s] to [a] before -r-, but it is conceivable that the series of changes was [er — aer — ar] ; that is to say, the sound represented by e in M.E. may first have been lowered and then retracted. The difficulty of the problem lies in the fact that at no period, and in no early writer after the appear- PRONUNCIATION OF BERKSHIRE, ETC. 213 ance of the -ar- spellings, is either type used with perfect consistency, the same writer often spelling the same word in both ways. Nor is it easy to see why in a certain number of words the -ar- spelling should gradually have become fixed, thus helping to fix the pronunciation, while in others again in which -er- or -ear- is written, the pronunciation should preserve the other type, nor further why yet a third group has preserved the -er- spelling, and are pronounced according to this type. It is difficult enough to reach a satisfactory solution of the difficulties even when the facts are known with some fullness ; it is quite impossible to do so when the facts are imperfectly known. The following account, though incom- plete, is less so than those which have appeared hitherto. From an examination of the list of words which have been found written -ar- from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, it seems impossible to formulate any law to account for the change in terms of combinative phonetic conditions, since almost every word formerly con- taining -er- in a stressed syllable is found at one time or another to have been written -ar-, and therefore, presumably, to have been pronounced according to this type among some groups of speakers. The nearest approach to any combinative influence which might be suspected is that of lip consonants, which present some slight appearance of having pre- disposed to the -ar- type when they stand before, and perhaps also after, the combination. I consider this, however, very doubtful, and it leaves much unaccounted for. It seems more probable that dialect is at the bottom of the difference, dialect of a Regional character to start with — though, as we shall see, this is hard enough to determine — which, however, was later on rather social than Regional. The Cbronological Facts. The -ar- forms are very rare in any text before the beginning of the fifteenth century. I cannot profess to give an exhaustive account of the conditions in M.E. until my M.E. Grammar is much farther advanced than at present, and I only give the results of my investigations on M.E. vowels so far for what they are worth. I have not yet examined PI. N.'sin respect of our present point. The earliest example of -ar- for -er- which I have is dare in St. Juliana, line 30 (Prose), MS. Royal, c. 1250; the only other from the West before the fifteenth century is from Robt. of Glos. {1320-30), Barcssire, 1. 64, Barkssire} 5706. The Eastern and South-Eastern texts are slightly more fruitful, and I have noted sarmon and sarmoun in Will, of Shoreham's Poems (f . 1 320), 4. 1 2 1 2, 56. 1562, 50. 1411, 100. 67, and harkne, 141. 330, in the same writer. From the Norfolk Guilds of 1389 I have \ioitA parsoties andprestes, p. 23, garland, 117, toiA farthing, 122 (five times). Chaucer has only fart, harre 'hiiige' (rh. with knarre, Prol. C.T. 550), iarie ' tarry ' (Vb.), and harrie. When we come to the fifteenth century we find that the larger number of the -ar- forms occur in S.E. and E- Midland texts, and they are not common here until well on in the century. Palladius on Husbandry (Colchester, c. 1420) has only barn and barley; Bokenam has very few of these forms, and they appear in the Suffolk Wills apparently only ' This name, however, is from O.E. Bearuc- which would normally become Bark- in M.E. It is really the present spelling Berks, &c. therefore, which is remarkable. a 14 STRESSED VOWELS IN THE MODERN PERIOD from 146a onwards; it is perhaps only a coincidence that Marg. Paston, also belonging to Suflfolk, has hardly any of these forms before 1461, and that before that date she writes her own maiden name Berney, after 1 46 1 Barney. The Essex family of Celys have a larger number oi-ar- forms in their letters in the late seventies and eighties of the century than is found prevailing in any other collection of documents. The writers of this century who belong to the more Westerly parts of the country have practically no -ar- forms. This is true of the Life of St. Editha, Bishop Pecok, Shillingford's letters, and the Exeter Guild documents. In the last mentioned, however, tarmes is a remarkable exception. Turning to London documents, the -ar- forms here are very rare before the middle of the century, though scattered instances will be found in the list. It is not until the second half of the century that we find any considerable number, and it is significant that we find most of all in the Chronicle of Lord Mayor Gregory, who was a Suffolk man by birth. Caxton has very few -ar- forms, and they are very rare in the official documents down to the end of the century. In the following century the -ar- spellings are more frequent, and most writers, of all classes, have a certain number. The examples quoted below are from documents of all kinds, including private letters, and works published in the sixteenth century. It will be noted that in some words, e.g. clerk, heard, serve, &c., swerve, war, these spellings are fairly widespread. It will be found, I believe, that the writers who use these spellings most frequently are Bishop Latimer, Machyn, and Queen Elizabeth. The evidence seems to point to the probability that before the end of the sixteenth century the -ar- pronunciation was far more common, that is, it included a much larger list of words, than at present. For the seventeenth century our best evidence is derived from the Vemey Papers and the Vemey Memoirs. These collections of letters put us in possession of the habits of speech of all the members of a very numerous family, and of a large circle of their friends (see remarks on these docu- ments, pp. 162-3). We find not only the Vemey ladies, but many of their male relatives and friends writing -ar- in words where we now pronounce the other type. It would be absurd to deny that the writers of these letters spoke typical upper-class English of their period, and we are led to the conclusion that sarvent, vartue, and so on, really represent the pronunciation in vogue at this time. If these spellings are more common in the ladies' letters than in those of the men, we must, I think, put this down to the fact that the former read fewer books than the latter, and were less influenced by the spelling which was rapidly becoming stereotyped by the printers. Many people doubtless used the -ar- forms who wrote -er-; cf. Ch. Butler in his Gn, p. 3 — ' We write person though we svf parson.' Lady Wentworth, whose letters contain a large number of these spellings, although her letters continue down to 171 1, must be held to represent the English of the Court during the last quarter of the seventeenth century. She therefore continues our record of this type of English for thirty years or so after the Verneys. Those whose views on the history of pronunciation are derived mainly from the statements of writers on pronunciation, will be glad to find that Jones (ijoi) — one of the best of his kind — includes mercy, heard, and verdict in his rather JOHN KEMBLE'S PRONUNCIATION OF VIRTUE 215 brief list of words in which ' e is sounded as a ', p. 24. Apart from the evidence of the Verneys, several of Lord Rochester's rhymes point in the same direction, and in supplement of Lady Wentworth's spellings we have several rhymes and spellings of Swift, which tell the same tale, and make it certain that down to about the middle of the eighteenth century the [a] pronunciation, or its immediate ancestor, obtained very largely in a number of words which are now pronounced according to the -er- type. Later in this century, Elphinston, a Scotchman who lived for many years in England and moved in decent society, puts down larn'd as a London Vulgarism in 1783, though we have reason to believe that the word was normally so pronounced by the best speakers of an earlier generation. Elphinstone is not absolutely above suspicion, since as a professional authority on pronunciation he was bound to uphold a theoretically 'correct' pronunciation, while he would be inclined to preserve a certain number of Scotticisms and Scottish prejudices against certain types of English pronunciation. Apparently, by the end of the eighteenth century the distribution of [a, a] among the old -er- words was, on the whole, the same as our own, though doubtless the older usage lingered here and there, among good old-fashioned speakers, much later. According to Leigh Hunt's Auto- hiography, i, p. 180, the actor John Kemble (1757-1823) pronounced -ar- in virtw. Leigh Hunt regarded this as an eccentricity. It is evident that the -ar- pronunciations were declining from the middle of the eighteenth century, since Fielding singles out sarvis, sartain, parson ' person ' for ridicule by putting them into the mouths or the letters of vulgar persons. This pronunciation evidently died out in some words earlier than in others, and the usage varied among speakers of the same breeding, at the same period. Thus it is curious that in spite of the testimony of the Verneys, and the habit of John Kemble 150 years or so later, Vanbrugh appears to discredit the pronunciation vartue by attributing it to a peculiarly dingy and dubious character, Mrs. Amlet in The Con- federacy (1705). Seventy years later Goldsmith puts varment into the mouth of Tony Lumpkin. As a rule, when a comic writer departs from ordinary spelling in depicting the speech of one of his characters, he intends to suggest a pronunciation which is out of the ordinary, though there is always the possibility that he is deceiving himself; as when a writer at the present time, attempts to express the pronunciation of a vulgar person by writing ' orf for off, ' wen ' for when, ' chewsdy ' for Tuesday, thereby expressing nothing different from the normal pronunciation. Swift's spellings vardy for verdict and varsal for universal in Polite Conversations may have represented fashionable pronunciations of his day, of which he disapproved. The reality of the vowel in the former is confirmed by Jones. Swift himself evidently said 'clargy ', and varment. (See these forms in the lists.) To sum up, we may say that the -ar- pronunciations appear to have been almost universal for at least two and a half centuries, among the politest speakers, and that the use of this type was gradually discontinued from about the middle of the eighteenth century in a large number of words. Why was this ? The most natural explanation seems to be that it was chiefly due to the influence of a difi^erent social stratum, which had either 2i6 STRESSED VOWELS IN THE MODERN PERIOD preserved the -er- type traditionally, or deliberately adopted it on account of the spelling, from a desire for correctness. The question naturally arises, Why should the spelling of the printers of -ar- in certain words, and -er- or -ear- in others, have gradually crystallized? The practice cannot have reposed altogether, or mainly, upon that of the Late M.E. professional scribes, since the -ar- forms were not nearly sufiBciently well estabUshed in their time to make their usage consistent, and as we have seen the -ar- spellings are rare, and very scattered in M.E. texts. It would seem that the early printers were a law unto themselves, for had they followed the scribes in this respect, as they did in most others, they must have printed no -ar- forms at all. We must suppose then that the distribution of -er- and -ar- spellings in the printed books of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had a certain phonetic basis. The very inconsistency in usage seems to show that the printers did to a certain extent reproduce their authors' own spelling (see discussion of this point, pp. 1 12-13). And if the early writers, as we know is the case from numbers of autograph letters and other documents, wrote sometimes -er- sometimes -ar-, this must have repre- sented a conflict between traditional and phonetic spelling on the one hand, or, on the other, a different pronunciation in different words. How did this fluctuation arise ? Clearly only from a mingling of the habits of two different dialects. Dialectal Origin of the -ar- Forms. Looking at all the facts so far as they are known to me, and set forth in the preceding pages and the following lists, I am inclined to assume that the change of -er- to -ar- began in Kent early in the fourteenth cen- tury, and spread thence to Essex, to Suffolk, and to Norfolk. During the fourteenth century the new forms began to filter into London speech very gradually from Kent or Essex, or from both. They were rare in the speech of the upper Classes at first, but gradually gained ground, probably through the speech of the lower strata of society, during the fifteenth century, possibly also through the direct influence of merchants from the Eastern Counties who acquired wealth and position like Gregory. During the sixteenth century these South-Eastern forms became fashionable, and were much used by Queen Elizabeth herself. Incident- ally, we may call attention to the occurrence of desarve in a letter of Anne Boleyn, and the same form in a letter of her daughter about twenty years later. In the former case the form may be due to native Eastern dialect, while Queen Elizabeth was simply following the increasingly fashionable tendency. As a matter of fact, the -ar- forms are more frequent in the Queen's later letters and her translations than in those written in her girlhood. According to the view here taken, the -ar- forms were originally from a Regional dialect, then passed into the London Class dialect of the lower orders, whence they spread upwards. The precise distribution of -er- and -ar- forms would thus be as impossible to account for as that of the three forms i, e, u from O.E. y. The second list of -er- spellings shows how comparatively late many of ILLUSTRATIVE SPELLINGS 217 these persisted, even in words where -ar- spellings and pronunciations have long been absolutely fixed, and which one might therefore suppose to have been among the earliest words to be adopted in the -ar- type. To my mind this shows that, even in these cases, difference of pronun- ciation persisted for a long period. List of Words which formerly had -er-, but which appear occasionally written -ar- from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Bark Vb. darcke, Lever's Sermons, 115, 1550. Barley, iarley, Pallad. on Husbandry 1420 ; Bury Wills 1467. Barn, barnes, Pallad. on Husbandry 1420; barnys. Bury Wills 98, 1504; Sir Thos. Elyot's Gouernour 1531 ; Ascham. Carve. Engl. Conq. of Ireland (MS. Trinity 1425) ; karue, p. 1423 ; carue, Shakespeare ist Fol. Loves L. L. Clergy, clargy, Gregory's Chron. 1450-70; Rede me and be not wrothe 1528; Latimer's Sermons; Thos. Lever's Serm. 1550; Swift rhymes clergy — charge ye. Clerk, clarke, &c.. Line. Will 1451 (Line. Dioc. Docs.); Rede me, &c., 1528; Skelton, Magnificence; Cavendish, L. of Wolsey 1S77 ; Latimer; clarklie, Gabriel Harvey 1578-80; -c/ar^, Q. Elizabeth ; Machyn 1550-63 ; Thos. Wilson, A. of Rhet. 1585. Certain, sartayne, cartayne, Gregory iii, 176; sartten, sarten, Cely P. 64, 139, 140, &c., 1475-88; unsartin, Mrs. Pulteney; Verney P. 199, 1639; sartinly. Lady Sussex 1641, Verney Mem. ii. i, 82, 83; carten, Mrs. Basire, 140, 1655; E. of Rochester rhymes certain — Martin; jor/awj, Wentworth P. 48 (Lady W.), 1705; and Fielding in Torn Jo'nes, where it is said by Landlady of an Inn, and is written by Mrs. Honour, a lady's-maid. Confirm, confarmes (Luce Sheppard), Verney Mem. iii. 75, 1651. Concern, consarned. Pen. V. in Verney Mem. ii. 195, 1642. Dark. Skelton rhymes with clarke, Magnif. 485 (ti529); dark, Fisher, Bp. of Rochester's Serm. (fl. 1459-1535) ; Lord Berners's Froissart; Sir Thos. Elyot's Gouernour 1531 ; darknes, Q.Elizabeth. Dearth, darth. Lord Bemers 1520, i. 344, 415 ; Lever's Serm., p. 84, 1550 ; Thos. Wilson, A. of Rhet. 1560, &c. Defer, de/arre, Lord Bemers, i. 100 ; de/ar, Q. Elizabeth 1572 (letters). Divert, divartid, Gary V. in Verney Mem. iv. 276, 1686; divariion, ibid. iv. 275. Early. E. of Rochester rhymes early with Farley, Epistle fr. B. to E. Errand. Gabr. Harvey, arrand. Letter Bk. 1573-80. Earn, yarne, Edm. V. Verney Mem. iv. 193, 1675. Ermine, armyns, Lord Berners 1523 ; armyn, Machyn 1550-3. Par. /ar«, &c., Lord Berners ; Sir Thos. Elyot ; Bp. Fisher; Ascham; Wilson; Lyly. Farther. Bury Wills 1535; Latimer; Bp. Fisher; Lord Burghley; farder, Ascham ; Lyly, farther. Farm, forme, Machyn ; Lever's Sexmons,farmes, farmer three times. Fervent, faruentlye, Latimer. 2i8 STRESSED VOWELS IN THE MODERN PERIOD Farthing, fardyng, Machyn 1550-63. Guerdon, guardon, Bokenam, S. Agn., 701, 1443 ; Shakespeare ist Fol. Loves L. L., four times. Heard (Pret. and P. P.). herde rhymes /arde, Siege of Rouen c. 1420; Aarde, Marg. Paston, P. Letters ii. 124, 1463; ibid. ii. 241, 1465; Cely Papers 77 ; Skelton, Magnif. ; Sir R. Wingfield 15 13, Ellis 2. I. 212; Lord Berners; Cranmer, Letters (Ellis i. 2. 33) 1533; Sir T.Elyot; Lever's Serm. ; Latimer; Aarrfi Machyn 1550-63; Gabr. Harvey, Letter Bk. 1573-80; Lord Burghley, Letters, Bardon P., and Ellis i. 3. 12 ; Cavendish, L. of Wolsey ; Ascham; Ch. Butler, Gr. 1634; Verney Mem., passim — Gary V. ii. 70, 1642; Lady V. ii. 268, 1647; Pen. Denton, ibid. iii. 228, 1655, &c., &c.; Lady W. in Wentworth Papers, 51, 1706, &c, ; Jones, Practical Phonogr. 1701. Heart. Hoccleve, Reg. of Pr. 1412 ; rhymes smarte, Siege of Rouen c. 1420; M. Paston, Letters ii. 365, 1469; Fortescue 1470 (?); Anne Boleyn 1528, Letter in Ellis 1528 ; Skelton, Magnif.; Thos. Pery, Ellis 2. a. 149, 1539; Sir T. More; Thos. Lever; hartly, J. Mason, Ellis 2, 2. 54. 1535; hartie, Cranmer, Letter 1533; Bp. Fisher ; harks, Ascham ; Lord Berners ; Sir T. Elyot ; hartily, Lord Burghley ; Ascham ; hartiest, hartily, hart, Q. Elizabeth ; Lyly; Ch. Butler, Gr. 1634; Cooper 1685; Jones, Practical Phonogr. 1701. Hart, hart. Lord Berners 1520 ; Machyn, hartes ede = head. Harbour, harborowe, Sir Thos. Seymour 1544, Letter in State Papers, Hen. VIII, i. 775. Hark — hearken, harke, Thos. Lever 1550; harken, Lyly 1579-80; Ch. Butler, Gr. 1634, ea in hearken = a. Harvest. Ascham. Hearth. Chapman, Aar/A ; Mons. D'Olive, Wks. i. 239 (1606) ; Cooper 1685. Herald, harold, Machyn 1553-60. Hereford. Arfford, Harrford, Machyn 1550-3. Hurdle [fr. S.E. form M.E. herdet]. hardel. Palsgrave's Esclarcissement 1530 ; hardels, Dives Pragmaticus 1563 ; hardell. Bury Wills 1569 ; Levins, Manipulus 1570. Herbage, tharbage ' the herbage'. Letters and Pprs., i. 80, 1483. Infer, enferre Vb. rhymes debar, Skelton's Magnif. 60. Iiearn. learne rhymes warm, Rede me and be not wrothe, p. 1 23, 1528 ; larne, Henry V in Verney Mem. iii. 368, 1647 ; Luce Sheppard, ibid. iii. 98, 1652 ; Swift rhymes learn with darn in ' A Panegyric ' ; Elphinston, 1783, regards Idrn as a London vulgarism. Mar Vb. marre rhymes barre. Rede me, &c., 1528; marre. Caven- dish, L. of Wolsey 1577. Mercy, marcy, Siege of Rouen c. 1420; marcyfully, Bokenam, S. Ann. 665, 1443 ; marcy, Gregory's Chron. ; Marcie (girl's name), Gabr. Harvey 1578-80; Wrtrfy, Q. Elizabeth ; warg/, Lady Sussex, Verney Mem. ii. 151, 1642 ; Lady V, ibid. ii. 296, 1647 ; Mrs. Ba- sire, marci, 135, 1654; marcey. Mall Verney, ibid. iv. 214, 1655; Jones, Practical Phonogr. 24, 1701. SARVE AS A POLITE FORM 219 Marvel, &c, marvylyously, Cely Papers. Merton College. Marten Colege, Rich. Layton (afterwards Dean of York) in Letter, Ellis 2. i. 60, 1535. Peril, paryl, Ordinances of Worcester 374, 1467; parill, Caxton's Jason 1477 > paryll, Lord Berners, i. 288 ; parillouse, ibid. i. 31 ; par ells, Cavendish, L. of Wolsey i677. Person, parson, Marg. Paston ; State of Ireland, St. Papers Hen. VIII, iii. 15, 1515; Thos. Pery, Letter, in Ellis 2. 2. 147, 1539; Lord Berners ; Sir T. Elyot's Will ; parsonages, ibid. ; parson=' person ', Machyn; Q.Elizabeth; 'We -wnlt person, though we say parson', Butler's Gr. 1634, p. 3 ; Lady Sussex in Verney Mem. ii. 88, 1641 ; Dr. Denton, ibid. iii. 461, 1660; Lady Wentworth in W. Papers, 94, 96, 1709; obcurs in a letter by Mrs. Honour, a lady's-maid, in Tom Jones. Parson, parson, Latimer|s Serm. ; Machyn. Prefer. Rede me, &c., prefarre ; E. of Rochester rhymes preferred — Blackguard in Nell Gwynne. Search, sarche, State of Ireland, St. Pprs. Hen. VIII, iii. 15, 15 15. Serjeant, sargent, Gregory's Chron. 81, 1450-70; sarj'ant, Dick Hals (cousin of Verneys) in Verney Mem. iv. 310, 1674. Sermon, sarmon, Bury W;lls, p. 17, 1463; Gregory's Chron. 203; Machyn; sarment. Lady W. in Wentworth Papers 221, 1711. Serve, sarvyd, Cely Papers 44 ; to sarve, Ld. Adm. Sir Thos. Seymour 1544, St. Pprs. Hen. VIII, i, ^778; sarue, sarved, Q. Elizabeth; sarve. Lord Barrymore, Verney Mem. ii. 53, 1642; Magdalen Faulkiner, ibid. ii. 56, 1642; Lady Hobart, ibid. iv. 127, 1665; Lady Wentworth, W. Pprs. p. 77, 1709; sarving, ibid., p. 118, 1710 ; Prior rhymes served — carved. The Ladie. Servant, sarvant. Sir T. Seymour, St. P. Hen. VIII, i. 776, 1544; sarvand, Machyn; sarvant, Q. Elizabeth; sarvante. Sir J. Hotham 1560, Ellis 2. 2. 325 ; Sir E. Sydenham, Verney Mem. _ ii. 102, 1642 ; Lady V., ibid. ii. 257, 1647 ; Sir R. Burgoyne, ibid. iii. 51, 1652 ; Lady Wentworth in W. Papers, passim, 1705-11. Service, sarvyse, Gregory's Chron. 222, 1450-70; Cooper, 1685, designates sarvyse as belonging to a ' barbarous dialect ' ; sarvice, Verney Papers ii. 120, 1642; ii. 68, 1642; ii. 70, 1642; Lady Wentworth, W. Pprs. p. 95, 1709 ; sarvis is written by Mrs. Honour, a lady's-maid, in Tom Jones. Deserve, desarve, Cely Pprs. 63. 1475-88 ; Anne Boleyn, Letter, Ellis I. I. 305, 1528; (/zjarwef/, Q. Elizabeth 1546; E. of Rochester rhymes deserving — starving, ' Batb Intrigues ' ; desarve, Lady Sussex, Verney Mem. ii. 83, 1641 ; Lady V., ibid. ii. 347 (twice), 1647 ; Lady Wentworth, W. Pprs. 118, 17 10. Desert, desart, Q. Elizabeth ; Shakespeare rhymes deserts— parts, Sonnet xvii. Preserve, presarve. Lord Barrymore, Verney Mem. ii. ^3, 1642; Mrs. Isham, ibid. iv. 1x8, 1665. Quarrel. Q. Elizabeth ; Lyly. Smart, smart. Siege of Rouen c. 1420; smarting, Caxton, Jason 1477. 220 STRESSED VOWELS IN THE MODERN PERIOD Star, starre, Gregory's Chron. 80, 1450-70; Sir Thos. More, Letters in Ellis i. r and 2 ; Wilson, A. of Rhet. 52, 1585 ; Q. Elizabeth. StarUng. starlyng, Cely Papers 1473-88 ; stare, Sir Thos. Elyot 1539. Start, astarte rhymes harte, Hoccleve, Reg. of Pr. 141 2. Starve, sfarue, Wilson, A. of Rhet. 61. Swerve, swarue, Skelton, Magnif. 1529; swarved. Lord Berners, i. 376, 1523 ; swaruing, Latimer's Serm. ; swarue, Wilson, A. of Rhet. 53; Q.Elizabeth; Gill, Logomonia 1621; Daines, Orthoep. Angl. 51, 1640. Tarry Vb. farming, Bokenam, Agn. 476, 1443 ; taryed. Lord Berners. Term. tarmes,'Eyieitr Taylors' Guild 317, 1466; Gary V. in Verney Mem. iii. 431, 1657. Universal. ' the varsal world', ' Miss ' in Swiff s Polite Conversation. Virtue, vartus (PI.), Lady Hobart in Verney Mem. iv. 57, 1664; vartuous, Vanbrugh's Confederacy (said by Mrs. Amlet), Act m. Sc. I, p. 174, 1705. Verdict. Jones, Practical Phonogr. 1701, includes this word among those pronounced with ar; one of the fashionable speakers in Swift's Polite Convers. says vardy. Vermin, varment, Thos. Pery, Letter, Ellis 2. 2. 145, 1539 ; varmin, Mrs. Eure, Verney Mem. ii. 86. 1642 ; vermin rhymes garment in Swift's poem ' The Problem ' ; varment, said by Tony Lumpkin in Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer, Act v, 1773. War. warre, &c.. Sir J. Fortescue 147 1-6 ; Gregory's Chronicle 1450- 70; Caxton, Jason 1477; Bp. Knight of Bath and Wells 151 2 ; St. of Ireland, St. Pprs. Hen. VIII 1513 ; Sir Thos. More; Lord Berners 1523 ; Sir Thos. Elyot 153 1 ; Lever's Serm. 1550; Caven- dish, L. of Wolsey 1577; Ascham; Lyly. Work, workys, Siege of Rouen 1420; warkys, Bokenam, Christ. 887, 1443; Exeter Taylors' Guild awarke Adv., 1466; wark. Lord Berners i. 82; awarke Adv. i. 161; wark, Skelton, Magnif.; Lincolnshire Inventory, Line. Dioc. Docs. 1527; warke. Sir Thos. Elyot ; Q. Elizabeth (Trans.) ; worke (Letters). Proper Names. Barney. This, the maiden name of Marg. Fasten, is always written Berney by her down to 1461 ; from then onwards generally with a. Berks.' Barks in an Oxfordshire Will of 1455, Line. Dioc. Docs.; Barkshire, Spenser, Present State of Ireland 628. 2 (Globe Ed.). Berkley. Barkeley, Gregory's Chron.; Barkly, Bp. Knight of Bath and Wells 151 2; Lord Berners; Shakespeare, First Fol., Pt. I, Hen. IV, Act i, Sc. iii. Bermondsey. Barmondsay, Creation of Duke of York a Knight of Garter, L. and P. i ; Barmsey, Machyn 303. Dunfermline. Dunfarlin, Sir J. Temple, Verney Mem. ii. 249. Derby. Darby, Rede me, &c., 59, 1528; the yerle oi Darbe, Machyn; Darby, Tom Verney in Verney Mem. iii. 174, 1659. * See footnote on p. 313. PROPER NAMES— WORDS NOW SPELT -AR 221 Guernsey. Gamesey, Machyn 271; Garnsea, Sir Ralph Verney in Verney Mem. iv. 289, 1658; Baker, Rules for True Spelling, &c., 1724, says that this name is pronounced Garnzee. Herbert. Included by Jones, Pract. Phonogr. 1701, among words ■where -er- is pronounced -ar-. Jemingham. Jarnyngham, Marg. Paston ii. 29. Jersey. Lady Wentworth in Wentw. Papers, Lord Jarzys (Possess.) 84; Garzy 55; Jarzy 149. Ker of Fernihurst (family name). Written Car by Q. Elizabeth. Verney. This name occurs, with very few exceptions, , in this form throughout the Camden volume of Papers, and the four volumes of Memoirs, in which nearly all the letters are by members or near connexions of the family. The only exceptions I have noted are — Varny, Lady Sussex, ii. 82, 1641 ; Sir R. Burgoyne, ii. 166, 1641 ; Susan Verney, same date, ii. 167, 170; Lady Hobart (a Denton), iv. 285, 1657, and iv. 49, 1662. The family now call themselves Verney [vSni]. List of words which now have \a\ in pronunciation whether spelt -er-, -ear-, or -ar-, but which occur spelt -er- in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Barley. Barley, Lord Lovel's Will 1455, Line. Dice. Docs. PI. Name now Barley. The first element is O.E. here, barley. Barn, berne, Palladius c. 1420; bernys, Marg. Paston; berne. Bury Wills 21, 1463; ibid. 94, 1501 ; ibid. 100 Bern, 103 beern 1504. Carve Vb. kerver, Short Eng. Chron. 1465; kervy r, Grtgoxy; kerved, kervyr, Cr. D. of York 1495; kerued, keruinge. Sir Thos. Elyot; kervers. Cavendish, L. of Wolsey 1577. Clerk, clerkis, Bp. Pecok c. 1449; clerk, Lord Lovel's Will 1455; clerkes, Marg. Paston ; Lord Berners ; clerk, Machyn. Dark, derk, Shillingford Papers 1447-50; Bp. Pecok; Bk. of Quin- tessence 1460-70; derke, Caxton, Jason 1477; Gregory's Chron.; Jul. Berners, Fysshynge 1496 ; derkness. Lever's Sermons 1550. Far. ferre, Pallad. c. 1420; fer, Hoccleve, Reg. of Pr. 141 2; Bp. Pecok ; Rewle of Sustris Men. c. 1450 ; ferre. Sir J. Fortescue ; afer, Shillingford 1447-50; ferre. Bury Wills 20, 1463; fer, Exeter Taylors' Guild 1466 ; ferre, Caxton, Jason x^i'wferr. Lord Berners ; ferre. Sir T. Elyot. Farther, &c. ferther, Pallad.; ferdyr, Marg. Beaufort (1443-1509), Ellis I. I ; Bp. Pecok; ferther, Shilhngford; ferihermore, ferthesi, Marg. Paston; ferther, Gregory; ferthesi, Caxton, Jason 1477; ferther, Skelton ■>fie^2, PI. Pres., 63. 1471, iloude ' blood ', O.E. Hod, goud 'good ', OJE.god 60. 1701, &c., &c., louAe^ 'looketh', O.E. loceJ> 75. 2142, iouke 94. 256 'took', O.E. ioc, and so on; the Feudal Aids of 13 70. or so have Boucland, O.E. Boc-, Lollebrouk, O.E. -broc, Cutypoule, O.E. -pol ' pool ', Caresbrouc, CokepouU, &c., which are PI. N.'s which occur in documents dealing with Dorset- shire, Somersetshire, and Hampshire; Alliterative Poems (Cheshire or Lanes, c. 1350) write goud. Patience 336, Pearl 33 (twice), &c. ; St. Editha (Wilts, c. 1420) has gowde 'good' 1472, brotik 'brook' 1363; Bokenam (Suffolk, 1441) not infrequently writes u — suthly 'soothly', St. Agn. 524, &c.,forsuk, O.E. -sok, St. Faith, 68, j/wafe ' stood ', St. Eliz. 206, and so on. One of the commonest words to be written otherwise than with o is earlier moste ' must ', often written musi, mwst during the fifteenth century. -This may not really be a case in point at all, as it may represent the unstressed form and stand for some sound quite other than [u]. The spelling at any rate is found in Palladius (1420), Rewle Sustr. Men. {c. 1450), Bp. Pecok (1449), Marg. Paston, passim, and Cely Papers, and Monk of Evesham (1482) to mention no more. As we faiow, this has become the Received Spelling, and it is one of the few cases where old is now spelt otherwise than or 00. Marg. Paston also vix'Ats Munday ; London Records (14 19, cit. Morsbach) h&ytgud; Cely Papers haytgud and hA. RISE OF NEW VOWEL SOUND IN MOON, ETC. 235 The ou- or ow- and «'-spellings in words of this class persist through- out the sixteenth century in private letters and in published books ; th'l' a-spellings are less common. The former are found amongst other places in a letter of Thos. Pery, Ellis 2. 2 {mounth 'month'); Rede me, &c., has shuts ' shoes '81,82, must rhymes vn/usi 105 ; in Edward VI's First P. B. {Jioude, &c.) ; Latimer's Sermons {bloud, gould, shuiyng) ; Machyn {sune 'soon', bludshed, &c.); Ascham, howne 'boon', lowse; Fisher, Bp. of Rochester's Sermons; Sir Thos. Smith, De Republ. {bloud); Queen Elizabeth's Letters {hauke 'hook'); John Alleyne, dueth 'doth', AUeyne Papers 16, 159- ; &c., &c. Such spellings as blud, in Ascham, Fisher, &c., may indicate the shortening of the vowel, on which see below, p. 236, &c. On the other hand, Latimer's shufyng ' shooting ', Serm. 161, and Ascham's 'it bu/ed Tiot', Toxoph. 81, almost certainly represent the long vowel. Few will doubt that ou in the words from the fifteenth century onwards implies [u] ; how much sooner the sound was fully developed, and when the new sound was first pronounced exactly as in present-day Received Standard, is more questionable. The spellings just illustrated from writings from the South and Midlands, or from the London dialect, have nothing to do with such spellings as gude, guid, &c., in the Northern texts of the four- teenth century and later. In the North, old pursued quite a different path of development from that which it followed farther South, and the rh)rmes of fourteenth-century Northern texts show an approximation to the sound of French a [y], e. g. stude—fortitade, &c. Even the sixteenth-century grammarians agree in describing [u] as the vowel heard in words containing old 0'. As regards the phonetic process it seems certain that it resembled that now in progress in Swedish in bo ' live ', &c., where the old long is strongly over-rounded, so that to unaccustomed ears it sounds rather like some kind of [ii]. The full development of the latter sound, however, demands also the raising of the back of the tongue from a mid to a high position. It is quite possible that the early fourteenth-century o«-spellings in English may indicate only that the over-rounded stage is reached, and that the sound pronounced at that time was the same a$ .the Swedish vowel just referred to. If all words containing old long 5^ were pronounced with [u] at the present time, the history of this sound would offer no difficulties.- The fact, however, is that we note a threefold development of the sound in present-day English. ii) Words which have fu] : — rood, spoon, moon, food, fool. 2) Words which have [»J : — good, stood, hood, hook, book, shook, forsook, look, (3) Words which have [a] -.—flood, blood, glove, done, month, brother ^ mother, other. In class (i) the Early Mod. or Late M.E. vowel has remained unaltered ; in (2) it has been comparatively recently shortened ; in (3) it wasshortened much earlier, and underwent a further change. This change also involved original M.E. (or O.E.) short [»], so that at the time when it came about, the latter sound and original o* in certain words were pronounced exactly alike. In other words, at a certain period, short [li], whatever its origin, began to alter in the direction of [a]. This question has been treated above 236 STRESSED VOWELS IN THE MODERN PERIOD under u, pp. 232-4 ; it is our business here to inquire what information is available (a) of the early shortening of the new [ii] which gave us class (3), and (3) of the late shortening which gave us class (2). Early Shortening of [uj from 5\ I assume that when, in M.E. and later, the consonant following a vowel is doubled, this implies that the preceding vowel was short. When in texts which express long «, whether original or derived, by the process we have just discussed, from original 3^ in some words by ou, we find u written in other words even when the following consonant is not doubled, it is probable that we are justified in assuming that this represents a short vowel, since, except in the North, u was not commonly used for a long vowel, apart from French k, which had quite a difierent sound from [u]. The conditions under which old long vowels were shortened in M.E. have often been formulated (cp. my Shor^ Hist. pp. 1 1 3-1 5), but the shortenings of the kind we are considering belong to a different category from any of those mentioned. If on the strength oi blood andjloodv/e assume that the -d exercised the shortening influence, this appears to be contradicted by rood and siood, for although we pronounce a short vowel in the latter at a and not [a] otherwise it the present time, the fact that the short vowel here is shows that it did not undergo the early shortening of _ _ would have shared the fate oi flood and blood. Again, why was the vowel in done shortened but not that in moon and spoon ? I believe it to be impossible to formulate the precise combinative con- ditions under which these forms were produced, and am inclined to think that the explanation of the three pronunciations of old 0^, or at any rate the existence of the [a] pronunciations, must be explained by assuming a mixture of dialect, probably of Social origin. This becomes more probable when we consider that while the group of words with [a] in Received Standard is now quite fixed, the distribution of these forms has varied according to the usage of different periods, and a greater latitude seems to have existed formerly in this respect. The earliest shortened form of the new u which I have found is sunner 'sooner', R. of Brunne's Handlyng Sinne, 1. 386 (Lines. 1301). This is a remarkable form as showing how early the attainment of the new pro- nunciation was in this dialect. The shortening may be explained as due to the same process which has shortened the vowel in done, in which case it implies a Positive sun ' soon ' and is a very early instance of the process, or on the other hand it may be due to the analogy of other Comparatives which shortened the vowel, when the word ended in a consonant, before the suflBx -re. This is an early M.E. shortening. Palladius (Essex c. 1420) has sonner ' sooner', 83. 615, which may represent the old M.E. Comp. when the shortening of before it had become [u] would produce e, or it may represent the new form sunner as in R. of Brunne, the old spelUng with being retained as elsewhere in Palladius. Machyn's_/J)/A«a» 126 probably stands for a M.E. shortening before [u] developed, but may be identical with Bp. Fisher's {oim/uithdovf. St. Editha (Wilts, c. i42o)has ^odde ' flood ' rhyming with gode, and in view of the present pronuncia- tion of the former word I am inclined to accept the spelling here, as EARLY SHORTENING OF VOWEL IN FLOOD, ETC. 237 standing for [flud]. We know that this dialect had already developed the new [Q] from 0^, cf. p. 234. In the will of Sir Thos. Cumberworth, Lines. 1451, Lines. Dioc. Docs., the spellings gud, 46. 29, uiherwise, 56. 15, occur, but these may be Northern spellings. In the sixteenth century Berners, Froissart, has fludde, i. 221, 241, 291 (three times); Edward VI's First P. B. has fluddes and bludde ; Spenser, On the State of Ireland, has ^ude ; Bp. Fisher has 6lud and iloud in his Sermons ; Gabriel Harvey in his Letters has iltid 32, /uii 'foot' 121, ind in a poem, whudd 'hood' rhyming with hudd. Letter Bk., p. 125. In Sackville's Induction (1563) undone and done rhyme with ruii, 119. Marston has hudwinkt. What You Will, Act i, Sc. i (1607). In 1621 Gill (Logonomia) gives the following as containing short a : — hhod, glove, good, brother, done, does (Vb.), mother, other. Butler (1634) gives gud, hlud as short. Sir Edm. Verney in 1639 writes bludd, hluddynose, Vemey Papers 212. Daines (1640) mentions the pronunciation swut = [swut or ?swat], but says it is 'better written and pronounced soot' = [sut]. Wallis (1653) mentions done as having ' obscure 0' = [a]. In 1653 Wil. Roades, the Vemeys' bailiff, writes tuck 'took', Verney Mem. iii. 275. Cooper (1685) gives ^ood, hood, other, soot; stood, as having labial shortened, which according to his terminology = H, which again he defines as being the sound of 00 shortened, that is p]. Cooper also \as fut 'foot' as a 'barbarous' form. Does this mean [fat] or [fut]? At any rate it is represented also by Bp. Fisher's form futt given above, and would be [fat] at the present time. Sir R. jVerney writes sutt ' soot ', Verney Mem. iv. 358, 1686 (= [sut or sat] ?). ! Jones (1701) has a list with [ii] which- corresponds to our present usage : — book, brook, cook, foot, forsook, good, hood, look, soot, stood, took. The one word in this list which we should not now include \s forsooth. Jones's list of words with [a] is another, mother, brother. He appears to recognize both [u or ii] as well as [a] ia foot, forsooth, good, hood, look, -sook, stood, took. He further says that die sound of H is written ou ' when it may be so sounded ' as in floud, bloud, which seems to imply the pronunciations [Had, blad ; flud, blud]. In the Gr. of the Engl. Tongue, 171 3, attributed to Steele, brother, mother are said to contain an ' obscure sound like a short ' = [a], and the same sound is said to occur in flood, blood. Bertram (1753), the writer of an Engl. Gr. for Danes, in Danish, and an excellent observer, gives book, look, and other words ending in k, and also hood and foot as con- taining the sound of Danish H, while blood, flood, soot are said to contain Dan. 0, e.g. blodd, &c. This clearly means the sound that is now [a]. From the above brief account it seems to be established that the new [ii] was shortened by the first quarter of the fifteenth century at any rate, if we disregard the somewhat doubtful evidence from Robt. of Brunne, or if we accept it, more than a century earlier. Until there is more evidence forthcoming of the development of the new [u] at this early period, it is safer not to build too much upon this. At the same time it may be pointed out that the oa-spellings in this text for old 0' may well dispel the suspicion which some might attach to the a in sunner, if this stood alone. In that case it might be said that the Lines, dialect was influenced by the Northern English. But since, so far as I know, the 238 STRESSED VOWELS IN THE MODERN PERIOD Northern »-spellings for 5* which express the sound [y] are not found as early as 1303, since in any case Northern texts do not write ou for old o, and since Handlyng Sinne is quite definitely E. Midland (though of a N. Midland type certainly) in dialectal character and not Northern, we may, I think, take the <7«-spellings in this text seriously as representing an E. Midland sound change, especially as the rhyme sbwe — vowe [slii(e) — vii(e)] occurs lines 1887-8. Prroably further investigation of fourteenth-century texts would show that during the first half of this century old ff- became, in the Eastern dialects, from Lincolnshire to Kent and Essex, a sound approximating to if it not quite attained the character of [u]. From thence it passed into the London dialect. We ought probably to regard the spelling must in fourteenth-century texts as representing the unstressed form, with a vowel shortened after the [u] -stage had been reached. In any case, the forms with short [ii] are the ancestors, so far as they survive, of those with [a] of a later date. The question of the unround- ing of [«] has been discussed in its proper place (cf. pp. 232-4, above). In the meantime we are left in doubt by the statements of the gram- marians down to the middle of the seventeenth century as to which of the forms which they describe as having ' short & ' really had [ii], and which had [a] or its immediate ancestor. They appear to correspond very largely with our [a] type, and include the words most commonly indicated as short by the occasional spellings. So long as we are not sure of the existence of [a] we cannot say with certainty whether the forms with ' short u ' are the descendants of those which had [u] in the fifteenth century, and are the ancestors of our [a] type, or whether they are the beginnings of the second or later shortening which has pro- duced our [a] in cook, &c. It does not follow even when once the [a] forms had come into existence in some dialects, that they were used in the best type of London and Court speech. The shortened forms from which they came probably came in slowly and sporadically, and it is certain that many speakers still said [fliid] long after others said [flild], and may have continued to do so after the latter had gone on to the next stage [flad]. The Later Shortening of New [u]. While Wallis and Cooper undoubtedly recognize the three types [ii, u, a] in the class of words we are considering, by far the larger number of words, according to them, have one or other of the two former vowels. This being so, and bearing in mind what was said in the last paragraph of the preceding section, we may be inclined to assume that the forms with short [ii] which these writers mention, are really rather survivals of the early shortening, which in this dialect underwent no unrounding because they were only adopted after original short & had been unrounded, than the ancestors of our present type of words like hood, cook, &c. This view becomes more probable when we consider that words such as foot, stood, good, and look, all of which at the present time show the late shortening, occur in the lists of Wallis and Cooper among those with [Q], This is even more strongly emphasized if we compare Gill's list of shorts already given above (which all correspond to LATE SHORTENING OF VOWEL IN BOOK, ETC. 239 our [a] type) with his list of longs, which include both of our other types — [« and kJ. Gill's list of words with long [u] is : — soot, soon, moon, book, shook, forsook, look, brook, hook, food, foot, brood, stood, goose, smooth, tooth, doth. When we come to Jones the case is diflferent. As has been said, his account points to a considerable variety of usage in the pronunciation of the same words. Evidently the [a] type has become much more wide- spread than in the periods which Wallis and Cooper describe, and his list of words with [ii] is, as has been shown above, pretty much the same as our own. On the above grounds I am therefore inclined to put the late or second shortening of [u] as lat^ as the end of the seventeenth or the beginning of the eighteenth century. Henceforth the chief interest lies in the distribution of the several types of pronunciation among the different words. There is no further question of sound change. The whole question is a very difiScult one, and I see no solution to it except on the lines already suggested, of the influence of Social or Class dialect. At the present time the distribution of the types in the various Modi- fied Standards still diflfers more or less considerably from the usage of Received Standard. The only variations of usage in the latter appear to be in groom, and to some slight extent in soon, in which words [u, u] are both possible. Within my own memory some old-fashioned speakers of Received Standard still said [sat] instead of the now universally received [s«t]. Rome and Gold. The present pronunciation of Rome, instead of the historically normal [rum], is comparatively recent and is due to the influence of the French' or Italian pronunciation of the name, perhaps also to the spelling. Cooper, Jones, and Steele all give [rum] as the normal pronunciation. In some verses on Sir J. Davenant, by Sir J. Menis (1641), cit. Aubrey, Lives, i. 206, Rome rhymes with groome. The present-day pronunciation of gold goes back to a M.E. short form gold, which may be derived from an adjectival goldne, or from such a compound as goldsmith, &c. The normal O.E. and M.E. forms of the noun had a long vowel, and would yield a Modern [gflld]. This type was in use among some persons who lived far into the nineteenth century, though by that time it was doubtless old-fashioned. An old lady who died in 1855, aged over 80, a very near relative of my own, always, so I have heard from her children, said [gQld]. It was a very usual though by no means the only pronunciation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries among good speakers. It is indicated probably by the spelling gould, Latimer, Serm. 7 and 26, G. Harvey's Letters, p. 86, and it is recognized by Elphinstone. On the other hand, the ancestor of the present-day type is referred to by the grammarians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In Rede me, &c., gold rhymes with cold — sold. In Alphabet Anglois (162 1) gaould is supposed to represent, for French speakers, the pronunciation of the English word. For 5'- < wb, and ho- < who, &c., cf. p. 308, below. 240 STRESSED VOWELS IN THE MODERN PERIOD The Unrounding of M.E. o in the Modem Period. During the fifteenth century, especially in documents written by men from the West Country, but not here alone, we find a written for M.E. S, In the sixteenth century a certain number of these spellings are found in London English, a few in Machyn, and one in Queen Elizabeth's letters. In the following century the a-spellings occur occasionally in the Verney Papers, and the habit of unrounding o, by this time evidently a fashion- able affectation, is pilloried by Vanbrugh in Tie Relapse in the well-known Character of Lord Foppington. Early in the eighteenth century Lady Wentworth and her son Peter each have, so far as I have observed, one of these spellings. This unrounding is at the present day heard chiefly in the South- West of England, but at least as far East and North as Oxfordshire. It has been suggested that Raleigh and Drake — both Devon men, the former, as we have seen (p. 109), speaking with a Devon accent all his life — made this pronunciation fashionable and current in the Court English of their day. This may be so, but the largest number of a-forms in any one writer in the sixteenth century are found in Machyn, who was not likely to reflect fashionable habits of Court speech, and who wrote at a time when Drake was still a boy, and Raleigh a baby, the former having been born, according to the Diet, of Nat. Biogr., about 1540, the latter about 1552. Evidently then, the habit was current among the inferior orders of the metropolis long before either of the two heroes were in a position to exert any influence upon London English. It is certainly possible that at a later date the courtiers may have adopted Raleigh's pronunciation of words containing 0, though it does not seem very likely that the haughty Queen would follow another's lead in matters of this kind. As the following examples show, traces of the a-spellings are found also in Palladius and Margaret Paston. If the pronunciation were in vogue also in the South-East and South-East Midland, it is comprehensible that it should penetrate into London speech, along with many other features from these areas. At any rate, wherever the habit came from, there is no doubt that it existed, and that it rose in the linguistic world. It has even left a few traces at the present time, notably in Gad, a weakened blasphemy, and in strap by the side of the unrounded strop. We have now restored the rounded vowel in plot (of ground), where the Authorized Version has plat. These are the examples I have noted : — Palladius, strape ' strap ', 9a. 870 ; St. Editha, starme ' storm ', rhymes •harm', 932, crasse 'cross', 1387; Shillingford, afteiymes, 53, 'oft-'; Marg. Paston, last 'lost' Pret. Subj., ii. 373; Lord Btxatis, yattder 'yonder', Froissart, i. 205; Machyn, C. hars 'horse', 12, the marrow 'morrow', 47, Dasset 'Dorset', 48, 57, caffen 'coffin', 120; Q. Elizabeth, 'I pray you stop the mouthes ', Letters, 64. This last word will cause a thrUl of pleasure to those who know Lord Foppington' s celebrated ^ stap my vitals'. Lady Hungerford has swarn 'sworn' p.p., Letters, p. 256 {c. 1569). A certain number of these forms occur in the Verney Memoirs : — becas 'because', Lady Sussex, ii. 77 (1642), cf. also the shortened form becos, Gary Verney, ii. 68, from which becas is derived ; faly ' folly ', Mall V., ii. STRAP AND STROP; LORD FOPPINGTON 241 380 (1647); sassages, Dr. Denton, ii. 318 (1648); 6 a clake 'o'clock', Luce Sheppard, iii. 78 (twice, 1652); Sir ^rlandoe Bridgmen, Lady Rochester, iii. 434 (1656). Mrs. Basire prays for Prence George in 1655, Corresp. 139. To these should probably be added naty ' naughty', Lady Sussex, ii. 154, and dater (see p. 305). These forms presuppose probably the unrounding of a shortened vowel from [o]. On the other hand, the vowel in both may still be long, and in that case we must assume that it was pronounced as [ae]. In Marston's Eastward Hoe occurs the rhyme after — daughter, Act v, Sc. i, and here we must suppose an earlier form "do/ier'. Lord Foppington, already referred to, has — stap. Tarn, Gad, pasiHvely, harse, plats, bax, &c. Lady Wentworth writes Anslow for 'Onslow', p. 67 (1708), and beyand, 127 (1710). This habit must have been fairly widespread in the seventeenth century, since it survives to-day in the English of America. The fact that several French writers on English pronunciation from the third quarter of the sixteenth century onwards find a resemblance between English o and French a certainly suggests that the former was commonly pronounced with but slight rounding. Ballot (1580) says that the English vowel is almost like French o. L' Alphabet Anglois (1625) says ' O se prononce souvent A. come Thomas, short, qu'il fauct prononcer tfiames, chart'. Mauger, Grammaire Angloise {i6';g), says of — ' Quand il est lid k m, n, r, t, d, g, p, st, ss, sk, il se prononce comme notre a — from \isez /ram, anon — fl«a«, nor — nar, not — tiat, God — Gad, lodge lodge, frost— /rast. It is, I think, impossible not to believe that there is a connexion between these statements, and the above spellings, taken from documents written by English people during the same period. It does not much matter whether these Frenchmen got their ideas of English pronuncia- tion from lower-class speakers or from the ultra-fashionable. They cannot be misleading us altogether, for their statements agree so well with the testimony of the occasional spellings and other known facts. An interesting and I think a valuable light is thrown by these French writers upon the probable character of the vowel sound implied by the spelling a in the English documents. It cannot have been [ae], the sound of the ordinary English ' short a', because these Frenchmen, or some of them, have fixed this as a front vowel — ' quasi comme le premier e du verbe itre ' (Gr. Angl.) ; ' comme e Latin . . . master lisez mester, man lisez men ' (Mauger). Since lodge, &c., are described as having a sound rather like French a, we must suppose that the French writers heard a back vowel for the English short 0, and that vowel I take to have been approximately a more or less slightly unrounded, form of (i. e. mid- back, or perhaps low-back with slight rounding). This is, I believe, pretty nearly the sound now heard in America and in many South- western English dialects. The Frenchmen's desciiption is the nearest they could get to such a sound, since even if they had perceived, as they apparently did, that the vowel was not precisely the French a, not being phoneticians they would be unable to fix upon the essential factor — the slight rounding — which differentiated the English vowel from their native sound. 242 STRESSED VOWELS IN THE MODERN PERIOD When the unrounding was complete, as it subsequently became in the politer forms of English, the resulting vowel was advanced (fronted) and levelled under the ordinary English [ae], the old sound of short a having long disappeared. This is what has happened in Gad and strap. During the eighteenth century the old fully rounded vowel was restored, partly from the spelling, by purists, partly by the influence of a large body of speakers who still preserved it unaltered. We must remember that Lady Wentworth is to be regarded as a fashionable speaker of the late seventeenth century, although her letters were written in the opening decade of the eighteenth. If proof is needed that the French writers sometimes do intend a slightly rounded vowel when they refer to French a, it is, I think, found in Mauger's statement that the a in water is pronounced like French a. There is Uttle doubt that the vowel of water was rounded by the time at which Mauger writes, and even if it were already [5] as now, this has always been a most baffling sound for French people to apprehend. If Mauger had been referring to the other pronunciation of the word he would not have hesitated to write it witer for French speakers. M.E. u from French U [y]; and M.E. eu; eu [eu]; lu; become [ju]. The sounds have all been levelled m present-day English under the combination [ju], which after [;-, dz, tj] and sometimes after /- becomes [ii]; e.^. due, duke; knew, grew; dm), few; Tuesday, steward; blue, true, fruit, &c., &c. The O.E. j/, where it survives in the single word bruise (cf. p. 34. (3)), has the same history. The questions involved are (i) when did the levelling take place, {2) what was the path of development towards the present sound, and (3) how long did the old sound of French « [y] survive, and when, on the other hand, did the present sound appear ? The answer to the first is, during if not before the fifteenth century; to the third, that the old [y] still existed, apparently, among some speakers in the sixteenth century, possibly later, but it is no less (and no more) certain that in the sixteenth century many speakers clearly pronounced the present sound. As to the process, the three diphthongs probably became [iy] (eu and eu, having first been levelled under the former sound), while old long « also became [iy] or [jy]. This stage was apparently reached in the fifteenth century. Then the second element was retracted, giving [ju], which is the present sound. Shillingford's spelling knywe [knjy] \ knew ',14, M.E. knew, shows the change in the first element of this diphthong. All words which now contain this combination derive it from one of the above sources. From the fifteenth century, we find in occasional spellings «, eu, ew, &c., written indifferently for the old diphthongs and French ft. Examples of this are : — St. Editha, blwe = ue [bljy] for M.E. blew Pret; hue and slew, Robt. the Devil, 922 ; here the first word is M.E. heu from the O.E. Pretl heow 'hewed'; greu 'grew' (O.E. greow) rhymes with ver/u, Bokenam, Pr. Marg. 159, and with isew, pursew, Bokenam, Ann. 261; Bewford 'Beaufort', Gregory, 219; nyew 'new', Rewle Sustr. Men. 96. 25; Cely Papers have several examples of French » written WHEN DID FRENCH SOUND IN SURE, ETC., DIE OUT ? 243 ew — sewer 'sure', 77, Dewke 'Duke', 112, dew 'due'. 112, continew, 78, indewer, 27; Q. Elizabeth vniits/ortiune, which doubtless represents the type fortune with an accentuated second syllable, Letters, 2 7 ; Gabriel Harvey has blue ' blew ', Letters, 1 44, and nu ' new ', ibid. 1 4 ; Mrs. Sherard, Verney Mem. iv. 16 (1661), writes /or /ewen znA/briewK, representing the same type as Q. Elizabeth's. Nan Denton has shued ' showed ' (M.E. scMwed O.E. sceaw-), Verney Mem. iv. 107, 1663 ; Mrs. Sherard has hewmor 'humour', Verney Mem. ii. 392, 1648. What vowel sound is expressed by ew, iu, u, &c. ? Those who appeal primarily to the Orthoepists sometimes get very dubious answers ; at other times, in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- turies, some authorities state as definitely as they are able that the English sound is [m, ju], while others, with equal definiteness, maintain that it is [y, jy]. The present-day writers who put these old writers on the rack, in the endeavour to wrest their secrets from them, generally take sides in this question. One school backs the accuracy of observation and general veracity of the — quite numerous — body of old writers, going down far into the seventeenth century, who appear to assert that [y, jy] is the sound ; the other school is much perturbed by this attitude and stakes its credit on [u, ju]. Apparently it must have been one thing or the other. An enormous amount of learning and ingenuity has been expended by both sides. Personally I am not at all convinced that either side has the whole truth. Did the sound [y] exist at all in English after, say, the middlei^, of the sixteenth century ? It practically resolves itself into whether the old grammarians can be trusted when they say that French u in sure was identical with the English sound in the same word. Did they really know what the French sound was ? When they appear to be describing [y] are they not in fact attempting to describe something quite different ? Are there not plenty of Englishmen at the present day who believe, for instance, that French pu and English pew are identical in every respect ? It is absolutely certain that there are many such, and I think equally certain that there must have been many in the reign of Queen Elizabeth who would have been unable to distinguish the sound of these two words, even if the difference had existed, still less to describe it. But is it not probable that there were some Englishmen in the sixteenth and seven- teenth centuries who coiild distinguish between [ju] on the one hand, and [y, jy] on the other ? I think that such men existed, and I therefore believe the strong body of testimony which asserts that what we may call the French sound did still exist jn English well into the seventeenth century. But I think it is equally well established that there were other speakers who did not habitually pronounce this sound, who in fact were probably unable to pronounce it. I know several highly educated, not to say learned, Cockney speakers at the present time, who, if they were to give a descriptive analysis of their ' long u '-sound, would with perfect accuracy give a totally different account from that which I should give of my own sound in boot, but not different from that which I should give of theirs. I can imagine that if the students of Historical English Grammar in the year 2200 should dig up our books from the British Museum, the fiercest war may rage . among them, unless they realize that both schools are perfectly right, R 2 244 STRESSED VOWELS IN THE MODERN PERIOD but were describing two quite different sounds. They might say, X. is a fairly reliable authority on the whole for the pronunciation of his period, but he has gone off the lines here, and was evidently under the impression that the sound in boot was almost identical with that in German hut (hat). But here are the "London writers" Smith, Brown, and Robinson, who all agree that the sound in boot, at the beginning of the twentieth century, was a diphthong, and that the second element was not, as X. asserts, the full, high back-tense-round, but a back vowel very much advanced and partially unrounded.' A still more disastrous attempt of the future grammarian would be to try to square the two descriptions as referring to one and the same sound, and to check one against the other, with the result that both parties would be credited with something quite different from what either had, quite rightly, described, and an utterly wrong statement would emerge from the muddle. I am certainly not inclined to repose blind faith in the old grammarians, even in the best of them, but if I were convinced that all of those who appear to describe the sound [y] were entirely wrong, or that they were in reality describing quite a different sound, I should certainly despair of ever learning anything from these old writers. As for the approximate period at which [ju] first appeared, from old Ry], &c., I do not know when to place it, but I think there can be no doubt concerning the interpretation of the following spellings •.—youes vb. 'use', Lady Hungerford, Letters, p. 254 (f. 1569); jyouse/'ull,Ma.iyVeiney's Will, Verney Mem. ii. 17, 1639; j/oust 'used'. Mall Verney, ibid, ii. 380, 1647; youseg ' usage', ibid. Hi. 214, 1655; y oumore 'huiaoar', Wentw. Papers 320 ; youmored, ibid. 107, 320 ; buity ' beauty ', ibid. 94, and Buforde 'Beaufort', 118, 119, 130. Mrs. Basire writes ashoure 'assure', 112 (1653), quewre, quewored 'cure, cured', H2 (1653); I take these spellings to indicate [ajua(r), kjU3(r)], &c. The spelling yewthe ' youth ' in a letter of Richard Layton to Lord Cromwell, Ellis 2. 2. 60, 1535, is ambiguous, as the origin of the present vowel in this word is doubtful. The above spelling may either point to an early identity in sound with the M.E. u, m, &c, and suggest gyg/> as the original type, or if we take the present form to be from a Northern «-type, it points to ew, &c., being a symbol for [ju] as early as 1535. M.E. « (O.E. J/). It has been clearly stated (pp. 30. (3), 34. (3), 41. (3), &c.) that O.E. y already in the O.E. period was differentiated into e in Kentish and South-Eastern, while the old sound remained elsewhere apart from combinative unrounding before front consonants in the South- Western dialects. In M.E. both types e a.ndy (the latter written u from the twelfth century onwards) are found, but a new type with complete unrounding to i is characteristic of the North and of the E. Midlands, and apparently also of certain areas in the South- West. The London dialect, as we have seen (pp. 9, 53, 57, &c.), has all three types in currency from an early period, the E. Midland gaining in fre- quency as time goes on. The history of the three types falls under that of the vowels t, e, and U respectively. We are concerned primarily here with u, whose history may be briefly summed up. It was retracted to &, at any DISTRIBUTION OF -i-, -e-, -«-TYPES 245 rate before the period in which this was unrounded, and it shared the common fate of all short «-sounds no matter what their origin. Thus we have today [a] in rusk (the plant), thrush, shut, dull, bundle, blush, drudge, clutch, cudgel, burden, hurdle, and probably much and suck should be included here. The same sound in French words, judge, just, &c., had the same history. Cp. p. 232. Busy and jBury appear from their spelling to belong to this type, but the former is pronounced [hi'zt] according to the E. Midland type, and the latter [berz] according to the South-Eastem. We noted con- siderable fluctuation in the distribution of the various types in the literary English of the fourteenth century and later (pp. 53, 57, &c.), but by the end of the fifteenth century the London usage was, on the whole, pretty much as at present, and even provincial documents show the influence of the speech of the Metropolis in their distribution of these forms. On the other hand, certain fluctuations continue during this and the following century, which show that a certain latitude still existed. The following hsts, which do not profess to be complete, will give some idea of the principal deviations from our present distribution in Early Modern. I have not enumerated the forms, generally more numerous, which agree with our present usage. I begin with some of the provincial texts, which are roughly classified into Eastern (including Suffolk and Essex) and Western (including South- western and South- West Midland). Eastern Group. Palladius, burstels 'bristles', 27. 124, cornel 'kernel', 56. ^^2, curnels, 98. 1032 ; besily, 11.28, werst ' worst ', 14. 356, wermes ' worms ', 32. 783 ; rysshe 'rush', the plant, 4. 69. Bokenam, thrust ' thirst ', Chr. 444 ; meek ' much ', Pr. 97, besy, passim, ii!r/4« ' birth ', Pr. Marg. 131, werst, Chr. 1015, kechyn, Eliz. 899; Marg. Paston, hyrdillys 'hurdles', ii. 84, swick 'such', passim; beye 'buy', i. 224, meche, i. 69, werse, ii. 61, 65, seche, ii. 130. 9. Western Group. Fortescue, though a Devonian, can hardly count as a provincial writer; his forms agree on the whole with our own, except for furst ' first', slurred ' stirred '. St. Editha, putte ' pit ', 1. 4169 ; Shillingford has mycke ' much ', 4,yuell '»vir, 13, myfy, myryly, 16, sAi/te P.P., 'shut', and_j' sh'tte, 88; /urst, iiured, luste Vb., 'hst', 90; werche 'work' Vb., O.E. wyrcan, ferst 'first', zZ,yskette, 86 ; Reg. of Oseney, mynchons 'monks' O.E. myncen, Medehulle, 26, buturhulle, 26, brugge, 27 and 49; Exeter Tailors' Guild, furst, 318; Ord. of Worcs., putts 'pits', brugge, 374; Coventry Leet, to wurche, i. 33; Pecok's Repressor, j/ai?/, i. 3, rische 'rush', i. 166 ; Reg. of Godstow, werste, 55, unschette Inf., ' unshut, open ' ; leried agrees with our pronunciation, but not with our spelling. I now pass to the non-dialectal sources. Hoccleve has thurstetk, but otherwise seems to agree with our present usage; Lydgate, who has certain East Country tendencies, has sterid, besynesse, felthe ' filth ', furst ; Rewle Sustr. Men., gerddlis, schet P. P., 91. 36, schette 'shut', 91. 38, besily, 93. 3; Gregory, who it must be 246 STRESSED VOWELS IN THE MODERN PERIOD remembered was born in Suffolk, has lyfte 'left hand', 86. 139, syche, 131, schytte Pret., 'shut', 159; steryd, 85, Yelde halle, loi ; Caxton, j^z//« Pret., ' shut ', Jason, 48 ; knetled, i-j 4. 31, sAe^/e 92.13, secAe'such', 96. 16, 6esines, 96. 21; 6uriAe, 4. 16; Bk. of Quint., yuh's 'evils', 10, si'eA ' such', 13, mi'cA ' much', 3, Mriede, 2, sterrid, 11 ; Skelton, Magnyf, agrees, apparently, with our present usage ; Cr. Knt. of BaXhj/ursi, 389, /^/'left hand', 391; Bp. Knight (1512), mycA, Ellis 2. i. 190; Rede me, &c., kneti P.P., 21; Sir Thos. More, mycA, Ellis i. i. 197; Thos. Pery (1539), '^^Jy, Ellis z. 2. 140; John Mason (i535). ^y"^-^. Ellis 2. 2. 54, jzV-^, ibid.; Lord Berners, Ayrdell ' hurdle', i. 38, sAiite ' shut' P.P., I. I55,yvell, i. 200; besynesse, i. 25, 96, &c., sieve Vb., i. 136, &c.; Adm. Sir Edw. Howard, steryd, Ellis 2. i. 214; Sir Thos. Elyot, ketcAyn, i. 71, j/«re/4 i- i45. sterynge 'stirring', i. 149, stere Inf., 208, /S«»(f/^ 2.51; tAursiy 'thirsty', r. 189, tAursie, 2. 155; Bp. Fisher, sturre, 372 ; Latimer, sterryng, 204; sturred, 46, j/arrj, 471; Machyn, mycA, i, ymberyng days 'Ember', 4, rywM 'rushes' (the plant); bered 'buried', i, 2, &c., &c., besiness, 4, Crepulgatt, 125, belded ^hvSx' , 174, &c., kecAens, 203 ; y^rj/, 2 ; Cavendish, wj/c/^?, 9 ; stere ' stir ', 52, j A*// ' shut ', 242 ; Sir Thos. Smith, suicA, ' such ', Letters, Ellis 2. 3. 16 ; furst, ibid. 2. 3. 19; Ascham, rtsAe, Scholem. 54; Q. Elizabeth, ivel 'evil'. Letters to James VI, 20, 65, bisy, Tr. 73; stur, Letters, 23; wesAing 'wishing'. Letters, 4 ; Euphues, creeple, creple' cripple', 131 (butcf. p. 247, below). It is unnecessary to pursue the subject farther. Throughout the six- teenth century we find that these forms correspond exactly to our own usage, and the above exceptions are comparatively insignificant by the side of the overwhelmingly larger number of forms which call for no mention at all. It should be pointed out that a certain proportion of the f-spellings may in reality represent the lowering of t to e according to the account given on pp. 207-8, 226-9, above. M.E. u from O.'E.y. The long vowel was treated in O.E. and M.E. in the same way as the short, and the three types U, e, i also exist. In Modern Standard English, however, the j-type is the only one which survives with the exception of the single word bruise, O.E. brysan, and the English origin of this is disputed, it being alleged that bruise is derived from Old French bruser, which, however, is itself a loan-word. Some East Country dialects still preserve a few if-forms — e.g. meece 'mice', leece 'lice'. Otherwise the descendants of the M.E. f-type hold the field. The development of this vowel has been that of all other M.E. ?-spunds, namely, that it has been diphthongized to [ai'\ (cf. pp. 223-6^ above). Words of this origin are — Aide Vb. and Noun, Aive (for bees), bride, kind, &t-fik,fire, mind. All these had y in O.E. The dialectal distribution of the various types U, e, i in M.E. appears to have been pretty much the same as that of the corresponding short vowels — I in the North and in the E. Midlands ; e in the South-East and part of the E. Midlands, perhaps as far north as Lines. ; U in the South, DIALECTAL VARIANTS OF FIRE, ETC. 247 South-West, and West Midlands. In the South-East both « and e seem to have been current. The E. Midland /-type seems to have gained ground in areas where it did not originally belong, earlier, and more rapidly than in the case of the short vowel, and the e-type is next in frequency, H being less widespread outside the South- West and West- Central Midlands. In the London dialect all three types were in use in M.E., l and e being the commonest, but the latter was gradually elimi- nated and is, I think, not found in Literary English much after the middle of the sixteenth century. The long % is often written ui or uy in M.E. and later, I give a few examples of survival of other types than that which we now use, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Provincial Sources. East Country. Palladius, ^r««rf ' bruised ', 25. 679; Bokenam, y^«r 'fire', Agn. 537, &c., 2\%o /yre, Chr. 629, rhymes with chere, mende 'mind', Ann. 389 ; Marg. Paston, mende, ii. 362. West and South-West. Reg. of Oseney, beeldid 'built', 56, Ordi- nances of Worcs., fuyre ' fire ', 371, 372, huydes ' skins ',374. London Sources and Literary English. Hoccleve, ihemel ' thimble ', Reg. of Pr. 682 ; Lydgate, /uyre ' fire ', unkende ; Skelton has no disagreement with present-day usage in those words which survive, but the interesting archaism lyther ' bad ', O.E. lycfer, may be noted ; /j're ' fire ' rhyming 5yre ' beer ', Rede me, &c., is a phonetic spelling for the M.'E./eer type ; cp. also Bokenam's rhymes above ; Dives Pragmaticus (1563), heeves ' hives'. I have included crepul, cre{e)ple (see above, under Machyn and Euphues) under short ii because I take it to be from O.E, crjipel from *crupil. It might, however, be from Pr. O.E. *criipil, in which case these forms should come here. In the same way there is a difficulty about build. The vowel in O.E. byldan was originally short, but lengthening generally takes place in late O.E. before -Id. On the other hand, our own present-day form is clearly derived from an unlengthened form. The lengthened form, however, seems certain in beeldid {Reg. of Oseney). Machyn's beldyd, 174, might be either long or short. M.E. ai, ei in the Modern Period. These diphthongs, originally different, were pretty generally levelled under one in M.E. at latest by the fourteenth century. In different dialects this single sound may have tended towards either [ai] or [e?"]- By the first quarter of the fifteenth century the sound, whatever it was, had evidently been very widely monophthongized, and the single vowel thence resulting was a front vowel, either [a] or [e]. This levelling is proved by the occasional spellings a, ea for former ai, ei, and further by the fact that ai, ey are sometimes written for old a. That the sound into which both ai and a had developed was a front vowel is shown by rhymes in which old a is coupled with old e (cf. discussion of the history of a, pp. 194-6, above), and by the fact that ey is sometimes used for old ^ = [e or i], and that ea which is written for old ai never does nor could stand for anything but a front vowel. 248 STRESSED VOWELS IN THE MODERN PERIOD The history of at, ei should be considered in connexion with that of old a, since from the moment that they have converged into a single sound, whatever is true of the one is true of the other. To show the levelling of the diphthong with old a and that the same symbols are used to express both, the following appear to me con- clusive : — (i) ai, ei, written a : — sa ' say', Mary Beaufort (1443-1509)' letter in Ellis I. I. 47 ; Duke of Buckingham (1442-5), fethifiill,Y2&\.. Letters i. 62; /a««' pains', 1528, Anne Boleyn, Ellis r. i. 306; agane, 1553, Q. Elizabeth, letter in Ellis 2. 2. 213 ; 1642, pade ' paid', Lady Sussex, Vemey Mem. ii; wa/e 'wait', ibid. 103; pra 'pray', Gary V., Vemey Mem. (2) Old a written a?': — 1421, maid P.P., Gov. Leet i. 24; 1529, irayvell. Lord Berners 1. 222; 1533, waiter 'water', Will of Sir J. Digby (Leicestershire), Line. Dice. Docs. 142. 9 ; i539. Letter of Thos. Pery, Ellis 2. 2, spajike, 141; iaj/ife ' bade ', 146; laydinge, 142; tayking, 146; mayde 'made', 142; Q. Elizabeth, maik, Transl. 148; maid, ibid. 143; 1550-60, stayffes "staves' M.E. staves, Machyn 51, mayde 'made ', ibid. 53 ; 1642, saifly, R. Verney, Vemey Mem. ii. 137 ; shairer, Ed. V., ibid. 141. (3) Rhymes: — Donne are — dispair, Heroical Epistle, 21, 22; are — azV^'air ', ibid. 41, 42 ; /aire — compare, ibid. 15, 16; Lord Rochester, are — dispair — declare— fair in ' Insulting Beauty you misspend ' ; Playr's — cares in poem entiiled ' The Rehearsal '. Shakespeare, in the song ' Orpheus with his lute ' (Hen. VIII, Act in, Sc. i), rhymes play with sea. The evidence that at, ei had become a front vowel as early as the fifteenth century is that in St. Editha {c. 1420) we find deythe for death, 445; m^yte, 1 001, for meale, M.E. mete; eyer, 2908, for ere, M.E. er O.E. xr ; eysterday for Easterday, 3104, 3105, and that Shillingford writes feale for fail, p. 19. Q. Elizabeth in Transl., p. 100, writes cheane for chain. Sir Thos. Elyot's waiker 'weaker', Gouernour i. 173, and Bp. Fisher's weyke ' weak ', Serm., p. 312, may represent a traditional spelling of the Scand. veik — though this seems to me extremely unlikely. If these forms represent the normal M.E. weke then they are good illustra- tions of our point. (For proofs that M.E. a had been fronted by 1420 or so, see under that heading, pp. 194-6.) As early as 1303 Robert of Brunne, in Handlyng Syime (Lines.), writes deyl, 826, for M.E. del ' part ', and weyl for zvel ' well ', but it may be thought that this represents the Northern method of expressing length. In the North, O.E. a as well as M.E. a were undoubtedly fronted in the fourteenth century, and the sound is often expressed by ai, ei, but this does not concern us here. At the present day the old diphthong is preserved in some dialects, for instance in that of Oxfordshire; the normal forms for rain, way, and even for fair being \rain, viai, fair (or vazr)]. This has nothing to do with the Modern Cockney pronunciation, which is quite recent, but is an interesting survival. It is probably to this type that Sir Thos. Smith and Gill allude as the ' rustic ' pronunciation, a ' fat ' sound. Unfortunately these writers appear, together with others of their kind and period, to assert MIDDLE ENGLISH at BECOMES A MONOPHTHONG 249 that a diphthongic pronunciation \a.{\ was also the educated habit, the first element, however, being less ' fat '. The French writers of the sixteenth century who deal with our pronunciation often observe accurately, and they give an intelligible account of the facts when they identify the sound of English ai with French i and ai. It is unnecessary to follow in detail the ambiguous or misleading statements of the English grammarians on the point. They may be read, together with those of the French, most industriously collected and ingeniously discussed by Zachrisson, Engl. Vowels, pp. 124 &c., 190 &c. As an example of the sort of help we get from them we may quote one passage from Mulcaster'S Elementarie (1582): ' Ai is the mans diphthong and soundeth full, ei the womans and soundeth finish in the same both sense and use — a woman is deintie and feinteth soon, the man fainteth not because he is nothing daintie ', p. 1 1 9. Gill, Logonomia, p. 33 (reprint), asserts that \a.i\ is the proper pronun- ciation, and that to substitute [ej for this is an affected mode of speech. Charles Butler, in 1634, says — ' The right sound of ai . . . is the sound of the two letters whereof (it is) made. . . . But ai in imitation of the French is sometime corruptly sounded like e as in may, nay, ply/, pray, say, stay, fray.' Cooper says that in bait, caitiff, praise the diphthong consists of the sound of a in can, joined to that of i pronounced ee. This would presumably mean [aei]. ei, ey in height, weight, convey, may be pronounced as regards the first element with either e in ken or a in cane, which would suggest either [s? or ej"]. But as if to show what nonsense all these refinements are, he winds up with what is clearly the simple truth — ' plerumque autem in colloquio familiari, neglegenter loquentes pronun- ciant ai prout a simplicem in cane '. Which one may perhaps interpret to mean that everybody who spoke naturally pronounced a single long front vowel in words where ai, ei were written, but that some rather pedantic speakers, misled by the spelling, and wishing to be very 'correct', still said [aez' or e«] in these words. It must not be taken as certain that any of the above-mentioned grammarians really pronounced a true diphthong, in spite of their theories. Later on, under the heading of ' a exilis ', that is, the development of old long a, Cooper gives a list of «?■ words which have the same sound as a in cane, e.g. bain — bane, main — marte, hail — hale, maid — made, tail — tale. Sec, &c. In addition to the various arguments which have been already adduced, to show the early monophthongization of this diphthong, there is the fact that from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries inclusive a pronuncia- tion [ei] existed for M.E. i, present-day [at]. (See on this point, p. 223, &c., above.) If we are to assume that M.E. ai, ei were still pro- nounced as diphthongs in the seventeenth century we shall, I think, land ourselves in inextricable confusion. M.E. oi in the Modem Period. It has been shown above, p. 224,. in dealing with M.E. i, that early in the Modern Period the new diphthong derived from the latter was identical in pronunciation with M.E. oi, and that this diphthong was 250 STRESSED VOWELS IN THE MODERN PERIOD probably [ai], at any rate in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The accounts given by the grammarians of the seventeenth century regarding the pronunciation of old oi suggest that there was more than one pronunciation. While, as stated on pp. 224-5, they confirm the con- clusions drawn from other evidence as to the identity of i and oi, the sound thus described is mentioned under the treatment of i, and additional information regarding the pronunciation of oi is often given under that diphthong itself. Mulcaster on pp. 117 and 118 of his Elementarie (1582) distinguishes clearly two pronunciations of oi : one ' sounding vpon the ' as in boie, enioie, ioy, anoy, toy, and another ' which soundeth vpon the u', or again, 'which seme to haue an «'as in anoint, appoint, foil. This would appear to imply a spelling-pronunciation [oz], here illustrated by the larger number of words, by the side of another pronunciation [az]. Thus Wallis says that in noise, boys, toys, oil (i) the sound is 'open, clear but short' -Vy; that some pronounce either (2) a as the first element in certain words, or (3) ' u obscure '. He illustrates two types of pronunciation — toil, oil, or tUyl, Hyl. Cooper groups together (i) wine, blind, wind, injoin, broil, ointment, &c., as having the same diphthong, namely, the sound in cut followed by i. This agrees with the Wallis's sound described in (3) above and denotes [ai]. (2) Cooper gives yoy, coy, coif as containing a diphthong consisting of the of loss followed by i. This agrees with Wallis's (i) and refers to \oi\ (3) Cooper says that in boil, moil, point, poison the sound is a in full, or o in fole (= * fool ' ?), followed by i, but that except in these words this diphthong, ' apud nos non pronunciatur '. This apparently refers to a pronunciation [mj or [uz'] and corresponds to Wallis's (2). These three pronunciations may be easily accounted for. The old sound seems to have been more like \m\ than \pi~\ just before its trans- formation. The first element appears to have been unrounded, and to have been lowered to [a], just hke old short « (cf. p. 232). This was the diphthong that was levelled with that produced from old t (p. 224). This unrounding, however, did not take place after lip-consonants, hence [bud, muzl], &c. (Cooper's type (3)). This retention of the rounded first element after lip-consonants was not universal, however (cf. Dr. Denton's ^y&i^ ' boiled ' [az'], p. 224). The [oz] pronunciation indicated by Mulcaster, Wallis, and Cooper represents probably an artificially 'restored' pronunciation due to the spelling, and this is the Received pronunciation at the present time. The [ojj pronunciation occurred among some speakers in both {uz'j and [az] words, since in another place Cooper indicates it as possible ioxjoin, toil, &c., as well as for boil, poison, &c. The ' restoring ' tendency has been carried too far in boil ' inflamed swelling ' (M.E. bile), and in joist (j'iste). Jespersen {JV. Engl. Gr., p. 320) thinks that the spelling of these words cannot be explained in this way because _/o)'j/ occurs as early as 149S, and bcyle in 1529. But these early spellings do not necessarily prove that [oz'J was pronounced in these words, but merely that old t and old oi already had a common pronunciation, so that they were written indiffer- ently to express the same sound. See also p. 224. The curious spelling junant ' joining ' is found in Shillingford, p. 86, &c., who also -^xitts joynant, p. 89, and Gregory, a few years later, writes THE RHYME SHINE— JOIN, ETC. 251 cunys for 'coins', p. 185. This may mark the change of the first element to [ii], but it is not a satisfactory method of expressing [uz]. Jones {1701), p. 113, says that the sound of u is written in boil, coil, coin, foil, moil, voyage, &c. It is rather doubtful whether he means to imply the pronunciation [uz] or [az], but as he includes in the list words without a diphthong, in which [aj was certainly the vowel intended, such as mother, door, work, &c., it is pretty evident that he intends to express the pronunciation [a/']. In Baker's Rules for True Spelling and Writing English, among a list of ' words commonly pronounced very different from what they are written ', we find the pronunciation of coin expressed as quine. The twofold pronunciation \oi, az] is recognized in Growth of the English Tongue, pubUshed by Brightland, 171 2 (or 17 14?), attributed to Steele. In boil, toil, oil the first element is said to be ' sometimes obscure «' (= [a]). But — 'I grant by the pronunciation Of some men open (0) is used in these words '. The frequent rhymes such as join — line which occur in the eighteenth century (in Pope and other writers) show that the ' unrestored ' pronun- ciation of 02, which identified it with 'long i' , was not an offence against the taste of the fastidious. The final adoption of [azj a«'] as the Received pronunciation was a slow process, and by some arbitrary standard in some words the restored pronunciation was fixed while others were ex- cluded. This is seen by the remark of Rendrick (1773) quoted by Jespersen (New Engl. Gr., p. 329), that it is an affectation to pronounce boil, Join otherwise than as bile, j'ine, and yet it is ' a vicious custom in conversation ' to use this sound [az'] in oil, toil, which thereby ' are frequently pronounced exactly like isle, tile '. In Received Standard at the present time there is, so far as I know, no exception to the [oz'j pronunciation. One rather remarkable exception to this rule used to, and probably still does, occur in the Place Name Foynes, in the County Limerick. Twenty-five years ago, when I lived there, the local peasantry and farmers, and the middle classes of Limerick City, pronounced it [fw'nz], but the neighbouring gentry, including the landlord himself, all called the place [faznz]. The type [uz] seems to have vanished after the seventeenth century. The testimony of rhymes during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries also confirms the evidence of the occasional spellings and of the grammarians as to the identity of oi and t in the pronunciation of those times. A few examples will suffice : — Spenser, guile — assoyle, Prothalam. ; Shakespeare, ' R. of L., swine — groin, 1115-16; Suckling, in the poem 'There never yet was woman made', rhymes find— joined; Habington, shin'd—joynd, Castara, 83. On the development of a lip-glide after a consonant, before oi, leading to 'twoil', &c., see p. 310, below. The M.E. Diphthong au in the Modern Period. The diphthong au, which, besides its development from -al- as described above (p. 201), had various origins in M.E., has long been monophthongized to [5]. It is not difficult to determine in which words 252 STRESSED VOWELS IN THE MODERN PERIOD the diphthong formerly occurred, as the old spelling au or aw is gener- ally kept, apart from the cases of later development before -/, and here the spelling is preserved in caul, haul, &c. Examples are — draw, hawk, law, saw, gnaw, slaughter, cause, taunt, haunch, &c. The process of change followed was probably [au, ou, o", o", 3], that is to say, the first element of the diphthong underwent rounding through the influence of the second element ; the former became longer and more important, and the latter proportionally weaker until it disappeared altogether. It is naturally impossible to fix the precise period at which complete monophthongization took place, but it is reasonable to suppose that the [o", o"] stage had been passed before old u had become [ou] (see pp. 230-1), otherwise these two diphthongs, which must have been closely alike in sound, would have been levelled under a single form, and would have shared an identical fate. It is evident, however, that this did not happen. On the contrary, the period in which speakers tended to get rid of the second element of such a diphthong as [5" j and to turn this into some- thing which has become [3] must have preceded that during which the speakers preserved this or a very similar diphthong (from old »), and gradually unrounded the first element, thus producing approximately \au\. There is nothing to prevent us supposing that u had become [ou) or even [au] early in the sixteenth century ; on the contrary, this is highly probable (see pp. 231-2). The older [ou] from au may therefore have been monophthongized in the preceding century. The occasional spellings in early documents which are enlightening are of two kinds : (i) those which write ou or for older au, showing either that the first element was rounded or that, in addition, the second element had been lost ; (2) those in which au or aw is used to express a sound which we know could never have been diphthongic. I see no reason to distrust the obvious testimony of some of the forms adduced by Zachrisson, Engl. Vowels, E. St. 53, pp. 313 and 314 — e.g. stolkes 'stalks ', Cely Papers (this form, however, is of doubtful identity) ; oil, 1505, defolte, ofull ' awful ', after 1500, which are given as from ' Suflfolk Records ', without further reference than to ' Binzel 49 ' ; further, oho from Sir Thos. More, c. 1535. Among my own collections are these from Machyn : — ^Ao/m* ' halfpenny ', solmon 'salmon', 170, ontt 'aunt', 64, (all these are mentioned by Z.) ; further, from Machyn — a note 62, ' an alb ' = [ob] from aulb. Surrey has the spelling ioughi 'taught ' rhyming ^ithywroughi, cf Tottel, p. 7, Compl. of a Louer, &c., 11 and 12 ; and Thos. Sackville rhymes wrought — caught, Compl. of Duke of Bucking- ham, 125, also draught — thought^raught, ibid., 127. Of spellings belonging to the second class may be mentioned saufte ' sofl ', cit. Zach- risson as being from Tyndale, 1525; I have noted also caumplet 'complete', Machyn, p. 12, which has not escaped the eagle eye of Dr. Zachrisson, and clausset 'closet' in Latimer, Seven Serm., p. 38. A much earlier spelling which has not yet been mentioned in this connexion, but which may well be a case in point, is y-/ole ' fallen ', St. Editha, 522. These spellings satisfy me that the writers no longer pronounced the old au as a diphthong, but rather as a single vowel, au ACQUIRES ITS PRESENT PRONUNCIATION 253 not very different from that we now use. The French grammarians of the seventeenth century insist that the sound in English awe resembles or is identical with French a long. If this refers to a sound like that now heard in French dpre, pdie, the description is as near to that of [5] as a Frenchman could be expected to get. At the present time French provincial speakers pronounce the vowel in pdte, &c., very low with a slight rounding, so that the sound is not far removed from our [3]. It is instructive to compare with the Frenchman's statement the spelling Spaw of Sir R. Verney, Verney Mem. ii. 23 (1641), for Spa, and of Lady Elmes, iv. 120 (1665). Other interesting spellings from the Memoirs in the present connexion are — Sent Obomes ' St. Albans ', Lady Sussex, ii. 81 (1642); sossy ' saucy ', Pen. Verney, ii. 78 (1642) ; cose ' cause ', M. Faulkiner, ii. 56 (1642) ; smol 'small', Betty Adams (nde Verney), iv. 131 (1665). Mrs. Basire (Corresp. of Dr. Basire) writes — sow 'saw', 108 (1651), do/er 'daughter', 112 (1653), colling 'calling', 135 (1654), iSsa fool 'fall ', 134, at the same date. Otway writes Gaud for God in Soldier's Fortune, Act v, Sc. i (1681), which certainly implies the now vulgar pronunciation [god], a pronuncia- tion also exhibited by Pope in the lines : — Slave to no sect, who takes no private road But looks through Nature, up to Nature's God. Essay on Man, Epistle iv, 320, and more unmistakably in : — Persist, by all divine in man unawed, But learn, ye dunces ! not to scorn your God. Dunciaa, 223-4. Iiengthenings and Shortenings of Vowels in the Modern Period. This whole question is beset by various diflSculties. Lengthening and shortening of vowels has occurred at various periods during the history of English, sometimes under conditions which are clear and can be formu- lated without hesitation, since the results are found with regularity, and the apparent exceptions can be explained by a specific analogy, sometimes under conditions which are more or less obscure, since the lengthening or shortening is apparently intermittent, being present in some words, but absent in others in which the phonetic conditions seem to be identical. A further difficulty, when the quantity itself is sufficiently clear from the spelling, is to be sure whether this or that particular quantity is attribu- table to a M.E. change or to one of later date. This difficulty arose in discussing the various developments of M.E. o> in the Modern Period. (Cf. pp. 236-9, above.) The handling of these various problems needs caution, since many of them cannot be settled without reference to other s^und changes, and a certain view respecting one may involve much else besides. Thus it would seem that the lengthening of M.E. o as in lost, croft [lost, croft] must be later than the change of M.E. , o\—/, s, th — and before these consonants followed by another consonant. It is this lengthening which has given us after, laughter [afta, Idfta], &c. (see pp. 203-5, above). It is probable that the lengthened vowel in cost, cough, froth [kSst, k5f, fro})], &c., belongs to the same period, and the now old-fashioned pronun- ciation [mo)?] for moth, instead of [m^]?]. These lengthenings, as has been said, are by no means universal, even among speakers of Received Standard. In Coventry Leet croqft occurs 43 {1422), and again 46 and 47 (1443), and geestes 'guests', p. 29. I have not noted other examples until we come to Euphues, in which work we find moathes, 34, toossed ' tossed ', 208 ; daussei, Latimer, Seven Serm., 38 ; Lady Verney writes moathes, V. Mem. ii. 270 (1647). Now it would seem from the above, that before the middle of the fif- teenth century vowels were lengthened before ft and st, in the dialect of Warwickshire at any rate. If e and were lengthened, why not a too ? Cely Papers have marster ' master ', which, while it shows that r could not have been pronounced before s, also shows that the vowel was long. Hede me, &c., rhymes after — carter, 1 1 9-20. Are we to assume that this lengthened vowel was [a], or [»] ? From what has been said above (pp. 196-201), we shall assume the latter if we think that M.E. a had already been fronted. If we reject this evidence and assume that the lengthened vowel was [a] we shall find it difiicult to fit in the subsequent development with that of old a (cf. pp. 195-6, above). Are we to assume that old a had been lengthened before the end of the fifteenth century — among those speakers who were affected by it — in the whole group of words where a stands before s, f, th, that is, in path, father, bath, grass, fast, chaff, laughter, &c., &c. ? As a matter of fact Palladius has graas, 4.69, and on his baathe, 40. 1080. Are these forms to be derived from the inflected forms, M.E. grase, bape, or are they lengthened by the same process which, as we have seen, had shortly after this time certainly produced crooft, geestes, master, and which, as we know, assuredly did at some time produce lengthened vowels in all these words ? The question is far too difiicult, and involves too many others to be settled hastily. The whole question of Modern lengthenings and shorten- ings requires special investigation, which at present is lacking. Having indicated some of the problems and possibilities we leave the matter unresolved for the present. CHAPTER VII THE VOWELS OF UNSTRESSED SYLLABLES For the student who wishes to acquire some knowledge of the treat- ment of vowels in syllables devoid of stress during the Modern Period, it is a great advantage that the early writers on English pronunciation have avoided the question altogether. We are thus spared the labour of reading through, and comparing, a number of statements which, to judge by other parts of the work of these writers, would not have been very enlightening. We are even more grateful for the absence of endless discussions and explanations by more recent authorities of what the earlier writers meant or did not mean. Speaking generally, we may say that it is not until the eighteenth century that we find direct accounts of the pronunciation of unstressed vowels, and by that time we are in a position to know from other sources many at least of the principal facts. The eighteenth-century writers often describe the unstressed syllables by means of a rough and ready but quite intelligible phonetic spelling, and these transcriptions frequently establish, for the period in which they were made, pronunciations which we know had been in existence for centuries before. The present chapter deals with the subject as from the fifteenth century. I have not attempted to follow the weakenings of vowels back into the M.E. period. My collection of material from M.E. sources, although not inconsiderable, is not yet by any means adequate for generalizations of value to be based upon it. Many of the phenomena here exhibited are no doubt much older than the fifteenth century. This is notably true of the weakening of the inflexional endings -ed, -es, -ep, -en to -id, -is. Sec. From the material contained in the following pages one may venture to formulate one or two statements of a general character. (i) At least as early as the middle of the fifteenth century vowels in unstressed syllables were shortened, reduced, or confiised, very much as in Colloquial English at the present time. (2) This may be inferred from numerous occasional spellings which reveal either (a) a sound of an undefined character, different from that expressed by the traditional spelling, which the writer is undecided how to express, or (3) a definite sound different from that expressed by the traditional spelling. (3) The spellings which indicate a reduction of the unstressed vowel are not used consistently by any writers, except in the case of such suffixes as -is, -id, &c., and even here the consistency is only relative. (4) While a violent and definite departure from the traditional spelling, whether sporadic or habitual, must be taken to imply some change in GENERAL TENDENCIES 259 pronunciation, the adherence to the conventional spelling does not neces- sarily imply that no change has taken place. (N.B. The examples given illustrate, as a rule, only departures from the older spelling.) (5) Varieties in spelling may express only indecision on the part of a writer in transcribing a sound (cf. (2), above); but they may also indicate the existence of more than one type of pronunciation. (6) Different types of pronunciation in the same vowel may represent (a) the results of different conditions of stress in the same word, or (d) they may be due to different tendencies which coexisted among different classes of speakers. (7) Examples of indecision in transcribing a vowel sound are : — -el, transcribed in Cely Papers in four different ways in the same word, e. g. stapell, stapyll, stapal, stapul. Here possibly -ell and -yll represent approximately one and the same type of pronunciation, and -al, -ul another. The same confusion is found in the spelling of the unstressed ending -er. It is evident that already in the fifteenth century the vowels in -er, -ar, -or, -ur, -our were all levelled under one sound — [ar] or syllabic r. (8) Examples of varieties due to different conditions of stress are : — ceriin from M.E. cMein : certayne, &c., from M.E. ceritin ; battel from M.E. bdttaille : and battayl from M.E. batldtlle ; forten, fortin from M.E. fdrtune: fortune, present-day [fotjan], from Mlk. fortune ; aventer from M.E. avinture : aventure from M.E. aventure ; &c., &c. (9) Examples of varieties due to different tendencies are : — sesyn, reasyn compared with sesoun, resoun, &c. This difference of treatment of -on in unstressed syllables is still heard to-day, when some speakers pronounce pigeon [pzdzzh], others [pz'dzan]. The type represented above by sesyn, &c., has almost died out in Received Standard, although formerly the chief type, and has given place to that represented by resoun, &c., now Erlzn]. Pigeon is perhaps the only word still commonly pronounced with zh], and this pronunciation is considered by many as old-fashioned. (10) The differences which exist between the pronunciation of un- stressed vowels at the present time, and that indicated by the spellings as existing in former centuries, are chiefly due to the adoption in recent times of a different type (cf. remarks on unstressed -on in (9), above), and not to new developments in changes of sound. These have hardly occurred since the late sixteenth century. Some of the pronunciations of to-day are due to the influence of the written form, and the recent efforts in some quarters to ' restore ' the full forms of vowels in stressless positions, cf. the spelling-pronunciation [popozz] instead of the historical [pSpzs] of the one type, or [popas] of the other. The distribution of the different types among the various words in which the same original vowel occurs in an unstressed position, as well as the selection of the unstressed vowels in certain words for 'restoration', while in others the ancient historical reduced form is still pronounced, are matters, as it would seem, of arbitrary chance and the fashion of the moment. I now pass on to give a brief summary of the actual changes which resulted from the weakening of vowels in unstressed syllables, so far as these can be gathered from the material, far from adequate, although not altogether contemptible, which I have collected and classified. s 2 26o THE VOWELS OF UNSTRESSED SYLLABLES I may say here that, so far as I can see, the results are the same, provided a vowel is unstressed, no matter where it stands in relation to the principal stress of the word or breath-group in which it occurs. The nature of the surrounding consonants probably exerts some influence, but the present material does not suffice for formulating the conditions or nature of such influence, except in respect of vowels before -/, -«, and -r. Front Vowels are raised : a = [as] becomes e [e] ; this e levelled later under original e which becomes i. Iu and probably levelled under the same sound, (written a) = [a] which becomes [a]. French u [y] becomes [i, i\ ; the result of this un- rounding written z and e. 01 becomes i [/'], written e, i. Diphthongs - ai [ei) (which had become [e]) result in a front vowel written e or t, probably ; au, ou, monophthongized to[o,(r] which is unrounded to [a] > written a ; this often fronted to a vowel written e or i (_y). There appear to be two quite different tendencies at work from early in Modern period among different sections of speakers. One group tends to level all weak vowels under some front vowel, written z' or ^ ; the other to level all weak vowels under the ' obscure ' vowel [a] or some such sound, written variously a, o, u. It is probably safe to infer that the sjTnbols for old back or back-rounded vowels, a, o, u, generally imply some sound corresponding to [a] at the present time, and that the symbols for front vowels — I, e — imply the kind of vowel now heard in the second syllable of ladies, here written [z], although it may have been the high-flat-slack vowel [z]. The two tendencies above referred to are specially observable in the treatment of vowels before -« and -/. One tendency results in developing and preserving the ' clear ' vowel, so that we get [zh, zl] for earlier -en, -el, and evenfor-o« (cf.(9), above, and pp. 271-2, 274-5, below). The other tendency results in [an, al], which are further weakened to syllabic n and / respectively as pfesent-day button, beaten, cradle, rebel (Noun), &c. We know both from practical experience and from the records of the past of the existence of both these types, [zh, zl] and [n, 1]. As regards the treatment of vowels in unstressed syllables before -r, although -yr, -ir are common spellings for old -er, it seems very doubtful whether the genius of the English language ever tolerated such a combina- tion as [-zr] in actual speech, at least finally. On the other hand such spellings as fadr, remembr, both fifteenth century, suggest that a syllabic [r] was pronounced. The various spellings or, er,yr, ur, ar for the same syllable er seem to imply a vowel which it was difficult to identify, probably [a, a]. The ' murmur ' vowel [a] probably developed quite early before -r, and [ar] was later reduced to syllabic [r]. This in its turn was weakened and gave place to the present [a]. We have appa- rently no confirmatory evidence from any living form of English of the existence of an [?r] type, and the records of the past are ambiguous. After these general remarks I now pass to consider, as briefly as ALTERATION OF VOWEL IN SUFFIXES 261 possible, the details which are exhibited in the lists. The latter are for the most part so arranged as to show the prevailing tendencies, so far as these may be inferred by the particular kind of departure from the conventional spelling in each century. I have tried to avoid needless subdivision, but a certain amount, especially under the heading -a and -0 in unstressed syllables, seemed necessary and unavoidable. The Unstressed Vowels in Detail. e in Unstressed Syllables. (N.B. The reader of the following brief comments may refer, if he please, to the lists, pp. 267-82, upon which the views here set forth are based.) The Suffixes. -ed. The suffix -ed in weak Prets. and P. P.'s appears as -id very commonly in all kinds of texts throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Adjective wretched appears with -id as early as 1451. Even St. Editha, alongside of the Western -ud, has not a few -id endings in Prets. and P.P.'s. This form -ud is no doubt the ancestor of the present-day provincial or vulgar [ad]. It is evident that the \iS\ form, now universal in polite speech, was established very early. Coote's warning against -id proves the existence of the pronunciation in his day, although such proof is quite superfluous. His statement that the pro- nunciation is Scottish is sheer nonsense. He might as well have said that it was Devonshire, and Norfolk, and London, and so on. -eth. The present pronunciation of this suffix \i}>\ which only survives in Liturgical and Biblical language or in Poetry, was established in the fifteenth century in a wide circle and over a large area. -es. The present-day pronunciation [zz] was established beyond dis- pute from the fifteenth century onwards. The old Western -us repre- sents doubtless the type [sz], which still exists as a provincialism and vulgarism. -est. The [-z'st] type was evidently as widespread during and since the fifteenth century as among good speakers to-day. The spelling intrust in the Verney Memoirs is the ancestor of present-day [zhtrast], which is provincial. The more polite forms are [mt(a)rzst, zhtrsst]. Every other form in the list might stand for the present pronunciation, including Sir T. Elyot's haruist. -ev. The early forms of -er as an ending point to at least two types, [ar] and syllabic r. Is it possible that the -i^r-spellings represent the ancestor of the present-day vulgar pronunciation with a tense vowel ? Lady Sussex's spelling misirable stands^ if we may draw any conclusion from -ir-, for a type no longer heard, The present-day possibilities are either [mzzarabl] or [mzzrabl]. -en, -em. The spellings suggest three types of pronunciation : — [?n, an], and syllabic [n]. All three types exist in present-day polite English, variously distributed. Of these [an, n] are perhaps the com- monest. Still, most good speakers preserve [zh] in — woollen, kitchen, chicken, women, linen, Latin, rosin, &c. = [wukh, kz'tjzh, tjzkzh, w«m?n, 262 THE VOWELS OF UNSTRESSED SYLLABLES hmh, TJZi'n]. On the other hand we have [an] or syllabic « in — golden, earthen, wooden, even, often, sudden, children, heaven, and in P. P.'s in -en, such z& forgotten. -em, as in solemn and 'em, is now usually [am]. Note Sir R. Verney's solome, which doubtless expresses this pronunciation. -el. The early spellings show a preponderance of -yl forms, with a few -ul = [al], and Sir Thos. More's Rmsll = syllabic I. This is the prevailing type at the present day, after consonants, whether in words like evil, devil, fossil, where \ti\ is also heard, or in those spelt -le. It is probable that many speakers who wrote -yl in earlier centuries often pronounced [al, 1]. After a vowel the best usage on the whole now favours [z'l], as in cruel (cf. also forms from Verney Memoirs in lists, /a^/, towel, vowel). Other Suffixes and Endings containing -e-. -less. Now always [hs] in Received Standard. This pronunciation is established in the fifteenth century by Marg, Paston's spelling harmlys. The provincial [las] and the spelling-pronunciation [les] may often be heard. -ness. Present-day [n?s]. I have not noted any spellings with -nis earlier than Queen Elizabeth, who makes frequent use of them. [?s] is. also the normal pronunciation oi -ess, as in mistress, &c. -Chester. The spelling Rochister of the Wentworth Papers, i^io, agrees with present-day usage in this and other similar names — Chichester [tjitjista], Manchester [msentjzsta], &c. -le(d)ge. Knowledge, college are pronounced [nj'l/dz, k^l/dz] at the present time. This pronunciation of the weak vowel in the former word dales at least from the fifteenth century, that of the latter word I have not found recorded earlier than Gabriel Harvey. The 1482 spelling collage of the Bury Wills corresponds to the present-day provincial [kjlad2]. -et. This ending is pronounced [z] after consonants, in covet, helmet, bullet, blanket, &c., but [a] in diet. These conditions are expressed by the sixteenth-century spellings given in the lists. e''. Unstressed e- followed by strong stress is now usually pronounced [»], as in estate, escape, elect, erroneous, &c. = [j'stez't, zskeip, zlekt, zrozoijas], &c. The spellings — fairly numerous in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries — ascape, astate, &c., apparently imply a pronunciation with [a]. -a- in Unstressed Syllables, The early spellings, and even the late spellings of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries show a more widespread tendency to weaken a to [«■] than at present prevails in Received Standard. Many of the spellings, from each of the centuries, represent pronunciations which it is true still obtain in English, but only in Regional or Class dialects. The mere fact that a is weakened to a sound written i or e is not in itself surprising, when we consider that one of the sounds for which a stood was, in the fifteenth century, in many areas, especially in the E. Midlands and South- East, in process of being fronted. This process may well have begun TREATMENT OF -a- IN VARIOUS COMBINATIONS 263 earlier in unstressed positions. It is most probable that an antecedent stage to the front vowel, written e, or more often i, was [se]. This was apparently raised to a sound intermediate between [e, i\, and from this stage the differentiation into a full [?'] on the one hand, or [a] on the other, took place. Received Standard has now adopted the [a] type in most of the cases illustrated in the lists. Attention may be drawn to the spelling Up- for Ap- quoted from Capgrave. This form shows that u in unstressed syllables was already unrounded, and that the symbol expresses [a] or [a] when used for a vowel in this position. I note first the points of agreement in type between the early spellings and present-day usage. Both agree in having [a] in the following : — as when unstressed in sentence ; cf. os in Cely Pprs. ; -mass in Christmas, &c., cf. Machyn's form in -mus, and Lady Sussex's crismus in 1639 ; in -as, Thomas, &c., cf, Gary Verney's tomos in 1642; -an, musician, &c., cf. mttsiiion, Italionated in Euphues ; -ac as in stomach, cf. Gabr. Harvey's stummock. Present-day usage agrees with the early spellings in having \{\ for unstressed -a- : — -ange, messenger (M.E. messager), cf. fifteenth-century form messynger ; -ac, in obstacle, character = [jbztzld, kserzlita], cf. obsticle, Verney Mem. 1647, and carecter, Wentw. Pprs. ; -age in cottage, courage, marriage, advantage, message, &c. = [kotid2, kaendz, msen'd2, advant«'dz], cf. Lever's cotingers which implies *cotige, Lady Sussex's corige, Cranmer's and Roper's marriges, &c., and Mrs. Sherard's advantig. The pronunciation [azzzk] still survives, indeed it is my own, but probably [aizak] (from the spelling) is now more usual. Note Baker's Izic for Isaac. Many speakers, including present writer, pronounce [d^qkista], with which compare Donkister in Verney Mem. 1665. I also say [sembKsz'da], cf. Cavendish's ambassiter, though many now pronounce [aembsesada]. As regards -ate, we say [pra?v?'t tpkah't], &c,, cf. pryvit chockolet in Wentw. Pprs. Present-day usage favours [a] for old -a-, in the following words and their likes, where earlier spellings have i: — as, in unstressed positions = [az], but cf. es in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries ; -an = [an] in company, -land, -man, but cf. Machyn's com- peny. Lady Sussex's compiny, and inglende, and Lady Rochester's Bridge- men, where we have [kampan?; iqgland, br2yzman]. -as in purchase, Thomas = [pStJas, tomas] with which compare Gabr. Harvey's purchise, and Lady Sussex's tomis. I remember hearing [pAtJzs] in my boyhood from excellent speakers who preserved the habits of an earlier generation. -ac as in stomach = [stamak], but cf. Anne Lee's stomichers in Verney Mem., and Baker's spelling stomick. I have heard the latter word so pronounced by very old speakers whose speech was merely old-fashioned though it contained no vulgarisms. At the present time [stamzk] survives chiefly in lower-class speech. In almanac we have ' restored ' [aek] in final syllable. I have heard [olmmzk], cf. form in Cely Pprs. -ant : — we now say [infant] with which cf. C. Stewkley's infints in Verney Mem. j -ark in Southwark, now = [satSak], but cf. Baker's Southwick, probably = [satS/k]. 264 THE VOWELS OF UNSTRESSED SYLLABLES The spellings -er for -ar probably show no more than that -er and -ar were levelled under one form r3(r)]. The only example where [e] is suggested for a where we now pro- nounce \t\ is passengers (earlier passager) in Cely Papers. Initial a- followed by the strongest stress, which is now always [a], as in annoyed, anoint, &c., was apparently sometimes weakened to [ej or \{\ (?) in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Cf. moyd, enoinUd, &c., p. 275, below. o in Unstressed Syllables, The early spellings indicate (i) that when unstressed was unrounded, and (2) that in a large number of words, chiefly, though not exclusively, before -«, and -/ in the same syllable, this unrounded vowel was fronted. The simple unrounding is expressed in the fifteenth-century spellings — dysabey, sa {=' so'), abedyenses, Byshap, &c., and in the sixteenth century men a warre, apinions, tenne a clocke, &c., &c. This vowel, which was either [a] or [a], has survived at the present time when we still say [skbk, msen 3 wo, dz'ssbezi bzjap], though a rounded vowel is generally pro- nounced in obey, and often in opinion and obedience. More interesting, and remarkable, are the fairly numerous forms of the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, in which a front vowel is clearly intended, although we now pronounce [a] in Received Standard. Taking first the words in which -on occurs finally, we find a consider- able number of spellings of the fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries which point unmistakaljly to a front vowel, generally written -yn, -in, but also occasionally -m. Of this class the only ones which retain the old pronunciation in Received Standard at the present time are pigeon, widgeon, and even in these the usual [an] is probably now more common. Several other words, however, retain [zn] in vulgar speech, e.g. wagon, ribbon, cushion, &c., though the schools are fast eliminating these old forms from the language altogether. As a boy 1 knew several old people whose English was the Received Standard of the beginning of last century, who pronounced [zh] in luncheon, puncheon, cushion, surgeon, dungeon, to my clear recollection, and possibly in other words also which I never heard from them, or which I have now forgotten. I remember noticing at the time the difierence between these old people and myself in respect of the words just mentioned. I notice that Eaker gives inin as the pronunciation of onion. Whether this was not a vul- garism already in his day it is impossible to say, but it apparently represents a pronunciation [a/hm] which I know is used at the present moment by at least one man, a labourer, in Oxfordshire. At an earlier period of my life I remember hearing [rz'bzhz, padzh, padiq] from domestics. Passing to words of other classes, I am inclined to believe that I have heard [pr^v/st] comparatively recently, but I am unable to indicate the position of the speaker. Faggot is still pronounced [faegz't] by some vulgar speakers (cf. Lady Hobart'syaf«/r, 1663), and carrots is [ksen'ts] in the same circles. Unstressed -0- in the middle of words is now either [a] or [0], e. g. accommodate, &c., but cf. Lady Sussex's acomidasyon and sorifull. In the last word ' sorry ' may have influenced the form, now [s^rowfall. ALTERATION OF ROUNDED VOWELS 265 Unrounding of Unstressed u and ou = u. The unrounding of this vowel perhaps took place earlier in weak than in stressed syllables. It can hardly be doubted that in such spellings as apon, sapose, anetke, a vowel without lip-rounding is indicated. Unstressed and K were levelled under a single vowel, which ultimately became [a]. So far as I know, there is no evidence to show that u in unstressed syllables was fronted after being unrounded. The sptWings /aver, semer (Seymour), &C., of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries merely indicate that '-our together with -er had become [3(r)]. Unrounding of French u = [y] in Unstressed Syllables. This process is a simple one, and its results are repeatedly traceable in the collection of spellings given below from documents of the fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. On the forms in -ir {/eutir ' future ', &c.) and in -in {/brtin ' fortune '), see remarks below, pp. 277-8, at the end of the lists. The present-day types [fotjan, ventja, vselJK, repjateijn], &c., which have taken the place of the old forms [fotm, vsnta, vaelz', reprtejn], &c., demand a few words. It is possible to explain all these new forms as due to the influence of the spelling, but I am inclined to agree with Jespersen that this cannot be the explanation in all cases. I have already propounded an explanation of the double forms (Short Hist, of English, § 265, and in Mod. Lang. Teaching, June 19 15) which still appears to me to be sound. It is briefly this. The only normal forms developed when there was no stress on the -u, are those in i, or its subsequent develop- ments [ar] and sometimes [an], by the side of [in]. Forms such as [fotjan, ventja, vselj«], &c., are due to a different type of accentuation, in which u was not, as a matter of fact, unstressed at all, but fully stressed — fortune, vaM, aventHre, under which circumstances French u became iu [ju] in Early Modern English, as in duke, virtue (from vertue), &c., &c. This type coexisted with the other, possibly into the early sixteenth century. At any rate its descendants, so far as the vowel is concerned, survived, and, aftcT/^rtune had already become fortin,fortiine survived in the form fortiune, although by the beginning of the sixteenth century, if not earlier, this type, too, had very likely been assimilated to the commoner (English) mode of accentuation, so that it was pronounced fSrtiune. The com- bination -ti became [tj] (cf. p. 293, below); hence we got [f6rtjiin, f6rtjiin, f6rtjan]. This theory, which is based on known facts, explains the present-day pronunciation of all the words of this class. The adoption of this type wholesale in Received Standard may well have been encouraged by the fact that it seemed to agree better with the traditional spelling. In some words analogy helped, e. g. reputation on the pattern of repute. While it so happens that I have found a fair number of spellings which show the unrounding of French u, it stands to reason that in the vast majority of cases the traditional spelling is preserved. This has no value for our purpose, since many who pronounced 'foriin ' from habit and training continued to write fortune, &c., and while we may be certain as 266 THE VOWELS OF UNSTRESSED SYLLABLES to which type is intended when the former spelling is used, we cannot tell whether the latter really implies that the writer pronounced the word with the accent on the final syllable, and therefore also pronounced the vowel in that syllable as [jii] or not. There are, however, among the forms collected in the lists a few whose spelling, while departing from the tradition, seems to imply a type of pronunciation derived from the accentuation of the final syllable. Such are Queen Elizabeth's/orA«««, Lady Verney's /Z(r/«(fr, Mrs. Eure's cretuers, and Mrs. Sherard's forkwen. I regard these spellings as definitely expressing [ju] in the final syllable, or at least the type of pronunciation derived from this. It is probable that Queen Elizabeth, and still more so that the Verney ladies, already pronounced [fo(r)tj3n, pjitja(r)z, kritj3(r)z], that is to say that they used the same type, and pronounced it in the same way, as we do now. On the other hand, if any importance is to be attached to the statements of the grammarians, it seems certain that during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries [pzlcts, kiits], &c., were chiefly in vogue. It is enough, however, if we can establish the coexistence of the other type in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as this would go far to prove that our modern pronunciation is not wholly new and inspired by the spelling, but rather that it is the survival, now in universal use, of a type wMch has always existed alongside of that which has now been discarded. The forms volupieous, Wilson and Cavendish ; verteous, vertious. Roper and Lady Wentworth ; sumptiotis, &c,, Cavendish, may owe their e or i to confusion of the suflBxes -uotis, -ious, and -eous. That can neither be definitely proved nor disproved. It is quite certain, however, that vertious is a perfectly normal development — veriue becomes [vAtJaJ, ve'riuous becomes [vsrtzas]. Lady Wentworth's yousyal ' usual ' [juzz'al] seems an excellent example of the unrounding process. The process also aflfects French unstressed u when final, and this is well illustrated by Machyn's newys ' nephews ', and by Lady Sussex's zialy ' value ' (Vb.), and Lady Wentworth's vallyed. It is wonderful what education has done for us nowadays; nevy 'nephew' hardly survives outside the pages of comic writers, and vally, I suppose, is now never heard, and has ceased even to be a traditional vulgarism. The Diphthongs. ai, or ei (=az'). When this diphthong stood before /, n, as in travail, haitail, counseil, certain, villain, &c., it was first reduced to [»j, giving -il, -in, and these combinations either remain or are further Weakened to syUabic [1, n] or to [si, an] respectively. Thus we say either [k^zunsl] or [kaansj'l] and either [sAtn] or [sStm]. On the other hand the early spelling battle has left no choice in pronunciation even to the most fastidious. We have differentiated travail at the present time in spelling, pronunciation, and meaning, travel and travail being now felt as quite independent. The pronunciation ol travail as [traeve?!], while partly due to the spelling, may also be accounted for by assuming that it represents the form which would naturally occur in the verb when this was followed by an inflexional REDUCTION OF ai, oi TO i IN WEAK SYLLABLES 267 syllable, with the accent on the second syllable — travdille (N.). The form so accentuated would survive the weakening undergone by irdvaille. Later on the accent was shifted back to the first syllable without further altering the now unstressed vowel. Before other consonants the unstressed syllable is \i\ in Received Standard, [a] in other forms, cf. [psehs, pselas]. oi. Not much comment is needed beyond pointing out that we have now 'restored' the diphthong oi in nearly all words except chamois leather, and the family vaxat Jarvis {ixom Jervoise). It is satisfactory to find shammee gloves in Sir Ralph Verney's letter of 1685. We learn from Spenser's spelling how the name of the author of the Steele Glasse was pronounced by his contemporaries. The form Gaskin still survives as a name by the side of the more usual Gascoigne, pro- nounced [gsesko?n]. Our present pronunciation of turquoise [tSkwDz, tSkwozz] is shown to be quite recent. The only possible lineal descendant of Milton's iurkis would be [tAkzs]. The early forms of this word, as well as that of tortoise, show the two tendencies which are found in nearly all unstressed syllables in English — towards [?s] and towards [as]. The present-day usage favours [as] in porpoise and tortoise, but we may note Gregory's porpys, and the two types tortes and tortus in the Verney Memoirs. We may regard [totozz, popwz] as mere schoolmaster's pronunciations. It is possible that tortes. Sec, should be placed in the list illustrating the unrounding of French «, as^ there is a M.E. tortuce, cf. Jespersen 9. 332. The form quoted from Euphues at any rate shows that the ending might equally well have been -ois. There may have been two forms, one in -uce and one in -ois. The early spellings might represent the reduction of either of these. Note. This process is apparently identical with that assumed to have taken place in Primitive Aryan, whereby ei, oi appear as i in the 'Reduced Grade', cf. Gk. otS- and iS- corresponding to Gothic wait, wit- from *woid; *wid-. The Pronunciation of the Vowels in Tlnstressed. Syllables. Examples of Occasional Departures from Traditional Spelling, Flexional Syllables. Ijth Century. -ed (Pret. and P. P.), &c. St.Editha (1420). clepud P.P., 50; dwellyd, 46 (corrected from dwelt), scomfytyd, 67 ; y-cronyd, 60. Archbp. Chichele (1418). assentyd, Ellis i. i. 5. Card. Beaufort (f. 1420). belovid, Ellis, Letter, i. i. 8. -jth Lord Lovel's Will (1466). beeldid 'built', Line. Dioc. Docs., PP- 76- 37> 77- 23- Bp. Pecok. feelid, schewid, strengthid, hurtid, i. no. Sir T. CumherwortK s WY// (Lines. 1451). L. D. D., wrechid, 45. 6 ; accordid, 46. 4; offendid, 46. 13. 268 THE VOWELS OF UNSTRESSED SYLLABLES Sir J. Fortescue. keepid, callid, 109, tredit 'treated', 109. Marg. Paslon. gidrt, ii. 241; pardonyd P.P., i. 115; -yd, the usual form of this suffix. Gregory's Chronicle, i-callyde, 61, i-halowyde, 65. Capgrave {Chronicle'), punchid, 291. Rewle of Sustris Menouresses {c. 1450). bilouid, 81. i, encresid, 81. 7, blessid, 81. 12, &c., &c. Bury Wills, 1480. blessid, fotyd, 23, steryd, 15, &c., &c. Cely Papers {Essex, 1475-88). -yd by far commoner than -ed, e.g. depertyd, 31; blessyd, 33; whelbelovyd, 34; mendyt, 35; alectyd, 162; derectyd, 274. -red. Bokenam. hundryd, 980. l6th Century, Admiral Sir Edw. Howard {i^i'^). steryd, Ellis i. i. 214. Br. Knight {Bp. of Bath and Wells), 1512, to Wolsey, -id, -yd more frequent than -ed. Sir Thos. Elyot {Gouernour). causid P. P. 2. 51 (generally -ed). Sir RaufVerney's Will {152^). aduisz'd, bequethz'd. Anne Boleyn (1528). preservyd, Ellis i. i. 306. R. Pace to Wolsey (Ellis 3. i ; 16 Hen. VIII). contentidde, 195. Berners' Froissart (1523-5). (Generally -ed), also -id, -yd. Cavendish {Life of Wolsey). providyd, commandyd, &c. (also -ed). Latimer {Sermons). Generally -ed. Thos. Lever's Sermons (1550). Nearly always -ed. Gabriel Harvey {Letter Book, 1573-80). offendid, 13, persuadz'd, 13, reiectid 'rejected', 14, &c., &c. Q. Elizabeth {Letters; Transl.). Generally -id; -ed rarer; preventid, acquaintid, L. 3. Sir Thos. Smith (Letters ; De Republ. Angl.). -id, -yd frequent, but -ed more usual. Euphues. Very conventional in spelling, unstressed syllable always -ed. Ascham. Generally -ed, auoyded, &c., sometimes syllable dropped — marde. Putienham. -ed, co\mUd, &c. Ijth Century. Cooie, English Schoolmaster, 1627. ' Take heed that you put not {id) for {ed) as unitid for united which is Scottish ', p. 27. Flexional Syllables. M.E. -e]J = -ith. iph Century. 1420 Palladius. wexith, 51. 193 (PI.). 1425-30 Paston Letters, namyth, i. 19; aflfermz'th, semyth, ibid, (all fr. Letter of Wm. P., Judge). 1443 Coventry Leet Book, holdithe, 47, streechith, 50, holdyth, 50, &c., &c. THE SUFFIXES -eth, -es 269 1443 Bohnam. always -yth, I447~50 Shillingfords Letters, menyth, p. 12. 1447 Bp. Pecok's Repressor, him likith, i. 113. Marg. Paston. sendyth, faryth, &c. 1450 R. of Sustris Menouresses. ]jey etz'th, iii. 17; redith, 116. 17 and 20 ; singijj, no. 9. 1455 WtUqfjth Lord Lovel. folowith, Line. Dioc. Docs. 72-4. 147- Sir J. Foriescue. makyth, 109; praisith, no. 1470, &c. Cely Papers, camyth, 146. 1480 Bury Wills, foluith, 16, longith, 16, stretchith (PI.), 20. 1494 Cr. of Dk. of York Knt. of Bath. Letters and Papers, endentith, I. 388, purposith, justithe, 389, gevyth (PI.), 398. i^^6/ul. Berners, Treatyse of Fysshynge. folowyth, makyth. i6th Century. 151 3 Sir R. Wingfield to Hen. VIII. dwellith, Ellis, Letters, ii. i. 167, holdith, ibid. 1525 R. Pace to Wolsey. makyth, Ellis, Letters iii. i. 196. 1533 Sir f.Dighy's Will (Leic). apperz'th, Line. Dice. Does. 142. 34. 1560 Cavendish, L. of Wolsey. extendyth, 14, tornyth, assuryth, 15, &c., &e. 1573-80 Letter Bk. of Gabriel Harvey, askith, 16. Q. Elizabeth {Letters to J. VI). bestoith ; burnith, Transl. 13. 3S. iph Century, c. 1420 Siege of Rouen, clerkys. 1420 St. Editha. monnys, 8 ; goddis (Possess.), 1056 ; thingus, 7 ; myjtus (PI.), 2. 1443 C'oz'. Leet. mannys, 51, eroftys, 47, fellys, 49. 1450 Rew. Sustr. Men. massis, no. 16; versis, in. 7. 1455 Lord Lovets Will, ehargis, Line. Dioe. Does. 77. 31. 147- Cely Papers, -ys far outnumbers other forms. i6th Century. 151 2 Dr. J?«2^^/ (Chaplain to Hen. VIII). fortresses, Ellis ii. i. 193. 16 Hen. VIII, R. Pace to Wolsey. Hostages, Ellis iii. i. 195; eausz's, ibid. 196. 1530 Sir Thos. More (Letter), promesszs, Ellis i. i. 209. 1530 Sir T. Elyots Gouernour. prinees, i. 44; horses, i. 63 ; sicke- nesses, r. 169 ; places, i. 45, &c., &c. 1532 Cranmer. barges, Ellis i. 2. 36. 1533 Leic. Will, hallowys. Lino. Dioc. Docs. 161. 10. 1560 Cavendish, L. of Wolsey. horses, -ys, 7; crosses, 35. Q. Elizabeth, scuses. Letters, 109 ; practises, ibid. 60. Ijth Century. 1629 Mrs. Wiseman, necis (PL), Verney Papers 144. 1642 Mrs. Eure in Verney Mem. ii. justises, p. 86 (1642); taxes 91 ; Mrs. Isham, ibid., pursses; Pen. Verney, expenses, 354 (1644). 270 THE VOWELS OF UNSTRESSED SYLLABLES z8tk Century. 1 705-1 1 Lady Weniworlh. Jarszs, St. Jams?s, 47 (Possess.); glasses, III; oringis (PI.), 107; freezes, 11 1. -est in Unstressed Syllables, = znd Pers. Pres. of Vbs. and Superl. Suffix, &c. -est. ijth Century. Eokmam (1443). clepyst (Vb.), Pref. Marg. 281. Bp. Pecok (1449). studiedist, enhauncidist. Northants Will (1450). In Line. Dioc. Docs., grettist. Gregory's Chron. (1450-70). eldyste, loi. Cr. of Dk. of York a Knt. of Garter (Letters and Papers ii), 1490, fairyst (Superl.), p. 389. Will of Richard Welby (Lines., 1465), L. D. D. eldist, 123. 2. l6th Century. Anne Boleyn (1528). humblyst, Ellis i. i. 305. Lord Berners' Froissart {i^ig), wekyst, i. 161. Sir T. Elyofs Gouemour (1533). kepist, 2. 76; askidist, 2. 76; haruist, 2. 256. Gabriel Harvey {Letter Bk., 1578-80). dearist, 13; deadist, 12; surist, 14; hardist, 14 ; haruist, 14; honist, 14, &c., &c. Q. Elizabeth {Letters and Transl.). expertist, L. 29; largist, 50; fuUist, Transl. 4 ; hottist, Transl. 97. IJtk Century. Anne Poyntz, Alleyne Pprs. honyst, 31 (1605). Verney Memoirs, vol. ii. eldist, Marg. V.'s WiU, 18 (1639) ; gretist, Gary V., 71 (1642); sadist, ibid.; greatist, 121, Lady Sussex; also z«/raj^ ' interest ', M. V.'s Will, p. 18. Mrs. Basire. greatist, 140 {1658). i8th Century. Wentworth Papers (1705-39). dearjst, passim; modist 'modest', "3- -er. iph Century. Boltenam. ' aftyr, Pr. 54, &c. ; phylosophyr, Pr. 54 ; mynystyr, Marg. 978 ; lengur, Ann. 438 ; wondurful, Ann. 641. Marg. Paston. fadr, i. 544; massangr, iL 390 ; remembr, ii. 419. Bury Wills, ovyr, 15; fadir, modir, 29; powdyr, 15; anothir, 17; aftir, 17; bettyr, 20; tymbyr, 20, &c., &c. ; also preyours * prayers ', 21 (1463); soupar 'supper', 21. Gregory's Chron. ovyr. Fortescue. remembr, 123, 124; vndr, 135; but also aftir, undir, passim. THE ENDINGS -er, -en 271 Caxton {Jason), murdre, 12. 35, 36; watre, 78. 5; vndre, 96. 21; ■writars, 3. 22 ; helpars, 13. 31. Cely Papers, bettyr, 6 ; nwmbyr, 33 ; ovyr, 6 ; dowttyr, lOg ; remembyr, 28; lettyrs, 33; manner 'manner', 69; annsor, 78; sumor, 9; octobor, 21 ; dynar, 76 ; manar, 17 ; wryngar, 7; finar, 30; answare, 8; brocur, 24. /6/i5 Century. Q. Elizabeth, sistar, Ellis i. 2. 163-4 (1649); bettar, Letters to James VI, 13; murdar, ibid. 19. ijth Century. In middle of word: — misirable, Lady Sussex, Verney Mem. ii. 88. -en and -en + Cons. iph Century. St. Editha. y-writon P.P., 367; lokedone, 285, throngedone, 461 mournedone, 461, burydone, 462 ; prayden, 287, putten, 1880, deden, 1888, &c. Bokenam. oftyn, Pr. 205 ; Inf. in -yn. Marg. Paslon. eronds, i. 201; Infinitives: — askyn, i. 49; heryn, i. 67; getyn, i. 68; tellyn, i. 68; sellyn, i. 69 ; PreSi PL: — owyn, i. 68 ; Pret. PI. : — ze badeyn, i. 69 ; zedyn, i. 70 (z = f); haddyn, i. no. Bury Wills, gravyn, 15; euyn, 19 (Adv.); wretyn, 19; opynly, 18; erthin, 22. (Also -en forms.) Shillingford. aunsion, 10. Pecok. thousind, i. 215. Rewle Sustr. Men. opunli, too. 22; opynli, no. 30; songoun P.P., 105. 7. Sir T. Cumberworth' s Will (Lines., 1451), L D. D, op3m, 45. 8; kechyn, 49. 12, 24. Fortescue. writun, 130, gotun, 137. Cely Papers, wryttyn P. P., 35 ; gevyn, 26 ; hosyn (N.), 28 ; lynyn (N.), 200; happen, 30; hofton 'often', 81. Cr. Duke of York, evyn, 389, brokyn (P. P.), 395. -ent. Cefy Papers, carpyntter, 180. l6th Century. Lord Admiral Sir Edw. Howard to Hen. VIII {i^i 2). burden, Ellis ii. I. 216. State of Ireland {St. Pprs., Hen. VIII. i (151 5)). wdypyn 'weapon', 18. Lord Berners' Froissart. havyn, i. 33 ; opyn, passim. Inventory of f. Asserley (Lines., 1527), L. D. D. wholyn 'woollen', 135. 18; kytehyn, 135. 30. Sir Thos. More's Letters. Ellis i. 2 ; hevyn, 52. Thos. Lever's Sermons, chikynnes, 56. 272 THE VOWELS OF UNSTRESSED SYLLABLES Cavendish, L. of Wolsey. opyn, 15 ; tokyn, 19 ; hosyn, 88 ; rysyn, 116; Latten 'Latin', 71. Gabr. Harvey {Letters), chickins, 31 ; tokins, 150. Q. Elizabeth, heauin 'heaven', Transl. 61. I']th Century. Gary Verney. takin (P. P.), V. Mem. ii. 70 (1642). Mrs. Isham. childrin, V. Mem. ii. 220; suddnly, ibid. 200. Mrs. Eure. wimin (PI.), V. Mem. ii. 86 (1642). -em. Sir R. Verney. solome, V. Mem. ii. 67 (1642). i8th Century. Lady Strafford, kitching, Wentw. Pprs. 540. igth Century. John Kemble said sentimmt, innocmt, conshihce according to Leigh Hunt, Autobiogr. i, p. 180. -el. ijth Century. Bokenam. appyltre, Ann. 441 ; lytyl, Pr. 55, &c. Marg. Paston. tempill, i. 81 ; unkyll, i. 202. Bury Wills, litil, 20; bokyll, 16; nobil, 17; candylstikke, 19; pepill, 19; sympil, 21 ; stepyll, 19; ladyll, 23; tharchangill, 62. Rewle Sustr. Men. dobel, 107. 25, dubbil, 107. 12, double, 107. 18. Will of Sir T. Cumberworth (Lines., 145 1) L. D. D. stabul, 50. 4. Will of Richard Moulton (Lines., 1465) L. D.D. stabull, 124. 37. Caxton (Jason), sadyl, 7. 34 ; sadle (Inf.), n. 29; litil, 13. 22, &c. ; nobole, 12. i, noble, 12. 4, &c. Cely Papers, myddyll, 34; saddyl, 34; stapyll, 5; craddyll, 157; medell, 11; stapell, 6; fardel, 71 ; stapal, 4; stapul, 77. l6th Century. Skellon's Magnyfycence. startyl, sparkyl, 741 ; dyvyls, 944 ; devyll, 941. Inventory off. Asserley (Lines., 1527). tabyl, L, D. D. 135. 28. Sir Thos. More {Letters, Ellis i. i). Sir John RussU, 205. Machyn. postyll ' apostle ' ; castyl ' castle ',11. Sir Thos. Smith (1583). evangill. Rep. 123. lyth Century. Boll Leake, cruilty, V. Mem. ii. 213 (1644). -e in Unstressed Syllables. Iph Century. -less. 1465. Marg. Paston. harmlys, ii. 226. -mest. 1447-50. Shillingford, utmyst. REDUCTION OF -e- IN VARIOUS ENDINGS 273 i6ih Century. -ness. Q. Elizabeth. kindn?s. Letters 40 ; wekenis, L. 41 ; happims, L. 50, &c., &c.; darken/s, Transl. 4; businis, Transl. 126. I'jth Century. -ess. Shakespeare, First Fol. mistn's, passim. Habington's Castara (1630-40). mistris, 51, &c. •ness. Doll Leake, bisnis, Verney Mem. iv. 114 (1663). iSth Century. -ester. 17 10. Wentworth Papers. Ld. Rochester, p. 118. -esS'. 1 701. Jones, mistnss, p. 6a. Lady Wentworth. dutchiss, W. Pprs. 45. Zph Century. -lege {-leche) and original -lege. Marg. Paston. knowlych, ii. 185. Bury Wills, collage, 66 (1480). Shillingford. knowliche, 67. -et. Cely Papers, markyt, 17. -et. i6th Century. Lord Berner^ Froissart. helmyttes, i. 362. Thos. Lever's Sermons, couitous, 84. Euphtus. dyot 'diet', 276. Gabr. Harvey, interprit, Letters 15. -lege. Gabr. Harvey (Letters). coUidg, 54. -ledge (earlier -leche). iph Century. Betty Verney. acknowliges, Verney Mem. iv. 21 (1661). -et. Lady Lambton. interpritt, Basire Corresp. 80 (1649). i8th Century. -et. Wentworth Papers, hullits, 81 ; blanckitt, 62. Initial e^. astate ' estate ', Bokenam, Pr. Marg. 877 ; Fortescue, 143 ; Gregory!, 132; Elyot, passim ; Berners, passim; alectyd, CAy 'P^rs. 162; a^fzMe 'excuse', Cely Pprs. 9; (Wca/_j/« ' escape ', Bokenam, Marg. 877; ascaped. Lord Berners, i. 7a; aronyous 'erroneous', Machyn, 81. -a + consonants. iS^h Century. -ao. Will. Paston, Jun. stomechere, Paston Letters, iii. 237 (1478); Cely Papers, almyneke, 1^6. as. Cely Papers, os 'as', i. 30; Cr. Duke of York, j/j = as— for as moche ys (= ' as ') at so noble feast, &c., 389. T 2 74 THE VOWELS OF UNSTRESSED SYLLABLES -ave. John Russe. Seynt 0/^«, Paston Letters, ii. 112 (1462). -age (-ange). Siege of Rouen, mesyngers, 31. Gregory, messyngere, 124; longege ' language ', 214. Cely Papers, passengers, 153. State 0/ Ireland (St. Pprs. Henry VIII, iii). messyngers, 14. Will of R. Astbroke (Bucks., 1534). messynger (Pers. N.), L. D.D. 169. 21. api. Capgrave's Chron. Upfwwel, 96 (= Ap-). -a-. Bury Wills, festement, 15. 43 (1463). -ar-. i6ih Century, Archbp. Cranmer (Letters), particulerly, Ellis i. 2. 172 (1549). Lyly, Euphues. perticulers, 234. Machyn. secretery, 10. Spenser, Pres. State of Ireland, schollers, 626. 2. -a-. Cavendish, L. of Wolsey. ambassiter, 7. -aster. Machyn. Lancoster, 244. -mas. Machyn. Cryustynmus, 122. -an-. Machyn. compeny, 303. Eupkues. musition, 213, Italionated, 314. -ao. Gabr. Harvey's Letters, stummock, 1 4. as, -as. es = as. Sir Thos. More's Letters, Ellis ii. i ; such entreprises es shold if they mought, &c., 289. Gabr. Harvey's Letters, purchisse Vb., 67. I'jth Century. -ant. infints. C. Stewkley, V. Mem. iii. 433 (1656). -man. Bridgemen. Lady Rochester, V. Mem. iii. 466 (1660). -an-, cotnpiny. Lady Sussex, V. Mem. ii. 133 ; inglende. Lady Sussex, V. Mem. ii. 88 (1642). -aster. Donkister. Verney Mem. iv. 121 ; Lady Elmes (1665). -ac-. stomichers, Anne Lee, V. Mem. ii. 235 (1646); obsticle. Sir R. Vemey, Mem. ii. 357 (1647); carictor, C. Stewkley, Mem. iv. 226. -mas. crismus. Lady Sussex, Verney Pprs. 205 (1639); mickelmust, M. Falkiner, V. Mem. ii. 52 (1642); Doll Leake, crismus,V. Mem. iii. 287 (1656). -as-. Sir tomis Chike, Lady Sussex, Vemey Mem. ii. 153 {1643); Sir tomos, Gary Verney, V. Mem. ii. 68 (1642). -a-, contrydicting, ibid. i8th Century. -ac-. stomick, /zzV = Isaac, Baker, Rules for True Spelling (1724); carecter, Wentw. Pprs. 50. -ark. Southwick for South wark, Baker (1724). -ave. (St.) Olive = St. Olave, Jones (1707), p. 59. -able. ' Sounded abusively ', -ible in Constable, Dunstable, Jones, p. 59. -ate. pryvit. Lady Wentworth, Wentw. Pprs. 94 (1709), chockolet. Lady Strafford, Wentw. Pprs. 213 (171 1). -dale. DugdeTs Baronage, Peter Wentworth, Wentw. Pprs. 88 (1709). UNROUNDED AND OFTEN FRONTED 275 -age. i6th Century. Archbp. Cranmer, Letters, marieges, Ellis i. 2. 36 (1533). Roper's L. of More (1556). marriges, xliv. 10. TTios. Lever's Sermons, cotingers, 82. John Alleyne. AUeyne Pprs., marrige, ig, incurrich 'encourage', 16 (159-?); Ph. Henslow in Alleyne Memoirs, spenege spinach, 28 (c- 1593)- i-jth Century. Vicartdge, Agreement for purchase of the Manor of Dulwich, Alleyne Memoirs, 191 (1605). corige 'courage', Lady Sussex, ii. 38 (1641), disadfantige, mesege; advantig, Mrs. Sherard, iii. 317 (1657) (all in Verney Memoirs); vicaridge, Dr. Basire, 303 (1673). Saucidg and cabbidg are mentioned by Cooper. Initial a-. ijth and i6tk Centuries. Cely Papers, enoyd ' annoyed ', 106 ; Elyot, anointed, 2. 235 ; Ascham, emonges, Tox. 37. o in Unstressed Syllables. Ion. ijt^ Century. St. Editha. caren ' carrion', 4328. Marg. Paston. sesyn ' season', v. i. 201. Gregory's Chron. Devynshyre, 216; -«»-, Aryndelle, 101. Cely Papers, questyans, 153; ressenabull, 74; rekenyng, 34; resenably, 14. -o'. Marg. Paston. dysabey, i. 252; sa m;^ch, ii. 308. Cely Papers, abedyensses, 69. -og. Caxton. genelagye, Jason, 336, 38. 0-. Short Engl. CAron. {146^, Cam. Soc). tawdrd, 62. -est. Marg. Paston. provest, ii. 187 (perhaps survival of Early Engl. form). ^op. Bokenam. bysshape, Elev. Thous. Virg. 108, no. i6th Century. -on. Dr. Knight (Chaplain to Hen. VIII). reasyn 'reason' (1512), Ellis ii. I. 203. Sir Thos. Elyot {1528). burgine Vb., 'bud', Gouem. i. 30. Jiede me, &c. (1529). mutten ' mutton '. Richard Layton to Lord Cromwell (1538). Martin Colege (= Merton), Ellis ii. 2. 60. ITios. Pery (1539). commyshin, Ellis ii. 2. 140. Cavendish, L. of Wolsey. waggans, 88. Bishop Latimer, dungen, Seven Serms. (1549), 119. Gabriel Harvey's Letter Bk. (1573-80). duggin 'dudgeon', 29; to reckin, 16. Edm. Spenser, scutchin, F. Q., Bk. iii. 7. 30. T 2 276 THE VOWELS OF UNSTRESSED SYLLABLES John Alleym, Alleyne Pprs. (159-?). posshene 'portion', 16; fashenges, 'fashions', 16. Sir Thos. Smith (1583). recken, Republ. 76. of. Lord Berner^ Froissart. men a warre, i. 156. Machyn's Diary. Justus arnes 'barons', 171 (twice). (^) Latimer — ^fArz«« ' sheriffs ', 154. Loss of vowel following first, stressed syllable, between consonants. S. of Rouen — enmys, 24; singler. Gov. Leet 72 (1424); Marg. 'SisXoxi—f antsy, ii. 83 ; Gregory, cytsyn ' citizen ', 64 ; Doll Leakfi— bisnis, Verney Mem. iv. 113 (1665); Wm. Baker, Rules for True Spelling (1724) — medson ' medicine', vennin ' venison'. Loss of vowel immediately after stressed syllable, before weak vowel or (h-). Gregory, unt hym (unto), 218. Loss of-i- after front vowel. Marg. Paston. payt ' pay it ', i. 256. Other losses after stressed syllable. Marg. Paston. yts 'it is', ii. 386. Loss of syllable in the middle of words, Machyn. Barmsey ' Bermondsey ', Chamley ' Cholmondeley '. CHAPTER VIII CHANGES IN CONSONANTAL SOUNDS The consonantal changes which we have now to consider are remark- able in that while the results were undoubtedly characteristic of English speech for several centuries, a very large number of those pronunciations, the existence of which can be proved by occasional spellings oft-times repeated, by rhymes and by the statements of the grammarians, have, during the last hundred years or so, been eliminated from polite speech, and survive only in Provincial or Vulgar forms of English. Such are the added -d in gownd, or -t in sermont, &c. Others, again, survive in what is rapidly becoming archaic usage, although, like ' the dropping of the g ' in shillin', &c., they are still widespread among large classes of the best speakers, no less than among the worst. Yet other tendencies in the pronunciation of consonantal combinations are repudiated altogether by purists as slipshod, while many persons who shp into them quite naturally in rapid speech would disavow any such habits if questioned upon the subject. To this class belongs the dropping of / in mostly, roast bee/, &c. — • If we could recall speakers from the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- turies it is probable that what would strike us most would be the pranks that even the most refined and well-bred persons would play with the consonants. From this point of view the English of these periods would appear to us with our modern standards as a mixture of rusticity, s\vp- shodness, and vulgarity. It is, I think, impossible to doubt that speakers who, from their education or their social experience, or both, must have been among the most irreproachable of their time, who could and did mingle with the great world, really did speak in what we should now consider a most reprehensible manner. The testimony from all sources is too strong to be ignored. We might disbelieve, or hesitate as to the interpretation of any one authority, if unsupported by other evidence, but when aU tell the same tale, when we find Pope rhyming neglects with sex, the Vemey ladies and Lady Wentworth writing respeck, prospeck, strick, and so on, and the writers on pronunciation before, after, and contem- porary with these personages deliberately stating that final / is omitted in a long list of words which includes the above, then we must admit that if all this is not conclusive evidence on the point, it will be impossible ever to get any reliable information regarding the modes of speech of past ages. But the case for taking these various indications seriously becomes stronger when we discover that the existence of many of these, to us, peculiar pronunciations is established by occasional spellings reaching 284 CHANGES IN CONSONANTAL SOUNDS far back to the fifteenth century, and beyond that into the M.E. period itself. In fact the more persistently the records of English speech are studied, the more it becomes apparent that the same general tendencies of change which are even to-day in force have been active for centuries. This is nowhere truer than of consonantal changes, but it holds good also of the treatment of vowels in unstressed positions, and, to some extent also, of the isolative changes in vowels in stressed syllables. It has been pointed out earlier in this book that down to far on in the eighteenth century the natural tendendies were allowed more or less unrestricted play, and this among speakers of the Received Standard of the period no less than among the more uneducated. Purists, as we know, existed, who protested against this or that usage, but few listened to them. Standards of refinement were certainly recognized, there were fashionable tricks which had a vogue and died away, vulgarisms and rusticities were unquestionably clearly perceived, and laughed at by those who had the entrance to the 6eau monde and were conversant with its usages. But the standards of this class of speakers were not those of the self-constituted authorities on ' correctness ' who abound from the seven- teenth century onwards. Habits of speech which provoked the mirth of the former because they were not those of persons of quality and fashion, were not, in most cases, the kind of ' errors ' which came under the lash of the purists. It is characteristic of those who set out to instruct the public at large how they ought to pronounce, that they almost invariably fix as subject for their censure, among other things it is true, upon those very features in the natural speech of their time which are most deeply rooted in traditional habit and destined to remain as bases for the language of the future. This is true of Gill in the first quarter of the seventeenth century, to some extent of Cooper in the last quarter of the same century, of Swift early in the following century, and of Elphin- ston towards the end of the eighteenth century. With all respect be it said, it is true of Mr. Bridges in his heroic if unavailing onslaughts upon the present treatment in ordinary English of the vowels of unstressed syllables, grounded as this is upon tendencies which have prevailed in our language from its earliest history. Among all the writers on pronunciation during the dghteenth century, Jones, in the Expert Orthographer, 1701, appears to be one of the least censorious. He records unblushingly, and without hostile comment, omissions and additions of consonants which we know from other sources, indeed, were habitual, but which it must have made some of his colleagues in the art of English speech extremely angry to see set down in this cool matter-of-fact way. Jones's business is primarily to teach English spelling, but his method of introducing each rule with the words ' When is the sound of such and such a letter written in such and such a way?' enables him to shed an amount of light upon the genuine pronunciation of his time which greatly exceeds that thrown by most other books of the kind before and for a long time after him. Now nearly all Jones's state- ments are shown to be true to fact by the enlightening spellings of the Verney family and of Lady Wentworth, to say nothing of the rhymes of good poets, but they must have appeared very outrageous to those whose THE NEW 'CORRECTNESS' 285 main object was to get as far away as possible from realities, and to construct a fantastic form of English from the spelling. But if the protests of the purists passed unheeded among 'the wits of either Charles's days ' and those of James II, Anne, and the first two Georges, it cannot be denied that the grammarians came to their own at last — ^up to a point. The process of ' improvement ', so far as one can see, but it is absurd to attempt great preciseness in these matters, began roughly in the third quarter of the eighteenth century, and has gained in force and volume ever since. But if the triumph of the pedagogue is thus unquestionable, the success, as has been suggested repeatedly in this book, must be set down rather to social causes than to a sudden capacity on the part of the Orthoepist to persuade those to whom he had so long preached in vain. It was assuredly not the Verneys and Wentworths, the Lady Hobarts, or ' my sister Carburer ' who first adopted the new-fahgled English. These and their like, and long may they flourish, have hardly done so completely at the present time. It was the new men and their families, who were winning a place in the great world and in public affairs, who would be attracted by the refinements offered by the new and 'correct' system of pronunciation which they learnt from their masters of rhetoric, or from their University tutors. That this new, wealthy, and often highly cultivated class should gradually have imposed upon society at large the gentilities of the academy of deportment, and have been able to insist with success upon gown instead of 'gownd', strict instead of ' strick', vermin instead of ' varmint ', richest instead of ' richis ', and so on, would have seemed incredible to Lady Wentworth and her friends. But so it has come about. Possibly the relations of Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Fiozzi are types of the process at its best, and one may suppose that the great man would not hesitate to correct what he took to be improprieties of speech in his circle, and that pronunciations which received his sanction would rapidly gain currency far and wide. In fact, it is not wholly fanciful to attribute in no small measure to the personal prestige of Johnson, a prestige of a very peculiar kind, more powerful perhaps than that possessed by any purely learned man before or since, the very marked reaction in favour of a certain type of ' correctness ' in speech which set in about this time, and which has continued ever since to make fresh inroads upon established tradition. But even so mighty a force as Samuel Johnson required suitable social conditions in which to exert his influence. The gradual penetration of those circles of society whose speech con- stitutes the Received Standard with something approaching the ideals of elegance and correctness maintained by the purists has been a slow process, and though each generation probably sees something of the old usage given up, there are many strongholds of ancient habits \yhich still resist the encroachments of innovation. ' Edward ', ' husban' ', ' edjikate ', ' Injun ', ' ooman ', ' masty' (mastiff), 'pagin ' (pageant), and the like, have gone, but [gnhjd2, nmdi, ofn, h'tratja, bousan], and many others, survive from the wreckage. These natural and historic forms are growing steadily less, and every ' advance ' in education sweeps more of them away. It will be interesting to see what fresh pranks the rising genera- 286 CHANGES IN CONSONANTAL SOUNDS tion will play, and with what new refinements they will adorn our language. As regards the dialectal origin of the consonantal changes, it is difficult to assign any specific Regional starting-point to most of them. It seems probable that the loss or assimilation of consonants in groups, the drop- ping of final consonants, the development of parasitic consonants between certain combinations, and so on, belong to the universal tendencies of English speech. We find evidence of all these changes East, West, and Centre in the dialects of the South and Midlands, in the fifteenth century. An examination of the early forms of Place Names would certainly reveal earlier examples of these and other processes than any given below, and might also enable us to say in which areas they were most prevalent. Other changes, such as the loss of initial w- before rounded vowels, the development of w- before certain other rounded vowels, the development of initial y- [j] before certain front vowels, might be localized with more precision were our knowledge of the distribution of Regional dialect features during the Late M.E. and Early Modem periods more complete than it is at present. Whatever be the area whence these various consonant changes started, nearly all of them are found fairly early in the London dialect, and later in Received Standard. For the sake of clearness it has seemed best to deal with the various phenomena in groups, according to the general nature of the process involved, rather than by taking every consonant separately and discussing everything that may happen to it. The following general classification of consonant changes includes under its several heads most of the chief points that demand attention. A. Isolative Changes without either Loss or Addition. ■h becomes -/- ; (a) final, (b) in combination, -ht. ^ , ng becomes -«, i. e. [rj] becomes [n]. (3) f^ [M becomes/, and ftS] becomes », initially, medially, or finally. (4) -s- becomes -sh, i. e. [s] becomes [|], medially and finally. (5) Interchange of w- and »-, and of v- and w-. B, Combinative Changes involving neither Loss nor Addition. (i) ty, i.e. [tj] becomes [tj] initially and medially. sj] becomes [J] initially and medially, (3^ |djj becomes Tdz] initially and medially, (4) "zjj becomes [2] medially. Assimilation of -nf- to -ml-. (2) (3 (4 (6) 111 C. Loss of Consonants. Loss of initial h- : (a) stressed, (b) in unstressed syllables. ^ , Loss of w- : (a) in stressed, (b) in imstressed syllables. (3) Loss of-/- before certain consonants, immediately following. (4) Loss of r : (a) medially before a following consonant, (b) finally. (5) Loss of consonants, especially of d, /, when final, immediately pre- ceded by another consonant. MAPPING OUT THE GROUND 287 (6) Loss of consonants between vowels, or after a consonant before a following vowel. (7.) Loss of back or front-open-voiceless consonant, written h or gh (a) finally, (b) in combination with -t (written -ght). (8) Loss of final y^ (9) Loss of « before other consonants, in unstressed syllables. D. Addition of Consonants. (i) Qiw- before rounded vowels. (2) Of_y- [j] before front vowels. (3) Of D] ^f'^"" ^"> S- before front or originally front vowels. (4) Of d, medially in combination -nl- ; of 3 in combination -w/-. (5) Of -d- or -/- finally after -r, -«,-/, -s, -/. (6) Of h- initially before vowels. £■ Voicing of Voiceless Consonants. (i) Of initial wh- = [w]. (2) Of other consonants : (a) initially, (b) medially ; (i) between vowels, (2) after a voiced consonant before a vowel. F. Unvoicing of Voiced Consonants. It will be observed that the terminology employed in the above system of classification is not in all cases strictly accurate from the phonetic point of view. Thus h- the aspirate is not a consonant, but a ' rough breathing', or stressed-breath-on-glide. Again, when gown is pro- nounced gownd there is in reality no ' addition ' of a consonant at the end; all that happens is that denasalization takes place before the tongue-position of -n- is dissolved. The effect to the ear is that a new and different consonant is added to the -n ; but from the phonetic point of view there is a diminution, not a renewal of activity. Similarly, we talk popularly of ' dropping ' a final consonant when husban' instead of husband is pronounced. As a matter of fact, all that happens in the former case is that nasalization continues to the end of the articulation. With this warning there can, I think, be no danger in adopting for the sake of convenience a popular terminology which regards the acoustic effect upon the listener, rather than the actual activities of the speaker. A. Isolative Changes without either Loss or Addition. M.E. -(g)h becomes [-f]. M.E. h, gh (back-open-voiceless cons.), at the end of a syllable, or before -t, either disappears altogether in the South or becomes f. For the disappearance see p. 305. The change to fis the result of a strong lip-modifying (' labializing') tendency, which at last was so pronounced that the back consonant which it accompanied was gradually weakened and finally lost altogether. 288 CHANGES IN CONSONANTAL SOUNDS leaving presumably a lip-open consonant, which generally tends to become the lip-teetJi [f]. In some dialects the latter sound was probably developed in M.E. It cannot have been fully formed in London English much before the fifteenth century or it would have been perpetuated in the spelling of some words at least. The following examples in some cases show -f in some forms which in present-day Received Standard have lost the consonant completely. Some of the examples are from documents which may show Regional usage differing from that of the London Standard of the period. The spelling Edyngburth ' Edinburgh ', in Berners' Froissart i. 85, shows that the old sound still preserved in the North was unfamiliar to him. Spellings with y are: — /Ac?//" ' through ', M. Paston ii. 197, 1465; fro^' trough', 1553, R. Bradley's Will (Leics.), Line. Dioc. Docs. 164. 14 ; to la^e, Letter of Barnabe Googe, Arber, p. 12, 1563 ; laffi ihymes distaffe, Gabr. Harvey's Letter Bk. 117, 1573-B0; troffe rhymes shyffe, ibid. ; ' hold their hips and loffe, Shakesp., First FoL, 1621, Midsummer N. D. I. i ; ' and coffing drowns the parson's saw ', L. L. Lost (Song at end of Play) ; also chuffes, First Pt., Hen. IV, Act ii, Sc. ii ; Butler, 1634, ' laugh, cough, tough, enough commonly sound like laf, cof, tuf, tnuf ' ; 'I Iqft at him', Mall V., Vemey Mem. ii. 379, 1647; Cooper, 1685, notes ^in rough, trough^ and that enough as a ' numeral ' is ' pronounced, and better written enow '. It seems clear from the above that -f was pronounced, from early in the sixteenth century, in those words of this class in which we now use the sound. (For the vowel sound and the spelling of laugh cf. p. 205.) No doubt other words were included by some speakers. It is probable that thofioT though, which Fielding puts into the mouth of Mrs. Honour, Sophia Western's waiting- woman in Tom Jones (1748), was at that time provincial or vulgar. -ht- becomes ft. The curious spelling unsoffethe 'unsought', Gregory's Chron. 192, 1450-70, is undoubtedly put for 'unso/t'. The rhyme manslaughter — laughter 'va. Roister Doister, 1553, is ambiguous. Marston rhymes after — daughter. Eastward Hoe, v. i, 1604 ; the Vemey Papers have dafter{e), 1629, Mrs. Wiseman, p. 143 ; Butler, 1634, ' daughter commonly sounded dafter ' ; Verney M.tTs\.-—dafter, ii. 203, Mrs. Isham, 1645, ^o- '"■ 3^5 (three times), 1657, and again, iii. 232, 1655; Jones, 1701 — 'some sound daughter^ bought, naught, taught, nought, &c., as with VRf, saying daufter, bo/t', &c., pp. 54 and 55. It is hard to say how far Jones is to be trusted not to include provincialisms or vulgarisms among his pronunciations. Mrs. Honour, the waiting- woman in Thm Jones, writes soft ' sought ' in a letter. Probably by Fielding's time, at any rate, many of the -ft pronunciations given by Jones were becoming antiquated among the best speakers. To judge from the statements of the grammarian, and the evidence of the occa- sional spellir^gs, it certainly looks as though throughout the seventeenth century the usage was not definitely fixed as regards the distribution of the various types, so that dater, daughter, dafter [djetsr, dotar, d^ftar, slsltar, slotar, slsftar, b^ft, hot], &c., were all in use. 'DROPPING THE g' IN FINAL -ing 289 There is no assignable reason beyond the fortunes of apparently arbitrary selection from among the various types why we should say [slota] on the one hand, and [lafta] on the other. Substitution of -th [])] for -gh = [x] 0^ [j]. We sometimes get a substitution of [Jj] for the old voiceless back or front open consonants, where these still survive among an older genera- tion, or occur in words introduced from another dialect. I take the spelling Edyngburth 'Edinburgh', Berners' Froissart i. 85, and Machyn's Luthborow ' Loughborough ', 309, to be examples of such a substitution, and likewise Peter Wentworth's Usquebath ' Usquebaugh ', W. Pprs. 196, 171 1 ; Jones's sit A for sigh must also be a survival of such an imitative pronunciation. The same is true of the modern pronunciation [kij)h'] for Keighley, Yorks., the younger generation of the district no longer using the old sound, and finding it more convenient to adopt one which can be mastered by speakers from farther south. Substitution qf\-XL\for [q], popularly known as 'dropping the g' in the Suffix -ing. Such pronunciations as kuniin', shilliri, &c., which for some reason are considered as a subject of jest in certain circles, while in others they are censured, are of considerable antiquity, as the examples which follow will show. The substitution of ' « ' for ' «^ ' [q] in Present Participles and Verbal Nouns was at one time apparently almost universal in every type of English speech. At the present time this habit obtains in practically all Regional dialects of the South and South Midlands, and among large sections of speakers of Received Standard English. Apparently in the twenties of the last century a strong reaction set in in favour of the more ' correct ' pronunciation, as it was considered, and what was in reality an innovation, based upon the spelling, was so far successful that the [q] pronunciation (' with -ng ') has now a vogue among the educated at least as wide as the more conservative one with -«. It is probable that a special search would reveal far more numerous and earlier forms of the -n spellings than those I have noted. Norf. Guilds (1389), holdyn, 63, drynkyn, 59, 66, 1389; Marg. Paston, wrytyn (N.), i. 49, 1443, gidyn (N.), ii. 74, dyvysen (N.), ii. 92, hangyn (Part.), ii. 124; Agn. Paston, walkyn, Past. Lttrs. i. 114, 1450; Gregory, 1450-7O) blasyn sterre 'comet', 80, hayryn 'herring', 169; Guild of Tailors, Exeter, hyndryn, 317, 1466; Sir Richard Gresham, 1520, hanggyns, Ellis iii. i. 234, 235 ; Machyn, 1550-, syttyn, 33, rydyn, 183, standyn, 191, syngyne, 281; Q. Elizabeth, besichen, Letter to James VI, 60. The following are taken from Verney Memoirs : — seein, missin, ii. 63, bein, 70, comin, 71, plondarin, 71, all written by Gary Verney, 1642; I may go a beggin, a beggen, Mrs. Isham, ii. 207, 220, 1645; shillins, Doll Smith, iii. 409, 1657 j disoblegin, Lady Hobart, iv, 55, 1664 ; lodgens, Lady Elmes, iv. 121, 1665, lodgins, Lady Hobart, iv, 126, 1665. u 290 CHANGES IN CONSONANTAL SOUNDS Cooper, 1685, includes among words having the same sound though differently spelt, coming — cummin, coughing — coffin, jerkin— jerking ; Lord Rochester, 1647-80, rhymes farthing — bear-garden [fserdan], in 'Against Disturbers of the Pit '. Lady Wentworth has iakin, dynin-room, 47, lodgins, 45, levin 'living', 64, Feeldin, 58, approachin, 66, buildin, 84, Haystins, 56, devertin tricks, c>i,prancin along, 57, ingagin, 60, digin 'digging', dr, far din, 99, want of (f««^/'» ' dunging ', iii, mornin, 113, stockins, 126, wriiins, 275, the Anthem for the Thanksgivin, 321. Swift in the Introd. to Polite Con- versations puts learnen among the words 'as pronounced by the chief patterns of politeness at Court, at Levees', &c., to which he objects. Pope, 1 7 13, rhymes gardens— farthings, Epigr. to Lord Radnor, where the latter word is doubtless pronounced as by Lord Rochester and Lady Wentworth. Walker, Rhet. Gr., 3rd ed., 1801, hedges a good deal. He says that he can assert that the best speakers do not invariably pronounce -ing to rhyme with king, but rather as in. He recommends -in in the Present Participles of words like sing, fling, ring, but prefers -ing in others. ' Our best speakers universally pronounce singin, bringin, flingin.' After saying ' What a trifling omission is g after n ', he goes on : ' Trifling as it is, it savours too much of vulgarity to omit -g in any words except the -ing-ly^e. Writing, reading, speaking are certainly preferable to writin, readin, speakin, wherever the language has the least degree of solemnity.' Walker is here trying to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. -ng written for -n. The pronunciation implied by this spelling may be heard occasionally at the present time, sometimes from those speakers who ' leave out the -g ' in the ending -ing. A few scattered spellings of this kind, one from the fifteenth and others from the sixteenth century onwards, may be recorded. Lupinge ' lupin ', the plant, Palladius 46. 60 ; kusshing ' cushion ', Thos. Pery, 1539, EUis ii. 2. 150; slouinglie, Latimer 55, 'slovenly'; eoyng^an'g, Machyn, 119, &c., &c. ; J. AUeyne, Alleyne Papers 16, 159-?, fachenges 'fashions'; chicking 'chicken'. Sir R. Verney, Vemey Mem. iii. 115, 1653; forting 'fortune', otherwise y^r//a, cf. p. 277; lining 'linen'. Lady Hobart, iii. 305, 1657 ; Mrs. Isham, ibid. iv. 108, 1663; chapling ' chaplain ', Gary Stewkley (Verney), ibid. iv. 35, 1662 ; fashing ' fashion ', Mrs. Edm., ibid. iv. 71, 1664; childering 'children'. Pen. Denton, ibid. iv. 469, 1692. Lady Wentworth, early in the following century, writes ' Lady Evlit^ Pirpoynt', and her daughter-in-law Lady Strafford, hitching, W. Papers 340, her son Peter, ^«c^««^«(/ ' beckoned ', 108, 17 10. It is difficult to say how far some of these are not inverted spellings implying that -ng has for the writer the same value as -w, and how far, on the other hand, they represent genuine pronunciations with [i)]. Such pronunciations undoubtedly do exist. -nk = [.r)k-] for -ng- [r|(g)]. Among very vulgar speakers — not in London alone — we sometimes hear * nothink ' for nothing at the present time. Cavendish, L. of Wolssy, 1557, / INSTEAD OF th 291 writes hankyng, p. 97, and Q. Elizabeth, in 1548, 'brinkinge of me up', and ' our brinkers up ', Ellis i. 2. 154. This pronunciation is referred to by Elphinston, 1787, who remarks ' a common Londoner talks of anny think else, or anny thing kelse', and again, 'English vulgarity will utter anny think (dhat iz, thingk)'. Assimilation of [g] to [n] be/ore point-consonants — d, t, th. Shillingford has leynth 'length', 85; Elyot's Gouernour has strenlhe, 237; Lady Sussex, Verney Mem. ii. 90, has kaindom 'kingdom'. Elphinston regards tenth, strenth as 'the Scottish shiboleth', and Walker as ' the sure mark of provincial pronunciation '. Change of th [])] to f ; [8] to v. The results of these changes are heard sporadically at the present time. It is doubtful whether such pronunciations as [tif, fri], &c., for teeth, three, &c., are characteristic of any Regional dialect as a whole. They appear to belong rather to individuals here and there, and they seem to occur more frequently in the speech of the lower strata of London speakers than else- where, though they may survive as uncorrected faults of childhood among individuals in all classes and belonging to any region. I have not found any very early examples, but the following are of some interest. Finally, Bk. of Quint, ^f/* =' earth ', 18, r 460-70; Gregory has Lamheffe for Lambeth, 229; initially, Machyn ha.s f rust for thrust, 21, and I^rogmorton for Throgmorton ; medially, Q. Elizabeth, bequived ' be- queathed', Transl. 149; and finally, John Alley ne. Alley ne Papers, hefe, 15 and 16 (159-?), and Middleton, Chaste Maid in Cheapside,^has 'neither h^ nor kin', Act iv, Sc. i (1630); Mrs. Isham has lo/le for loathe, Verney Mem. ii. 220, 1645. I" the last instance the -/ is a typical addition, cf. p. 309, and does not concern us for the moment. Elphinston, in 1787, refers to 'the tendency of the low English to Redriph and loph instead of Rotherhithe and loath', cf. Miiller, § 252. Readers of Cowper's correspondence are familiar with his pet name *Mrs. Frog' for Mrs. Throgmorton, which shows that a pronunciation of the name similar to that used by Machyn still existed. Lady Wentworth writes threvoles ioi frivolous, 127, which rather sug- gests that she pronounced ^th' as 'f. Final and medial a becomes ' sh ' = [J]. This isolative change does not appear to be widespread, but I include it because I find that I have a few early examples noted among my collec- tions, and it is referred to as a vulgarism by Elphinston in the eighteenth century. This fact makes it probable that the early forms mean some- thing, and are not mere scribal vagaries. The following are the examples I have noted : — R. of Brunne, Handlyng Sinne, 1302, reioshe 'rejoice', 2032, vasshelage, 4610; Bokenam, 1443, vertush, Ann. 248, mossh ' moss ', Ann. 360, reioysshyng ' rejoicing ', Agn. 401, dysshese 'disease', Agn. 614; Engl. Register of Oseney, 1460, blesshyng, p. 13; M. Paston, a powter vesshell, ii. 75, 146 1; Caxton, kysshed ' kissed ', Jason 85. 35 ; Machyn has theprynche of Spaine, 51, 52, u 2 292 CHANGES IN CONSONANTAL SOUNDS 66; Henslow's Diary (iggS), Henshlaw, 213; Sir J. Leake, Verney Mem,, burgishes 'burgesses', ii. 218, 1645; Lady Lambton, hushhand, Basire Corresp. 79 (1649); Mrs. Basire, /arj^/&j, in (1653); 'touch'd a gall'd beast till he winch' d', Congreve's Old Batchelor, Act v, Sc. xiii (^^93)- , . „ , Elphinston notes the vulgar cutlash, nonplush, frontishptece, Poarch- mouth. In the last word the change is probably combinative ; an earlier example of this 'vulgarism' is Porchmouth, Sir T. Seymour, St. Pprs. Hen. VIII, i. pp. 773. 1*1^ (twice), 1544 ; the same spelling is used by C. Verney, V. Mem. iv. 136, 1665; J. Verney, 244, 1679; A. Nicholas, p. 265, and N. N. 266, 1680. Those who are familiar with Martin Chuzzlewit will remember Mrs. Gamp's vagaries in respect of substituting ' j A ' for ' j ', Interchange o/V' and w- ; \-for w-, and yft-for v-. This was formerly a London vulgarism, but is now apparently extinct in the Cockney dialect. Personally, I never actually heard these pro- nunciations, so well known to the readers of Dickens, Thackeray, and of the earlier numbers of Punch. My time for observing such points begins in the late seventies or early eighties of the last century, and I never remember noticing this particular feature in actual genuine speech, though I remember quite well, as a boy, hearing middle-aged people say weal for veal and vich for which, jocularly, as though in imitation of some actual type of speech with which they were familiar. I used to wonder why these people introduced this peculiarity in jest, and whose pronunciation it was supposed to imitate, I have since come to the conclusion that my boyhood's friends must have heard these pronunciations in their youth — say from twenty to thirty years before my time, which would bring us back to the forties and fifties of last century. Another possibility is that the generation to whom I am referring did not as a matter of actual personal experience hear this interchange of v- and w-, but that they took them over from Dickens. The forms which I have noted are the following, though I have come across many others from the fifteenth century onwards : — Palladius, 1420, vyves 'wives', 25. 669; Bokenam, 1441, valkynge, Ann, 540, veye, Ann, 565 ; avayte ' await ', Marg. Paston, ii. 249. 1465 ; Lord Lovel's Will, vyne ' wine', L. D. D. 17. 12, Oxf., 1455 ; Prynce of Valys, Gregory, 1450-70, 192; Reception of Cath. of Ar., 1501, vele 'weal', 415; Machyn, the Cockney Diarist, has vomen, 56, 59, &c., Volsake ' Woolsack ', 91, veyver ' weaver ', 83, Vestmynster, 86, Vefyngton ' Whittington ', 96, voman, 98, Vossefer 'Worcester', 102, Voderoffe, otherwise Woodroffe, 303. Elphinston notes the habit of confusing v and w among Londoners, but, while disapproving, does not assert that it is confined to vulgar speakers only; Walker regards the practice as 'a blemish of the first magnitude', but says that it occurs among the inhabitants of London, • not those always of the low order '. I have noted the following early examples of w- for original v- : — St. Editha, wex 'vex', 47, awowe 'avow', 864; Bokenam, wenger ' avenger ', Ann. 476, wyce ' vice ', Fth. 42 ; Marg. Paston, wochsaf, i. 49, i- 354; Gregory, wery 'very', 192; Cely Papers, were 'very', 50, ANTIQUITY OF 'j^- 'SOUND FOR -A-, -«-, ETC, 293 whalem 'value', 73, Wyllars 'Villiers', 76; Machyn, welvet 'velvet', 6, II, 12, 19, &c., walance 'vallance', woyce 'voice', 58, weklle 'victuals', wacabondes, 69, mergers, 141, waluw, 186, wue 'view', 293. B. Combinative Changes without Loss or Addition, -si-, -ti-, that is [-si-, -sg-], also su = [qju], become ' sh ' [JJ. The examples date from the middle of the fifteenth century. Marg. Fasten — sesschyonys ' st&svms', i. 178, 1450, conschens ' conscience ', ii. 364, 366, 1469 ; Cely Papers — proses schc hen, 113, pertyschon ' partition ', 57, partyshon, 1^'^, jessychens, 23, restytuschon, 152, oblygaschons, 114, commyngaschon, 5, derecschons, 137; Letters and Papers i — huisshers 'ushers', 136. 1501; Admiral Sir Thos. Seymour — instrocshens„%\.. Pprs., Hen. VIII, i. 779. 1544 ; Thos. Pery to Mr. R. Vane — commy- shm,'EX\\s ii. 2. 140. 1539; Gabr. Harvey's Letters — ishu 'issue', 13. 1573-80 j Q. Elizabeth, Letters to James VI (1582-1602) — alteragon, 2, expectafon, 3, execugon, 3 ; Marston, What you Will, 1607 — caprichious. Act V, Sc. i. The following are all from the Verney Memoirs : — indis- creshons, disposishons, Mall V., ii. 380. 1647 ; suspishtously, Lady V., ii. 245. 1646; condishume 'condition', Mrs. Isham ii. 206; menishone, M. Faulkiner, ii. 56; /ondashon, Lady Sydenham, ii. loi ; mentshoned ' mentioned'. Lady Sydenham, ii. 162 ; hobbkgashons, ibid. ii. 125, ' obli- gations '; adishon, Mary V., iii. 28. 1650; condishon, Mall V. (Sir Ralph's sister), iii. 213. 1655; possestion, Gary Stewkley (Verney), iii. 434. 1656; pashens. Lady Hobart iv. 56. 1664. Cooper, 1685, notes that ci, ce, ti have the sound of sh in antient, artificial, conscience, magician, ocean, Egyptian, essential, pacience, &c. Jones, 1701, says that ocean is pronounced oshan, and sh also in issue. Lady Wentworth writes: — Queen of Prushee, 63, exprestions, 50, pation 'passion', 49, faiion 'fashion', i6g,Prutia, 1 18, PrwAbw (Lady Strafford), 243. Baker,inTrue Spelling, says that dictionary is pronounced dixnery. This last form indicates a pronunciation now extinct so far as I know. The above examples are quite sufficient to establish the early development of the present-day pronunciation. Initial su- = [sjii] becomes -' shu- ' = [Ju]. The earliest examples oish- spellings, initially, which I can record, date only from the late sixteenth and middle seventeenth centuries. The first is found in the AUeyne Papers — sheute 'suit', J. AUeyne, 159-, p. 16; the next are from the Verney Memoirs : — shur ' sure ', Gary V., ii. 71. 1642 ; shuer, Lady Sydenham, ii. loi ; sAuite (of clothes), Luce Sheppard, iii. 1653; shewer, Mis. Sherard, iii. 324. 1657; shewtid 'suited', ibid. iii. 325. 1657. Mrs. Basire writes ashoure, 112 (1653), shut 'suit', 132 (1654). Cooper mentions the pronunciations shure, shugar, 'facilitatis causa'. Jones says that sh- is pronounced in assume, assure, censure, consume, ensue, insure, sue, suet, sugar. The careful pronunciation 'according to the spelling' has been restored now in some of the above, such as suit, suet, consume, &c. 194 CHANGES IN CONSONANTAL SOUNDS -di- [dj] becomes [dz]. Present-day usage varies considerably as to the pronunciation of this combination in different words. Thus, while soldier, grandeur are pretty generally pronounced [souldza, graendza] we do not, for the most part, say [iraliM, jhdzan, /dz9t, oudzas] for immediate, Indian, idiot, odious. The ' careful ' artificial pronunciation of these and other words which is now generally affected is, however, quite recent I am only able to offer comparatively few spellings, and only one of these earlier than the seventeenth century — Machyn's sawgears 'soldiers', 302 — ^to prove the [dz] pronunciation. The Verney Memoirs furnish the-foUowing : — teges ' tedious ', Mall V., ii. 381. 1647 ; sogers ' soldiers ', Lady Sussex, ii. 105, 153. 1642. Jones, 1 701, says that contagious, soldier, Indian, are pronounced contages, soger, Injan. Lady Wentworth writes sogar 'soldier', 113, emedgetly ' immediately '. Bertram, 1763, transliterates (for Danes) soldier, Indian, could you, had you, as soldsj'er, indsjan, kudsju, hxdsju. The last two examples are interesting as showing the same colloquial pronunciation of final -d, followed hyy [j] in the next word of a sentence, as we now employ — [kiidzu, hsedza]. Walker, Rhet. Gr., 3rd ed., 1801, says that polite speakers always .pronounce edjucate, verchew, verdjure, and that they ought also to say ojeous, insidjeous, Injean. John Kemble, according to Leigh Hunt, Autobiogr. i. 180, said 'ejus', ' hijjus', 'perfijjus'. [^] becomes [z]. This occurs chiefly in such words as pleasure, measure, where, origin- ally, u was pronounced [jii], and in hosier, br osier, &c., though in the latter group probably [houzw, breezw], &c., are more common. Cary Verney, Mem. ii. 62. 1642, writes pleshar, plesshur, and Jones says that ^sh ' — here, clearly [z] — is pronounced in measure, leisure, brasier, glasier, hosier. -nf- becomes -mf-, -kn- becomes -tn-. The assimilation of the point -n- to m before a following lip-consonant is a natural one, and may be heard even at the present time from persons who are not careful speakers, in rapid utterance. Thus, one may occa- sionally hear ' all om board ', ' he 's im bed ', &c. The following examples are worth noting as showing the tendency at work in the middle of words : — imphants ' infants ', Wilson, A. of Rhet. 52.; Lady Wentworth writes comfution 'confusion', W. Pprs. 113. 1710; Twitienham 'Twickenham' is found in Verney Mem. iv. 417. 1687; Lady Wentworth writes Twitnam, W. Pprs. 49. 1705, and this form is common in the eighteenth century, and often found in Pope's poems and letters; Lady W. writes Lord Barily for Berkley, 174. 1711. C. Loss of Consonants. Loss of the Initial Aspirate. In discussing this question we must distinguish between h- in stressed syllables and in unstressed, and further between words of pure English 'DROPPING THE h-' 295 origin and those from French or Norman French, It is doubtful whether the latter were pronounced with an initial aspirate originally. As regards words of English origin, it is only in respect of stressed syllables that the question of ' dropping the h- ' arises. In unstressed syllables, e. g. the second element of compounds, and words such as Pronouns and Auxili- aries, which more often occur in unstressed positions in the sentence, the loss of h- is very' early, and at least as early as the thirteenth century is frequently shown by the spelling to have taken place in Pronouns {madim for made him) in the second elements of compounds {^-ham and -urn, &c., often confused in early forms of PI. N.s). The question, then, is when did the tendency arise to pronounce \ill for hill, or 'ome for home, &c., when these and other words occur as independent words in the sentence ? Norman scribes are very erratic in their use of h- in copying English manuscripts, and we therefore cannot attach much importance to thirteenth- or even to early fourteenth-century omissions of the letter which occur here and there. The forms in Norf. G.'s (1389), alf a pound, 80, and alpenny, 98, seem genuine. I have found comparatively few examples in the fifteenth century of spellings without h- ; even the Celys, although they write h- where it is not wanted, do not omit it so far as I have noted. An unmistakable ' dropping ' seems to be owsold ' household ', in the Will of Sir T. Cumberworth, Line. Dioc. Docs. 1451 ; Margaret Paston has asiely, ii. 143. 1463. She also writes erafiyr 'hereafter', i. 530. 1460, but as she does not write ere for here, the loss of h- in the former word is probably to be set down to lack of stress. The form erefter also occurs in a letter of Q. Mary of Scotland (daughter of Hen. VII), in 1503, Ellis i. I. 42, and the same letter contains the spelling &ulde for Ao/<;?, a genuine instance of ' dropping the h '. Fifty years later, the Cockney Machyn has a fine crop of A-less forms: — ede ' head', 29, alff^ 'half, 13, 19, ard, 107, J// 'hit', 139, alpeny, 7, Amton courte, 9, elmet 'helmet', Allalows 'AH Hallows', 61. Cooper does not include the loss of initial h- among his traits of ' barbarous dialect '. I have not noted any examples in the Verney Mem. except ombel 'humble', Cary V., ii. 63, and yumer 'humour', where the absence of the h- in pronunciation was normal ; Lady Wentworth also writes Umble, W. Pprs. 47, for Humble, a family name^ doubtless on the analogy of the Adjective, andyoumore, ^20, youmored, 107, 320. The restoration of an aspirate in the last word is a trick of yesterday, and I never observed it until a few years ago, and then only among speakers who thought of every word before they uttered it. Mrs. Honour, in Tom Jones, writes ■■ — ' mite not ave ever happened ' ; ' that as always ad', the last word being the only one stressed, except ai ome. This phrase is still pronounced [atoum] by excellent speakers, and aidm is found as early as Layamon, c. 1 200. In the letter written by Mr. Jackson's fiancde in Roderick Random, chap, xvi, there is not a single h- left out, although several are wrongly introduced, neither is there any in the letter written by Mr. Jonathan Wild to Letitia in Fielding's Life of that gentleman. Later in the century Elphinston, 1787, notes that 'many Ladies, Gentlemen and others have totally discarded ' initial h- in places where 296 CHANGES IN CONSONANTAL SOUNDS it ought to be used; Walker, 1801, also draws attention to the ha,bit, which he attributes chiefly to Londoners, and Batchelor does the same. The above evidence is too slight to found much upon, but so far as it goes, and its negative character is of some value, it would appear that the present-day vulgarism was not widespread much before the end of the eighteenth century. The gap in the evidence between Machjm and two hundred years later is remarkable. The practice, which apparently did exist in Machyn's day in London, must have been confined to a limited class. The evidence, from the spelling, for the wrongful addition of h- is, as we shall see, far more copious. It may be remarked that the habit of omitting initial h- is common to all Regional dialects except those of the North. In Modified Standard also, this was very widespread when I was a boy, even people, below a certain rank in society, who were fairly well ' educated ' being very shaky in this respect. This state of things has been very noticeably altered in the last few decades, presumably by the efforts of the schools. Loss of - ^^^ ^^^ of oir neighbours, Mrs. Basire, no. 1651, According to Jones, 1701, -/ is omitted at the end of rapt, script, abrupt, bankrupt, corrupt, manuscript; distinct, strict, direct, afflict, reflect, respect, sect, &c., &c. He gives the pronunciation of pageant as pagin, or pageen. Lady Wentworth — prospeck, 62; Peter W.. — strick 'strict', 255; Lady W. — richis ' richest ', Lord Dyzer ' Dysart ', tex ' text ', Lady W. 221. 1711; Baker, 1724 — Egip, poscrip, ballas ' h&WisX' ; Pope rhymes sex — neglects, Epilogue to the Satires, Dial. 1, 15-16. 1738. Elphinston says that / cannot be clearly heard in distinct, but has not quite disappeared in distinctly. Loss of final -t. kerchys 'kerchiefs', Bokenam, St. Cecil, 862. r44i ; kersche and nekkerchys, M. Paston, ii. 342. 1469 ; Sant Toivleys ' St. Olaves ', Machyn, 118; masties 'mastiffs', G. Harvey's Lttrs. 18. 1573-80; Marston — handkerchers, Ant. and Mell., Pt. ii. Act n, Sc. i, 1602 ; masty. Middle- ton's Trick to Catch the Old One, i. 4 (1608) ; Lady Sussex — baly, Verney Mem. ii. 156. 1642 ; Baker, 1724 — handkercher, mastee 'mastiff' ; Jones, 1701 — mastee, bailee, hussee, or hussy ' housewife '. Loss of final -b. We no longer pronounce -b in comb, lamb, jamb, &c., nor in inflected forms of these words before a vowel, such as combing, lamiing, &c. On the other hand, we have restored the b in Lambeth, originally Lambhefi with the South-Eastern or Kentish form of O.E. hyp, a landing-place or wharf. As early as r 418 Archbishop Chichele writes Lamhyth, Ellis i. i. 5; and in 1534 a letter from Archbishop Cranmer, though not, unfortunately, preserved in his own handwriting, contains the form Lameth, Ellis iii. 2. 319; lameskynnes occurs in Rewle of Sustr. Men., 1450. 49 ; to clyme ' climb', Euphues, 185. 1580. lamme, Gabr. Harvey's Lttrs. 135, lamskin, ibid. 14. 1573-80; to come it = 'comb', Pen. Verney, V. Mem. ii. 177. 1642. Cooper, 1685, notes that -b is lost in climb, dumb, lamb, limb, thumb, tomb, womb. In limb and thumb the b is unhistorical, the O.E. forms being lim, pUma. The explanation of the spelling in these two words may possibly be that the final -b was once pronounced, having been developed accord- ing to the tendencies illustrated on p. 309, below. Loss of Consonants between Vowels, or after Consonants before a following Vowel. Loss of open consonants. St. Editha, 1420 — senty ' seventy ', 414, swene = sweven ' dream ', 906, godmores 'godmothers', 2215, pament 'pavement', 2027; Caxton, Jason — pament, 166. 27. 1477; Machyn — Denshyre, 39, Lussam 'Lewisham'; Marston — / marie 'marvel', E. Hoe 3. 2. 1605; Jones gives Dantry as the pronunciation of Daventry ; Cary Stewkley — senet 'seven nights, se'nnight', Verney Mem. iv. 434. 1656; Aubrey, Lives (1669-96), has Shrineham ' Shrivenham' Berks.j ii. 47, Clark's Ed. LOSS OF 'A' IN NIGBT AUB BROUGHT, ETC. 305 Loss of d between vowels. The form Id ship for ladyship occurs in Congreve's Way of the World, Act III, Sc. iv, said by a mincing waiting-woman, and in Tom Jones, said by Mrs. Honour, Sophia Western's waiting-woman. As this is the only evidence I can produce for this form, it is probably to be regarded as a vulgarism. Loss o;^ h + t. We must distinguish between the treatment ot the combination -ht— (a) when preceded by original front vowels, e. g. in night, light, &c., and {6} when preceded by back vowels, e. g. in daughter, bought, &c. In the former case the sound represented by -h- disappeared in Southern English at least as early as the fifteenth century, in spite of the statements of some of the seventeenth-century Orthoepists ; in the latter case there were two developments — (i) total disappearance of the con- sonant before -/, and (2) a change to the sound -f-. The latter develop- ment is treated above, p. 288. The disappearance of the consonant is shown in the occasional spellings, both by the omission of the letter -h- in words where it belongs historically, and by the introduction of -h- or -gh- in words where no sound ever existed between the vowel and the following -/ — Wright for ' write ', abought for ' about '. (a) Loss of h before t when preceded by a front vowel. Curiously enough, the earliest proofs I have found of the disappearance of the consonant — here a front-open-voiceless [j] — in the combination •ight, consist of the introduction of the consonantal symbols where they do not historically belong. In the following list the two types of spelling are enumerated indiscriminately, in chronological order, since they both go to establish the same thing. Marg. Paston — wright ' write ', ii. 29, 1461, &c., &c., also E. of Surrey, Letter to Wolsey, St. Pprs. Hen. VIII, pt. ii. 39, 1520, Sir Thos. More, Ellis i. I. 199; quight. Rede me, &c., 1528; lyte 'light', Elyot's Gouer- nour 2. 355 ; whight ' white ', Cavendish, L. of Wolsey, 23, 1557 ; baight ' bate ', Whetstone's Remembr. of Gascoine, Steele Glasse, p. 24, 1577 ; weight rhymes fate, Habington's Castara 134, height rhymes state, ibid. 96, 1634; Henry Verney — to wryght,YeTney Pprs. 190, 1637; Spenser constantly writes quight, bight ' bite ', &c., and rhymes fght, &c., indiffer- ently with white, Sec, or with quite, &c. (b) Loss of-h- -)- t when preceded by a back vowel. My evidence for this is earlier than for (a). Already in the thirteenth century hroute 'brought' is found in Lajamon, and naut 'naught' in Hali Meidenhed, 1225, dowter 'daughter' in Songs and Carols, 1400, while the spelling ^/cg-to 'foot' is found in W. of Shoreham. Marg. Paston has kawi 'caught', i. no, 1450, abowght 'about', ii. 29, 1461, ought 'out', ii. 341, 1469, abaught, ii. 362, 1499; dowttyr, Cely Papers 105; Henry VIII writes abought in 15 15, EUis i. i. 126; Elyot's Gouernour — dought 'doubt', i. 35, cloughts, 1. 247; Gabr. Harvey — droute 'drought', Lttrs. 72, and thoat ' ihoMghX' , ibid. 15; J. AUeyn, AUeyn Pprs. — dater, datter, p. 15, 159- ; Anne Denton, Verney Mem. iii. 73 — dater 'daughter', 1650; Wm. Roades, V. Mem. 3o6 CHANGES IN CONSONANTAL SOUNDS iii. 274 — slater 'slaughter', 1656. Mrs. Basire has doter 'daughter', 112 (1653). D. Addition of Consonants. Development of w- initially before M.E. 6^ The word one and its old Gen. the Adv. once [wan], &c., are curiosities in Received Standard, being the only forms of their kind. The normal development of O.E. an is heard in o«-ly and al-o««, and it is evident that the corresponding form of one [on] was in use in the Standard English of the seventeenth century, alongside the other type, that from which our present form is derived. The pronunciation [wan] or its equivalent, at any rate a pronunciation with initial w-, seems to be the sole form now in use in stressed positions in the various rustic dialects apart from those of the North, which are [en, jen], &c. In some it is, no doubt, indigenous, in most it must have been borrowed from Received Standard. The development of the form [wan] is not altogether easy to follow. It is certain, however, that it owes its main feature — the initial ' w- ' — to what is called a strong rounded on-glide, which in time became a defi- nite independent lip-back consonant. It is strange that this word should be the sole survivor of its type in Received Standard, strange also that it is not recognized in the official spelling. The first point may strike us as yet more remarkable when we call to mind the words only and alone, which, though almost completely isolated from their parent by form and meaning, were formerly closely associated with it by both of these ties ; the second is the more astonishing when we note that a very similar tendency which overtook o^ preceded by h- (in holy, hot), &c., actually has been recorded in the orthodox system of spelling in the words whole, whore, although no trace of any lip consonant {w) survives in any form of Standard English, in any words of this class. But although at the present time there is only one word which retains the w-type which began originally with a-, and none originally beginning with ho-, we shall see that down well into the seventeenth century at least, other words, as one would expect, also show this type of pronunciation, so far as can be judged by the occasional spellings. We may well ask where our solitary [wan] came fi-om, and to a great extent Echo answers — where ? From what Regional dialect the tendency arose we cannot say at present. The earliest spelling of the wone form I have found so far is in St. Editha (Wilts.), and other instances of the w- spellings in this and other words will be found below from other fifteenth-century texts of Westerly origin. But do we seek to draw any conclusions from this, behold the Cely Papers, in the same century, written for the most part by Essex people, also furnish examples. Still it is true that most of my fifteenth-century examples are from texts written in the West of England, and we may make what we can of that fact. If we turn to the facts of the Modern dialects, as they are recorded in Wright's Engl. Dial. Gr., they do not, I think, point to anything definite — the ic-forms of words like oats, &c., seem to be peppered about, more or less at random, among the Regional dialects. This, like so many other problems of its kind, will never be PRONUNCIATION OF 'ONE' 30^ settled by limiting our investigation to the Modern dialects. Not until we know much more than is known at present of the details of the distribu- tion of dialectal peculiaries in the M.E. period and in the fifteenth century will these questions be solved. The words of which I have found spellings with w- before original initial are M.E. oon ' one ', oonly ' only ', othe ' oath ' ; while those with an initial A- of which I have found wA- spellings are Aool ' whole ', Aoom ' home ', /looi ' hot '. I put them into two separate lists. Forms with w- of ' one ', Sfc, ' oath ', Sfc. St. Editha, 1420 — won 'one', 1835, 2302, 3086, 3103; wonlyche, 3529, wothe, 2100 ; Audelay's Poems, 1426 — won, p. 38 ; Exeter Tailors' Guild, 1466 — won, 322, woth, 322; Cely Pprs., 1475 — whon, ^■^,whone, 24, ' one ' (the Celys often write wh- for w-, cf. p. 313) ; Henry VIII, Letters, Ellis i. i — won, p. 126, 1515, and won, woon, i. 2. 130, 1544; Thos. Pery, Letters — wo«*, Ellis ii. 2. 140, 143, 1549; Latimer's Ser- mons — such a worn, 5, 7, 32; Machyn, 1550-63 — won, 125; Q. Elizabeth, Transl. — won, 74, wons, 4, 1593 ; W. Faunte, AUeyn Pprs. — ihuch a on (= w-\ p. 32, 159- ; Verney Mem. — a meane wan. Sir R. V. ii. 76, 1642; woris 'one's', Lady Sydenham, ii. 100, 1642; Wentw. Pprs., Lady Strafford — won, 213, 214, 1711, 280, 1712. Cooper, 1685, includes wuis ' oats ' among his list of dialectal forms. Forms with who, Ifc, for old ho-. St. Editha — wholle 'whole', 3368; Bp. Bekinton, 1442 — whome 'home ', Lttrs., p. 80 ; Syr Degrevaunt — whome, 1. 929 ; Sir J. Fortes- cue — whome, 153; Cely Pprs. — wolde' old', 22, 1479; Rede me, &c., 1528 — whore, whoredom, passim, whoate, 51, 'hot', whole, wholy, 61, wholines, 85, 86, wholy ' holy ',116, &c. ; Latimer's Serm. — whomlye, 134, whore, whoredom, 160 ; Lever's Serm. — what ' hot', 126, 1550 ; Ascham, Scholemaster — wholie ' ■whoWy ' , 92, 1563-8; Lord Burghley, Letters — whott 'hot', Ellis ii. 3. 99, 1582; Sir Thos. Smith, Rep. Angl.— whoi, 70, 1565 ; Peele, Edw. I, Malone Soc. — whoi, 2389, whote, 1212, 1591 ; Q. Elizabeth, Lttrs. J. VI — wholy, 27, 1593; Spenser — whott, F. Q., Bk. ii. Cant. v. 18; Mulcaster, 1583 — 'mere ignorance writeth so unwarielie whole for hole which (ought) to begin with h- ', Elementarie, p. 155; Henry Verney, V. Mem. ii. 355, 356, writes whome 'home', 1647. Cooper, 1685, notes hwutier 'hotter' as belonging to 'barbarous dialect ' and to be avoided. The Combination so' becomes swo ; scou- [sku] becomes [skwu-]. Bp. Pecok's Repressor, 1449, has the form swope ' soap ',1.127. This must be regarded as a purely Regional form of a type which apparently never got a footing in the London dialect or in Common Literary English. Pecok's English is decidedly Western in type, in so far as it departs from the London form. Cooper records the pronunciation squrge ' scourge ', ' facilitatis causa '. X 2 3o8 CHAISTGES IN CONSONANTAL SOUNDS 6'- initially becomes wo [wu] ; ho'- becomes who [whfi-]. Whatever may be the case in Regional dialects, the instances are rare in the London dialect and Literary English. I have noted wgther 'other'. Rede me, &c., 1528, 22, 27, 32, &c. ; also in a letter from Thos. Pery, Ellis ii. 2. 146, 1539. Under this heading may be mentioned Wolskr ' Ulster ', St. of Ireland, St. Pprs. Hen. VIII, p. 7, 1515. In Gabriel Harvey's Lttr. Bk. 'hood ' is written whudd, p. 125. I re- member, as a boy, hearing a domestic pronounce ' Red Riding Wood' = Hood. In Chapman's Mons. d'Olive, Wks. i. 246, whoote occurs for 'hoot', 1606. Development of y [j] initially before Front Vowels. A certain number of words occur written with y- in various writers, between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries inclusive. I do not propose to deal with M.E. forms here. This feature is perhaps more character- istic of the Western dialects, but traces of it are found in Cely Papers, and it penetrates into the London dialect and the Received Standard of the sixteenth and following centuries. One loxva—yearth — as will be seen from the particulars below, is very persistent, and may perhaps be regarded as a Kentish or South-Eastem form originally — cf. M.E. (Kentish) j/fr/^e, &c., whereby* represents the old diphthong eo. I have noted the following examples of y- forms : — St. Editha — jende 'end', 1. 1846; Coventry Leet Bk., 1430, ^euery 'every', p. 131; Bokenam— ^yor/;^ 'earth'; Shillingford— ^yer^ 'early', i6,j/«««« ' even', i6,_j'«je'ease', 40; Cely Papers— ^ye/Zifi' ' ells ' ; Recept. Cath. of Ar., 1501— ;^«/ 'east', Lttrs. and Pprs. i. 394; Thos. Pery — yendingjYXx^ ii. 2. 140, 1539; Latimer's Serm.—^^re 'ere', 56,yearth 'earth', 52; Edw. VI, Eirst P. B.—yer 'ere', Joh. viii, y earth, Venite, Te Deum, &c., &c. ; Machyn has yerl ' earl ' frequently throughout his Diary; Lever's Serm., xe^ip— year the, tt-^, y earthly, 61; Butler, 1634, warns against yer 'ere' a.nd yerst 'erst'; Mall Yem^y—y earnestly, V. Mem. ii. 381, 1647 J Mrs. Ishzm—yeare ' ear', V. Mem. iv. 118. 1665 ; Cooper, 1685, puts yerb 'herb' and yearth under his forms which illus- trate 'Barbarous Dialect'; in 1749 (Letter 195), Lord Chesterfield mentions yearth as an example of the pronunciation of the Vulgar Man, which ' carries the mark of the beast along with it ' ; Goldsmith, in the Essay 'Of Various Clubs', Busybody, 1759, makes a Club member tell a story of what a noble Lord said to him — ' There 's no man on the face oi 'Ca.t yearth' , &c. ; young Squire Malford, in Humphrey Clinker, 1771, writes yearl ' earl ' (in italics) in a letter, evidently indicating a con- temporary pronunciation which he did not use himself; Elphinston, 1787, mentions yearth and yerb as current both in Scotland and England, though not in good usage. It is evident that some of these forms were once fairly widespread, and that not only in provincial usage. At the present time, the only one which still survives among good speakers is year for ear, and that is fast becoming archaic, and is heard less and less. ADDITION OF FINAL AND MEDIAL CONSONANTS 303 Addition of Consonants. Finally, especially after -r, -n, -m, -I, -s, -f. Falladius, 1420 — Spaniald 'Spaniard' for Spanyol, yg. 409; St. Editha — -Jaylardes, 2923, to past away; Bury Wills — wochsaft, 17; Capgrave's Chron. — lynand 'linen', 108, ylde, 257; Sir J. Paston — ilde ' aisle ' ; Marg. Paston — wyld ' will ', i. 83, com&e Vb. Inf., iv. 78 ; Short Engl. Chron., 1465 — Lymoste, 65, 'Limehouse'; Gregory's Chron., 1450-70 — loste, 215, patent 'paten', 86; Cely Pprs. — Clifte 'Cleave' PI. N. GIos. r6i ; Cr. of Knt. of Bath-/^/c?e, 397 ; R. Pace to Card. Wolsey — ^jj'wj/, Ellis iii. i. 199; Lord Berners' Froissart — finekd downed, i. 25 ; St. of Irel., St. Pprs. Hen. VIII, iii — whylde 'while', p. rS, 1513 ; Thos. Pery — varment 'vermin', Ellis ii. 2. 148, sermonte 'sermon', 154; Machyn, 1550-63 — .Sa^^/(f 'Sackville', 153; Gabr. Harvey, Lttrs., 1573-80 — surgiant 'surgeon', 23; Ascham, Tox. — grafte Vb., earlier graffe, p. 56; Wilson, Arte of Rhet. — gallands 'gallons', 155; Euphues — visard, 319, lombe 'loom', 293, margent, 270, mushrompe, 62 ; E. of Shrewsbury — orphant, Ellis ii. 3. 60, 1582 ; Q. Elizabeth, Lttrs. to J. NY— for the nonest 'nonce', 91. 1593 ; Marston, Anton, and Mell., Pt. 2, Act 11, So. iv — orphant, 1602 ; Shakespeare, First Fo\.—vilde ' vile ', Mids. N. Dr. i. i, Merry W. iv. v. Hen. IV, Pt. i, 3, &c., &c.; vildely. Second Pt., Hen. IV, i. ii, 11. ii; Spenser — vylde, F. Q., Bk. vi, Cant. i. i, and it rhymes milde, Bk. iii, Cant. viii. 34, &c. ; Donne (1573-1631) rhymes vilde 'vile' — child, Elegie xiii. 7 and 8; Verney Mem. have: — schollards. Sir R. V. ii. 21, 1641 ; micklemust, M. Faulkiner, ii. 52, 1642; generald 'General', ii. 91, 1642; Mrs. Eure; the hold yeare ' whole ', Pen. Denton, iii. 229, 1655 ; lofte ' loathe ', Mrs. Isham, ii. 220, 1645; lemonds. Luce Sheppard, iv. 29, 1662; night gownd, Cary Stewkley, iv. 442, 1688; homb 'home', Cary Stewkley, iv. 35, 1663; Butler, Hudibras, Pt. i, 919-20, rhymes wound — swound ' swoon ', 1664 ; Swift thymts ferment — vermin, The Problem ; y Jones, 1701, seems to take clift as the normal form, but says it may be written cliff; Wentw. Pprs., Peter W. — 'made the house laught', &c., in, 1710, 'not soft (' safe ') for me ', 103, ibid., sarment, P.W. 221, i7ii,and 321, Lady W., 1 7 1 3, gownds, 284, Lady Strafford, 1 7 1 2 ; lost of time, P, W. 200, 1 7 1 1 ; — 'were liked (like) to have obtained', P. W. 104, 17 10; Lord Harvey, Mem. of Reign of George II, often writes Hulst for Sir Edward Hulse, cf. iii. 302, 315, 316; Elphinston puts down sermont, drownd (Inf.), gownd, scollard, wonst ' once', as vulgarisms; Pegge, 1814, regards as London vulgarisms verment, serment, nyst, margent. Addition of Parasitic Consonants between Groups of Consonants. Already in the middle of the thirteenth century we find dempt 'deemed', Gen. and Ex. 2038, drempte dremes, ibid. 2049. Eater examples are : — sumptyme 'sometime', St. Ed. 14; Cely Pprs. — Montgwmbre ' Mont- ' gomery ', 80, rembnant, 75 ; St. of Ireland, St. Pprs. Hen. VIII, iii — Lymbryk, p. 8, 1513 ; Archbp. Cranmer — combly ' comely ', Ellis i. 2. 37, 1533; "Thoe. Lever, Serm. — Humbles =z HomiMes, 65, 1550 Gabr, Harvey, Letters, ; 573-80 — maltconceived ' malconceived ', p. 67; Verney Mem. — clendlynes, t.a.d.y Hobart, iii. 78, 1644; Peter Wentworth— i?a/J« of Hambletm = 'Hamilton ', Wentw. Pprs. 238, 1712. 310 CHANGES IN CONSONANTAL SOUNDS Introduction of -w- (a lip-glide) between Consonant and follorwing Rounded Vowel. St. Editha has twoile, 2274, 2277; Cely Pprs. have apwoyntyd, 116, pwoyntement, 71; Bury Wills, gwory, 84 (1501); Butler, 1634, gives pronunciation bwoS for 'boy'; Wallis, 1653, says that after p and b, before 0, w is pronounced, but not by all speakers, nor in all words — pwot ' pot ', bwoil ' boil ', iwoy ' boy '. Lady Wentworth writes twilete 'toilette' = [twj/ln], perhaps in imita- tion of French pronunciation. Development of front-glide between g-, k-, and following Front Vowel, This may be expressed by Lady Hobart's spelling gearl = [gjerl] ?, V. Mem. iv. 54, 1644, but I give the form tentatively. Wallis, 1653, says that can, get, begin are pronounced cyan, gyet, begyin. Elphinston affirms that kyind, gyide, and the introduction of 'y' before the vowel in sky, can, card, skirt, guard, &c., are essential to a polite pronunciation. Walker, 1801, is very definite about the intro- duction of a ' fluent, liquid sound after k, c, or g hard before a and i, which gives a smooth and elegant sound to . . . and which distin- guishes the polite conversation of London from that of every other part of the island '. Walker expresses the pronunciation referred to by the spellings ke-ind, ke-ard, rege-ard. The words ' which require the liquid sound ' are : — sky, kind, guide, gird, girt, girl, guise, guik, card, cart, cap, carpenter, carnal, cartridge, guard, regard. I used to hear the pronunciations [kjad, gjadn], &c., as a boy, from a very near relation of mine, a most fastidious speaker, a lady born in 1802, who died in 1886. (Note in card, &c., the glide developed while a still represented a front vowel ; in kind, &c., it must have developed at some stage such as [ksemd < kjsemd].) Aspiration of Initial Vowels, popularly called '■putting in an h '. The ' incorrect ' aspiration of initial vowels, one of the commonest of vulgarisms, appears to be confined not merely to stressed words or syl- lables, but chiefly to those which have extra-strong stress in the sentence. It is rarely heard before words that are weakly stressed. The habit seems always to have been considered a vulgarism, and the few examples I have recorded are nearly all from provincial sources, or from the writings of persons who otherwise show signs of defective education and vulgar habits of speech. Norf. Guilds have herthe ' earth ', 35, a garland of hoke leaves, 117, &c. Another considerable number of instances occur in St. Editha (1420). These are: — Aoujt' out', 54, I(y9y ssche 'liish', 48, heyndynge ' ending', i, hende, 515, herlyche ' early', 270, hyiton 'eyes', 1892, hevelle ' evil ', 32, 34, Hyronesyde ' Ironside ', 3279, karme ' arm ', 41 29. Bokenam has herand 'errand', Marg. 108 1, and hangyr 'anger', Ag. 485. The Will of Sir T. Cumberworth, Lines., 1451, has haske Vb., Line. Dioc. Docs. 49.13; Gregory's Chron., hasche (the tree), 200 ; Cely Papers, howlde ' old ', 48 ; Marg. Paston, Aowyn ' own ', i. 438, hour ' our ', i. 439, howeth ' oweth ', ii. 26, 461, haskyd, ii. 26, hondyrstonde, ii. 32, tfie horn ' the 'DROPPING THE h' IN WHITE, ETC. 311 one', ii. 62, hewers 'ewers', ii. 75, herand, ii. 215. Machyn furnishes more examples than any other source, and has one excellent instance of the h- occurring in a strongly stressed word at the end of a sentence — ' a gret dener as I haue be hat ' ' at ', p. 2, which might be said at the present time by a certain kind of speaker, has, 139, hundershaft, 116, harme (of the body), 85, haskyd, 205, hanswered, 242, hetten 'eaten', 16, hoyth 'oath', 25, herth 'earth', 6, here 'ear', 40, Hambrose, 48. John Alleyn has hernest ' earnest ', AUeyn Papers 16, 159-. Lady Sydenham writes hobblegashons ' obligations ', Verney Mem. ii. 125. The evidence, such as it is, does not point to this habit being very widespread before the eighteenth century. The grammarians of the six- teenth, seventeenth, and early eighteenth centuries do not utter warnings against it, and the fact that it is not found in the English of Ireland or America also suggests that it gained currency rather late. Smollett, in Roderick Random, ch. xvi, makes Mr. Jackson's fiancee — ' a charming creature — writes like an angel' — introduce h- in her letters in hopjack ' object ', heys ' eyes ', harrows ' arrows ', harms ' arms ', which shows that when this book was written in 17 71 the practice was a recognized and common vulgarism. E. Voicing of Voiceless Consonants. Voicing 0/ Initial wh-, i. e. [w< w]. Popular^ called 'leaving out ° the h '. At the present time in the Received Standard as spoken in the South and Midlands, and in the Regional dialects of these areas, no distinction is made between whine and wine, between which and witch, white and Wight, &c. The only exceptions are those speakers who have been sub- jected to Scotch or Irish influence, or who have deliberately chosen to depart from the normal practice for their own private satisfaction. In the South and West we find zw-spellings, instead of wh- or hw, from an early period in M.E. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, which, white, &.C., are the usual spellings in the London documents, though in 1494 we find wich, 388, wen, 391, wero/, 388, in Cr. Knt. of Bath. We may, I think, dismiss the form ztiich as having probably arisen in positions of weak stress as a Relative Pronoun, but the others seem to illustrate the voicing. The form wich is very common in letters, wills, and other private and public documents in this and the following century, and it is suspicious because it is so often the only spelling of its kind. For instance, Marg. Paston writes wich{e), but otherwise wh-, and even qu-, a spelling which must have penetrated from the N.E. Midlands or lower Northern area, where it is usual, and was probably intended to express a particularly strong form of the voiceless consonant. Wete ' wheat ' occurs in Will of J. Buckland, Northants, 1450, L. D. D. 42. 13. The Celys, in Essex, might have been expected to pronounce ' wite ', &c., but such spellings seem not to occur in their letters, though wh- for original w- is frequent, and is indeed one of the features of these documents. The evidence is slight so far as the fifteenth century is concerned. In the next century Machyn has wyped ' whipped ', 8, warff ' wharf, 13, and the inverted speUing wheni is common. In Cavendish, L. of Wolsey, 312 CHANGES IN CONSONANTAL SOUNDS I have noted zr^ghi '■white', 148, wj/e ' why ', 157, and the inverted wAear iorwear, 154. In the Verney Papers I have noted only wick (1629) without h ; in the Verney Memoirs, which begin in the forties of the seventeenth century, we have anyware, Mary Gardiner, ii. 334, 1644, and wig 'whig', Edm. V., iv. 267, 1683. It is remarkable, if the habit of voicing was well established, that such independent spellers as the Verney family should not have recorded it oftener. It should be said that all the seventeenth-century writers on pronunciation assert that 'A' is pronounced in wA; a French writer (Alphabet Anglois, 1625) giving houiich as the pronunciation oi which. Wallis, 1653, Howel, 1662, and Cooper, 1685, to mention no more, all declare, in various ways, that wh is pronounced hw, &c. Lady Wentworth in 1709, W. Papers 99, writes wig 'whig'. Elphinston, in his various writings from 1765-87, admits, while he deplores, the complete ' disappearance of A ' in whale, what, &c. Dr. John- son in 1765 still believes that he 'hears the h'. Walker notes with regret the London use of w- for wh-. It would appear from the above that the voicing of wh- was not unknown in the fifteenth century, and that this became more and more widespread, though for a long time not universal in London and the surrounding counties. There were perhaps always, as now, a certain number of speakers who prided themselves on ' pronouncing the A'. Voicing of Voiceless Consonants ; Medially : between Vowels ; between a Vowel and a Coiisonant ; Finally. Some of the examples of voicing between vowels persist to the present day among some speakers. The forms are arranged chronologically without sub-classification. St. Editha, 1420, crebulle 'cripple', 432, 4347,_/9(/r>'rf 'fettered', 2301, hondynge 'hunting', 447, 4453, drongon 'they drank', 520, thyngeth ' seems ' for thynketh, thongedon ' thanked ' PI., 461, thonged, 43^2, y thenge 'I think', 3247, dronge 'drank', 1642, shalde 'shall', 532, servaunde, 2342, ' servant ', y-graundyd ' granted ', 809, peyndynge ' painting ', 1780, peyndud 'painted', 1781, &c., Egberde, 201, parde 'part', 517 (rhymes whoderwarde), comforde Pret., 1537, Dorsed 'Dorset', 2549 ; Bury Wills, \ifi3, jebardy, 163, 164, 165; Sir J. Fortescue, treded 'treated', 109, 145, entreded, 135 ; Bk. of Quintessence, /a^zfer, 8, 18 (twice); Gregory's Chron., 1450-70, radyfyde 'ratified',' 64, depudyd, 131, dalmadyke, 166, priest's dalmatic; Cely Papers, ^i^e^-^, 163, jebardy, 164, 165; Letlers and Papers, i, i/^g^, juberte, 397, endendith ' indenteth ', 388; Caxton, Jason >],Juiyter; Bury Wills, cobard, 98, 1504; Rede me, &c., 122, 1528, Consiantinoble ; Sir Thos. Viaxt, Jubardy, Letters, Ellis ii. i. 289 ; Line. Dioc. Docs., Will of J. Asserley, 1527, cobberdes ' cupboards ', 13. 61 ; ibid.. Will of R. Bradley, Leics., 1533, coberd, 161. 15; Bp. Fisher's Sermons, 1550, Constantinoble, 335 ; Machyn, 1550-63, sagiottes 'sackbuts', 78, hundyd, 292, elevant, 137, ctibard, 206, drynges ' drinks ', 208 ; J. Alleyn, comford, Alleyn Papers, 16; Verney Papers, debutye. Sir R. V., p. 56; Bullege 'Dulwich' is written by Ch. Massye, Alleyn Mem. 109, 1613; Verney Mem.: — prodisiants. Lady Sussex, ii. 88, 1642, combeanion, Pen.V., ii. 129, coberd. Lady Sussex, ii. 162, medigate 'mitigate', iii. 317, Mrs. Sherard, 1657 J I thang God, Cary Stewkley (Verney), iii. 437, 1656, VOICING AND UNVOICING 313 Dehity, Mrs. Isham, iv. 33, 1662; iemberall, Mrs. Basire, 141 (1655), comford, 134 (1655). Cooper, 1685, says that j in casement = z; Jones, I'joi, says 'd and p being like in sound, and 6 the easier and sweeter / does sometimes take the sound of 6, as in — Baptism, capable, culpable, passport ( = ' pass-board ') ! Cupid, Deputy, Gospel, Jasper, Jupiter, napkin '. Jones also notes ' Cubbard, nevew, Steven, a.nd provesy' = prophecy. Lady Wentworth writes prodistant ' protestant ', W. Papers 50, 1 705 ; Peter W., cenzure, 100, 1710, and Lady Strafford, prodistaiion, 208, 1712. In the comic letter of Mr. Jackson's fiancee in Roderick Random, ch. xvi, the lady writes Cubit for ' Cupid '. Elphinston mentions the pronuncia- tions proddestant, padrole, pardner as London vulgarisms. Mr. Bernard Shaw, in John Bull's Other Island, makes one of his Irish characters say ' prodestant' , but I doubt whether the d in this word is confined to Irish speakers of English. I hasten to add that Mr, Shaw does not assert that it is. F. UnToiciug of Consonants. A certain number of instances of unvoicing occur scattered through the texts I have examined. Some of these appear to be of the nature of dissimilative changes, to use an unsatisfactory term, due perhaps to an unconscious attempt at distinctness ; others may be due to some obscure analogy, while others are altogether inexplicable, unless they may be set down as Regional peculiarities. Some of these changes might appear hardly worth recording, but in some cases the same voiceless form appears in widely separate sources, and is therefore probably genuine; other isolated examples are recorded in the hope that future investigations may reveal more of them and throw light on their origin. Unvoicing 0/ Initial Consonant (at beginning of word, and at beginning of stressed syllable). Fochsave 'vouchsafe', Gregory 110; felwette 'velvet', ibid. 208; file ' vile ', Lady Sussex, Verney Mem. ii. 107 ; disadfantige, ibid. 108 ; full oifanity, ibid. 85, 1642; Fox hall ' Vauxhall', J. Verney, Verney Mem. iv. 357, 1685. Unvoicing of Final Consonant. St. Editha •.—y clepyt,^\ (two syllables), clepyt, 43 (two syllables), encreset, 190, scarmysshute (Pret.), 282 ; aspyet ' espied ' P. P., 554 ; twelj'e ' twelve ', 624; ayschette 'asked', 872; hulte (Pret.) 'held', 1277, &c.; byche 'to buy' = bigge, 1305, 1397 ; y-tolte (Pret.) 'told', 1830; feynte 'fiend', 2145; hleynte 'blind' Adj., 2731; Gregory, War draper, 196; Letters and Papers, ii. 72, Keper of the gret Warderop, 1485 ; incurrich, AUeyne Pprs. 16, 1591 ; Mrs. Elmes, Verney Mem., tvienty thousent etc., ii. 82. 1641 ; Lady Strafford, War dr ope, W. Papers, 314, 319, 1713; Peter Wentworth, iifc^««'/' beckoned', W.Papers, 431, 1714; seniing, 202, 1711. Medial Unvoicing. Ambassiter, Cavendish, L. of Wolsey, p. 7, probably owes / to the influence of the preceding s; optayne, 'obtain', Fortescue 144, Ascham, Tox. 103, is a combinative change before -t; puplishe. Letters and Papers, ii. 388, may be due to the analogy oipuple, a common spelling oi people; nefew, Doll Leake, Verney Mem. iv. 291, 1655, is probably a spelling- pronunciation in origin, here popularly expressed; it may still be heard. CHAPTER IX NOTES ON INFLEXIONS I Nouns. Fosseesive Case of Norms. In fourteenth-century London English the ordinary suflSx, as written by the professional scribes, is -es. In Feminines this suffix is sometimes omitted, of. Chaucer's In hope to stonden in his Ladye grace, &c. During the fifteenth century the suffix -es tends to be written more and more as -ys, -t's, both in private letters and official and literary documents. This is observable not only in Eastern texts but also in London docu- ments. See on this point, p. 269, above. More or less rustic productions of the West, such as St. Editha, often write -us. The ^yj-forms, however, while characteristic of Eastern texts from an early date in M.E., are very common everywhere in the fifteenth century. Since the vowel is often omitted, even in M.E., it appears that the suffix ceased normally to be pronounced as a separate syllable — except, as now, after -s, -ch, &c. — in Colloquial English by the beginning of the fifteenth century. On the other hand there were circumstances which tended to restore a syllabic pronunciation of the suffix, as -is = \iz\, well on into, perhaps to the end of, the century, and in poetry an occasional syllabic pronunciation is revealed by the rhyme and metre for two hundred years longer. The main points to be considered here are the confusion of the old Possessive suffix with the Possessive Pronoun j/j, the weak or unstressed form of hys, his ; the omission of the suffix -ys, -s, &c., in any form ; the various constructions in the inflexion of groups of words — e. g. the King 0/ England s son, &c. Confusion of Possessive Suffix with the Possessive Pronoun Masculine. From the moment that on the one hand the Pronoun his had lost the aspirate in unstressed positions, and on the other the Possess, suffix had become -is, -ys, there could be no distinction in pronunciation between a Noun inflected with the latter suffix and the same Noun followed by the weakened form of his. Thus confusion arose, and is revealed by the detachment of the suffix -ys from the Noun to which it belongs, and then by the spelling of this latter hys or his. The kyng hys sonne, &c., was felt as a definite construction and therefore so written. While this came to exactly the same as the kyngys sonne, the two constructions were HIS INSTEAD OF POSSESSIVE SUFFIX 315 doubtless recognized as distinct by the more careful speakers and writers. On the other hand the less critical scribes were often doubtful whether to write the suffix -ys joined on to the Noun or whether to detach it, and in this case whether to write ys as they and every one else pronounced, or hys to show that they knew what it meant. The result of the new construction was that what was meant as a genuine inflected Possessive, e. g. kyngys, &c., retained the vowel in pronunciation long after this had normally disappeared in such words. Thus as late as Shakespeare's L. L. Lost, we find, ' To shew his teeth as white as Whalw bone ', Act iv. It is probable that this occurred also in colloquial speech, helped also by the analogy of Possessives Vikt Jamesys. But after all, the construction with his, and the Noun with the old inflexion, were absolutely indis- tinguishable in pronunciation, and most speakers, possibly well into the seventeenth century, would have been hard put to it to say exactly which they intended. We find traces of the construction with his as early as Genesis and I Exodus {c. 1250), where the suffix is already separated, though joined toi the Noun by a hyphen — adame-is sune, 493, 3ai dune-is siden 'the sides off the hiir, 1295. This text is noteworthy for constantly writing the weak' forms of the Pers. Prons. without h-. Again, in the fourteenth century this construction is found, e.g. in Trevisa (c. 1387), to play with a chyld hys brouch. From the early fifteenth century onwards the construction is common, and it will be remarked that ys is used indifferently after Masculine and Feminine Nouns : — St. Editha : — Wortynger is tyme, 51, seynt Duns tone his lore, 751 ; Shil- lingford: — seynt Luke is dey, 5, Calston isfayre, 5, my lord of Excetre is tenants, 14; Marg. Paston : — Harlesdonys name, ii. 191, the knylhys sonne, ii. 240, my moder ys sake, ii. 364; Gregory's Chron. : — Seynt Edmonde ys Bury, 91, the queneys modyr, 232, no schoo apon no man ys fote, 238, my Lorde o/Warwycke ys brother, 230 ; Register of Oseney, oure lord pe pope-is commaundments, 6 1 ; Cely Papers : — Margaret ys doughter, 1 1 7 j Earl of Desmond (Lttr. to Henry VII, c. 1489-93), therle of Ormond is deppute (Lttrs. and Pprs., i, p. 382; Thos. Lord Dacrej 1521: — her Grace is requeste, Ellis ii. i. 282 ; Archbp. Cranmer, 1536 : — the Busshop of Rome his power, Ellis ii. 3. 27, the Busshoppe of Rome his lawes, Ellis iii. 3. 25 ; Machyn : — oneys ere 'one his ear', 64, the penterys nam, 105, the Bishop of London and Coventre ys wiff, 229; Ascham, Toxophilus : — on a man his tiptoes, 47, the Kinge his wisdome, 3S, an other his heeles, 47, the Kinge his foole, 50; Euphues : — Philantus his faith, ^'j , Fidus his hue, 277. Such phrases asforfesus Christ his sake are familiar in the Prayer Book. Sir Thos. Smith, Republ. Angl., 1583, has the daulphin of Fraunce his power, 19. A few examples from the seventeenth century must suffice to illustrate the survival of this construction. Dr. Denton has Dr. Read his treatise on wounds, Verney Pprs., 1639; Edmund Verney, Verney Mem. ii, p. 130, has my lord Parsons his sonne, 1641, and Sir Ralph V. has St. James his House, Verney Mem. iii. 236, 1655. In these cases his may be written as the most satisfactory way of inflecting words ending in -s and to avoid Parsonses, Jameses. Lady Wentworth has the Princ his 3i6 NOTES ON INFLEXIONS buirying, but makes no difficulty about writing St. Jamsis, 47. Lady Plyant in Congreve's Double Dealer, 1693, says, 'I am in such a twitter to read Mr. Careless his letter ', Act iv, Sc. iii. When this construction was well established and recognized as con- taining the Pron. his, the process was extended to the Fern, and the PI. We get Juno hir bedde, Euphues, 86; Mrs. Francis Jur^mariage, Lady Verney, Verriey Mem. ii. 378, 1647; andj/ow should translate Canterbury and Chillingworth thar books into French, Dr. Denton, Verney Mem. ii. 222, 1645. The Omission of the Possessive Suffix in Nouns. In M.E. the suffix -es, -ys, &c., is used commonly to inflect Nouns of all genders, but is sometimes omitted. This occurs most frequently in the M.E. period — (a) after names ending in -s, such as Moses ; {b) in old Feminines like ladye, where the -e is a survival of a Fem, Genitive suffix ; (c) as a survival of old Weak Nouns whose Gen. ended in -an, M.E. -en, but which have lost the -« of the ending ; (d) occasionally in old Nouns ending in -r, brother, fader, &c., which originally had no -es suffix. All these cases of flexiqnless Possessives occur in the Modern period, and there are certain additional categories which arise, viz. there is an extension of class (a) to words like hors{e), and there are other instances of omission which cannot be brought under any of the above classes. We may summarize the classes of flexionless Possessives as follows : — The suffix is often omitted — {a) in words ending in -s, where we now preserve it as a full syllable [izj; (b) before a word beginning with s- ; (c) in old Feminines, of which we have now only a few survivals in stereotyped phrases — Lady Chapel, &c. ; (d) in groups, when we should inflect the last word of the group — the duke of Somerset dqwther (which see below) ; («) in old -r viot&s— father, brother^&c. ; \f) in other words where no special reason can be assigned. It must be understood that in nearly all the above classes the inflected forms are more frequent, but the examples of omissions are sufficiently numerous to deserve recording. Some of the examples might be classified under more than one head. (a) Omission of Possessive Suffix in Words ending in -s. Siege of Rouen (c. 1420), Itors quarter, horse hedde, 18 ; Marg. Paston, my lord of Clarance man, ii. 372 (this might fall under (' lamhe, L. D. D. 153. 16. Horse. Shillingford, 5, Cr. Duke of York ; Lord Berners — a thousand horse (= soldiers here), i. 77 ; Cavendish, L. of Wolsey — vi of the beste horse, 285. Apple. Euphues — to bring forth apple, 113. No doubt used collect- ively. Thing. Gregory — alle thinge ; Lord Berners — to love god of whome we have all thinge, ii. 190. Thank. Q. Elizabeth — the two gentilmen I trust shal receave your thanke, Lttrs. to J. VI, 6g. Lady Wentworth has this twoe last poste, and ten wax candle. The former word perhaps owes its uninflected form to the consonantal com- bination — possibly Lady W. even pronounced it without the final -/ (cf. p. 303) — the latter may be used collectively, referring to a bundle or group of candles. A curious instance of an uninflected PI. after the word pair is a payre of coberd ' cupboards', in the Will of R. Bradley, Leicestershire, 1533, L. D. D. 161. 75. Exceptional Plurals in -s, I have noted the following exceptional use of the -s suffix : — hosys (instead of hosen, hosyn), Will of Sir Thos. Cumberworth, Lines., 1451, L. D. D. 51. 23;fotes 'feet', Palladius, 8. 200; Machyn — mottuns ' sheep ' (cf. also Pope — )velles 'calves', ii, swines, 11, satnons, 11, ees 'eyes', 204. This form is usually weak. Sir Edm. Verney, in 1639, actually writes in spight of our teeths, Verney Pprs. 244. The word riches, now taken as a PI. (having no Sing.), is in reality the French richesse. Bp. Pecok inflects it regularly in the PI. — ricchessis, i. 296, 297. The Change off to v before the Suffix of the Possessive and of the Plural. At the present time we do not make this change in the Possess. Sing., except in the phrases calve' s head, calve' s foot, but say calfs, wife's, wolf's. INTERCHANGE OF/ AND v IN SINGULAR AND PLURAL 323 &c. On the other hand, we pronounce the voiced ending, and express it in the spelling, in the Plurals, loaves, wives, wolves, calves, Sec, and usage varies in roofs, while in the PI. of koof, hooves is felt as archaic and more suited to poetry (of. Lady of Shalott) than to colloquial speech. There is no historical reason for the distinction between the Possess. Sing, and the Plural. In O.E. voiceless open consonants {s,/,/>) were voiced between vowels, so that normally all inflected cases, Sing, and PI., of the above words would have -»-, which in the Possess. Sing, and in the PI. would produce the forms [walvz, kovz, wai'vz], &c., when the vowel of the sufBx disappeared, and left -vs in contiguity. Our uSage now has generalized the /for the whole Singular and v for the Plural, apart from those words where the Sitigukr-type has been extended to the Plural as well. This is convenient and provides descriptive grammarians with their rule that ' words ending in -/form their Plural in -ves '. The habit was by no means fixed, however, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and the examples show that some speakers generalized / everywhere, both Sing, and PL, while others adhered to the ancient practice of voicing the/ in the Possess. Sing, and in the Plural alike. A few examples will suffice to show how unsettled was the usage. Plurals in -f(e)s. Lord Berners, wifes, i. 352 (but lyves, i. 356, wyves, i. 404) ; Elyot, wolfes, i. 22, lyfes, i. no, our selfes, i. 138; Machyn, beyffes ' beeves ', II, Ulyeffes, 74; Machyn also writes a-lyffe 'alive', 75; Cavendish, lyfs, 56, selfs, passim, heafes, 97 ; Ph. Henslow, tjoifes, AUeyn Mem. 29, 1593 ; Lady Vemey, wifes, Verney Mem. ii. 271, 1647. On the other hand, the voiced type is the more usual, and Shillingford includes under it the French word strife, of which he has a PI. form stryves, 98. Possessive Singular in -v(e)s. Marg. Paston, wyvis, ii. 365 ; Wilson, witus, 56, 206 ; Q. Elizabeth,j/o«r /?Wj/e«7(Sing.),Lttrs. to James VI, 7 1; Euphues, wo/«m, 322; Shakespeare (First Fol.), wiues, Merry Wives, iv. 5. The form oflyue in Lord Lovel's Will, 1455, L. D. D. 8. 4, 14, may be considered either as the survival of an inflected form (after if), or at least as based on the analogy of the inflected forms. Irregular Plurals. Under this head we include children, brethren, and several other Pis. of the same kind which are still found in Early Modern. Children is remarkable for having both the PI. -r- suffix — O.E. cildru, M.E. childre — and the weak PI. suffix -en. Brethren has a mutated vowel in the base and the weak PI. suffix. Several other words, mostly old Neuters, show in M.E. a PI. suffix -ren, that is a combination of the old -ru suffix, with the addition of -en. Such are O.E. lamb — lamhru, M.E. lambre, lambren; O.E. calf—cafru, M.E. calfre, calfren; O.E. xg ' egg ', PI. segru, M.E. eire, eiren. The group of words expressing family relationships, O.E./asrfer, modor, bropor, s{w)ustor, dohtor, all favour PI. forms in -en in the South in M.E. The weak sustren survives, as we shall see, well into the sixteenth century. Y 2 324 NOTES ON INFLEXIONS A few examples are given to illustrate the variety of usage with regard to some of these Pis. in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. M.E. eyren, &c., ' eggs' ; VaUadius, eyr on; Rewle Sustr. Men., «j'm, 86. 31 ; Bk. of Quint., eyrm, 4 ; Caxton, in the well-known Preface to the Aeneid, uses eyren to illustrate that this archaic form was still in use, but the London innkeeper in the story did not understand what was wanted until eggys were asked for. Gregory has eggyis. Sisiren, Sec. St. Editha, sustren ; Rewle Sustr. Men. sustryn, -in, 105. 27, &c. {sustris is the more frequent form); Pecok, sisiren; Wilson, sisierne. Brethren. St. Editha, britheren ; Pecok, bretheryn ; Gregory, bretheryn ; Fortescue, brotheryn, 137 ; Elyot, bretkern, Gou. 100, bredern, E.'s Will, 313 ; Bemers, bretherne ; Latimer, bretherne ; Machyn, bredurne ; Wilson, brefherne; Cavendish, bretherne. Children. Childeren, childeryn, St. Editha, Pecok, Fortescue, &c.; Machyn, Euphues, chylderne, childerne; Elyot's Will, childre, which is a survival of the O.E. and M.E. forms ; Coverdale has a Gen. PI. childers, and Edw. VI First P. B. has childers children in the Marriage Service. The spelling childre doubtless stands for [tjildr]. The rather rare PI. deytron ' daughters ' occurs in St. Editha. This shows mutation of the vowel (M.E. dehter), and the Wk, -en, II Adjectives. The inflexion of Adjectives, as regards case, has disappeared by the beginning of the fifteenth century, or, if it survives in poetry here and there for the sake of the metre, it must be regarded as archaic. A belated Genitive PI. occurs in the phrase God our oiler Creatour from a letter of Richard III to James III of Scotiand, Lttrs. and Pprs. i, p- 53i where aller represents M.E. allre, sometimes written alder, O.E. allra. French Fltirals. The addition of -j to the PI. of Adjectives, on the French model, which is rare in M.E., though there are a few instances in Chaucer (cf Short Hist, of Eng., § 319). In the fifteenth century I have found a not incon- siderable number of tbese Plurals, chiefly in legal and oflBcial documents. Some of the following are certainly more or less technical (legal) phrases, and are presumably taken straight from French legal documents. Others, again, are not to be explained in this way. Apparently the usage was extended from the legal cliches by certain writers, with a view to special elegance and correctness. It will be observed that the inflected Adj. usually follows the Noun, as in French, though this is not always the case. We may, I think, regard these -s Plurals as the result of a literary whim. They can hardly have had a real existence in uttered speech. The cases I have noted are : — Palladius, children cknnes, 9. 229 ; Shillingford, Utters patents, 77, 131 (legal documents); Will of Sir Thos. Cumberworth (Lines., 1451), prestes seculers. Line. Dioc. Docs. 53. 35 ; Rewle Sustr. Men., Ministris PLURAL AND COMPARISON OF ADJECTIVES 325 prouinciallis, 117. 36, gode maneris and honestes, loi. 14, certaines wommen, loi. 12, greuousis trespassts, loi. 24, deuowtes handmaydenes, 98. 1, ii of the most demures and wise sistris, 90. 26, it sistris vise, sad, and vertuouses of the Couent, 92. 13, massts conuentuales, no. 16, atpe secunde etgmsonges offeslis doublis, 114. \\,festis simplis or lasse hepofestis which be nat dowbles, 113. 33, festis half doubles, no. 5; Sir John Fortescue, Lordes of the lande both spirituellis and temporelks, 145, privatis personis, 147 ; E. of Salisbury, 'the kings moste nobkz lettrez', Past. Lttrs. i. 421 (1458); Reg. of Godstow, diuinis seruices, 18; Caxton, yong children masks, Jason 86. 3; Instructions to Lord Montjoie, Lordes spirituelx and temporelx, Lttrs. and Pprs. i. 12 (1483); Cr. of Knight of Bath, Uttres missives, Lttrs. and Pprs. 388, /kj/m ('jousts') roiaulx, 397; Will of Lord Lovel, heires males, Line. Dioc. Docs. 82. 24, 27 (1456); Irish Documents, Lordes spiritmls and temporels, Lttrs. and Pprs. i. 379 and 381 {c. 1489-93); Lord Berners, letters patents, i. 81 ; Sir Thos. Elyot's Will, heires males, 314. Note that while E. has such constructions as beastes sauage, i. 22, actes martial, 37, spirites vitall, 169, &c., he omits the -s except in the instance cited. Queen Elizabeth has clirristz days ' clearest ', Transl. 19. The Forms of the Comparative and Superlative. This is the main centre of interest, so far as Adjectives are concerned, in the Modem Period. The chief points to be considered are : (i) com- paratives with vowel shortened by a M.E. process before the suffix -re, when the Positive ends in a consonant ; this shortened vowel is sometimes extended by analogy to the Superlative, where it could not normally develop, and even to the Positive ; (2) the survival of Comp. and Superl. forms with mutated vowel ; (3) the pleonastic use of more and most before Adj. already inflected respectively with the Comp. or Superl. suffixes; (4) certain irregularities consisting either in the use of an entirely new form, cf. badder under 4, below, or in the addition of the Comparative or Superlative suffixes to words which we should not now thus inflect, preferring rather to prefix more, most. Survival of Comparatives with Shortened Vowels. Gretter 'greater', Palladius, Shillingford, 11; Fortescue, 122 ; Gregory, 277 ; Caxton, Jason 16. 33. The Superl, form grettist {-est) is found in Fortescue, 119, &c. ; Gregory, 115; Jul. Berners and Machyn. The Positive grett^e) occurs in Fortescue, 121; Gregory, 83; Machyn, passim. Depper 'deeper', Palladius, 52. 239; sonner 'sooner', PaU. 83. 115; swetter ' sweeter ', Pali. 84, 644; swettist, in Pecok, i. 67. Uttrist, Pecok ; Caxton, Jason 7 1. 1 1. The positive of this word is in reality a Comparative — O.E. Ute, with a Comp. suffix added. Survivals of Mutated Comparatives and Superlatives. The only surviving members of this class at the present time are elder, eldest, which are no longer used, as formerly, as the Comp. and Superl. of old, but in a special way, applied only to the members of a family, society, or group. 326 NOTES ON INFLEXIONS Pecok has eeldir dates 'former days', i. 107; Palladius, elder 'older', 28. 760; elder as an ordinary Comp. of o/rf occurs in 1579 in 'E. K.'s' Epistle Dedicatory to the Shepherds' Calendar; and a little later in Euphues, 208 — ' You are too young, and were you elder . . .' In Con- greve's Way of the World (1700) the phrase occurs, ' I suppose this Deed may bear an elder Date than what ', &c.. Act v, Sc. xiii. Of the other words formerly mutated in Comparison, long and strong appear to be the only survivors in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, unless we include GTegory' s gryiier, 227 (O.E. grietra), but this is much more probably to be explained otherwise (p. 212). The Comp. strenger is found in Pecok, i. 46 ; Jul. Berners (Adv., the Adjective is stronger) ; Lord Berners, i. 84. The Super!, strengest I have found in Caxton, Jason 70. 7 and 26. Lenger is found, Marg. Paston, i. 176; Sustr. Men. 93. 29; Gregory, 233; Lord Berners, i. 310 (-ar, Adv.) ; Latimer, 72 ; Lord Edw. Howard, Ellis ii. i. 215 (1513); Ascham, Tox. 64 ; Gabr. Harvey, Lttrs. 20. Lengest I have noted, Palladius, 88. 772 ; Pecok, i. 133; Marg. Paston, i. 250. Use of More and Most before ComparatiTe and Superlative Forms. Every one knows Shakespeare's ' most unkindest cut of all ', Jul. Caesar, Act HI, Sc, ii. The following are a few examples from works written before and up to Shakespeare's time. Comparatives: — more better, Gregory, 200; Monk of Evesham (1482), more worthior 47, more surer 56, more gladder loi ; more larger, Jul. Ber- ners ; more gretter, Caxton, Jason 63. 30; more stronger. Lord Berners, i. 59, the more fresher, ibid. i. 295 ; more diligenter, Latimer, 53 ; the more fitter, Euphues, 87, more awifter, ibid. 152. Superlatives '.—pe most streytest, Shillingford, 9 ; the most best wyse, ibid. 18; the most gentellyst, Gregory, 200, most parfytyste, ibid. 230; mxist strengest, Caxton, Jason 70. 7; mooste byttyrste, Mnk. of Ev. 43; moost hardest, Jul. Berners; moost merest and secrettest. Lord Berners, i. 27, moost outragyotist people, ibid. i. 211, moost ungracyoust of all. Dryden, in his Essay on the Dramatic Poetry of the Last Age, says : — ' I think few of our present writers would have left behind them such a line as this — " Contain your spirits in more stricter bounds ". But that gross way of two comparatives was then ordinary, and, therefore, more pardonable in Jonson.' Various Peculiarities and Irregularities of Comparison. The most remarkable ' irregularity ' in Compariso'n which I have found is perhaps badder, in Lyl/s Euphues of all books. The passage in which it occurs is worth quoting for various reasons. It is typically Euphuistic in character, it is interesting as giving Lyly's opinion concerning a favious seat of learning, and the context seems to explain why the author took such a liberty with English grammar. The passage occurs in the message ' To my verie good friends the Gentlemen SchoUers of Oxford', at the end of the first part of Euphues. ' The Estritch that taketh the greatest pride in her feathers, picketh DISAPPEARANCE OF ENGLISH PERSONAL PRONOUNS 327 some of the worst out, and burneth them : there is no tree but hath some blast, no countenance but hath some blemish, and shall Oxford then be blamelesse ? 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 fewe Uniuersities that haue lesse faultes then Oxford, many that haue more, none but haue some ', p. 208. Lyly could not resist the alliteration and assonance of better and badder. Pecok preserves rathir with its original force as the Comparative of rath ' early ', and contrasts it with latt'r, i. 94. Lord Berners has the old Superl.y^rm/ ' farthest ', the vowel of which has mutation. Elyot uses fnoost in the old Adjectival sense of 'greatest' — kir moost discomforte, 2. 147. Latimer uses -lye as a living Adjectival suffix — byshoplye duties and wordes, 25, unscripterlye, 48. Far into the seventeenth century many words which we should not now inflect appear with the Comp. and Superl, suflBxes. I give only a very few examples among many. Openist, Pecok, i. 77; greuotiser, Latimer, 191 ; willinger, Ascham, Scholem. 23 ; delicatest, Euphues, 35 ; naturalest. Sir Thos. Smith, Rep. 22 ; pacienter, Gabr. Harvey's Lttrs. 137; ungratefulV st, Otway's Friendship in Love. A few more Superlative suffixes to words of this kind will be found on p. 282 to illustrate the loss of the vowel. Ill Personal Pronouns. The Personal Pronouns in the Plural. The Old English Personal Pronouns hie, heora, heom appear in M.E. in the South and a great part of the Midlands as hi, here, hem, &c. In the London dialect these forms are gradually ousted by the forms, of Scandinavian origin, /«j/, peir, peim, &c., which get into this dialect from the North through the East Midlands. The Nom. hii is the first to go, and is not found after the time of Davie. Chaucer, his contemporaries, and followers invariably write pei, pey, ihei, they, &c. Some provincial works hke St. Editha still preserve the archaic hee, hoe. There is nothing more to be said about the strong forms of the Nom. after the first quarter of the fourteenth century. The weak forms will be discussed later. The next of the h- forms to disappear is herie), and I know no examples of it after the third quarter of the fifteenth century, except in the Nut-brown Maid, c. 1 500, and in Surrey. The th- forms do not appear in the London dialect before the fifteenth century, and they seem to come in rather reluctantly and very gradually during this century, generally accompanied by the Ojlder forms. Except, however, as occasional, probably deliberate, archaisms, the old Possess, her may be said to dis- appear from literature by the end of the fifteenth century. The history of hem is rather curious. It survives in constant use among nearly all writers during the fifteenth century, often alongside the th- form. I have not noted any sixteenth-century example of it in the comparatively numerous documents I have examined, until quite at the end of the century. It reappears, however, in Marston and 328 NOTES ON INFLEXIONS Chapman early in the seventeenth century, and in the form 'em occurs, though sparingly, in the Verney Mem. towards the end of the seventeenth century, where the apostrophe shows that already it was thought to be a weakened form of iAem. During the eighteenth century 'em becomes fairly frequent in printed books, and it is in common use to-day as [am]. It is rather difficult to explain the absence of such forms as Aem or em in the sixteenth century, since the frequency at a later period seems to show that, at any rate, the weak form without the aspi- rate must have survived throughout. The explanation must be that em, though commonly used, was felt, as now, to be merely a form of (Aem. Survivals o/Taexe, S[c. Hoccleve, here, Mr ; Lydgate, her, here. St. Editha, hure, here; Audelay, here; Bokenam, hyr, here (and iher'); Constable of Dynevor Castle, her, har; Bp. Pecok, her; Sir J. Fortescue, her (occasionally, usually thair); Marg. Paston, her, passim (and ther") ; Rewle Sustr. Men,, her, here ; Bk. of Quintessence, her (and per") ; Ord. of Worcester, hur (and ther) ; Engl. Reg. of Godstow, her (and more rarely their) ; Engl. Reg. of Oseney, ^£ (and there, peri) ; Gregory, her, hir, here (and there rarely) ; Caxton, Jason, her (rarely, generally their) ; Nut-brown Maid, her, line 6. I have noted one certain example oiher ' their ' in Surrey's poems, Tottel, p. 24. Other cases are very doubtful. An undoubted example of her in late colloquial use is pointed out by Mr. Orton of Merton CoUegre, in Machyn 141, — 'and after to her plasse, and they, &c.' Mr. Henry Bradley, however, in Shakespearis England mentions the following undoubted examples of her : Hen. VI, Pt. I, i. i. 83 ; Othello, III. iii. 66 ; Troilus, i. iii. 118. The first occurs in all the Folios, the second in all Quartos and Folios, the third in F'. All later works which I have examined have the th- forms only. Survivals qfhem, ifc. It would probably be correct to say that down to the end of the first quarter of the fifteenth century most texts, except those of the Northern and North-East Midlands, use hem only. After that date ih- forms appear very widely alongside the others, though many still have no examples of die latter. Audelay, St. Editha, Wm. Paston (the Judge, 1425-30), Hoccleve (has, however, themselfe in Minor Poems), Lydgate, Myrc, Bk. of Quint., Bp. Pecok, Const, of Dynevor, Rewle Sustr. Men., J. Buckland's Will (Northants, 1450), appear to have no th- forms ; the following have hem, by the side of less frequent th- forms : — Siege of Rouen, Hen. V. (in Letter, 1421), Shillingford, Fortescue, Marg. Paston (the Bp. of Exeter's letter in St. Pprs. has only herrC), Lord Lovel's Will, 1450, Ordinances of Worcester, Engl. Registers of Godstow and Oseney Abbeys, Gregory, with whom th- forms are rare, and who has the weak form em — ax of em that felde the strohys, 236, and Caxton. 'Bem occurs in Ben Jonson's Every Man in his Humour, 1598; Marston's Eastward Hoe, 1604; 'Goe Dame, conduct -am in', Chapman's All Fooles, 1605, p. 136; 'em is in frequent use in the colloquial dialogue of the later seventeenth- WEAK FORMS OF PRONOUNS 329 century comedies, and occurs occasionally in the letters of the Verney family towards the end of the century — e. g. John V., Mem. iv. 349, 1685, and Nancy Nicholas, iv. 428 (three times), 1688. It is common in serious poetry and prose in the eighteenth century. Unstressed Forms of the Plural Pronouns. The full stressed forms of these are, originally, generally pei, J>ay, thei, thai ; J>eir, pair, their, thair ; fieim, J>aim, theim, thaim, &c. The only one of these that certainly survives in pronunciation is they ; their ^^i\ is doubtful, though it may very possibly represent old their ; them is certainly derived from the old weak form. From the fifteenth century onwards spellings such as the, ther, tham, them are found fairly frequently, and these are weak forms, which show the normal monophthonging of «, ai in unstressed positions. • (On this point see further particulars, pp. 2^9-80.) We have now lost the old the, which would have become [tSe, tSz'], and we use the old strong form in all positions, though this no doubt some- times undergoes a slight reduction when unstressed. The old weak form ther survives in the form \JSs'\, which is now rather falling into desuetude. The old weak them survives as a strong form, being used in stressed positions — ' They have forgotten me, but I have not forgotten them.' From this we have formed a new weak form [tSam], which we habitually use in unstressed positions. Examples of weak the. This is the least frequent of the weakened forms, but it occurs in Shillingford, e.g. p. 62, Gregory, and frequently in the letters of Queen Elizabeth. Examples of weakened ther (thyr). Marg. Paston, ther; Bk. of Quint., per; Gregory, there (rarely); Ordinances of Worcester; State of Ireland (St. Pprs., 15T5), ther; Skelton's Magnyficence, thyr; Q. Elizabeth (in Lttrs. and in Transl.), ther ; Cavendish, L. of Wolsey, ther. Most of these writers generally use their or thair, &c. Strong and Weak Forms of them.. Already in the fifteenth century several texts write them only, and this may be due to the influence of hem, which also occurs in these docunlents. On the other hand, the spellings theim, theym are found far into the six- teenth century, Hoccleve has hardly any th- forms, but themselfe in Minor Poems; Sir J. Fortescue has thaim, them ; Shillingford, tham ; Ord. of Worcester, them; Lord Lovel's Will, theym; Marg. Paston, them; Gregory, them; Cr. of Duke of York, thaym, them; State of Ireland (St. Pprs., 15 15), them ; Skelton, them ; Rede me, &c., theym, passim ; J. Mason (Letter, Ellis iii. 2), them; Sir Thos. More (Letter, 1523), theym more frequently than them ; Lord Bemers, theym, them ; Elyot, theym, them ; Latimer, theym, them ; Cavendish, L. of Wolsey, theym and them ; Euphues, them. 330 NOTES ON INFLEXIONS You and Te. Down to the middle of the sixteenth century writers generally dis- tinguish between Nom._j'« and Ace. Butj/ou. The PI. forms akeady in M.E. are used in respectful address to a single person. While, for instance, Sir Thos. More and Lord Berners distinguish between _y< andyou, Bp. Latimer, Ascham, Cavendish, and Euphues use both forms indifferently for the Nom. Q. Elizabeth appears to employ you alone for Nom. and oblique cases, Sing, and PL On the whole, in the sixteenth century, while j>ou is common as a Nom., jie is much rarer as an Ace. or Dat. Fe is sometimes introduced merely for variety, cf. Ascham — 'you that be shoters, I pray_yoa, what mea.n j/ou whenj/e take ', &c., Tox. loi. In the seventeenth century you is far commoner than ye in Nom., though the latter is not infrequent. Sir Edmund Verney, in 1642, uses ye after a preposition — any of ye, V. Mem. ii. 136. A distinction was formerly made between thou, thee, and you, in the sense that the former was used by superiors, or senidrs in addressing their inferiors or juniors, and in the familiar and affectionate speech of parents addressing their children. Sir Thos. More's son-in-law, Roper, in his Life of that famous man, represents him as addressing the writer — ' Sonne Roper' — as thou, thee, but himself as v&xvLgyou in speaking to Sir Thomas More. The Weak b. for he. This form scarcely survives at present except in the archaic literary quotha. Ha and a are fairly common in M.E. in texts of the South- West and South- West Midlands — e.g. quotha, St. Juliana (MS. Royal); a is used by Trevisa as a Neuter or Masculine ; other Southern texts use ^ as a PI. Nom. The Constable of Dynevor Castle (temp. Hen. IV) uses a both for he and they, Ellis ii. i. 16; Latimer, Sermons, writes 'here was a not gyltie ', 153. Henry Verney writes, in 1644 — 'a dyed one newersday a is tomorrow caryed to his own church ', V. Mem. ii. 204, and in 1647 — ' a proves by fits very bad ', Mem. ii. 361. hit and it. The old spelling hit, hyt, persists nearly to the end of the sixteenth century, although the weak it is found as early as the twelfth century in E. Midland, and in the London dialect in the poems of Davie (c. 1327). Hit or hyt is still the only spelling in many sixteenth-century documents, while in others j//, &c., preponderates, and in others again hit or hyt is the more frequent. Sir Thos. Elyot has hit more frequently than it in his Will, but the conditions are reversed in the Gouemour ; Machyn uses hyt but rarely ; Queen Elizabeth writes hit with very great frequency in her Letters and Translations alike, _y/ being only occasionally used. It can hardly be doubted that in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the aspirate was lost in unstressed positions, and the spelling h- was an archaism. At the same time it is possible that some speakers still pro- ITS AND HER 331 nounced hit when the word was stressed. Since the other Personal Pronouns which began with h- all had both strong and weak forms, there is no reason why the old strong form of the Neuter Pronoun should not also have been retained. By the end of the century, apparently, the k- form had disappeared from ordinary colloquial English. The Possessive Neuter its. I have found no trace of the present-day its during the sixteenth century, my earliest reference being in Charles Butler's English Grammar of 1634, p. 40. As Butler was bom in 1560, it seems probable that its was in use in his youth, since it is unlikely that he would incorporate, without comment, a form which was a recent innovation. At the same time, the form was evidently felt as a colloquialism at the beginning of the century, for it is avoided in the Authorized Version. Queen Elizabeth uses his of ' the matters ' (Letters to J. VI, 3), Euphues has his referring to ' learning '. Shakespeare does not use its. Ascham, we may note, uses he, hym, speaking of a bow, Tox., p. 116. The Forms Mr and her. The old form of the oblique cases of the Fem. Pronoun is represented by the M.E. and Early Modern hir, hyr, and these forms persist until towards the end of the sixteenth century. Latimer, Ascham, Euphues, and Lord Burghley in his letters, all have hir and hyr, and these on the whole are the more usual forms in letters and printed books throughout the greater part of the century, though in many her is found also. The spelling her, which may represent a lowering of the vowel in unstressed positions, before -r, a process which may have been helped by the ana- logy of the Nom. he in those M.E. dialects which employed this form for she, is found very commonly in M.E. by the side of hir, but the more careful scribes distinguish between the Possess., &c., Fem., and the Possess. PL, keeping her for the latter and hir, &c., for the former. In the fifteenth century Hoccleve has hir only ; her is found in the London oflBcial documents, in the Rewle Sustr. Men., which text often distinguishes the cases — her. Ace, here. Possess, and Dat. — in Lydgate's Poems, Lord Lovel's Will, Marg. Paston — herr, here, hers, by the side of hyr. Caxton has both forms. Cely Pprs., Gregory, the Will of Sir Thos. Cumber- worth, Lines., 1451, all have hir, hyr. Sir J. Fortescue has huyr. Hen. VIII, in a letter of 1515, writes har. Ace. and Possess., a survival of a M.E. unstressed form often found in the South-Eastern dialect. Edward VI, First P. B., seems to have her only. Hir is still very common in the Verney Memoirs ; see especially the letters of Sir Ralph. The weak form without the h- is rather rare; however, hoselder 'houselled her ' occurs in St. Editha, and carry er ' carry her ' in Verney Mem., Henry V., Mem. ii 366, 1647. Indiscriminate use of J. and me. It is not uncommon at the present time to hear / used instead of me after a Verb or Preposition, as though the speaker wished to avoid the latter form. ' What have they to do with you and I ? ' writes Sir John 332 NOTES ON INFLEXIONS Suckling in a letter to Aglaura, Wks., ii, p. 198. The phrase leiweenyou and I is used by Tom Vemey, V. Mem. iii. 173, 1657, ^Jid by Lady Hobart, V. Mem. iv. 57, 1664 ; // must all light upon Heartfree and lis said by Belinda in Vanbrugh's Provok't Wife, Wks. vol. ii, 363. In 1734 Lady Strafford writes Lady Anne Harvey invited my love and I, Wentw. Pprs. 499. A habit more characteristic than the above, of illiterate speakers, is the use of me as a Nom. Susan Verney writes, in 1645, Sis peg and me got an opportunity, &c. Miss Austen makes that rather underbred young woman, Miss Lucy Steele, say Anne and me are to go there later. Sense and Sensibility, i, ch. 24. IV Thk Articles. Survival of M,E. thoo. The form thoo, po, &c., originally the PL of the Def. Article, O.E. pa, survives into the sixteenth century, generally, it is true, with a rather more definite Demonstrative sense than belongs to the Article, sometimes with the full force of the Demonstr. those. See my Short Hist, of Engl., § 287, for details of the late M.E. use olpo. Pecok appears to use the form practically as the PI. of the Art. in tho writingis, tho deedis to he doon, Repr. i. 23 ; alle tho whiche, ibid., is more definitely Demonstrative. The form occurs in the Bk. of Quintessence, bo men, in the Will of J. Buckland, in Rewle Sustr. Men. (pod), in Gregory — one of thoo, 140, thoo that, 233, and in Caxton. The latest example I have found of thoo is in a list of ships of Hen. VIII's time, 1513, in the sense oi those, Ellis ii. i. 218. Indeflnite Article. The stressed M.E. form 00 survives in Gregory — 00 place, 153. A instead of a« is sometimes used before vowels — a Englyssche squyer, Gregory, 184; a increasing, a ivelname, Q. Elizabeth in a letter, Ellis i. 2- 157. 1549- Verbal Endings. Ending of the 3rd Fers. Singular Fres. Indicative. In M.E. the Southern dialects have universally -ep and -ip. The E. Midland has almost exclusively the -p, -th ending, except, very occasion- ally, -es, -is, and then chiefly in rhymes. W. Midland has the -j ending far more frequently. Chaucer seems to have -es only once, and then in a rhyme. In the fifteenth century the -th forms (-yth, -itk, -eth) very largely hold their own in the South, the E. Midlands, and in the London dialect, with occasional outcrops of sporadic -s forms. THIRD PERSON SINGULAR IN -eth AND -« 333 Thus, the essentially provincial and usually archaic Sti Editha, while generally preserving -eth as the usual form, writes also corny s, 617, he hmys, 2028. The E. Midland Bokenam has only -yth, &c., with the rarest exception, and even some of the Lincolnshire Wills of the fifteenth century write -ith as the usual type, with rarer -eth, but -es very rarely indeed, though Sir T. Cumberworth's Will has several -s forms, and apparently no -th, L. D. D. 45. It is noteworthy that in a Will of 1465 ligges occurs, apparently as the only form of its kind. This appears to be a l^se into dialect as regards the form of the word (lig = ' lie '), with a Northern sufSx retained to avoid the incongruity of liggeth. Wm. Paston, the judge, has only -yth. Marg. Paston has few, if any, forms of ending other than -yth ; Palladius has -ej>, Pecok only -ith ; Fortescue, and Shillingford, and Ord. of Worcester, -yth, -ith, with occa- sional -eth ; the Wills from Bucks., Oxfordshire, and Northants only -yth, -eth. Cely Papers have -yth as a rule, though the younger members of the family often use -es, -ys as well. Passing to London English, the fifteenth-century official documents have an overwhelmingly large proportion of -ith forms, with a trifling number of -j forms, which might be counted on the fingers of one hand. Other prose documents which show no particular Regional influence generally agree with this, but poetical writers, for purposes of metre or rhyme, begin to use forms in -s. Thus, while Lydgate (a Suffolk man) has in his poems frequent forms in -es, and Siege of Rouen has puttys, 32, askysse, 33, Capgrave, according to Dibehus, has only one such form, and the Bk. of Quintessence and the Rewle of Sustr. Men. have -ith, -ip only. In the sixteenth century, apart from poetry, -ith, &c., is practically universal in literary prose, official documents, and in private letters, until well into the third quarter of the century. To this the Sermons of Bp. Latimer, preached in 1549, form an exception, but it must be re- membered that we possess these only in the form in which they were printed thirty years or so later, and it is possible that we owe some of the peculiarities to the editor or the printer. At the same time, Latimer's language shows certain traces of provin- cialism in other directions, and the -s forms may be perfectly genuine and characteristic of the bishop's dialect. At any rate, I have noted about sixty-three examples in Arber's Reprint of the Sermons, side by side with many -eth forms. In Thos. Lever's Sermons (1550) there are a few -s forms, though the. first of these seems to occur on p. 65, where it is put into the mouth of what the preacher calls ' rude lobbes of the country ', who are supposed to say : ' he minisheth Gods servants, he slubbers up his service who cannot reade the humbles.' The 3rd Sing. Pres. is very rare in any form in Machyn's Diary, but he lys occurs, pp. 181, 204, bys, lyys, 146, gyffes, T47. Gabriel Harvey uses -j forms in his letters occa- sionally, especially in the more familiar letters — smels, 18, hopes, heares, 33. When writing to the Master of his College he uses only -ith forms. Cavendish, Life of Wolsey, has very few -s forms, -ith, -yth being nearly universal, but I have noted me semys, p. 60. Ascham has at least twenty examples of -* in Toxophilus, of which endures, 39, occurs in a metrical line, and leaues, 91, also in a verse. Sir Thos. Smith nearly always writes -eth in Republ., but gettes, ibid., p. 67. Queen Elizabeth, in her 334 NOTES ON INFLEXIONS later letters (to James VI) and in the Translations writes -s, by the side of -eih, &c., very frequently. In the latter, -s is much commoner than -iA. The -s forms are not so frequent in those letters in Ellis written when the Queen was a girl, but methinkes occurs in 1572, Ellis i. 2. 263. The Auxiliaries doth and hath are nearly always so written in all the Queen's writings. In Wilson's Arte of Rhetorique -eth and -s forms are both frequent, the latter occurring more commonly than in Ascham, especially in the less stately and solemn passages. In the Letters of Lord Burghley (Ellis, and Bardon Papers), so far as I can see, and in Euphues, none but -th forms are found. Bacon, in his Essays, seems invariably to use the -th ending. From the beginning of the seventeenth century the 3rd Singular Present nearly always ends in -s in all kinds of prose writing except in the state- liest and most lofty. Evidently the translators of the Authorized Version of the Bible regarded -s as belonging only to familiar speech, but the exclusive use of -eth here, and in every edition of the Prayer Book, may be partly due to the tradition set by the earlier Biblical translations and the early editions of the Prayer Book respectively. Except in liturgical prose, then, -eth becomes more and more uncommon after the beginning of the seventeenth century; it is the survival of this and not the re- currence of -J which is henceforth noteworthy. The -th forms are common in Sir Thomas Browne, but his style is not typical of his age. Thei letters in the Verney Memoirs contain a few examples of -eth which show that this survived even in familiar and colloquial language down to the middle of the century. Tom Verney writes telleth, Mem. ii. 156, 1646; Lady Verney, expres- seth, ii. 246, 1646; Sir Ralph has 'on (= one) looseth his time, the other spends his money', ii. 247, 1646, and 'my Lady Browne telleth me ', iii. 70, 1650. In Tom Jones, Fielding makes Parson Supple, the hypocritical chaplain, say ' You behold, Sir, how he waxeth wroth at your abode here', voL i, p. 312, First Ed. The -J forms are usually ascribed to Northern influence, but this cannot conceivably have been exerted directly, and one naturally turns to the East Midland dialects, which so often were the undoubted medium whereby Northern forms have reached London English, as the probable channel in this case also. In this instance, however, the forms are almost as rare in the fifteenth century in the works of writers from Suffolk, Norfolk, and even from Lincolnshire, as they are in the docu- ments of London and of the South generally. It must be mentioned, however, that Norf. Guild Returns, 1389, have numerous -j forms in the documents of the Guild of St. Thomas of Canterbury, but elsewhere -ith. It is true, also, that Lydgate of Bury has -s forms in abundance, and it is possible that in other E. Midland documents, especially the official writings such as the Suffolk and some Lincolnshire Wills of the fifteenth century, the writers dehberately avoided these forms and assimilated their usage to that still prevailing in London, although the forms may have been in the normal colloquial usage of these areas. This, however, would not apply to Bokenam, who shows few if any traces of specific London influence. It is perhaps rather a far-fetched assumption that the £. Midland writers of the fifteenth century conceal their normal speech THIRD PERSONS IN -s COLLOQUIAL IN ORIGIN 335 habit in this respect, while all the time the very peculiarity which does not emerge in their writings was in existence and was gradually in- fluencing London speech. Again, it is significant that some of the earliest -s forms are found in St. Editha, and few will attribute Northern influence to this Wiltshire text. Some other explanation must be sought. They are also not infrequent in the letters of the younger Celys (Essex) in third quarter of fifteenth century, and they are here clearly a colloquial feature. It has been suggested that the -j forms of the 3rd Sing, passed into prose literature from the poetical writings, and from prose literature to colloquial speech. This now appears to me highly improbable. It is true that the exigencies of rhyme and metre make it convenient to sub- stitute the forms in -s for those in -t'lA in verse. By this means a syllable is got rid of, and the possibilities of rhyme enormously increased. Thus, at a time when -s is comparatively rare in prose writings of any sort — that is, down to the middle of the sixteenth century — the ending often appears in poetry. But it is hard to believe that what was destined to become the only form in the colloquial language should have come into that form of English primarily from poetry. It is more likely that the use of the -s forms in poetry is quite independent of their introduction into colloquial English. The use of those forms made by Ascham and Queen Elizabeth strikes one as reflecting a prevalent habit of ordinary speech. We might suspect Northern influence in the case of Ascham, a Yorkshireman, but not in the Queen and her contemporaries generally. The avoidance of them — in Euphues — by the highly correct Lyly is not consistent with a purely literary origin. Had he regarded these forms as primarily poetical, why should he not have employed them in his essen- tially artificial dialogue ? On the other hand, if Lyly regarded the -s ending as an innovation, associated with familiar colloquial speech, he was just the man to set his face against them in writing such a work as Euphues. The -s forms in Machyn are certainly the result of colloquial usage, as this writer is not the man to take his grammar from the poets, nor, indeed, from literature of any sort. It is more in accordance with what we know of the relations of the Spoken language to the language of Literature to suppose that the feature we are considering passed, in the first instance, into everyday usage, quite independently of the poets, and thence into the prose style of literature. It is evident that the number of persons who read poetry must at any time be very small in comparison with the population as a whole ; and poetical diction, in so far as it differs from that of ordinary life, can exercise but a slight influence upon the colloquial language at large. If the -s fornis of the 3rd Sing. Present gained currency primarily- from poetical and then from prose literature, it would be difficult to explain how, in a comparatively short time, they attained such univer- sality ofusage, and also, allowing for the weight of tradition in favour of the older form, why they should have been felt as too colloquial to be admitted at all into Liturgical English in any form, and into the Autho- rized Version. But all this is purely negative, and does not account for the appearance of the forms and their gradual complete a,cceptance in a dialect area to which they were originally quite alien. 336 NOTES ON INFLEXIONS We are placed in this dilemma, that the only apparent possible inter- mediary between the North and London and the South, by which a dialectal peculiarity could pass, is the E. Midland area, whereas this particular characteristic does not appear to be especially widespread in the E, Midland dialects, or among such writers as might be expected to show direct influence from these dialects in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries — e. g. Bokenam, Gregory, Capgrave, Bury Wills, some of the Lines. Wills, Marg. Paston. From this dilemma the theory which saddles the poets ultimately with giving currency to the -s forms in the Spoken language, if it can be accepted, offers an easy escape. If, in spite of the improbabilities which have been urged against it, this view commends itself to the reader, he will have no further difficulty. It is possible, however, that the starting- point of the -s forms has nothing to do with Regional influence, but that the extremely common Auxiliary is may have provided the model. I am inclined to think that this is the true explanation of the 3rd Pers. Pres. in -s in the Spoken dialect of London and the South, and in the English of Literature. A few remarks upon the use of these forms by the poets down to the first half of the sixteenth century will not be out of place. The -i forms were a great boon to writers of verse, both in supplying rhymes, and metrically, in providing a form with a syllable less than the -eih form of the same verb. Thus poets often make use of these forms both in rhyme and in the middle of lines. As regards the fifteenth century, while Lydgate often employs these forms, Hoccleve does not, and Stephen Hawes appears to make but moderate use of them. Skelton, who was born in 1460, and may therefore be regarded as belonging to the late fifteenth century firom a linguistic point of view, makes frequent use of the -s endings (-w, -ys, -es, -s) in such a rough coarse satire as ' Why come ye nat to Courte ? ', but generally writes -M in his more delicate work, such as Phyllyp Sparowe ; in Magnyficence he has usually -eiA, but also she lokys, 925, he ne reckys, 1 168, rhymes spekys, 2nd Pers. S. It has already been mentioned that the Wilts, writer of St. Editha has a few -J forms, while the Suffolk writer Bokenam has practically none. The Earl of Surrey has many of these endings, the sonnet The Swele sesoun alone having springes, bringes, singes, flinges, slitiges, minges all rhyming, besides decayes, and they occur with fair frequency in all his love poems and in the translation of the Aeneid. Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder has a great many in his Satires. Lord Buckhurst, in the Induc- tion, has twenty -j forms in the seventy-nine seven-line verses. The only -th endings are hath, four times, doih, doeih, three times, ^xA ceasseth, once. Hath and doth survive long after -j has become universal in English, but so far as the metre is concerned it is evident that has would do just as well, and the same is true of does. The spelling doeth, which occurs in verse 69 of the Induction, is monosyllabic — ' mine iyes. . . . That fylde with teares as doeth the spryngyng well.' The form ceasseth, verse 40, is metrically of the same value as ceases, which might, therefore, have been used had the poet wished. All the -j forms in the poem are necessary for the metre, and in the only cases where THIRD SINGULAR— PRESENT PLURAL 337 there was any option Lord Buckhurst has written -tk in preference to -s. All these facts, taken together with the arguments stated earlier, seem to me to confirm the view that the -j ending was of colloquial, not of literary origin, in Standard English, and that it arose in various areas in the South, not through external Regional influence but as a result of a natural and widespread analogy. The ending may have had currency first among the humbler classes (cf. the Celys and Machyn), and its usage for convenience in poetry may have hastened its acceptance in the collo- quial speech of the better classes. Forms of the jrd Pers. Present Singular without Inflexion. At the present time such forms may occasionally be heard from vulgar and uneducated speakers. I noticed, some years ago in Essex, that such phrases as ' he come every day to see me ', ' he always take sugar in his tea ', and so on, were very common. In earlier times these flexionless 3rd Singulars were used by far more distinguished persons. The origin of the omission is presumably the analogy of the ist Person. I have noted a few from the fifteenth century onwards : — Marg. Paston, commaund, i. 246 ; Lord Earners, methynke, i. 250 ; Latimer, methynke, Seven Sermons, 133; Ascham, methincke, Tox. 100; Q. Elizabeth, ' as your secretarye terme it ', Lttrs. to J. VI, 30 ; Wentworth Pprs., ' my cossen hear take great delight in fishing, and ketch many ', 47 ; ' the town tell a world of stories of Lady Masham ', Peter W., 408. The Endings of the Present Indicative Plural. In M.E. the ending -ep, -ip in the Present PI. is typical of the Southern dialects, and -en of the Midland, especially of E. Midland. From the middle of the thirteenth century onwards London texts, by the side of the Southern -ep, have a preponderance of the E. Midland -en type of Pres. Pis. The weakened ending -e, with loss of final -«, was still further weakened, sometimes, even in the fourteenth century, and from this type our present-day form, without any sulBx, is derived. Chaucer generally writes -en in his prose, -e being rare. In his poetry both forms occur very commonly, but in rhymes -* is almost universal. The history of the Present PL dining the Modern period is concerned (i) with the gradual loss of the final -n, and the ultimate fixing of the prevailing type as one with no ending at all ; (2) with the survival, for a considerable period, alongside the -en, or the flexionless type, of the ending -eth, -ith; (3) with the appearance of a PL ending in -es, -ys, -s. Now this last is still, as it was in M.E., and even in O-E., a character- istic feature of the Northern dialects. Whether the use of this suffix, sporadically, from about the middle of the sixteenth century in Literary English, and in the colloquial speech of educated persons in the South of England, is to be ascribed to Northern influence, is quite another matter. We shall discuss this question later on. TTie Present Indicative Plural in -en, -e. We should expect, from what we know of M.E., to find that in the fifteenth century -en or -e would be the sole, or at least the prevailing typle of z 338 NOTES ON INFLEXIONS ending in London English, and that -eth, -ith, &c., would occur only in texts written by Southerners. As a matter of fact, the latter sufiix is by no means so rare in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as we might expect, even in the writings of those whom we have no reason to suspect of Regional tendencies. It would appear that the literary and official documents of the late fourteenth century do not give us an altogether true picture of actual speech habit in this respect, and that the -ip Plurals must have survived in the colloquial speech of large sections of the population, over a considerable area, although expressed comparatively rarely in the written form of English. This type of ending survives long after the disappearance of -n. The appearance of the -s endings marks a further and later stage. These appear some time after the loss of -» and at a period in which ith, &c., is a rarety. It must be ascribed to the indirect influence of London speech, in its written form, that the -en type either very largely predominates, or is at least represented, from quite early in the fifteenth century, even in docu- ments whose authors might be expected to stick to a pure Southern form. Thus, Palladius (Essex) generally writes -eth, but has occasional -en; the Constable of Dynevor, by the side of we fayleth, 15, has also they seyen ' see ', 16, and hau ' have ', Ellis ii. i ; St. Editha has slydith, 8, but dwelU, 57 ; the Devonian Fortescue has only -en, -yn, or -e ; Shillingford has semeth, 12, menylh, 16, but more often -en, requyren, 30, seyn 'say', 40, 131, &c., deserven, 131, touchyn, 132 {-en occurs most commonly in the legal and ofScial documents in the Shillingford Pprs., and in Shilling- ford's letter to the Chancellor ; this ending is commoner in the letter of the Bishop of Exeter than in S.'s own letters or those of his friends). Turning to writers whom we might suspect of specific E. Midland tendencies : — Bokenam has -e or -yn ; William Paston, the judge, has -en or -e; Marg. Paston has generally -yn — jeowyn, i. r68, or no ending — ye thenh, i. 224, but makyth, ii. 124; Gregory, the Cockney from Suffolk, -yn, -e, or no ending — belevyn, 75, depuiyn, 124, behote 'promise', 125, long, 201, but also longythe, 134. These writers, as we should expect, hardly differ from the London usage in this particular case. We may now describe the characteristics of a certain number of typical Literary English texts. Hoccleve has only -en; Rewle Sustr. Men. very commonly -in, purchassin, 81.4, longin, 33. 2, &c., &c., but also/ey singip, no. 9,J>ey etip, in. 17, /ey redip, 116. 17 and 20; Bk. of Quint., -en with occasional -ifi ; State of Ireland, SL Pprs. of Hen. VIII, 1515, has frequent examples oli-yth, but -en occasionally — there bin more then 60 counties, p. 1. Lord Surrey has ben, Aeneid, Bk. ii, 735. This is the latest -en form in prose in my collections until we get to Euphues, in which work I have noted they loaden, 144. This is a better example than that quoted by Bradley on p. 257 of his edition of Morris's Histori- cal Outlines, from Shakespeare — ' and waxen in their mirth ' — since the additional syllable is here added for the sake of the metre. The same applies to Wyatt's 'you that blamen', Tottel, 37. On the whole, Ben Jonson's remark in his English Grammar, that the ending -en was used ' till about the reign of Henry VIII ' is correct, but it should be qualified and limited to the beginning of the reign, for we must regard the exam- PRESENT PLURALS IN -th 339 pies just quoted from Surrey, Wyatt, and Euphues as literary archaisms, which do not represent the usage of the spoken language. This applies also to Spenser's deliberate archaisms — bene, rhymes tene, uieene, &c. As late, however, as 1695 Congreve makes Ben Legend, a rough sailor, though a gentleman's son, say ' as we sayn at sea ', Love for Love, Act III, Sc. vi. Mention may be made of three fifteenth-century texts written in the South- West Midlands : — the English Register of Godstow Abbey (1450) has -th Pis., in -ith and -eth, very frequently, especially in the first, liturgi- cal portions of the work, but also many in -en, and some in -e ; the English Register of Oseney Abbey, Oxfordshire, c. 1460, has they hauen, J>ey holden, 53, but -« is rather rare, -e being commoner, and -J> forms being apparently absent ; the Ordinances of Worcester have -en or -e. The Central Midlands, as represented by the Coventry Leet Bk>, have -en, -yn. The Survival of Pres. Pis. in -eth, -ith. We have seen that these are in use in documents over a very wide area, besides in the London and Literary English throughout the fifteenth century, we have now to trace them through the following century and beyond. The chief examples I have noted are : — St. of Ireland, St. Pprs. Hen, VIII, iii, 1515, -yth is very common — e. g. some callyth, I, messengers comyth, 14, they payeth, 5, &c., &c. ; Skelton, Magnyf., 'your clothes smelleth musty', 761, Her eyen gray and stepe, Causeth mine herte to lepe, Phyll. Sparowe, 1015 ; Sir Thos. Elyot, besemeth, 1, harts lepeth, 345, people takethe comforte, 45, other foules and bestis which herdeth and flocheth, 2. 210, after exploitures hapneth occasions, 2. 429; Lord Berners, Froissart, other thynges lyeth at my hart, i. 194, your Knightes abideth for you to wasshe, i. 195, what weneth the French- men, I. 328, their husbandes payeth, i. 352 ; Archbp. Cranmer, Your Lordships hath bene thorowly enformed, Ellis i. 2. 172; Bp. Latimer, the mountaines swelleth. Seven Serm., 31, goth, 41, kepeth, 74; Cavendish, L. of Wolsey, them that hath, 245; Ascham occasionally uses hath, doth in PI. — as wild horses doth race, Tox. 8 ; Q. Elizabeth, the (' they ') ar most deseeved that trusteth most in theirselves, Ellis i. 2. 156, 1549; who seekith . . . the may, &c., Transl., breakith, TransL, 132; Sir Thos. Smith, the father and mother sendeth them out in couples, Rep. Angl. 24 ; Spenser, State of Ireland, the upper garment which serving men weareth, p. 623, col. 2; Euphues — whose barkes seemeth, 231, pleasant sirroppes doth chiefliest infect a delicate taste, 306. In the seventeenth century the Verney Memoirs have a few examples: — / helime others doth doe that. Lady V., ii. 252, 1647, Elders who . . . asketh them such questions. Lady V., ii. 259, 1647. It seems evident from these examples that the Southern -th Plurals survived longer in good usage than might be gathered from the late M.E. literary works. This form is one of the Southern characteristics of the original London dialect which were gradually ousted by E. Midland en- croachments, but it lingered long in the conservative usage of the upper classes of society. z % 340 NOTES ON INFLEXIONS Present Plurals in -s. This form of the Pres. Indie. PI., which survives to the present time as a vulgarism, is by no means very rare in the second half of the sixteenth century among writers of all classes, and was evidently in good colloquial usage well into the eighteenth century, I do not think that many students of English would be inclined to put down the present-day vulgarism to North country or Scotch influence, since it occurs very commonly among uneducated speakers in London and the South, whose speech, whatever may be its merits or defects, is at least untouched by Northern dialect. The explanation of this peculiarity is surely analogy with the Singular. The tendency is to reduce Sing, and PI. to a common form, so that certain sections of the people inflect all Persons of both Sing, and PI. with -s after the pattern of the 3rd Pers. Sing., while others drop the suffix even in the 3rd Sing., after the model of the un- inflected ist Pers. Sing, and the PL of all Persons. But if this simple explanation of the present-day PI. in -s be accepted, why should we reject it to explain the same form at an earlier date ? It would seem that the present-day vulgarism is the lineal traditional descendant of what was formerly an accepted form. The -s Plurals do not appear until the -* forms of the 3rd Sing, are already in use. They become more frequent in proportion as these become more and more firmly established in colloquial usage, though, in the written records which we possess they are never anything like so widespread as the Singular -s forms. Those who persist in regarding the sixteenth- century Plurals in -s as evidence of Northern influence on the English of the South must explain how and by what means that influence was exerted. The view would have had more to recommend it, had the forms first appeared after James VI of Scotland became King of England. In that case they might have been set down as a fashionable Court trick. But these Plurals are far older than the advent of James to the throne of this country. The earliest example I have noted occurs, strangely enough, in the Report on the State of Ireland in St. Pprs. Hen. VIII, iii, 1515, p. 15, the noble folk of ike land shofes at hym. This sentence is the more temarkable in that there are no 3rd Pers. Sing, in -j in this text, and that Pis. in -iih abound. It is just conceivable, though unlikely, that folk is here regarded as a Singular Collective Noun, and that the Verb is there- fore also Singular. Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder has for swine so grones, which rhymes «o««, ^o«M, Satire to Sir F. Bryan, 18, 1540. Bp. Latimer, in his Sermons, has a certain number of -s Plurals: — slandes, 87, some that Hues, 179, there be some writers that saies, 188, some sqyes, 189. As we have seen above, the bishop often uses -s in the 3rd Sing. Machyn has q/ler them comys harolds, 40. The only forms of the 3Td Sing, which I have found in this Diary end in -s (cf p. 333), but they are so few that we cannot judge with certainty whether this was Machyn's usual form, nor how far the -s Plural may have been influenced by it. Lord Buckhurst, Induction, has 'And as the stone that drops of water weares', rhyming with teares, Noun, v. 12. Ascham has the cordes haue nothyng to stop them, but wMppes so far back, &c. ; PRESENT PLURALS IN -s 341 Queen Elizabeth has many examples, especially in her Translations, but some also in her later letters (to James VI). A few examples : — all our suijectes lakes after, Lttrs. 31, small flies stiks fast for wekenis, L. 41, your commissionars telz me, ibid. 44, sild recouers kings ther dominion, ibid. 58 ; in the Translations we have : — roring windz the seas perturbz, 4, all men hides them, 1^2, as the huntars rates ther houndz, 134, men that runs, 1361 &c., &c. Thos. Wilson, Arte of Rhet., has some speakes some spettes, 220. There are seventeen forms in -s after some on this one page. The Verney Papers have Jiow things goes here. Sir R. V., 1639 ; couenaniirs has forbidden any man to read it, 240; Verney Memoirs — My Lady and Sir tomos remembers their sarvices to you and Mrs. Gardiner, Gary V., ii. 68, 1642, both sides promisis, &c.. Lady Sussex, ii. 252, 1647, the late noyses of riesings puts me in a fear, &c., Gary Stewkley (Verney), iii- 439> 1659- In the Wentworth Papers Lady W. and her son Peter both use these forms -.T-which moste lauhgs at, 52, 1706, all people from the highist to the lowist stairs (i. e. ' stares ') after them, 57 ; several affirms, 123 (Peter W.) ; Lord Wentworth and Lady Hariot gives their duty to your Lordship, Lady A. Wentworth, a child, 453, 1724; Lord Garsy and Mr. Varnum both coms in the somer thear, 55 ; all others sends fowls, 59; Peter and his wife comse tomorrow, 127; my letters that informs you, 107 (Peter W.); Two of the prettiest young peers in England . . . who, by the way, makes no pretty figure, 395 (Peter W.); Mrs. Lawson and Mrs. Oglethorpe gives their service to you, 444 (Lord Bute). Note. The use of is and was with a Plural Subject will be dealt with under the Auxiliaries, p. 356. The Inflnitive. The usual M.E. ending in the Midlands and South is -en, but forms without -« are found quite early. A typical Southern ending of the Inf. is -y, -ie, &c., which represents the O.E. -ian suffix, and is generalized widely, especially in Verbs of French origin, in the dialects of the South- East and South-West. The -n termination hardly survives in written documents beyond the third quarter of the fifteenth century, and by that time the examples arc scarce. All fifteenth-century writers use Infinitives in -e, even when they occa- sionally keep -en or -yn. Hoccleve has han, usen, synkyn, wedden ; Gonst. of Dynevor, to wetyn, Ellis ii. i. 14 ; Rewle Sustr. Men. is rather rich in -n forms — to herin, 90, Sec, J>ey sckullen dwellin, 94. 21, we commaunde . . . senden, enioinen, 95. 14, bowen, 113. 12, knelyn, 115. 38, &c. ; Fortescue generally has -e or no ending, cg.gyf but helpen, 152; Marg. Paston has numerous forms in -n^—ye vol askyn, i. 49, to heryn, i. 67, buyn ' buy ', i. 68, sellyn, i. 69, &c., &c. ; Bokenam has seen, delyvyrn, acceptyn, adver- tysyn, geuyn, lesyn, &c. ; Gregory has a fair number of -n forms — usyn, 82, folowyn, gi, procedyn, 99, ben, 99, betyn, 99, doen, 99, setten, settynne, 117, and also rather strangely a few forms inj-j/ — delyvery, 118, answery, 231 {f.v'\cfi),ymageny, 231 ; the Godstow Register usually has -e or no ending, but_^/^«, 25 ; Caxton has very few examples of -«, but ouer taken, Jason 50. 5. The -y type is found also in St. Editha — to correcty, 2383. 34a NOTES ON INFLEXIONS A late example in prose is he and I wyll commen, in a letter of Thos. Pery, 1539, Ellis ii. 2. 148. A late survival, or rather revival, of -en, for metrical reasons, is seen in Lord Buckhurst's / can accusen none, Complaint of Duke of Buckingham, 147. The Prefix y- in Past Participles. This prefix, which is still much used by Chaucer, is comparatively rare in the poems of Hoccleve. In the Reg. of Pr. he ^ntcs ypynchid.yput, but generally omits the prefix in Strong Verbs. In the Minor Poems, however, we have Hake, i/alle. On the whole during the fifteenth century the use of the prefix is chiefly confined to texts which show a more or less strongly marked Southern provincial influence, whether South-Eastern or South- Western. Thus it is frequent in the letter of the Constable of Dynevor Castle, in Shillingford, in the Register of Oseney, where it is almost universal in Strong and Weak Verbs, in the R. of Godstow, where, however, it is less frequent, especially in Strong Verbs. In St. Editha the prefix is often written and crossed out again in the MS., though it is also fairly often not erased, and often not written at alL In the South- East the prefix is very common in Palladius, but very rare in the much later Cely Papers ; this Suffolk dialect, as represented by Bokenam, shows no example of it, nor does Marg. Paston. Fortescue, from whom one might expect this Southernism, appears not to write j/- at all in Strong Verbs and very rarely in Weak, though I have noted i-blissed, 155 ; Pecok seems to have no examples in vol. i of the Repressor, and there are none in the Ordinances of Worcester, nor those of Exeter. Of texts written more specifically in the London dialect, the Suffolk man Gregory has a fair sprinkling of Past Participles, Strong and Weak, with i-, and Rewie of Sustr. Men. a few. Apparently Gregory's forms were not derived from his native dialect, so we must regard them as belonging to a rather archaic form of London speech. Caxton makes no use of the prefix, nor is it found in the later Cr. of Knt. of Bath, which is a better example on the whole of the higher type of London English. After this the prefix is only used by poets who are more or less deliberately archaic. An interesting form — storm ybeten — occurs in Skel- ton's Magnyfycence, a word which suggests the Spenserian period of Keats. Spenser's imitation of Chaucer is doubtless chiefly responsible for the occasional use of the t-forms by later poets. VI The Strong Verbs. The following is but the slightest sketch of the development of these Verbs in the Modern period. The examples given of the forms of the members of each class are intended mainly to show on the one hand the survival of old forms, and on the other the adoption of those now in use. It is evident that a much larger collection of forms would be necessary to achieve, with anything like completeness, either of these objects. In fact a special monograph would be required, which I may possibly undertake when circumstances permit. The excellent monograph of Price on STRONG VERBS 343 Strong Verbs from Caxton to the End of the Elizabethan Period contains a great deal of material which I have not incorporated here, the following short account being based on part of my own collections. We want an account dealing with these Verbs from 1400 or so until the end of the eighteenth century, Caxton is not a good starting-point, nor is the end of the Elizabethan period the end of the story. I now regret that I did not make much larger collections from the Vemey Memoirs and the Wentworth Papers, as well as from later eighteenth- century sources. The apparent irregularities in the Strong Verbs during the Middle and Modern periods, compared with the conditions in O.E., are due to the working of analogy in various directions. The fact that originally there were two, three, and in some cases four types in a single class of Verbs, and that there was a certain variety of treatment of each type according to Regional dialect, has given a very considerable number of possible types for the Preterite and Past Participle of some classes. Added to this there is the transference of Verbs from one class to another which while closely resembling it, yet differed from it in certain respects. Thus speak has been transferred to the class to which break belongs. The result of this was first to produce a new P. P. spoken, on the analogy of broken, and then to call into existence a new Preterite broke on the pattern of the new P. P. During the M.E. period the tendency was to get rid of the distinction between the Singular and Plural in the Preterite in those classes where this originally existed. In the North and East Midland it was usually the old Singular Preterite which survived as the sole type for that tense. In the South- West, on the other hand, the type of the P.P. generally dominated the Preterite also. It will be noticed that many Verbs have forms with both a long and a short vowel in the Pret. in the Early Modern period, a condition which is inherited from M.E. Thus we have both spaek and spake, bad and bade, sat and sate, &c. The explanation of this is simple. The short forms are in all these cases the normal developments of the O.E. forms — sp{r)sec, bsed, sset, &c. In M.E. these forms were the only ones with a short vowel in the whole conjugation of each of these Verbs. It is perfectly natural, therefore, that some speakers should have extended the quantity of the Inf. and Pres. speken, the Pret. PI, speken, and the P. P, speken — spoken to the Pret. Sing., the. solitary form which had a short vowel, pronouncing spdk{e) instead of spdk. Later, this new type spak{e) was in its turn extended also to the Pret. PI., so that speken was eliminated and the distinction disappeared. We see two distinct tendencies conflicting during the Modern period, namely, one to establish the type of the P. P. for the Pret. as well, and the other to eliminate the old P. P. type in favour of that of the Pret. Those speakers who said writ in the Pret. exhibited the former ten- dency, while those who said / have wrote displayed the latter. It has been pointed out that the old Pret. PI. type rarely supersedes that of the Sing., unless the former be also that of the P. P., in which case it is assumed that it is the P. P. which is the basis of analogy, as the form more frequently used. Thus the history of the Strong Verbs after the O.E. period is chiefly 344 NOTES ON INFLEXIONS concerned with transference of Verbs from one class to another, with the elimination of this or that type, and with the ultimate distribution in a given dialect of the various types between the Pret. and P. P. Many old Strong Verbs have passed into the Weak conjugation, e. g. iake, sew, &c. We notice a tendency to transfer others, e. g. iake, come, stand, which did not, however, become established in the Standard Spoken or in the Literary form of English. The converse process of a Weak Verb becoming Strong is rarer, but we note strive — strove — striven on the analogy of thrive — throve — thriven, &c. Hide — hid — hidden instead of O.E. hydd, M.E. hidde, is due to the influence of ride — rid — ridden. Here we note that hid was a perfectly normal Weak Pret. from hide, the vowel being shortened in M.E. before the double consonant. Rid, a common Preterite, instead of rode, is due to the influence of the P. P. Having got hide — hid, it was inevitable that the agreement with ride should be completed by the formation of hidden as a P. P. We see, even from the comparatively few examples given below, that the usage of the best writers in the sixteenth and even in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in regard to the Strong Verbs, does not by any means coincide exactly with our own. Even at the present time there is a certain fluctuation. Thus, while we have eliminated fiang as the Pret. oi fling, and prefer the P. P. type, sang, rang are still in very wide use, although many speakers say sung, rung, allowing the P. P. type to carry the day as in the case oi flung. Great hesitation exists in the conjugation of wake. What is the current form of the P. P. ? Some speakers habitually use waked, others woke, others woken. Such forms as wrdte, drave, stroke, which occur sometimes in Ci. i in the sixteenth century are certainly not of Northern origin as is sup- posed by some. Apart from the very common occurrence of forms with a in other classes — e. g. sate, bare, spake, &c., side by side with sat, &c., which probably encouraged the use of a as a vowel associated with the Pret., wrdte, &c., would arise naturally by the side of wrat (with O.E. shortening) just as sate and spake arose by the side of sat, spak, and gave by the side oi gaf. The analogy of bade Pret. with a P. P. bidden may also have helped to form a Pret. wrdte, strdke, &c., in association vrith written, stricken, as also sate with a P. P, sitten. It should be noted that the preservation or loss of -en in the P. P. is a matter of dialect originally. In M.E. the Southern dialects generally drop the -«, and Midland dialects retain it. Thus the variations between Verbs in this respect are the result of different competing Regional tendencies. Class I. O.E. i—a—i—l M.E. «— o»— ?— j. The Inf. and Pres. type of this Class shows no variation from the normal development of M.E. z, and is invariably [ai\ It is therefore unnecessary to include examples. Write. Preterite, wrote, &c. : — Pecok, wroten (PI.) ; Shillingford, wrote, 8, WRITE CLASS 345 wrotte, 61 ; Marg. Paston, wroi, i. 178, &c.; Latimer, wrote, 175, virot, writ, &c. :— Euphues, writ, 304 ; Mrs. Eure, Verney Mem. ii. 87, rit (1642). wrate: — Elyot, i. 131, 156, ii. 100. Past Participle. writt(en), &c. : — Hoccleve, wryten; St. Editha, wryten, 33, y-wrytm, 9 ; Bokenam, wryiyn, Pr. Marg. 4 ; Gregory, wrytynne, 61; Shillingford, writyn, 15; Gabr. Harvey, writ, Lttrs. 265; Euphues, written, 169; Mrs. Pulteney, V, Pprs. 222, rit (1639). wrote, &c. :— Sir Edw. Howard, Ellis ii. i. 216 (151 3) ; Lady Mary M. Wortley, ' all the verses were wrote by me '. Write. Lady Sussex uses right as a Pret., V. Mem. iv. 88, 1642. Smite. Preterite, smote, smot: — Gregory, smote, 76 ; Cr. of Dk. of York Knt. of Bath, smot, 399. Past Part, smyttyn, Machyn, 14. smete, Gregory, 77 ; sm^tyn, Gregory, 106 ; smet, Bokenam, Kath. 898. smot, Shakespeare, L. L. L., rhymes with not. Drive. St. Editha has Pret. Sing, drof, 36, Pret. PL drovyn, 3263, and drevyn, 54. The latter form occurs also in Shillingford, 97, and Short Engl. Chronicle, 71. Abide. The normal Pret. Sing, abode occurs, St. Editha, 276, and. the PI. ahydyn, Bokenam, Crist. 673 ; Pecok has Sing, ajxode, and PI. abiden, i. 20, aboden, i. 206; Marg. Paston, abedyn PL, i. in ; Shilling- ford, abode Sing., 5; Latimer, a^odfe, 188. Past Participle. Marg. Paston, abiden, 41 ; also Fortescue, 135, and Shillingford, 41, and Skelton, Magnyfycence, 576 ; Marg. Paston has also abedyn, i. 81, also Short EngL Chron. 130; Elyot has aboden, ii. 184. Bite. The old Pret. bdte survives in the fifteenth century, Gregory, 202 ; Caxton, Jason, 69. 14. Bide. Pret. rod, Marg. Paston, i. 77 ; Shillingford, rode, 5; Gregory, roode, 89; rodde, Lord Berners, i. 114; Machyn, rod, rode, 4. rid, &c. : — Cranmer, Ellis i. 2. 37 ; Thos. Wilson, 140; Machyn also has red, 167. Strike. Inf., &c. By the side of strih, strick is also found : — ^Euphues, to strick, 239. Preterite, stroke : — Cr. of Knt. of Bath, stroke, 400 ; Latimer, 94 ; Euphues, 251. strake : strack : — Cr. of Knt. of Bath, strakke, 399, 400 (twice) ; Lord Berners, strake, i. 114, 140; J. Mason, strake, Ellis ii. 2. 59; Cavendish, L. of Wolsey, strak, 83. streke : — St. Editha, 3739. struck : — ^Machyn, 85. Past Participle, stricken, &c. : — Machyn, stryken, 63 ; Euphues, stricken, 152, striken, 299. 346 NOTES ON INFLEXIONS strooken, &c. : — Thos. Wilson, strokm, 132; Sir T. Smith, siroken, Republ. 36 ; Euphues, strooke, 57, strokm, 162, 230. stTUOken : — Honourable J. Dillon (of a ship), ' She had her bottome sirucken owt' , Verney Pprs. 149. Class XL O.E. ea, ea, u, ; M.E. e, u {= [y]), S^, u, 0. Choose. The Present and Inf. forms appear in three types — (i) ehese (with M.E. «*), which is characteristic of South-East and E. Mid- land ; (2) d (M.E. ^) from a form with shifting of stress from the fi st to the second element of the diphthong, and the loss of the former : — a — eo — 5; (3) «= [y], which is a characteristic W. Midland and South- West treatment of eo in M.E. Types (2) and (3) have no difference in pronunciation from the moment that [y] has become [a] (cf. p. 246), but the spelling with u probably indicates a late survival of (3). On the other hand, u may be written occasionally for type (2), according to the habit of writing u for O.E. ff: See pp. 234, &c. This is probably the explanation of the chme spelling in writers who would harcUy make use of type (3). (i) Inf. and Pres., to chees, ckese, &c., occur in Pallad. 4. 84, 99. 1059, &c. ; M. Paston, ii. 292, / ches; Pecok, chese Subj., i. 112 ; Gregory, 230, Inf.; Caxton, Jason, for to chese, 57. 32; Elyot, 51, chesing; Lord Berners, i. 53. (2) chose, choose, Lord Berners, i. 58 ; Latimer, Sev. Serm. 25 ; Ascham, Toxoph. 39; "Eaphaes, choose, 139. (3) chuse, &c., Pallad. 5. 123, Imperat. ; Lord Berners, i. 389; Machyn, ckuysse, 17, chusse, 141 ; Thos. Wilson, A. of Rhet. 56 ; Euph. chuse Imperat., 229 ; Lady Rochester, Verney Mem. iii. 467 (1660). The Preterite. The M.E. chees, ches, &c., with ^ [i] from O.E. ea, is gradually replaced by a form with 5', formed on the analogy of the P. P. chosen. This is the ancestor of the present form. The older form survives far into the fifteenth century, after which the 5 form is most common. The occasional cMse must be explained by association with Vbs. of the bear class — Pret. bare, P. P. boren. chees, Sec, Hoccleve; St. Editha, chesen (PI.), 274; Gregory, c}iesse PL, 190; Fortescue, chese, 112, 113. chose, &c., Pecok, i. 183 ; Gregory, chosse, 95, they chosynne, 96 ; Caxton, Jason, 94. 32 ; Lever, Serm. 35. chase, Pecok, chas, ii, 349, chaas, ii. ibid.; Elyot, i, 214. Past Participle. St. Editha still retains the old form y-core, 789, by the side of y-chose, 2207. There is no variety as regards the vowel, except that it occasionally appears to be short, as the following consonant is doubled, e.g, chosse, Gregory, 95; chossen,Ma.chya, 22 ; otherwise the only point of note is that, as in other Strong Vbs., the forms in -e alter- nate with those in -en: * occurs, Pecok, i. iii ; Gregory, 71, 95; Lady Rochester, choose, V. Mem, iii. 467, 1660. Most writers, so far as my material goes, use the -en {-yn) type. O.E. geofan — geat — guion — goten ' pour '. This obsolete Vb. is still traceable in the word ingot, where got is LOSE, ETC.; FIND, ETC. 347 derived from the P. P. Elyot preserves the fuller form of the P. P. in yoten, i. 48. Lose. This Vb. had, originally, exactly the same vowel sequence as choose. It is conjugated as a Weak Vb. from early in the Modern period, the survivals of the old Strong Pret. and P. P. being rare. The latter survives as an Adjective in the compound ^r/or«. If^. and Pres. Use, &c., Pallad. 35. 248 ; Marg. Paston, i. 109, ii. 309, &c. ; Fortescue, 118, lesynge Pres. Part., 138; Elyot, 34, lese; Lord Earners, leese, i. 28; Ascham, lease, Tox. 117, leese, ibid. 128, 158 (Subj.), leeselk, Tox. r58 ; Euphues, 193. The other type appears as loose, 305. Shoot. O.E. scedtan — sieat — scuton — sioten still retains the form with i, comparable to cKese, Use, in the fifteenth century, and is found in Marg. Paston — scheU, i. 83, shet, i. 82. This lady also writes schote, i. 83. Gregory has schute, which may be a phonetic spelling for the ^ type, as is most probable. Gregory has a Weak Pret. schot, 204, and a P. P. schottyn, 58. Float. O.^.fleotan, &c. ; Bk. of Quint. \a&fletip 3rd Pres. Sing, Class III. O.E. singan — sang — sungon — sungen. Verbs of this Class have, on the whole, preserved three original types, though no longer distinguishing between Sing, and PI. in the Pret. Begin, spin, spring, swim, drink, &c. It is possible that begin, &c., besides began, in Pret. had also forms with a long vowel, on the analogy of Class IV — cf. begane, Pecok, Machyn, &c., suiame, Lord Berners, by the side of swamme, Elyot, ii. 169. In some Verbs of this Class the P. P. type penetrates to the Pret., and just as we now often have rung, swum, &c. in the Pret., we find wonne, Euphues, ' won ', 273, by the side of the then usual wan or wanne, which occurs very generally not only in Euphues itself, but also before, in Short Engl. Chron., wanne, 61, Gregory, 58, 7r, Caxton, Jason, 11. 3, Lord Berners, Machyn, &c. Lord Berners, i. 371, and Euphues, 88, both h&vt flang where we now ha.\t flung, but Euphues already has siung, 68. In the Vb. flnd the old distinction between Sing, and PI. Pret. — O.E. /and, M.E. fond; O.E. fimdon, M.E. /bunden— is preserved far into the fifteenth century. Pecok has Sing. /onde, i. roi, Vl./ounden, by the side oi fondtn, i. 242 ; Shillingford has fonde, 61, founde, 65. In the P. P., forms with or without -» occur throughout the fifteenth century — e. g. Gregory, founde, foundyn ; Caxton, /bunden ; Fortescue, ffounde ; M. Taston, /bwnd,/ond; Pecok and Ord. of Worcester, _/o««rf«. Elyot has founde, i. 21 s, founden, 26, &c., &c. Jiun, in Inf, is a new formation; the ordinary M.E. type in Inf and Pres. is renne, which is perhaps of Scand. origin. This persists as the more usual form throughout the fif- teenth century and into the next century, and is found in Pallad., St. Editha, Bokenam, Pecok, Bk, of Quint., Fortescue, Cr. Knt. of Bath, and Cath. of Ar., the last but one having also rynnyng in Pres. Part. Lord Berners has rynne and ry«, and further, ronne (= runne), i. 163 and 358, 348 NOTES ON INFLEXIONS and ronnyng, i. 163. Roon is found in a letter of Sir Edw. Howard, Ellis ii. I. 217, io runne, Ascham, Tox. 46, ronne, ibid. 103, b»t rin still occurs, Scholem. 54. Euphues has, apparently, only the runne type. Come. O.E. cuman — com — cam — comon — camon — cumen. Various types spring from the above. Fret. St. Editha has come and become, 25, Sing. 65,. PI. comen, 58 ; Pecok, cdmen, came; Gregory has Pret. PI. cum, 91, and a Pret. Sing. come, apparently = [kum] from the comen type; also cam, 91, a survival of old cam ; Caxton has becam, 4. 24 Sing., and cam, 94. 32. Dr. Knight has cam, 196, and so has Sir T. Smith, Ellis ii, 3. 16. The P. P. is generally written come, which may represent either [ks?m] or [kum]. That the O. and M.E. P. P. cumen survives is shown by the occasional spelling comme, &c. Gabriel Harvey had a new formation, overcomd, p. 3, as a P. P., and ouercomed occurs in the Te Deum in Edward Vl's First and Second Prayer Books, and Shakespeare has misbecom'd, L. L. L. Pecok has come, Gregory, ovyrcom^, 125, Machyn, over-cum, 70. Caxton has comen (Jason), and so has Elyot, ii. 144. Laneham's Lttr. (1575), cummen 33. Climb. O.E. climban — cldmb — clumbon — clumben ; M.E. cRmh — clomb — dumb. The Pret. : — cldme survives in Ascham, Tox. 76. The vowel is from an O.E. and M.E. unlengthened form clamb, with later lengthening on the analogy of the other tenses. Hoccleve has the P. P. clumben, and Bokenam, clomhen, Ann. 646. Yield has a Pret. PI. yelde in Gregory, 83, which apparently comes from the Late O.E. (Sthn.) giad, M..'E.yeld, type of the Singular, extended to PI. also. The P. P. yolden often occurs in Short Engl. Chron., and is found in Gregory as i-yolde, >]g,yolde, ii^,yoldyn, 115, and Elyot, ii. 220. Short Engl. Chron. has also ylden, 56, and Gregory has a Wk. P. P. yoldyd, 115. Spenser has P. P. yold, F. Q. vii. 7. 30. Help. Caxton, Jason 102. 26, still has the old Pret kalp, also kelpe, 76. I, perhaps from O.E. South and South-East healp, M.E. help. A Pret. holpe is found in Robt. the Devil, 960, and in Shakespeare's Hen. IV, Pt. I, I. ii. This is derived from the P. P. type. The P. P. holpe{n) in M.E. is found without -n in Pecok, i. 284, with -en, &c., in Pallad., Gregory {holpyn), 207, Cr. Knt. of Bath, 400, Elyot, 117, Ascham, Tox. 43, &c., &c. Fight. O.E. feohtan {feht-, fiht-)—/eaht—/uhton^/ohien ; M.E. fihien^-faM—fauht;fuhten dmA/oughten ; /oughten. The Pret. /augAi{e) (M.E. Singular type) survives, Gregory, 82, &c. ; Caxton, Jason 66. 33; Short Engl. Chron. 68; Elyot, 179; the other typ^y/ougAi, from the P. P., also occurs in Gregory and afterwards. The P. P. retains the -en suffix in Ascham's/o«^/5/^«, Tox. 64. Class IV. Enead. The Strong P. P. knoden is preserved. Lever's Sermons, 46 — knoden into dough. BREAK: GIVE 349 Break. O.E. brecan — brxc — brxcon — brocen; M.E. breken, brak, and brak{e) — breke and broke — broken. Preterite. During the whole of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries brake is the most frequent type, and, occasionally, brak. St. Editha, Pecok, Gregory, Cr. Knt. of Bath, Lord Berners, Latimer, Euphues, &c., all have brake. St. Editha still distinguishes the PI. brekon, 4410, from the Sing, type, and Gregory uses this type in the Sing,, 202. broke comes from the P. P. type. It is found already in Cr. Knt. of Bath, 395. Past Participle. The vowel is practically invariable from the M.E. period onwards, being always the lengthened 0. There is, however, a form brake, on the analogy of the Pret., found in Verney Mem. iv, used both by Sir R. Verney, p. 134 (1665), and Dr. Denton, p. 223 (1676). There is the usual fluctuation during the M.E. and Modern periods between the forms broke — broken. Speak, which originally belonged to Class V (O.E. sprecan — sprsec — sprxcon — sprecen), has passed completely into that of break, and is best considered under this Class. Its forms are identical with those of break. The Pret. has both long and short forms as in M.E. St. Editha has Sing, spake and a PI. speke, 287, which doubtless preserves the original PI. type. The latter is rare, however, after the M.E. period. Spdke is the usual type well into the seventeenth century. The type with a short vowel, however, is also used by Pecok, spak, Caxton, spack, Jason 64. 30, Latimer, 115, and many others. The Rev. Mr. Aris uses speake as a Pret., Verney Mem. iii. 136, 1655. Past Participle. Spoke, spoken seem to be equally common down to and during the eighteenth centuryi Sir J. Burgoyne has spok, V. Mem. ii. 217, 1642. Lord Chesterfield, writing in No. 100 of the World, 1754 (on Johnson's Dictionary before it appeared), speaks of English as being ' studied as a learned language, though as yet but little spoke ' in France and Italy. Marg. Paston still uses the archaic speke, i. 77 (1449). Bear and steal have pretty much the same history as the other Vbs. of this Class, bare and stale long being the common form of the Pret. Cr. of Knt. of Bath has bere'i^itt. Sing, and PL, 391, 389), which may be a phonetic spelling for bare, or correspond to the old PL type. Bokenam has Pret. PL bere. Stale occurs throughout the fifteenth century and in Cavendish, L. of Wolsey, 92. Class V. Give. O.E. giefan, geaf, geafoh-^giejFen (W. Sax.) ; Non-W. Sax. : — gefan, geofan ; ' gsef, gef; gefon ; gefen, geo/en. These forms give rise to correspondingly various types in M.E. and Modern English. The initial sound was an open consonant in O.E., and in M.E. is ex- pressed by y or y-. By the side of these, forms with g-, expressing a stop consonant, are common in M.E., which are probably due to Scan- dinavian influence. There is also an alternation between i and e in the vowel of the Inf. and Pres. Indie. The former may be of Scandinavian 350 NOTES ON INFLEXIONS origin, when the initial consonant is g, otherwise it must be derived from the Saxon type, or formed by analogy from the and and 3rd Fers. Pres. The give forms are to be explained according to the statement on pp. 207-8. In/, and Pres. type, (i) yeve, geue, &c. : — St. Editha 958, 1409, &c. ; Pallad. (Imperat.) 19. 508 ; Bokenam, Marg. 1053, Eliz. 930 {yeuylh) ; Pecok, jeueth, 1 1, ^euen (PI.), passim ; Godstow Reg., w. forjeue, 6 ; Marg. Paston, yeve, i. 268, toy/, i. 109, yue, i. 67, jeuyn, i, 69; Shillingford,j'«'tf, zl,yeveth, 29, &c. ; Fortescue, 153, &c. (2) geve, &c. : — Pallad. Pr. 24. 656 ; Bokenam, Pr. Marg. 232 and 411; Pecok, passim ; Marg. Paston, ^«»«, ii. 218; Gregory, toyor^«3'«, 99 ; Shillingford, geve Inf., 20; Sir Thos. More, Ellis i. i. 213, Inf., and geveth, i. i. aoo; Latimer, to geue, Ploughers 35, and Seven Serm. 22, geuynge, Ploughers 24 ; Edw. VI's First and Second Prayer Bks., getu, passim; Ascham, geue, Scholem. 115, 134, geueth, Tox. 39, 145; Cavendish, L. of Wolsey, 96, &c. ; Gabriel Harvey, gef (= gev ?), 48 ; Q. Elizabeth, Lttrs. to J. VI, 2 ; Mrs. Basire, geuittg, Corresp. 140 (1635)- (3) gi'''®* yive: — Pecok; Bokenam, Imperat. ^««f, Marg. 1123. (4) give, gyve, &c. : — Caxton, Jason 13. 2 ; Fortescue, gy/lni., 129, giviih, 139, give PI., ibid. ; Lord Berners, i. 22 ; Latimer, gyue, Ploughers 25, Ascham, £ya*/A, Tox. 28; Machyn, gy/e, gj^Subj. ; Euphues, gitu, 163, gt'ues, 88, to/orgiue, 90; Thos. Wilson (always); Q. Elizabeth, gyve, give (usual type). Preterite. Type (i). yaf, &c. : — St. Editha, jqfe, 81 ; Bokenam, ya/ Pr. Marg. i^6,)>ouyoue, Marg. 507, Pl.j/ow«(«), Agn. 441, Ann. 254; Shillingford, yeaf, 14 ; Marg. Vistxm, yaffe, ii. 215. (2) gaf, &c. : — Wm. Paston, gef, i. 25 {= gaf vnXYi e written for [se]?); Gregory, gaffe, 174; Caxton, Jason 12. 2^, gaf. (3) gave : — Short Engl. Chron. 62 ; Marg. Paston, jave PL, i. 109. Sir Thos. Smith refers to both _j'^ and^as* as antiquated. (4) gave : — Gregory, 58 ; Caxton, Jason 3. 5 ; Bp. Knight, 204 {15 1 2); Lord Berners; Ascham, Tox. 31 ; Latimer, ^a««. Seven Serm., i^i/orgaue, ibid. 57 ; Machyn, gayf 3 (ay = a, i. e. [i or «] ?); Euphues, gaue, passim, /orgaue, 175. Past Participle. (i) yeve(n) :— Hen. V, Letter in Lttrs. of Marg. of Anjou (1421); St. Editha, j«<«, ^gg,y-yeue, 759; Pecok, ^«k«; Shillingford, 131; Lord Level's Will, yeven, L. D. D. 75. 27 ; Fortescue, yeuen, 152 ; Barlings Abbey Agreement, L. D. D. 135. 5 ; y yeven, Cely Pprs. 4 ; Oseney Reg., ijefe, 6 ; Bury Wil]s, yeuen (1480). (2) yove(ii): — Bokenam, youe, Ann. 329; Pecok; Marg. Paston, jovyn, i. 112; Godstow Reg., yoven; Gregory, yovyn, 126; Sustr. Men., ^ouin, 96. 32; Irish Docs.. Lttrs. and Pprs. i. 379, youen; also Bury Wills 77 (1492) ; youe, ibid. 77 ; Q. Elizabeth, yeouen, Argyle Lttrs. 32 (iS95). (3) geve(n) :— M. Paston, i. 112; Gregory, irgeve, 64, geve, 96, gevyn. BID; GE7 351 96, 118; Fortescue, ^««», 136, 150, gene, 155; Bury WUls, gevyn, 82 (1595); Cr. Knt. of Bath,^ew«, 393, 398; Sir R. Wingfield, Ellis ii. i. i\'i,geoyn% Edw. VI's First and Second Prayer Bks.; Latimer, geum^ Ploughers 20; Ascham, Tox. 13, 18, Scholem. 59, 134; Q. Elizabeth, Lttrs. 2; Mall Verney, V. Mem, ii. 214, /orgeven (1655); Lady Went- •/», 201. (4) g6tte(n) : — "Elyot, gotten, 27 ; Lord Berners.i. 2&^,gotte; Machyn, gotten,. ^2, be-gotten, 23 ; Ascham, gotten, Tox. 32 ; Latimer, 50, 78, &c. ; Lever, Sermons, 32 ; Gabriel Harvey, gottin, Lttrs. 17 ; Thos. Wilson, gotten, 202. gotten is used by Lady Arabella in Vanbrugh's Journey to London, 11. >. P- 345- The American use of the suffix -en in the uncompounded form goes back to the current English of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Lie ' cumbo '. O.E. liigean — Ideg — Ixgon (and logon) —legen ; M.E. liggen — lav — lain. The M.E. Pies, and Inf. type with gg (= [d2]) survives in Pecok, who has l^gith, i. 29, liggen Pres. PL, Pres. Part, ligging. The P. P. lyen, &c., is used during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, SIT, SEE; BAKE, ETC. 353 and occasionally in the seventeenth century : — Bokenam, lyne, Christ. 685; Cely Papers, lyne, 47; lyen, Elyot, i. 150; Cavendish, L. of Wolsey, 123; Creighton, Bp. of Bath and Wells, Verney Mem. iii. 93, 1670. (M.E.) Mete ' measure '. O.E. meian — maef — mseton — meten. The P. P. of this old Verb, meaten, occurs in Euphues, 92. Sit. O.E. sittan — sxt — sseton — seten. Preterite. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries both sale and sat are in frequent use. sate occurs in Gregory, 112, Short Engl. Chron. 53 (three times), Elyot ii. 157, Euphues, 52. satte, &c., Gregory, 112, Cr. Knt. of Bath, 389, satt ; Latimer, satte, 174, Machyn, satt, 43. Euphues has also set, which is capable of more than one explanation. Lady Verney uses sate, V. Mem. ii. 306 (1647). A P. P. sitten occurs in Hume's History of England, vol. vii, p. 353. See. O.E. seon — seah (and sxh) — sawon — sewen. The M.E. Pret. forms are — Angl. saugh, and its variant, saw, from the sdeh type, seih from a Southern seh type. There is also a form si and slh, from the PI. type seh, sxh, formed on the analogy of Angl. PI. sxgon. The old P. P. is generally abandoned in favour of a new form sine from the O.E. Adj. gesiene, non-W. Sax. gesene ' visible '. The early Modern reflects the variety of forms found in M.E. Preterite. St. Editha has, in Sing. :— j^yje, 1016, saye, 823, seye, 907, sey, 2521, sye, 3153, sawe, 220, saw, 2112; in PI. — seyje, 460, seyen, 2573. Bokenam has, in Sing.— j«y, Marg. 1130, sawe, Magd. loro, saw, Christ. 240 ; in Vl.—seyn, Pr. Marg. 345, seyin, Agn. 81. Marg. Paston has sey (PL), i. 113; Pecok, thei sien, i. 187, sawen, i. 246; Shillingford, sigh, 10, sawe, 67 (both Sing.) ; Cely Papers sometimes has se\ Gregory, sawe, no (Sing.), say, 222 (PI.); Cr. Knt. of Bath, sayw, 394 (Sing.); Bp. Fox of Winchester writes see, Ellis ii. 2. g, c. 1520; Machyn, say, and often see Sing., saw PI. ; Aubrey has I see, i. 115. Lady Wentworth often writes see, especially in the phrase as ever I see, p. 57, &c. Past Participle. St. Editha, sene, 473, seyje, 1502, sey, 2436, y-sey, 2440; Bokenam, f^yw, Magd. 1058; Pecok, seen; Shillingford, seyn, 4, sey, 13; Marg. Paston, sene, ii. 82; Cr. Knt. of Bath, sien, 390, seen, 394- Class VL Bake. O.E. iacan — 60c — 5ocon — iacen ; M.E. iaken — 5oke — bdken. The old P. P. 5ake survives in Pecok, i. 67, Gregory, 141, and in Bp. Knight, 202. The latter writer has ' the bisket is almost liake ' = the matter is nearly ripe. Stand. O.E. standan — stod—stodon—standen. The old P. P. standi, &c., is used throughout the fifteenth century. A Weak form, especially in the compound understanded, is much in vogue in the sixteenth century, e. g. in the First Prayer Book, Preface. The Second Prayer Book has understanden. A a 354 NOTES ON INFLEXIONS Take. By the side of the universally used forms take, taken, -yn, in the P. P., Palladius has taked, used as a passive with an Auxiliary, 83. 630. Lade. The P. P. lade occurs in Gregory, 175; otter loaden, Wilson, 66, and loaden in Verney Mem. ii. 224, 1645, in a letter from Sir H. P. Newton. Forsake. Sir T. Smith has '?xti./orsakzd in a letter, Ellis ii. 3. to. Laugh. O.E. hlxhhan — hlog — hlogon. The old Strong Pret. loughe from hlok survives in the fifteenth-century poem Robert the Devil, 872, and in Bokenam, low, Eliz. 737. Gnaw, draw, slay have Prets. gmg — gnogon, slog — slogan. The forms slew, drew, which we now use exclusively, and the rather remark- able gnew, Robert the Devil, 200, are due to the influence of the reduplicating Verbs of the blow, grow class. Slew appears, Robert the Devil, 922 (coupled with hue 'hewed'), slewe, Caxton, Jason ir. 2, Gregory, 75, Machyn, slew, 102. On the other hand, slow from the sldg type occurs, Gregory, 79, and Fortescue, 117. Drewe occurs, Gregory, 58, drue. Lord Berners, i. 135, 136, withdrue, i. 153, druw, Machyn, 64. But Shillingford has drowe, 6, and Gregory, withdrowe, 84, from drag type. The P.P. of draw is drane, Machyn 4 (cf. p. 142); the normal is drawen, &c., cf. Gregory, drave, 58, drawyn, i86. Gregory has also a Weak form dravoyd, 172. CLASS VII. The So-called Reduplicating Verbs. Beat. O.E. liedian — beat — beoton — beaten. The Early Modern forms of Pres. and Pret. must have been [bet — bet; bit] respectively. The difference does not appear to be indicated by the spelling. Latimer has a Pret. bet, which may represent an early shortening from M,E. bet. This would correspond to the present-day popular and dialec- tal bet. The latter could also be explained on the analogy of meet met, &c. Fall. Q^. feallan—fedll—fedllon— fallen. The very common M.E. fill, &c., which has not been satisfactorily explained, persists at least as late as the sixteenth century : — Hoccleve has filk; Shillingford, fyll, 19; Pecok, fill, fillen, befill; Caxton, fylU, Jason, II. ?,, fill, 99. 24; also Lord Berners, fill, i. 336, 398; and Cavendish, 6. On the other hand, Bokenam has fel, befel, St. Editha, felle, 239, fel, 258. Lord Berners's usual form is feel, the normal development of O.E. feoll, of which_^// is the shortened form. Hold. Comparable Xofill horn feoll, we find kild or hyld from Juold, Shillingford, 20 ; Gregory, 69, 179, hylde ; Cr. Knt. of Bath, 389 ; Caven- dish, 89. REDUPLICATING VERBS, HEW, ETC. 355 Shillingford has also held, 5, and Gregory, helde, 78, Lord Berners, held, i. 366, &c. ; Marg. Paston has huld, ii. 191, a remarkable form to find in an Eastern dialect. It is not surprising to find hulie in St. Editha, 852, &c., by the side of helt, 3206. The P.P. is tholde, Godstow Reg.; kald, Marg. Paston; holde, 77, hold, 99, holden, 120, Shillingford; Euphues h&s helde, 304. Hew. Robert the Devil has hue (and slew), 922, the descendant of M.E. heu (cf. p. 242, on the spelling). The P. P. in -en is normal in Early Modern hewen, Marg. Paston, ii. 251 ; Euphues, iii, &c., &c. Enow, blow, grow have quite regularly knew, grew, blew. Sec, with variants knjiw, blue, &c. Shillingford has a Weak Pret, knawed, 10 and 27. The Pret. shewe from show, an old Weak Verb, occurs, Cavendish, L. of Wolsey, 185, doubtless on the analogy of this group. Euphues has the Strong P. P. showen, 202, 280, also shewn, 280. CLASS VIII. Auxiliaries. Be. The main points to be considered are the forms of the 3rd Pers. Pres. Indie, and of the PI. Pres. As regards the former, the old Southern form bith, &c., occurs here and there in the fifteenth century. Shillingford has bi'lh, Marg. Paston, belh (and is), but Pecok and Fortescue, is. This, indeed, is the usual form. The PI. shows more variety, and the present-day are, derived from the E. Midlands, and ulti- mately from the North, comes only gradually into general use in London and the South. The Southern PL h'lh, &c., was widely used in the fifteenth century, by the side of the Midland bin, been, or be. The E. Midland texts of M.E. generally have am, sometimes by the side of ben — thus. Genesis and Exodus (am and beti), R. of Brunne {are, ben, and even bep"), Norf. Guilds [arr^ ; in the fifteenth century Bokenam has am, em. William Paston, arn, Marg. Paston, am, ar, ben, Lydgate, am, Gregory, ar and bene. These writers are all from the E. Midlands, Bokenam definitely claiming to write the Suffolk speech, the others show- ing in many ways traces of their native dialect. In the letters of Q. Marg. of Anjou there is one from the Treasurer of Calais, who writes er, 16, other officers write we aren, by the side of beeih, and Henry V, in a letter of 142 1, writes ar, p. i8. Other texts, with no very pronounced dialectal character, vary more or less. Short Engl. Chron. has befhe, Rewle Sustr. Men., been, Caxton, ben, but also _ye ar (Jason), Cr. Dk. of York, be, been, Bk. of Quint., ben, Irish Documents in Letters and Papers, vol. i, ben. Shillingford has, by the side of occasional ben, the archaic buth, and also beih, Ord. of Worcester, ben, Godstow Register, byn, ben, Oseney Reg., been. A a 2 3S6 NOTES ON INFLEXIONS Early in the following century, a letter from Sir J. Wingfield, Ellis ii. I (1513) has le, while Bp. Knight (afterwards of Bath and Wells) (1512) has beifi[e) and be. Lord Berners has ben and are, arre, ar. The Will of R. Bradley (Leics., 1533) still has ben, L. D. D. 162. i. Bp. Latimer, be, bee commonly, rarely are, Machyn, ar, Ascham, be, often in Tox., while are occm-s somewhat infrequently in Scholem. ; Wilson, Arte of Rhet., has both are and ben frequently, Euphues, are and be, Q. Elizabeth, ar and be. With the negative, be was used late into the seventeenth century by good speakers ; thus Col. Courtly, in Vanbrugh's Journey to London, says If it ben'i too long. Otherwise, are seems the universal form of the PL in the seventeenth century in good colloquial English. I have noted no be forms in the Verney Letters. Confusion in use qfia — are ; was — were. A tendency to extend the use of is to sentences in which there was a PI. subject is traceable in the sixteenth century and continues among educated people well into the eighteenth century. The -s- Plurals of other verbs, referred to p. 340, may have been fostered partly by this habit. At the present time is with a PI. subject is heard only among the uneducated. Sir Thomas Elyot writes both body and soul is deformed, Gouern. ii. 340; Sir Thos. Smith — there is three wayes. Rep. Angl. 64; Mrs. Isham, Verney Mem. iii — moste of our gentre is secured and took to Oxford, 233, 1655 ; Sir Ed. Sydenham, ibid, ii — all hopes of peace is now taken away; Edm. V, — -your delayes is out of your goodness, V. Mem. ii. 132, 143; Sir R. Verney — my Cough and Cold is badd enough God helpe me, iv. 326, 1685; Lady Strafford, Wentworth Pprs. 262 — Lord Marsam and Lord Bathurst is named; Lord Bute, Wentw. Pprs. — when there is great folks, fine words, &c. The construction you was was apparently much more common, and there are indications of a more general tendency to extend the use of was to the 3rd Pers. PI. also. Pope, in a letter to Lady Mary Montagu Wortley, dated Sept r, 1718, writes I shall look upon you as so many years yow^er than you was; Lady Wentworth \a.%you was, pp. 94, 118 ; Vermilla, in Fielding's Love in several Masques, says— pray. Sir, how was you cured of your love. Act IV, Sc. ii. The habit was apparently passing into disrepute at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Miss Austen puts the construction several times into the mouth of the rather vulgar Miss Lucy Steele in Sense and Sensibility — I felt almost as if you was an old acquaintance, vol. i, chap. 22 ; I felt sure you was angry with me, chap. 24 ; if you was to say to me, &c., chap. 24. The better-bred personages in this and others of Miss Austen's books do not use this phrase. I have noted a few examples of was with the 3rd Pers. Pis. Sir Thos. Seymour, 1544, such sowders and maryners as was shept at Harwyche, St. Pprs. Hen. VIII, i, p. 781 ; Cavendish, L. of Wolsey, the wells whiche was, 80 ; Nancy Nicholas, in Verney Mem., has ye seconds (in a duel) was, iv. 230, 1683; Lady Sussex, we was glade; in Wentw. 'AIR' FOR ARE 357 Pprs. — they was, 124, 1642 ; The Duke of Kent and Lord Longville was 300 (Peter W.). In Euphues appears the strange but quite explicable construction an not you, p. 180, where j/o«, being used to a single person, takes the Singular form of the Verb. This is also the explanation of you was, though, as they was shows, there was a tendency to generalize this form of the Verb for both numbers. The Vowel of Present-day are. The M.E. dre{n) had undoubtedly originally a long vowel in stressed positions, as can be shown by rhymes. M.E. are would result in present-day [ea], cf. M.E. bare, which has become [bes], and hare, which has become [hea]. This form was still in vulgar use down to the first half of the nineteenth century, as is seen from the spelling air in Dickens and other writers of his period. The ancestral form of this, from M.E. are can also be proved by rhymes and spellings to have been in use at a much earlier date. Rede me, &c., rhymes are — care, Donne rhymes are— /aire, Heroical Epistle, 21-2, with aire, ibid. 41-2, pp. 124-5; Mrs. Isham, in Verney Mem. iii, writes, you air tow discrate, p. 235, 1655, and Mrs. Sherrard writes aier, V. Mem. iii. 256, 1655; Cooper mentions are, air, heir, ere as all having the same sound. This form is the basis of the negative ain't [eint], formerly written an't. The present-day pronunciation of are [a] when stressed, [a] in un- stressed positions, is derived from the'M.E. unstressed form ar{P). This became [ser] when M.E. a was fronted (p. 196, &c., above) and was used both in Strong and Weak positions. In the former position the vowel underwent lengthening before -r, and the Early Modern combination [air] was re- tracted subsequently to [«('')], cf pp. 203-5, above. This old Weak form, used in a stressed position, is seen in various rhymes in the sixteenth century and later, e. g. are — warre, Habington's Castara, 49 ; far re — are, Donne's Progr. of the Soul, First Aniv. 7-8. Thus, it is evident that for a long time both types were in use, until one was finally eliminated in good usage. Shall. The original difference in the vowels of the Sing, and PI. of the Pres., which is found in Old and Middle English (^schal — schulkn) is preserved in texts from all sources down to the third quarter of the fifteenth century. During the greater part of this period schall, &c., occurs also in the PL, and gradually the schullef^n) forms are altogether superseded by the Singular type. The following PI. forms may be noted : — Hoccleve, schul, schol, Pecok, schulen and schal, Shillingford, shall, Marg. Paston, we sholle, Rewle Sustr. Men., schullin, schuUen, Bk. of Quint., schulen and schal, Gregory, shulle and shalle, Ord. of Worcester, shullen, Fortescue, shul and shall, Caxton, shal, shull, shulle, Jul. Berners, shall. Henceforward the PI. seems to be everywhere levelled under the type of the Sing. The 2nd Pers. Sing, is usually shall, the traditional form, but Caxton has the analogical form shalst, Jason, 5. 20. Marg. Paston's scholl (Sing.) and sholl (PI.) may have been formed on the analogy of the old form of the Pret. — schdlde, cf wol from wolde, though she does not 358 NOTES ON INFLEXIONS usually write the Pret. in this way, or the o may be written for », in which case the vowel has been introduced from the old PI. type. Finally, it is just possible that o represents the rounded vowel resulting from earlier shaul, for the explanation of which see p. 201, above. The commonest spelling of the Pret. in the fifteenth century seems to be schulde, and this is used by nearly all the writers above cited. Shilling- ford, however, writes sholde, and Marg. Faston, shoulde. It seems probable that this last, and the ou spellings, express [u], which is that natural development of the vowel in M.E. schoMe in stressed positions. The / was probably lost earlj^ in unstressed positions at any rate, though the traditional spelling is rarely departed from in this word. I have, however, noted shud, Elyot's Gouernour, 70, shtidd, Gabr. Harvey's Lttrs. 3, and shud, in a letter of Gary Verney, V. Mem. ii. 67. The vowel in the present-day Weak form of should shows that this is a new forma- tion, in the Early Modern period, from the stressed form [Jti(l)d]. The old spelHng of the Pret. shold lasts far into the sixteenth century ; Latimer writes both shold and should; Euphues also has both spellings. Will. The forms wille, wile, wil, &c., occur commonly in M.E., alongside wule, the vowel of which seems to be a rounding of » after V). Chaucer has wil, but more commonly wol, which is very common in the fourteenth century. It may be explained sometimes as a mere ortho- graphical variant of wule, &c., but it is also often a distinct new form made on the analogy of the Pret. wol-de. It is this that gives rise to the negative won't (for wol not). Both will and wol occur throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, some writers using both forms, others chiefly wol, others only will, &c. Pallad. has both, Bokenam, wyl, Marg. Paston, toul and wol ; St. Editha, ychulle (I will), he wole ; Sustr. Men., Fortescue, and Caxton, wol, wok. Bp. Knight (15 13) has wil in PI. and wol in Sing., but the distinction is probably accidental. Lord Berners has wol, Latimer, ms)l. Cavendish, wyll and wol, Euphues, wil. Can. The O. and M.E. distinction between Sing, and PI. survives in the fifteenth century to some extent ; Pecok has cunnen for the latter. Bokenam has kun for both Sing, and PL, but also kan for the former. The past tense is still couthen (PI.) in Pecok, cou^the in St. Editha, cowde in Bokenam, Marg. Paston, and Lord Berners. The latter also writes coulde, and this remains the usual form, with occasional colde, for the sixteenth century and later. The / has no historical justification, and is due to the analogy of wolde. Elyot has a strange P. P. banned, with the sense of known. The Inf. is used after another AuxiUary throughout the fifteenth century, the old form, kunne, being used by Pecok, kon by Marg. Paston, conne by Caxton — as in hit shall not conne kepe it secrete, Jason, 13. 6. May. The old PI. mowen, as used in Chaucer's time, from O.E. mdgon, survives throughout the first three quarters of the fifteenth century, and is found in Hoccleve, Shillingford, Pecok, Fortescue, and Caxton.- An Inf. mowen ' to be able ', is used after other Auxiliaries by Marg. Paston, Sustr. Men., Fortescue, and Caxton. The past tense mought is found in Sir Thos. More (Ellis ii. i. 289), Elyot, i. 164, passim, and Queen Elizabeth's early letters \mot^th),'E.Vas i. a- i57> 1549- CHAPTER X COLLOQUIAL IDIOM The uttered speech of private life is fluctuating and variable. In every period it varies according to the age, class, education, and habits of the speaker. His social experience, traditions and general background, his ordinary tastes and pursuits, his intellectual and moral cultivation are all reflected in each man's conversation. These factors determine and modify a man's mode of speech in innumerable ways. They may aff'ect his pronunciation, the speed of his utterance, his choice of vocabulary, the shade of meaning he attaches to particular words, or turns of phrase, the character of such similes and metaphors as occur in his speech, his word order and the structure of his sentences. But the individual speaker is also affected by the character of those to whom he speaks. He adjusts himself in a hundred subtle ways to the age, status, and mental attitude of the company in which he finds himself. His own state of mind, and the mode of its expression are unconsciously modified by and attuned to the varying degree of intimacy, agreement, and community of experience in which he may stand with his companions of the moment. Thus an accomplished man of the world, in reality, speaks not one but many slightly different idioms, and passes easily and instinc- tively, often perhaps unknown to himself, from one to another, according to the exigence of circumstances. The man who does not possess, to some extent at least, this power of adjustment, is of necessity a stranger in every company but that of one particular type. No man who is not a fool will consider it proper to address a bevy of Bishops in precisely the same way as would be perfectly natural and suitable among a party of fox-hunting country gentlemen. A learned man, accustomed to choose his own topics of conversation and dilate upon them at leisure in his College common room where he can count upon the civil forbearance of other people like himself, would be thought a tedious bore, and a dull one at that, if he carried his pompous verbiage into the Officers' Mess of a smart regiment. 'A meere schoUer is but a woefull creature ', says Sir Edmund Verney, in a letter in which he discusses a proposal that his son should be sent to Leyden, and observes concerning this — ' 'tis too private for a youth of his yeares that must see company at convenient times, and studdy men as well as bookes, or else his bearing may make him rather ridiculous then esteemed '. There is naturally a large body of colloquial expression which is common to all classes, scholars, sportsmen, officers, clerics, and the rest, but each class and interest has its own special way of expressing itself, which is more or less foreign to those outside it. The average colloquial 360 COLLOQUIAL IDIOM speech of any age is at best a compromise between a variety of different jargons, each evolved in and current among the members of a particular section of the community, and each, within certain social limits, affects and is affected by the others. Most men belong by their circumstances or inclinations to several speech-communities, and have little difficulty in maintaining themselves creditably in all of these. The wider the social opportunities and experience of the individual, and the keener his lin- guistic instinct, the more readily does he adapt himself to the company in which he finds himself, and the more easily does he fall into line with its accepted traditions of speech and bearing. But if so much variety in the details of colloquial usage exists in a single age, with such well-marked differences between the conventions of each, how much greater will be the gulf which separates the types of familiar conversation in different ages. Do we realize that if we could, by the workings of some Time Machine, be suddenly transported back into the seventeenth century, most of us would find it extremely difficult to carry on, even among the kind of people most nearly corresponding with those with whom we are habitually associated in our present age, the simplest kind of decent social intercourse ? Even if the pronunciation of the sixteenth century offered no difficulty, almost every other element which goes to make up the medium of communication with our fellows would do so. We should not know how to greet or take leave of those we met, how to express our thanks in an acceptable manner, how to ask a favour, pay a compliment, or send a polite message to a gentleman's wife. We should be at a loss how to begin and end the simplest note, whether to an intimate friend, a near relative, or to a stranger. We could not scold a footman, commend a child, express in appropriate terms admiration for a woman's beauty, or aversion to the opposite quality. We should hesitate every moment how to address the person we were talking to, and should be embarassed for the equivalent of such instinctive phrases as — look here, old man ; my dear chap ; my dear Sir ; excuse me ; I beg your pardon ; I'm awfully sorry ; Oh, not at all ; that 's too bad ; that 's most amusing ; you see ; don't you know ; and a hundred other trivial and meaningless expressions with which most men fill out their sentences. Our irmocent impulses of pleasure, approval, dislike, anger, disgust, and so on, would be nipped in the bud for want of words to express them. How should we say, on the spur of the moment — what a pretty girl ! ; what an amusing play ! ; how clever and witty Mr. Jones is ! ; poor woman ; that's a perfectly rotten book ; I hate the way she dresses ; look here. Sir, you had better take care what you say ; Oh, shut up ; I'm hanged if I'll do that ; I'm very much obliged to you, I'm sure ? It is very probable that we perfectly grasp the equivalents of all these and a thousand others when we read them in the pages of Congreve and his contemporaries, but it is equally certain that the right expressions would not rise naturally to our lips as we required them, were we suddenly called upon to speak with My Lady Froth, or Mr. Brisk. The fact is that we should feel thoroughly at sea in such company, and should soon discover that we had to learn a new language of polite society. SOME ASPECTS OF THE SUBJECT 361 If we did not realize this, but insisted on speaking in our own way, we should be made to feel before long that we were outraging every convention and sense of decorum which that not very decorous age possessed. We should appear at once too familiar and too stiff and stilted; too prim and too outspoken; too pompous and too much lacking in ceremonious observance. In any case we should cut a very sorry figure. Now to exhibit, in a single chapter, even in the merest outline, the genius of the English colloquial idiom of several centuries, is an im- possible task. Each century would need to be the subject of a thorough investigation, and all possible sources of information would require to be exploited to the full. Again, the various aspects of colloquial speech life must be examined, and the different elements arranged and grouped according to some principle of classification. Such a work, for a single age, would profitably occupy the time of a band of inquirers for many years, and even then it would be necessarily incomplete. As Mr. Henry Bradley has well remarked in his chapter on Shakespeare's Language : — ' At no period — not even in our own time, which has an unexampled abundance of prose fiction dealing with all aspects of contemporary life — has the colloquial vocabulary and idiom of the English Language been completely preserved in the literature. The homely expressions of everyday intercourse, the phrases of contemporary currency alluding to recent events, the slang words and uses of words characteristic of particular classes of society — all these have been but very imperfectly recorded in the writings of any age.', A very perfunctory treatment of a vast subject is all that can be attempted here. If it suffices to interest a certain number of readers in the general question, and in some of the details here touched upon, so that they pursue the subject for themselves ; if a few of these readers should be stimulated to devote some of their time to a systematic investi- gation of such parts of the matter here dealt with, or of others which are here omitted, then this short study will not have failed altogether of its object. It is proposed to deal here with the subject in the following manner. In the first place characteristic specimens will be given, of dialogue when this is available, otherwise of passages from letters of a colloquial character, to illustrate the general features and tone of familiar English from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries inclusive. Following these specimens of whole passages, we shall attempt to illus- trate certain special and particular elements in the conversation of every- day life. Those selected come principally under the following heads : — Modes of greeting ; farewells ; compliments and complimentary banter ; endearments ; angry and abusive speeches among equals, or addressed to inferiors ; expressions of approval and disapproval. Oaths, imprecations, expletives, exclamatory and interjectional ex- pressions; emphatics. Preciosities, affectations, and euphemisms. The term Colloquial is so far extended as to include formulas used in beginning and ending letters, nor are the examples of these confined entirely to purely familiar epistles written to intimates, but include also the beginnings and endings of letters of a more formal character. 362 COLLOQUIAL IDIOM In illustrating the colloquial style of the fifteenth century we have to be content, either with the account of conversations given in letters, or with such other passages from letters of the period as appear to be nearest to the speech of everyday life. The following passages are from the Shillingford Letters, to which reference is repeatedly made in this book (see p. 65, &c.), and are extracted from the accounts given by the stout and genial Mayor of Exeter, in letters to his friends, of his conversations with the Chancellor during his visit to London. Shillingford begins by referring to himself as ' the Mayer ', but suddenly changes to the first person—;)' — ^in describing the actual meeting, again returning for a moment to the impersonal phrase. John Shillingford. 'The Saterdey next (28 Oct. 1447) therafter the mayer came to West- minster sone apon ix. atte belle, and ther mette w' my lorde Chanceller atte brode dore a litell fro the steire fote comyng fro the Sterrechamber, y yn the courte and by the dore knellyng and salutyng hym yn the moste godely wyse that y cowde and recommended yn to his gode and gracious lordship my feloship and all the comminalte, his awne peeple and bedmen of the Cite of Exceter. He seyde to the mayer ij tymes " Well come " and the iij** tyme "Right well come Mayer" and helde the Mayer a g^rete while faste by the honde, and so went forth to his barge and w* hym grete presse, lordis and other, &c. and yn especiall the tresorer of the kynges housholde, w* wham he was at right grete pryvy communication. And therfor y, mayer, drowe me apart, and mette w* hym at his goyng yn to his barge, and ther toke my leve of hym, seyyng these wordis, " My lord, y woUe awayte apon youre gode lordship and youre better leyser at another tyme ". He seyde to me ayen, " Mayer, y pray yow hertely that ye do so, and that ye speke w* the Chief Justyse and what that ever he will y woU be all redy ". And thus departed.' — ^pp. 5, 6. A little later:— ' Nerthelez y awayted my tyme and put me yn presse and went right to my lorde Chaunceller and seide, " My lorde y am come at your commaunde- ment, but y se youre grete bysynesse is suche that ye may not attende ". He seide " Noo, by his trauthe and that y myght right well se". Y seide " Yee, and that y was sory and hadde pyty of his grete vexadon ". He seide "Mayer, y moste to morun ride by tyme to the Kyng, and come ayen this wyke : ye most awayte apon my comyng, and then y wol speke w* the justise and attende for yow " ', &c. — p. 7. ' He seyde " Come the morun Monedey " (the Chancellor was speaking on Sunday) ..." the love of God " Y seyde the tyme was to shorte, and prayed hym of Wendysdey ; y enfourmed hym (of t)he grete malice and venym that they have spatte to me yn theire answeris as hit appereth yn a copy that y sende to yow of. My lorde seide, " Alagge alagge, why wolde they do so i y woU sey right sharpely to ham therfor and y nogh".' Margery Brews. The following brief extracts from the letters of Margery Brews, the affianced wife of John Paston (junior) are hke a ray of sunlight in the dreary wilderness of business and htigation, which are the chief subjects of correspondence between the Pastons. Even this love-letter is not A FIFTEENTH-CENTURY LOVE-LETTER 363 wholly free from the taint, but the girl's gentle affection for her lover is the prevailing note. ' Yf that ye cowde be content with that good and my per persone I wold be the meryest mayden on grounde, and yf ye thynke not your sel£fe soe satysfyed or that ye myght hafe much mor good, as I hafe undyrstonde be youe afor ; good trewe and lovyng volentyne, that ye take no such labur uppon yowe, as to come more for that matter, but let it passe, and never more to be spokyn of, as I may be your trewe lover and bedewoman during my lyfe.' — Paslon Letters, iii, p. 172 (1477). A few years later Mrs. Fasten writes to her 'trewe and lovyng volentyne ' : — ' My mother in lawe thynketh longe she here no word from you. She is in goode heale, blissed be God, and al yowr babees also. I marvel I here no word from you, weche greveth me ful evele. I sent you a letter be Basiour sone of Norwiche, wher of I have no word.' To this the young wife adds the touching postscript : — ' Sir I pray yow if ye tary longe at London that it wil plese to sende for me, for 1 thynke longe sen I lay in your armes.' — Pas ton Letters, iii, p. 293 (1482). Sir Thomas More. No figure in the early part of Henry VIII's reign is more distin- guished and at the same time more engaging than that of Sir Thomas More. A few typical records of his conversation, as preserved by his devoted biographer and son-in-law Roper, are chosen to illustrate the English of this time. The context is given so that the extracts may appear in Roper's own setting. ' Not long after this the Watter baylife of London (sometyme his servaunte) hereing, where he had beene at dinner, certayne Marchauntes liberally to rayle against his ould Master, waxed so discontented therwith, that he hastily came to him, and tould him what he had hard : " and were I Sir " (quoth he) " in such favour and authoritie with my Prince as you are, such men surely should not be suffered so villanously and falsly to misreport and slander me. Wherefore I would wish you to call them before you, and to there shame, for there lewde malice to punnish them." Who smilinge upon him sayde, " M"^ Watter Baylie, would you have me punnish them by whome 1 receave more benefitt then by you all that be my frendes ? Let them a Gods name speake as lewdly as they list of me, and shoote never soe many arrowes at me, so long as they do not hitt me, what am I the worse ? But if the should once hitt me, then would it a little trouble me : howbeit, I trust, .by Gods helpe, there shall none of them all be able to touch me. I have more cause, M"^ Water Bayly (I assure thee) to pittie them, then to be angrie with them." Such frutfuU communication had he often tymes with his familier frendes. Soe on a tyme walking a long the Thames syde with me at Chelsey, in talkinge of other thinges he sayd to me, " Now, would to God, Sonne Roger, upon condition three things are well estab- lished in Christendome, I were put in a sacke, and here presently cast into the Thames." " What great thinges be these, Sir" quoth I, " that should move you so to wish ? " " Wouldest thou know, sonne Roper, what they be " quoth he? "Yea marry. Sir, with a good will if it please you", quoth L " I faith, they be these Sonne ", quoth he. The first is, that where as the most part of Christian princes be at mortall warrs, they weare at universal peace. The second, that wheare the Church of Christ is at this present 364 COLLOQUIAL IDIOM soare afflicted with many heresies and errors, it were well settled in an uniformity. The third, that where the Kinges matter of his marriage is now come into question, it were to the glory of God and quietnesse of all parties brought to a good conclusion : " where by, as I could gather, he judged, that otherwise it would be a disturbance to a great part of Christendome.' ' When Sir Thomas Moore had continued a good while in the Tower, my Ladye his wife obtayned license to see him, who at her first comminge like a simple woman, and somewhat worldlie too, with this manner of salutations bluntly saluted him, "What the good yeare, M' Moore" quoth shee, " I marvell that you, that have beene allwayes hitherunto taken for soe wise a man, will now soe playe the foole to lye here in this close filthie prison, and be content to be shutt upp amonge myse and rattes, when you might be abroad at your libertie, and with the favour and good will both of the King and his Councell, if you would but doe as all the Bushopps and best learned of this Realme have done. And seeing you have at Chelsey a right fayre house, your librarie, your books, your gallerie, your garden, your orchards, and all other necessaries soe handsomely about you, where you might, in the companie of me your wife, your children, and houshould be merrie, I muse what a Gods name you meane here still thus fondlye to tarry." After he had a while quietly hard her, " I pray thee good M" Alice, tell me, tell me one thinge;" " What is that ? " (quoth shee). " Is not this house as nighe heaven as myne owne ? " To whome shee, after her accustomed fashion, not likeinge such talke, answeared, " Tille valle, Tille valle " "How say you, M" Alice, is it not soe?" quoth he. "jBo/te deus, bone Deus, man,_ will this geare never be left?" quoth shee. "Well then M'^^ Alice, if it be soe, it is verie well. For I see noe great cause whie I should soe much joye of my gaie house, or of any thinge belonginge thereunto, when, if I should but seaven yeares lye buried under ground, and then arise, and come thither againe, I should not fayle to finde some therin that would bidd me gett out of the doores, and tell me that weare none of myne. What cause have I then to like such an house as would soe soone forgett his master ? " Soe her perswasions moved him but a little.' The last days of this good man on earth, and some of his sayings just before his death, are told with great simplicity by Roper. We cannot forbear to quote the affecting passage which tells of Sir Thomas More's last parting from his daughter, the writer's wife. ' When Sir Tho. Moore came from Westminster to the Towreward againe, his daughter my wife, desireous to see her father, whome shee thought shee should never see in this world after, and alsoe to have his finall blessinge, gave attendaunce aboutes the Towre wharfe, where shee knewe he should passe by, e're he could enter into the Towre. There tarriinge for his cominge home, as soone as shee sawe him, after his blessinges on her knees reverentlie receaved, shee hastinge towards, without consideration and care of her selfe, pressinge in amongest the midst of the thronge and the Companie of the Guard, that with HoUbards and Billes weare round about him, hastily ranne to him, and then openlye in the sight of all them embraced and tooke him about the necke, and kissed him, whoe well likeing her most daughterlye love and affection towards him, gave her his fatherlie blessinge, and manye goodlie words of comfort besides, from whome after shee was departed, shee not satisfied with the former sight of her deare father, havinge respecte neither to her self, nor to the presse of the people and multitude that were about him, suddenlye turned backe againe, and rann to him as before, tooke him about the necke, and divers tymes togeather most lovingley kissed him, and at last with a full heavie harte was fayne to departe from him ; the behouldinge whereof was to manye of them that were SIR THOMAS MORE'S LAST CONVERSATION 365 present thereat soe lamentable, that it made them for very sorrow to mourne and weepe.' In his last letter to his ' dearely beloved daughter, written with a Cole ', Sir Thomas More refers to this incident : — ' And I never liked your manners better, then when you kissed me last For I like when daughterlie Love, and deare Charitie hath noe leasure to looke to worldlie Curtesie '. Next morning ' Sir Thomas even, and the Utas of St. Peeter in the yeare of our Lord God 1537 . . . earlie in the morninge, came to him Sir Thomas Pope, his singular frend, on messedge from the Kinge and his Councell, that hee should before nyne of the clocke in the same morninge suffer death, and that therefore fourthwith he should prepare himselfe thereto. " M' Pope " sayth he, " for your good tydinges I most hartily thank you. I have beene allwayes bounden much to the Kinges Highnes for the bentefitts and honors which he hath still from tyme to tyme most bounti- fully heaped upon mee, and yete more bounden I ame to his Grace for putting me into this place, where I have had convenient tyme and space to have remeijibraunce of my end, and soe helpe me God most of all M"^ Pope, am I bound to his Highnes, that it pleased him so shortlie to ridd me of the miseries of this wretched world. And therefore will I not fayle most earnestlye to praye for his Grace both here, and alsoe in another world. . . . And I beseech you, good M' Pope, to be a meane unto his Highnes, that my daughter Margarette may be present at my buriall." " The King is well contented allreadie " (quoth M'^ Pope) " that your Wife, Children and other frendes shall have free libertie to be present thereat"- "O how much be- houlden " then said Sir Thomas Moore " am I to his Grace, that unto my poore buriall vouchsafeth to have so gratious Consideration." Wherewithal! M' Pope takeinge his leave of him could not refrayne from weepinge, which Sir Tho. Moore perceavinge, comforted him in this wise, " Quiete yourselfe good M"^ Pope, and be not discomforted. For I trust that we shall once in heaven see each other full merily, where we shall bee sure to live and love togeather in joyful! blisse eternally." Wolsey. The Life of Wolsey (iSB?), by George Cavendish, a faithful and devoted servant of the Cardinal, who was with him on his death-bed, gives a wonderfully interesting picture of this remarkable man, in affluence and in adversity, and records a number of conversations which have a convincing air of verisimilitude. The following specimens are taken from the Kelmscott Press edition of 1893, which follows the spelling of the author's MS. in the British Museum. 'After ther departyng, my lord came to the sayd howsse of Eston to his lodgyng, where he had to supper with hyme dyvers of his frends of the court. And syttyng at supper, in came to hyme Doctor Stephyns, the secretary, late ambassitor unto Rome ; but to what entent he came I know not ; howbeit my lord toke it that he came bothe to dissembell a certeyn obedyence and love towards hyme, or ells to espie hys behaviour, and to here his commynycacion at supper. Not withstandyng my lord bade hyme well come, and commaundyd hyme to sytt down at the table to supper; with whome my lord had thys commynycacion with hyme under thys maner. Mayster Secretary, quod my lord, ye be-welcome home owt of Itally; whan came ye frome Rome? Forsothe, quod he, I came home 366 COLLOQUIAL IDIOM all most a monethe agoo ; and where quod my lord have you byn ever sence ? Forsothe, quod he, folowyng the court this progresse. Than have ye hunted and had good game and pastyme. Forsothe, Syr, quod he, and so I have, I thanke the kyngs Majestie. What good greyhounds have ye ? quod my lord. I have some syr quod he. And thus in huntyng, and in lyke disports, passed they all ther commynycacion at supper. And after supper my lord and he talked secretly together until it was mydnyght or they departed.' — p. 143. 'Than all thyng beyng ordered as it is before reherced, my lord prepared hyme to depart by water. And before his departyng he com- maundyd Syr William Gascoyne, his treasorer, to se these thyngs byfore remembred, delyverd safely to the kyng at his repayer. That don, the seyd Syr William seyd unto my lord. Syr I ame sorry for your grace, for I understand ye shall goo strayt way to the tower. Ys this the good comfort and councell, quod my lord, that ye can geve your mayster in adversitie? Yt hathe byn allwayes your naturall inclynacion to be very light of credytt, and mych more lighter in reporting of false newes, I wold ye shold knowe, Syr William, and all other suche blasphemers, that it is nothyng more false than that, for I never, thanks be to god, , deserved by no wayes to come there under any arrest, allthoughe it hathe pleased the kyng to take my howse redy furnysshed for his pleasyr at this tyme. I wold all the world knewe, and so I confesse to have no thyng, other riches, honour, or dignyty, that hathe not growen of hyme and by hyme ; therefore it is my verie dewtie to surrender the same to hyme agayn as his very owen, with al my hart, or ells I ware and onkjmd servaunt. Therefore goo your wayes, and geve good attendaunce unto your charge, that no thyng be embeselled.' — p. 149. 'And the next day we removed to Sheflfeld Parke, where therle of Shrews- bury lay within the loge, and all the way thetherward the people cried and lamented, as they dyd in all places as we rode byfore. And whan we came in to the parke of Shefifeld, nyghe to the logge, my lord of Shrewesbury, with my lady his wyfe, a trayn of gentillwomen, and all my lords gentilmen and yomen, standyng without the gatts of the logge to attend my lords commyng, to receyve hyme with myche honor ; whome therle embraced, sayeng these words. My lord quod he, your grace is most hartely welcome unto me, and glade to se you in my poore loge ; the whiche I have often desired ; and myche more gladder if^you had come after another sort. Ah, my g^till lord of Shrewesbury quod my lord, I hartely thanke you ; and allthoughe I have no cause to rejoyce, yet as a sorowe full hart may joye, I rejoyce my chaunce, which is so good to come into the hands and custody of so noble a persone, whose approved honor and wysdome hathe byn allwayes right well knowen to all nobell estats. And Sir, howe soever my ongentill accusers hathe used ther accusations agenst me, yet I assure you, and so byfore your lordshipe and all the world do I protest, that my demeanor and procedyngs hathe byn just and loyall towards my soverayn and liege lord ; of whose behaviour and doyngs your lordshipe hathe had good experyence ; and evyn accordyng to my trowthe and faythfulnes, so I beseche god helpe me in this my calaniytie. I dought nothyng of your trouthe, quod therle, therfore my lorde I beseche you be of good chere and feare not, for I have receyved letters from the kyng of his owen hand in your favour and entertaynyng the whiche you shall se. Sir, I ame nothyng sory but that I have not wherwith worthely to receyve you, and to entertayn you accordyng to your honour and my good wyll ; but suche as I have ye are most hartely welcome therto, desiryng you to accept my good wyll accordyngly, for I wol not receyve you as a prisoner, but as my good lord, and the kyngs trewe faythfuU subjecte ; and here is my wyfe come to salute you. Whome my lord kyst barehedyd, and all hir gentilwomen ; and toke my lords servaunts by the hands, as well gentilmen and yomen as other. Then these two lords went anne in arme CARDINAL WOLSEY TAKES HIS LEAVE 367 into the logge, conductyng my lord into a fayer chamber at thend of a goodly gallery within a newe tower, and here my lord was lodged.' — p. 246. Here are some short portions of dialogue between Wolsey and his friends, just before his death : ' Uppon Monday in the mornyng, as I stode by his bedds side, abought viii of the clocke, the wyndowes beyng cloose shett, havyng wake lights burnyng uppon the cupbord, I behyld hyme, as me seemed, drawyng fast to his end. He perceyved my shadowe uppon the wall by his bedds side, asked who was there. Sir I ame here, quod I. Howe do you ? quod he to me. Very well Sir, if I myght se your grace well. What is it of the clocke ? quod he to me. Forsothe Sir, quod I, it is past viii. of the clocke in the mornyng. Eight of the clocke, quod he, that cannot be, rehersing dyvers times eight of the clocke, eight of the clocke. Nay, nay, quod he at the last, it cannot be viii of the clocke, for by viii of the clocke ye shal loose your mayster ; for my tyme dr3.wyth nere that I must depart out of this world.' . . .—p. 265. ' Mayster Kyngston farewell. I can no moore, but whyshe all thyngs to have good successe. My tyme drawyth on fast. I may not tary with you. And forget not 1 pray you, what I have seyd and charged you with all : for whan I ame deade, ye shall peradventure remember my words myche better. And even with these words he began to drawe his speche at lengthe and his tong to fayle, his eyes beyng set in his hed, whos sight faylled hyme ; than we began to put hyme in rembraunce of Christs passion, and sent for the Abbott of the place to annele hyme ; who came with all spade and mynestred unto hyme all the servyce to the same belongyng ; and caused also the gard to stand by, bothe to here hyme talk byfore his deathe, and also to here wytnes of the same ; and incontinent the clocke strake viii, at whiche tyme he gave uppe the gost, and thus departed he this present lyfe.' — p. 276. Latimer. The Sermons of Bp. Latimer present good examples of colloquial oratory, and the style is but little removed from the colloquial style of the period. The following are from the Sermon of the Floughers, preached in 1548: ' For they that be lordes vyll yll go to plough. It is no mete oflSce for them. It is not semyng for their state. Thus came up lordyng loiterers. Thus crept in vnprechinge prelates, and so haue they longe continued. ' For how many vnlearned prelates haue we now at this day ? And no maruel. For if ye plough men yat now be, were made lordes they woulde cleane gyue ouer ploughinge, they woulde leaue of theyr labour and fall to lordyng outright, and let the plough stand. And then bothe ploughes nor walkyng nothyng shoulde be in the common weale but honger. For euer sence the Prelates were made Loordes and nobles, the ploughe standeth, there is no worke done, the people starue. ' Thei hauke, thei hunt, thei card, they dyce, they pastyme in theyr pre- lacies with galaunte gentlemen, with theyr daunsinge minyons, and with theyr freshe companions, so that ploughinge is set a syde. And by the lordinge and loytryng, preachynge and ploughinge is cleane gone . . . — pp. 24, 25. 'But nowe for the defaulte of vnpreaching prelates me thinke I coulde gesse what myghte be sayed for excusynge of them : They are so troubeled wyth Lordelye lyuynge, they be so placed in palacies, couched in courtes, ruffelynge in theyr rentes, daunceyng in theyr dominions, burdened with ambassages, pamperynge of theyr paunches lyke a monke that maketh his 368 COLLOQUIAL IDIOM jubilie, mounchynge in their maungers, and moylynge in their gaye manoures and mansions, and so troubeled wyth loyterynge in theyr Lordeshyppes : that they canne not attende it. They are other wyse occupyed, some in the kynges matters, some are ambassadoures, some of the pryuie counsel!, some to furnyshe the courte, some are Lordes of the Parliamente, some are presidentes, and some comptroleres of myntes. Well, well. Is thys theyr duetye? Is thys theyr offyce? Is thys theyr callyng? Should we haue ministers of the church to be comptrollers of the myntes ? Is thys a meete office for a prieste that hath cure of soules ? Is this hys charge ? I woulde here aske one question : I would fayne knowe who comp- trolleth the deuyll at home at his parishe, whyle he comptroUeth the mynte ? If the Apostles mighte not leaue the office of preaching to be deacons, shall one leaue it for myntyng ? ' 1 Wilson's Arte of Rhetorique (1560) has a section 'Of deliting the j hearers, and stirring them to laughter ' in which are enumerated ' What are the kindes of sporting, or mouing to laughter'. The subject is illustrated by various ' pleasant ' stories, which if few of them would now make us laugh, are at least couched in a very easy and colloquial style and enlivened by scraps of actual conversation. The most amusing element in the whole chapter is the attitude of the writer to the subject, and the combination of seriousness and scurrility with which it is handled. 'The occasion of laughter' says Wilson, 'and the meane that maketh us mery ... is the fondnes, the filthines, the deformitie, and all such euill be- hauiour as we see to be in other? . . . Now when we would abashe a man for some words* that he hath spoken, and can take none aduauntage of his person, or making of his bodie, we either doubt him at the first, and make him beleeue that he is no wiser then a Goose : or els we confute wholy his sayings with some pleasaunt iest, or els we extenuate and diminish his doings by some pretie meanes, or els we cast the like in his dish, and with some other devise, dash hym out of countenance : or last of all, we laugh him to scorne out right, and sometimes speake almost neuer a word, but only in continuaunce, shewe our selues pleasaunt '. — p. 136. ' A frend of mine, and a good fellowe, more honest then wealthie, yea and more pleasant then thriftie, hauing need of a nagge for his iourney that he had in hande, and being in the countrey, minded to go to Partnaie faire in Lincolnshire, not farre from the place where he then laie, and meeting by the way one of his acquaintaunce, told him his arrande, and asked him how horses went at the Faire. The other aunswered merely and saide, some trot sir, and some amble, as farre as I can see. If their paces be altered, I praye you tell me at our next meeting. And so rid away as fast as his horse could cary him, without saying any word more, whereat he then being alone, fel a laughing hartely to him self, and looked after a good while, vntil the other was out of sight.' — ^p. 140. ' A Gentleman hauing heard a Sermon at Paules, and being come home, was asked what the preacher said. The Gentleman answered he would first heare what his man could sale, who then waited vpon him, with his hatte and cloake, and calling his man to him, sayd, nowe sir, whate haue you brought from the Sermon. Forsothe good Maister, sayd the seruaunt your cloake and your hatte. A honest true dealing seruaunt out of doubt, plaine as a packsaddle, hauing a better soule to God, though his witte was simple, then those haue, that vnder the colour of hearing, giue them selues to priuie picking, and so bring other mens purses home in their bosomes, in the steade of other mens Sermons.' — pp. 141-2. These two stories are intended to illustrate the point that ' We shall delite the hearers, when they looke for one answere, and we make them 'DELITING THE HEARERS' 369 a cleane contrary, as though we would not seeme to vnderstand what they would haue '. 'Churlish aunsweres like the hearers sometimes very well. When the father was cast in judgement, the Sonne seeing him weepe: why weepe you Father? (quoth he) To whom his Father aunswered. What? Shall I sing I pray thee seeing by Lawe I am condemned to dye. Socrates likewise hieing mooued of his wife, because he should dye an ipnocent and guiltlesse in the Law: Why for shame woman (quoth he) wilt thou haue me to dye giltie and deseruing. When one had falne into a ditch, an other pitying his fall, asked him and saied : Alas how got you into that pit? Why Gods mother, quoth the other, doest thou aske me how I got in, nay tell me rather in the mischiefs, how I shall get out.' The nearest approach to the colloquial style in Bacon is to be found in the Apophthegms, in which are scraps of conversation. A few may be quoted, if only on account of the author. ' Master Mason of Trinity College, sent his pupil to an other of the fellows, to borrow a book of him, who told him, " I am loth to lend my books out of my chamber, but if it please thy tutor to come and read upon it in my chamber, he shall as long as he will." It was winter, and some days after the same fellow sent to M' Mason to borrow his bellows ; but M^' Mason said to his pupil, " I am loth to lend my bellows out of my chamber, but if thy tutor would come and blow the fire in my chamber, he shall as long as he will." —Apophth. 47, p. 113. •There were fishermen drawing the river at Chelsea: M"^ Bacon came thither by chance in the afternoon, and offered to buy their draught : they were willing. He asked them what they would take ? They asked thirty shillings. M' Bacon offered them ten. They refused it. Why then said M' Bacon, I will be only a looker on. They drew and catched nothing. Saith M' Bacon, Are not you mad fellows now, that might have had an angel in your purse, to have made merry withal,, and to have warmed you thoroughly, and now you must go home with nothing. Ay but, saith the fishermen, we had hope then to make a better gain of it. Saith M' Bacon, " Well my master, then I will tell you, hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper." — p. 136. Otway's Comedies have all the coarseness and raciness of dialogue of the latter half of the seventeenth century, and a pretty vein of genuine comicality. They are packed with the familiar slang and colloquialisms of the period. A few passages from Friendship in Fashion illustrate at once the speech and the manners of the day. Enter Lady Squeamish at the Door. Sir Noble Clumsey. Hah, my Lady Cousin ! —Faith Madam you see I am at it. Malagene. The Devil's wit, I think ; we could no sooner talk of wh — but she must come in, with a pox to her. Madam, your Ladyship's most humble Servant. Ldy Squ. Oh, odious ! insufferable ! who would have thought Cousin, you would have serv'd me so— fough, how he stinks of wine, I can smell him hither. — How have you the Patience to hear the Noise of Fiddles, and spend your time in nasty drinking ? Sir Noble. Hum ! 'tis a good Creature : Lovely Lady, thou shalt take thy Glass. Ldy Squ. Uh gud ; murder ! I had rather you had offered me a toad. Bb 37© COLLOQUIAL IDIOM Sir N. Then Malagene, here's a Health to my Lady Cousin's Pelion upon Ossa. \hrinks and breaks the Glass,] Ldy Squ. Lord, dear M' Malagene what 's that ? Mai. A certain Place Madam, in Greece, much talk't of by the Ancients ; the noble Gentleman is well read. Ldy Squ. Nay he 's an ingenious Person I'll assure you. Sir N. Now Lady bright, I am wholly thy Slave : Give me thy Hand, I'll go straight and begin my Grandmother's Kissing Dance ; but first deign me the private Honour of thy Lip. Ldy Squ. Nay, fie Sir Noble ! how I hate you now ! for shame be not so rude : I swear you are quite spoiled. Get you gone you good-natur'd Toad you. \Exeunt^ Malegene. . . . I'm a very good Mimick ; I can act Punchinello, Scara- mouchir, Harlequin, Prince Prettyman or anything. I can act the rumbling of a Wheel-barrow. Valentine. The rumbling of a Wheel-barrow ! Mai. Ay, the rumbling of a Wheel-barrow, so I say — Nay more than that, I can act a Sow and Pigs, Saussages a broiling, a Shoulder of Mutton a roasting : I can act a fly in a Honey-pot. Truman. That indeed must be the Effect of very curious Observation. Mai. No, hang it, I never make it my business to observe anything, that is Mechanicke. But all this I do, you shall see me if you will : But here comes her Ladyship and Sir Noble. Ldy Squ. Oh, dear M' Truman, rescue me. Nay Sir Noble for Heav'n's sake. Sir N. I tell thee Lady, I must embrace thee : Sir, do you know me ! I am Sir Noble Clumsey : I am a Rogue of an Estate, and I live — Do you want any money ? I have fifty pounds. Val. Nay good Sir Noble, none of your Generosity we beseech you. The Lady, the Lady, Sir Noble. Sir N. Nay, 'tis all one to me if you won't take it, there it is. — Hang Money,' my Father was an Alderman. Mai. 'Tis pity good Guineas should be spoil'd. Sir Noble, by your leave. [Picks up the Guineas^ Sir N. But, Sir, you will not keep my Money ? Mai. Oh, hang Money, Sir, your Father was an Alderman. Sir N. Well, get thee gone for an Arch- Wag — I do but sham all this while :■ — ^but by Dad he 's pure Company. . • . . . . Lady, once more I say be civil, and come kiss me. Val. Well done Sir Noble, to her, never spare. Ldy Squ. I may be even with you tho for all this, M' Valentine : Nay dear Sir Noble : M"^ Truman, I'll swear he'll put me into Fits. Sir N. No, but let me salute the Hem of thy Garment. Wilt thou marry me ? [K'neels.] Mai. Faith Madam do, let me make the Match. Ldy Squ. Let me die M"^ Malagene, you are a strange Man, and I'll swear have a great deal of Wit. Lord, why don't you write ? Mai. Write? I thank your Ladyship for that with all my Heart. No I have a Finger in a Lampoon or so sometimes, that 's all. Truman. But he can act. Ldy Squ. I'll swear, and so he does better than any one upon our Theatres ; I have seen him. Oh the English Comedians are nothing, not comparable to the French or Italian : Besides we want Poets. Sir N, Poets ! Why I am a Poet ; I have written three Acts of a Play, and have nam'd it already. 'Tis to be a Tragedy. Ldy Squ. Oh Cousin, if you undertake to write a Tragedy, take my 'PLEASURE INTOLERABLE' 371 Counsel : Be sure to say soft melting tender things in it that may be moving, and make your Lady's Characters virtuous whate'er you do. Sir N. Moving ! Why, I can never read it myself but it makes me laugh : well, 'tis the pretty'st Plot, and so full of Waggery. Ldy Squ. Oh ridiculous ! Mai. But Knight, the Title ; Knight, the Title. Sir N. Why let me see ; 'tis to be called The Merry Conceits of Love ; or the Life and Death of the Emperor Charles the Fifth, with the Humours of his Dog Boabdillo. Mai. Ha, ha, ha. . . . Ldy Squ. But dear M' Malagene, won't you let us see you act a little something of Harlequin? I'll swear you do it so naturally, it makes me think I'm at the Louvre or Whitehall all the time. [Mai. acts.] O Lord, don't, don't neither ; I'll swear you'll make me burst. Was there ever any- thing so pleasant ? Trum. Was ever anything so affected and ridiculous ? Her whole Life sure is a continued Scene of Impertinence. What a damn'd Creature is a decay'd Woman, with all the exquisite Silliness and Vanity of her Sex, yet none of the Charms ! \Mal. speaks in Punchinello's voice."] Ldy Squ. O Lord, that, that ; that is a Pleasure intolerable. Well, let me die if I can hold out any longer, A Comparison between the Stages, wi'lA an Examen 0/ the Generous Conqueror, printed in 1702, is a dialogue between 'Two Gentlemen', Sullen and Ramble (see below), and 'a Critick',upon the plays of the day and others of an earlier date. The style is that of easy and natural familiar con- versation, with little or no artificiality, and incidentally, the tract throws light upon contemporary manners and social habits. The following examples are designed to illustrate the colloquial handling of indifferent topics, and the small-talk of the early eighteenth century, as well as the treatment of the immediate subject of the essay. Sullen. They may talk of the Country and what they will, but the Park for my money. Ramble. In its proper Season I grant you, when the Mall is pav'd with lac'd shoes ; when the Air is perfum'd with the rosie Breath of so many fine Ladies ; when from one end to the other the Sight is entertain'd with nothing but Beauty, and the whole Prospect looks like an Opera. Sull. And when is it out of Season Ramble ? Ram. When the Beauties desert it ; when the absence of this charming Company makes it a Solitude : Then Sullen, the Park is to me no more than a Wilderness, a very Common ; and a Grove in a country Garden with a pretty Lady is by much the pleasanter Landscape. Sull. To a Man of your Quicksilver Constitution it may be so, and the Cuckoo in May may be Music t'ee a hundred Miles off, when all the Masters in Town can't divert you. Ram. I love everything as Nature and the Nature of Pleasure has con- triv'd it ; I love the Town in Winter, because then the Country looks aged and deform'd ; and I hate the Town in Summer, because then the Country is in its Glory, and looks like a Mistress just drest out for enjoyment. Sull. Very well distinguish'd : Not like a Bride, but like a Mistress. Ram. I distinguish 'em by that comparison because I love nothing well enough to be wedded to 't : I'm a Proteus in my Appetite, and love to change my Abode with my Inclination. Sull. I differ from you for the very Reason you give for your change ; the Town is evermore the same to me ; and tho' the Season makes it look after another manner, yet still it has a Face to please me one way or other, and both Winter and Summer make it agreeable.— pp. 1-3. B b 2 372 COLLOQUIAL IDIOM Here is a conversation during dinner at the ' Blew Posts '. Critik. What have you order'd ? Ramb. A Brace of Carp stew'd, a piece of Lamb, and a Sallet ; d'ee like it ? Crit. I like anything in the World that will indure Cutting : Prithee M"^ Cook make haste or expect I shall Storm thy Kitchin. Sull. Why thou'rt as hungry as if thou hadst been keeping Garrison in Mantua : I don't know whether Flesh and Blood is safe in thy Company. Crit. I wish with all my Heart thou wert there, that thou mightst under- stand what it is to fast as I have done : Come, to our Places ... the blessed hour is come Sit, sit . . . fall to, Graces are out of Fashion. Ramb. I wish the Charming Madam Subligny were here. Crit. Gad so don't I : I had rather her Feet were pegg'd down to the Stage ; at present my Appetite stands another way : Waiter, some Wine . . . or I shall choak. . . . Sull. This Fellow eats like an Ostrich, the Bones of these great Fish are no more to him than the Bones of an Anchovy ; they melt upon his Tongue like marrow Puddings. Crit. Ay, you may talk, but I'm sure I find 'em not so gentle; here's one yet in my Throat will be my death ; the Flask ... the Flask . . . , Ramb. But Critick, how did you like the Play last Night ? Crit. I'll tell you by and by, Lord Sir, you won't give a Man time to break his Fast : This Fish is such washy Meat ... a Man can't fix his knife in 't, it runs away from him as if it were still alive, and was afraid of the Hook : Put the Lamb this way. Sull. The Rogue quarrels with the Fish, and yet you cou'd eat up the whole Pond ; the late Whale at Cuckold's point, with all its oderiferous Gar- badge, wou'd ha' been but a Meal to him : Well, how do you like the Lamb ? does that feel your knife ? Crit. A little more substantial, and not much : Well, I shou'd certainly be starv'd if I were to feed with the French, I hate their thin slops, their Pot- tages, Frigaces, and Ragous, where a Man may bury his Hand in the Sauce, and dine upon Steam : No, no, commend me to King Jemmy's English Surloin, in whose gentle Flesh a Man may plunge a Case-raiife to the tip of the Handle, and then draw out a Slice that will surfeit half a Score Yeoman of the Guard. Some Wine ye Dog . . . there . . . now I have slain the Giant ; and now to your Question . . . what was it you askt me ? Ramb. Won't you stay the Desert ? Some Tarts and Cheese ? Crit. I abominate Tarts and Cheese, they're like a faint After-kiss, when a Man is sated with better Sport ; there 's no more Nourishment in 'em, than in the paring of an Apple. Here Waiter take away. . . . Ramb. Then remove every Thing but the Table-cloth.' . . . Ramb. Here Waiter — send to the Booksellers in Pell mell for the Generous Conqueror and make haste . . . you say you know the Author Critick. Crit. By sight I do, but no further ; he 's a Gentleman of good Extraction, and for ought I know, of good Sense. Ramb. Surely that's not to be questioned; I take it for granted that a Man that can write a Play, must be a Man of good Sense. Crit. That is not always a consequence. I have known many a singing Master have a worse voice than a Parish Clerk, and I know two dancing Masters at this time, that are directly Cripples : . . . A Ship-builder may fit up a Man of War for the West Indies, and perhaps not know his Compas : Or a great Traveller, with Heylin, that writ the Geography of the whole World, may,' like him, not know the way from the next Village to his own House. Ramb, Your Comparisons are remote M"' Critick. Crit. Not so remote as some successful Authors are from good sense ; GENERAL CONVERSATION AFTER DINNER 373 Wit and Sense are no more the same than Wit and Humour; nay there is even in Wit an uncertain Mode, a variable Fashion, that is as unstable as the Fashion of our Cloaths : This may be prov'd by their Works who writ a hundred Years ago, comjjar'd with some of the modem ; Sir Philip Sidney, Don, Overbury, nay Ben himself took singular delight in playing with their Words : Sir Philip is everywhere in his Arcadia jugling, which certainly by the example of so great a Man, proves that sort of Wit then in Fashion ; now that kind of Wit is call'd Punning and Quibbling, and is become too low for the Stage, nay even for ordinary Converse ; so that when we find a Man who still loves that old fashion'd Custom, we make him remarkable, as who is more remarkable than Capt. Swan. Ramb. Nay, your Quibble does well now a Days, your best Comedies tast of 'em ; the Old Batchelor is rank. Crit. But 'tis every Day decreasing, and Queen Betty's Ruflfand Fardin- gale are not more exploded ; But Sense Gentlemen, is and will be the same to the World's end. Sull. And Nonsense is infinite, for England never had such a Stock and such Variety. Ramb. Yet I have heard the Poets that flourish'd in the last Reign but two, complain of the same Calamity, and before that Reign the thing was the same ; All Ages have produced Murmurers ; and in the best of times you shall hear the Trades-man cry — Alas Neighbour ! sad Times, very hard Times . . . not a Penny of Money stirring . . . Trade is quite dead, and nothing but War . . . War and Taxes . . . when to my knowledge the gluttonous Rogue shall drink his two Bottles at Dinner, and his Wife have half a Score of rich Suits, a purse of Gold for the Gallant, and fifty Pounds worth of Gold and Silver Lace on her under Petticoats, Sull. Nay certainly, this that Ramble now speaks of is a great Truth ; those hypocritical Rogues are always grumbling ; and tho' our Nation never had such a Trade, or so much Money, yet 'tis all too little for their voracious Appetites : As I live — says he, I can't afford this Silk one Penny cheaper — d'ee mind the Rogues Equivocation ? as I live — that is, he lives like a Gen- tleman — but let him live like a Tradesman and be hang'd ; let him wear a Frock, and his Wife a blew Apron. Ramb. See, the Book 's here : go Waiter and shut the Door. — pp. 76-9. The dialogue of Richardson, 'sounynge in moral vertu', devoid of all the lighter touches, is typical of the age that was beginning, the age of reaction against the levities and negligences in speech and conduct of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The following conversation of rather an agitated character, between a mother and daughter, is from Letter XVI, in Clarissa Harlowe{i'j^%): ' . . . My mother came up to me. I love, she was pleased to say, to come into this appartment. — No emotions child ! No flutters ! — Am I not your mother ? — Am I not your fond, your indulgent mother ? — Do not discompose me by ascoraposvag yourself \ Do not occasion me uneasiness, when I would ^wcyou nothing but pleasure. Come my dear, we will go into your closet. . . . Hear me out and then speak ; for I was going to expostulate. You are no stranger to the end of M' Solmes's visits — O Madam ! — Hear me out ; and then speak. — He is not indeed everything I wish him to be : but he is a man of probity and has no vices — No vices Madam ! — Hear me out child. — You have not behaved much amiss to him : we have seen with pleasure that you have not-=-0 Madam, must I not now speak ! I shall have done presently. — A young creature of your virtuous and pious turn, she was pleased to say, cannot surely love a proflicate ; you love your brother too well, to wish to see any one who had like to have killed him, and who threatened your uncles and defies us all. You have had your own way six or seven times : we want 374 COLLOQUIAL IDIOM to secure you against a man so vile. Tell me (I have a right to know) whether you prefer this man to all others ? — Yet God forbid that I should know you do ; for such a declaration would make us all miserable. Yet tell me, are your affections engaged to this man ? I know what the inference would be if I had said they were not. You hesitate — You answer me not — You cannot answer me — Rising — Nevermore will I look upon you with an eye of favour — O Madam, Madam ! Kill me not with your displeasure — I would not, I need not, hesitate one moment, did I not dread the inference, if I answer you as you wish. — Yet be that inference what it will, your threatened displeasure will make me speak. And I declare to you, that I know not my own heart if it be not absolutely free. And pray, let me ask my dearest Mamma, in what has my conduct been faulty, that like a giddy creature, I must be forced to marry, to save me from — from what ? Let me beseech you Madam to be the Guardian of my reputation ! Let not your Clarissa be precipitated into a state she wishes not to enter into with any man ! And this upon a supposition that otherwise she shall marry herself, and disgrace her whole family. When then. Clary [passing over the force of my plea] if your heart be free — O my beloved Mamma, let the usual generosity of your dear heart operate in my favour. Urge not upon me the inference that made me hesitate. I won't be interrupted. Clary — You have seen in my behaviour to you, on this occasion, a truly maternal tenderness ; you have observed that I have undertaken the task with some reluctance, because the man is not everything ; and because I know you carry your notions of perfection in a man too high. — Dearest Madam, this one time excuse me ! Is there then any danger that I should be guilty of an imprudent thing for the man's sake you hint at ? Again interrupted ! Am I to be questioned, and argued with ? You know this won't do somewhere else. You know it won't. What reason then, ungenerous girl, can you have for arguing with me thus, but because you think from my indulgence to you you may ? What can I say ? What can I do ? What must that cause be that will not bear being argued upon ? Again ! Clary Harlowe — Dearest Madam forgive me : it was always my pride and my pleasure to obey you. But look upon that man — see but the disagreeableness of his person — Now, Clary, do I see whose person you have in your eye ! — Now is M' Solmes, I see, but comparatively disagreeable ; disagreeable only as an- other man has a much more specious person. But, Madam, are not his manners equally so ? — Is not his person the true representation of his mind ? — That other man is not, shall not be, anything to me, release me from this one man, whoiii my heart, unbidden, resists. _ Condition thus with your father. Will he bear, do you think, to be thus dialogued with ? _ Have I not conjured you, as you value my peace — What is it that / do not give up ? — This very task, because I apprehended you would not be easily persuaded, is a task indeed upon me. And will you give up nothing ? Have you not refused as many as have been offered to you ? If you would not have us guess for whom, comply ; for comply you must, or be looked upon as in a state of defiance with your whole family. And saying thus she arose, and went from me.' Miss Austen. The following examples of Miss Austen's dialogue are not selected because they are the most sparkling conversations in her works, but rather because they appear to be typical of the way of speech of the period, and further they illustrate Miss Austen's incomparable art. The first passage is from Emma, which was written between 1811 and CONVERSATION OF MR. WOODHOUSE 375 18 16. Mr. Woodhouse and his daughter have just received an invitation to dine with the Coles, enriched tradespeople who had settled in the neighbourhood. Emma's view of them was that they were ' very respect- able in their way, but they ought to be taught that it was not for them to arrange the times on which the superior families would visit them '. On the present occasion, however, ' she was not absolutely without inclina- tion for the party. The Coles expressed themselves so properly — there was so much real attention in the manner of it — so much consideration for her father.' Emma having decided in her own mind to accept the invitation — some of her intimate friends were going — it remained to explain to her father, the ailing and fussy Mr. Woodhouse, that he would be lefl alone without his daughter's company for the evening, as it was out of the question that he should accompany her. ' He was soon pretty well resigned.' '" I am not fond of dinner-visiting " said he j "I never was. No more is Emma. Late hours do not agree with us. I am sorry M' and M" Cole should have done it I think it would be much better if they would come in one afternoon next summer and take their tea with us ; take us in their afternoon walk, which they might do, as our hours are so reasonable, and yet get home without being out in the damp of the evening. The dews of a summer evening are what I would not expose anybody to. However as they are so very desirous to have dear Emma dine with them, and as you will both be there [this refers to his friend M"^ Weston and his wife], and M"' Knightley too, to take care of her I cannot wish to prevent it, provided the weather be what it ought, neither damp, nor cold, nor windy." Then turning to M"^* Weston with a look of gentle reproach — " Ah, Miss Taylor, if you had not married, you would have staled at home with me." " Well, Sir ", cried M' Weston, " as I took Miss Taylor away, it is incumbent upon me to supply her place, if I can ; and I will step to M" Goddard in a moment if you wish it." . . . With this treatment M' Woodhouse was soon composed enough for talking as usual. " He should be happy to see M« Goddard. He had a great regard for M" Goddard; and Emma should write a line and invite her. James could take the note. But first there must be an answer written to M" Cole." " You will make my excuses, my dear, as civilly as possible. You will say that I am quite an invalid, and go nowhere, and therefore must decline their obliging invitation ; beginning with my compliments, of course. But you will do everything right. I need not tell you what is to be done. We must remember to let James know that the carriage will be wanted on Tuefsday. I shall have no fears for you with him. We have never been there above once since the new approach was made ; but still I have no doubt that James will take you very safely ; and when you get there you must tell him at what time you would have him come for you again ; and you had better name an early hour. You will not like staying late. You will get tired when tea is over." " But you would not wish me to come away before I am tired, papa ? " " Oh no my love ; but you will soon be tired. There will be a great many people talking at once. You will not like the noise." "But my dear Sir,'' cried M' Weston, "if Emma comes away early, it will be breaking up the party." "And no great harm if it does " said M"^ Woodhouse. " The sooner every party breaks up the better." " But you do not consider how it may appear to the Coles. Emma's going away directly after tea might be giving offense. They are good-natured people, and think little of their own claims; but still they must feel that anybody's hurrying away is no great compliment ; and Miss Woodhouse's 376 COLLOQUIAL IDIOM doing it would be more thought of than any other person's in the room. You would not wish to disappoint and mortify the Coles, I am sure, sir; friendly, good sort of people as ever lived, and who have been your neighbours these ten years," " No, upon no account in the world, M' Weston, I am much obliged to you for reminding me. I should be extremely sorry to be giving them any pain. I know what worthy people they are. Perry tells me that M' Cole never touches malt liquor. You would not think it to look at him, but he is bilious — M' Cole is very bilious. No, I would not be the means of giving them any pain. My dear Emma we must consider this. I ain sure rather than run any risk of hurting M'' and M" Cole you would stay a little longer than you might wish. You will not regard being tired. You will be perfectly safe, you know, among your friends." " Oh yes, papa. I have no fears at all for myself ; and I should have no scruples of staying as late as M" Weston, but on your account. I am only afraid of your sitting up for me. I am not afraid of your not being ex- ceedingly comfortable with M" Goddard. She loves piquet, you know ; but when she is gone home I am afraid you will be sitting up by yourself, instead of going to bed at your usual time ; and the idea of that would entirely destroy my comfort. You must promise me not to sit up." ' The next example is in a very different vein. It is from Sense and Sensibility (chap, xxi) and records the mode of conversation of the Miss Steeles. These two ladies are among Miss Austen's vulgar characters, and their speech lacks the restraint and decorum which her better-bred personages invariably exhibit. While the Miss Steeles' con- versation is in sharp contrast with that of the Miss Dashwoods, with whom they are here engaged, both in substance and manner, it evidently passed muster among many of the associates of the latter, especially with their cousin Sir John Middleton, in whose house, as relations of his wife's, the Miss Steeles are staying. Apart from the vulgarity of thought, the diction appears low when compared with that of most of Miss Austen's characters. As a matter of fact it is largely the way of speech of the better society of an earlier age, which has come down in the world, and survives among a pretentious provincial bourgeoisie. ♦"What a sweet woman Lady Middleton is" said Lucy Steele . . . "And Sir John too " cried the elder sister, " what a charming man he is ! " . . . " And what a charming little family they have ! I never saw such fine children in my life. I declare I quite doat upon them already, and indeed I am always destractedly fond of children." "I should guess so" said Elinor with a smile "from what I witnessed this morning." " I have a notion " said Lucy, " you think the little Middletons rather too much indulged ; perhaps they may be the outside of enough ; but it is natural in Lady Middleton ; and for my part I love to see children full of life and spirits ; I cannot bear them if they are tame and quiet." "I confess " replied Elinor, "that while I am at Barton Park, I never think of tame and quiet children with any abhorrence." ' "And how do you like Devonshire, Miss Dashwood? (said Miss Steele) I suppose you were very sorry to leave Sussex." In some surprise at the familiarity of this question, or at least in the manner in which it was spoken, Elinor replied that she was. " Norland is a prodigious beautiful place, is not it ? " added Miss Steele. " We have heard Sir John admire it excessively," said Lucy, who seemed to think some apology necessary for the freedom of her sister. " I think MISS LUCY STEELE 377 every one must admire it " replied Elinor, " who ever saw the place ; though it is not to be supposed that any one can estimate its beauties as we do." ' And had you many smart beaux there ? I suppose you have not so many m this part of the world ; for my part I think they are a vast addition always." ^^ " But why should you think " said Lucy, looking ashamed of her sister, that there are not as many genteel young men in Devonshire as Sussex." " Nay, my dear, I'm sure I don't pretend to say that there an't. I'm sure there 's a vast many smart beaux in Exeter ; but you know, how could I tell what smart beaux there might be about Norland? and I was only afraid the Miss Dashwoods might find it dull at Barton ; if they had not so many as they used to have. But perhaps you young ladies may not care about beaux, and had as lief be without them as with them. For my part, I think they are vastly agreeable, provided they dress smart and behave civil. But I can't bear to see them dirty and nasty. Now, there 's M' Rose at Exeter, a pro- digious smart young man, quite a beau, clerk to M' Simpson, you know, and yet if you do but meet him of a morning, he is not fit to be seen. I sup- pose your brother was quite a beau. Miss Dashwood, before he married, as he was so rich ? " " Upon my word," replied Elinor, " I cannot tell you, for I do not per- fectly comprehend the meaning of the word. But this I can say, that if he ever was a beau before he married, he is one still, for there is not the smallest alteration in him." " Oh ! dear ! one never thinks of married men's being beaux— they have something else to do." "Lord! Anne", cried her sister,' "you can talk of nothing but beaux;— you will make Miss Dashwood believe you think of nothing else."' It is not surprising that ' " this specimen of the Miss Steeles" was enough. The vulgar freedom and folly of the eldest left her no recommendation and as Elinor was not blinded by the beauty, or the shrewd look of the youngest, to her want of real elegance and artlessness, she left the house without any wish of knowing them better '. Greetings and Farewells. Only the slightest indication can be given of the various modes of greet- ing and bidding farewell. These seem to have been very numerous, and less_ste!;gotyped in the fifteen,th and sixteenth centuries than at present. It is not easy to be sure how soon the formulas which we now employ, or their ancestral forms, came into current use. The same form often serves both at meeting and parting. In 1451, Agnes Paston records, in a letter, that 'after evynsonge, Angnes Ball com to me to my closett and bad me good evyn '. In the account, quoted above, p. 363, given by Shillingford of his meetings with the Chancellor, about 1447, he speaks of ' saluting hym yn the moste godely wyse that y coude ' but does not tell us the form he used. The Chancellor, however, replies ' Welcome, ij times, and the iij^la tyme "Right wel come Mayer", and helde the Mayer a grete while faste by the honde '. In the sixteenth century a great deal of ceremonial embracing and kissing was in vogue. Wolsey and the King of France, according to Cavendish, rode forward to meet each other, and they embraced each other on horseback. Cavendish himself when he visits the castle of the Lord of Cr^pin, a great nobleman, in order to prepare a lodging for 378 COLLOQUIAL IDIOM the Cardinal, is met by this great personage,' who ' at his first coming embraced me, saying I was right heartily welcome '. Henry VIII was wont to walk with Sir Thomas More, ' with his arm about his neck '. The actual formula used in greeting and leave-taking is too often un- recorded. When the French Embassy departs from England, whom Wolsey has so splendidly entertained. Cavendish says — ' My lord, after humble commendations had to the French King bade them adieu '. The Earl of Shrewsbury greets the Cardinal thus — ' My Lord, your Grace is most heartily welcome unto me ', and Wolsey replies ' Ah my gentle Lord of Shrewsbury, T heartily thank you '. It is not until the appearance of plays that we find the actual forms of greeting recorded with frequency. In Roister Bolster, there are a fair number: — God keepe thee worshipful Master Roister Bolster; Welcome my good wenche ; God you satie and see Nourse ; and the reply to this — Welcome friend Merrygreeke; Good night Roger old kaaae, /arewell Roger old knaue ; well met, J bid you right welcome. A very favourite greeting is God be withyou. God continue your Lordship is a form of farewell in Chapman's Monsieur B'Olive, and God-den ' good evening ', occurs in Middleton's Chaste Maid in Cheapside. Sir Walter Whorehound in the same play makes use of the formula ' / embrace your acquaintance Sir ', to which the reply is ' // vows your service Sir '. Massinger's New Way to pay old Debts contains various formulas of greeting. lam still your creature, says AUworth to his step-mother Lady A. on taking leave ; of two old domestics he takes leave with ' my service to both ', and they reply ' ours waits on you '. In reply to the simple Farewell Tom, of a friend, AUworth Answers ' All j'qy stay with you'. Sir Giles Overreach greets Lord Lovel with ' Good day to My Lord ' ; and the prototype of the modem how are you is seen in Lady AUworth's 'How dost thou MarraUf A graceful greeting in this play is 'You are happily encountered'. The later seventeenth-century comedies exhibit the characteristic urbanity of the age in their formulas of greeting and leave-taking. • A happy day to you Madam ', is Victoria's morning compliment to Mrs. Goodvile in Otway's Friendship in Fashion, and that lady replies — ' Dear Cousin, your humble servant'. Sir WilfuU Witwoud in Congreve's Way of the World, says ' Save you Gentleman and Lady ' on entering a room. His younger brother, on meeting him, greets him with ' Four servant Brother', and the knight replies ' i^oar servant I Why yours Sir, Your servant again; 's heart, and your Friend and Servant to that'. I'm everlastingly your humble servant, deuce take me Madam, says Mr. Brisk to Lady Froth, in the Bouble Bealer. Your servant is a very usual formula at this period, on joining or leaving company. In Vanbrugh's Journey to London, Colonel Courdy on entering is greeted by Lady Yltz.d^itct— Colonel your servant; her daughter Miss Betty varies it wUh—Your servant Colonel, and the visitor replies to both — Ladies, your most obedient. Mr. Trim, the formal coxcomb in Shadwell's Bury Fair, parts thus from his friends— .S"?)-, / kiss your hands ; Mr. Wildish— Ar your most humhle servant; Iraa.—M' Oldwit 1 am your most faithful servant; Mr. Oldwit — Your servant sweet M" Trim. BEGINNINGS AND ENDINGS OF LETTERS 379 Your servant, madam good morrow to you, is Lady Arabella's greeting to Lady Headpiece, who replies — And to you Madam (Vanbrugh's Journey to London). The early eighteenth century appears not to differ materially from the preceding in its usage. Lord Formal in Fielding's Love in Several Masques, says Ladies your most humble servant, and Sir Apish in the same play — Your Ladyship's everlasting creature. Epistolary Formulas. The writing of letters, both familiar and formal, is such an inevitable part of everyday life, that it seems legitimate to include here some examples of the various methods of beginning and ending private letters from the early fifteenth century onwards. A proper and exhaustive treatment of the subject would demand a rather elaborate classification, according to the rank and status of both the writer and the recipient, and the relation in which they stood to each other — whether master and servant, or dependant, friend, subject, child, spouse, and so on. In the comparatively few examples here given, out of many thousands, nothing is attempted beyond a chronological arrangement. The status and relationship of the parties is, however, given as far as possible. We note that the formula employed is frequently a conventional and more or less fixed phrase which recurs, with slight variants, again and again. At other times the opening and closing phrases are of a more personal and individual character. 1418. Archbp. Chichele to Hen. V. Signs simply : your preest and bede- man. — Ellis, i. i. 5. 1425. Will. Paston to . Right worthy and worshepfull Sir. I recom- maunde me to you, &c. Ends : Almyghty God have you in his governaunce. Your frend unknowen. — Past. Letters, i. 19-20. 1440. Agnes to Will. Paston. Inscribed: To my worshepful housbond W. Paston be this letter takyn. Dere housbond I reccommaunde me to yow. Ends : The Holy Trinite have you in governaunce. — P. L. i. 38-9. 1442-5. Duke of Buckingham to Lord Beaumont. Ryght worshipful and with all my herte right enterly beloved brother, I recomaunde me to you, thanking right hastili your good brotherhode for your gode and gentill letters. I beseche the blissid Trinite preserve you in honor and prosperite. Your trewe and feithfuU broder H. Bukingham. — P.L. i. 61-2. 1443. Margaret to John Paston. Ryth worchipful husbon, I reccomande me to yow desyryng hertely to her of your wilfar. Almyth God have you in his kepyn and sende yow helth, Yorys M. Paston. — P. L. i. 48-9. 1444. James Gresham to Will. Paston. Please it your good Lordship to wete, &c. Ends : Wretyn right simply the Wednesday next to fore the Fest. By your most symple servaunt. — P. L. i. 50. 1444. Duchess of Norfolk to J. Paston. Ryght trusty and entirely wel- beloved we grete you wel hertily as we kan . . . and siche agrement as, &c. ... we shall duely performe yt with the myght of Jesu who haff you in his blissed keping. — P. L. i. 57. 1444. Sir R. Chamberlayn to Agn. Paston. Ryght worchepful cosyn, I comand me to you. And I beseche almyty God kepe you. Your Cosyn Sir Roger Chamberlain. 1445. Agnes to Edm. Paston. To myn welbelovid sone. I grete you wel. Be your Modre Angnes Paston.— i. 58, 59. 38o COLLOQUIAL IDIOM 1449. Marg. to John Paston. Wretyn at Norwych in hast, Be your gronyng Wyflf.— i. 76-7- 1449. Same to same. No mor I wryte to jow atte this tyme. Your Mar- karyte Paston. — i. 42-3. 1449. Will, to John Paston. Ends: Be jowre pore Broder. 1449. Eliz. Clare to J. Paston. No more I wrighte to 50W at this tyme, but Holy Gost have jow in kepyng. Wretyn in haste on Seynt Peterys day be candel lyght. Be your Cosyn E. C. — P. L. i. 89-90. 1450. Duke of Suffolk to his son. My dear and only welbeloved sone. Your trewe and lovynge fader Suffolk. — P. L. i. 121-2. 1450. Will. Lomme to J. Paston. I prey you this bille may recomaunde me to mastrases your moder and wyfe. Wretyn yn gret hast at London. — P. L. i. 126. 1450. J. Gresham to 'my Maister Whyte Esguyer'. After due recomen- dacion I recomaund me to yow. 1450. J. Paston to above. James Gresham, I pray you labour for the, &c. — i. 145. 1450. Justice Yelverton to Sir J. Fastolf. By your old Servaunt William Yelverton Justice.— P. L. i. 166. 1453. Agnes to J. Paston. Sone I grete you well and send you Godys blessyng and myn. Wretyn at Norwych ... in gret hast, Be your moder A. Paston. — P. L. i. 259. 1454. J. Paston to Earl of Oxford. Youre servaunte to his powr John Paston.— P. L. i. 276. 1^$^. Lord Scales to J. Paston. Our Lord have you in govemaunce. Your frend The Lord Scales.— P. L. i. 289. 1454. Thomas Howes to J. Paston. I pray God kepe yow. Wryt at Castr hastly ij day of September, Your owne T. Howes. — P. L. i. 301. 1454. The same. Your chapleyn and bedeman Thomas Howes. — i. 318. 1455. Sir J. Fastolf to Duke of Norfolk. Writen at my pore place of Castre, Your humble man and servaunt. — P. L. i. 324. 1455. J. Cudworth, Bp. of Lincoln, to /. Paston. And Jesu preserve you, J. Bysshopp of Lincoln. — P. L. i. 350. 1456. Archbp. Bourchier to Sir J. Fastolf. The blissid Trinitee have you everlastingly in His keping, Written in my manoir of Lamehith, Your feith- fuU and trew Th, Cant.— P. L. i. 382. 1456 (Nephew to uncle). H. Fylinglay to Sir J. Fastolf. Ryght wor- shipful unkell and my ryght good master, I recommaund me to yow wyth all my servys. And Sir, my brother Paston and I have, &c. . . . Your nevew and servaunt. — P. L. i. 397. 1458. John Jemingham to Marg. Paston. Nomor I wryte unto you at this tyme. . . . Your owne umble servant and cosyn J. J. — P. L. i. 429. 1458 (Daughter to her mother), Eliz. Poynings to Agn. Paston. Right worshipful and my most entierly belovde moder, in the most lowly maner I recomaund me unto your gode moderhode. . . . And Jesu for his grete mercy save yow. By your humble daughter. — P. L. i. 434-5. 1469. Chancellot and University of Oxford to Sir John Say. Ryght wor- shipful our trusty and entierly welbeloued, after harty commendacyon. . . . Ends : yo'^ trew and harty louers The Chancellr and Thuniversite of Oxon- ford. — Ellis. 1477. John Paston to his mother. Your sone and humbyll servaunt P. — P. L. iii. 176. 1481-4. Edm, Paston to his mother, '^qmx umble son and servant. — P. L. iii. 280. 1482. J. Paston to his mother. Your sone and trwest servaunt. — P. L. iii. 290. 1482. Margery Paston to her husband. No more to you at this tyme, Be your servaunt andbedewoman.— iii. 293. LONG WINDED GREETINGS 381 1485. Duke of Norfolk to f. Paston. Welbelovyd frend I cummaund me to yow. ... I shall content you at your metyng with me, Yower lover J. Nor- folk.— iii. 320, 1485. Eliz. Browne to f. Paston. Your loving awnte E. B. 1485. Duke of Suffolk to J. Paston. Ryght welbeloved we grete you well. .. . Suffolk, yor frende. — iii. 324-5. l^ for various processes, see under separate consonants. Cooper, Charles {pr. Anglicana, i68£), features of his work on English pro- nunciation, 172 ; the best before Ellis and Sweet, 173; first phonetician to give accurate analysis of Mod. English [se], 199 ; on oi and f, 225 ; list of words with short vowel, from O.E. 0, Coote (^English Schiolmaster, 1627), warns against '-«Wfor '-ed', 261, 268. 'Correctness' in speech, desire for, growing since Johnson, 184, 284. Cowley, Mr. Abraham, his writings praised by Dryden, 152 ; example of his prose style, 153; his conversation described by Bishop Spratt, 154. d, loss of before and ailer cons., 301-2 ; offinal-i^, 303; loss of between vowels, 305- -di-, treatment of, 294. Dialects, Regional, 2 ; Class or Social, 2-3 ; Middle English, ch. ii. Diphthongs, O.E., apparent survival of in Kentish, in M.E., 41 ; monoph- thongized in E. Midi., 30 ; in Sthn., 34- 5 ; M.E. diphthong in Mod. period, 247, &c. Donne, John, rhymes wo- with a not 0, 203 ; vilde-childe, 309; are-faire, 357 ; are-farre, ib. Dowes, Henry, tutor to Secretary Cromwell's son, instructs his pupil in the 'true pronunciation'of English, 103. ' Dropping the h,' 294-6. 'Dropping the -g,' 289. Dryden, John, his views on Shake- speare's language contrasted with Waller's and Suckling's, 152; Dramatic Poetry of the Last Age, quoted, 154-5 ; on English conversation being less stiff than formerly, ib. ; his strictures on the language of Elizabethans criticized, 156 ; says he is unfitted by Nature to write Comedy, 390-1 ; Marriage d, la Mode, 389. Dunning, Iiord Ashburton, said by Dr. Johnson to speak as a Devonshire man, 167. § (M.E.) in open syllables becomes i, 332. e* (M.E.) becomes [1], 205, &c. e' (M.E.) in Mod. period, 209 ; appears! as [t] in i6th c, ib. ; [e] type of also! survives into i8th c, 210, 211. ■ Sast Midland Dialect of M.E., chief characteristics of, 29 ; features of found in Chaucer, 53-4. Education and Received Standard English, 4. Edward IV {d. 1483), contemporary account of his funeral, 89. ei (M.E.) in Mod. period, 247 ; in unstressed syllables, see under ai. Elizabeth, Queen, her learning and taste in dress, 104 ; her pronunciation, 136; grammatical forms in her letters and translations, 139-40. Elphiiuton, James, writer on English pronunciation (1756-90), account of, 179-80. Elyot, Sir Thomas, on expediency of gentlemen's sons learning pure English, 104; account of language of his Gotumour, 1 19-21. Sr becomes dr, 213, &c. -es endings of 3rd Fers. Sing. Pres. probably not Northern, 334-7. Expletives, 378-91. -f, loss of, 304. Familiar idiom changes from age to age, 360. Farquhar, Twin Rivals, 391 ; Sir Harry Wildair, 390. Fielding, Tom Jones, 390; Don Quixote, 391- Fifteenth Century, points of importance for students of EngUsh, 63 ; increase of private writers, ib. ; survey of chief documents, 64-5. Foppington, Iiord, his pronunciation, 240, 241. Formality of address, decline of, 20 ; Lord Chesterfield's instructions con- cerning, 21 ; examples of in letters of Lady M. Montagu and the Went- worths, ib. SUBJECT INDEX 403 FoTtescue, Sir John, a Devonian of ijth c, free from provincialisms, 86. Front glide, developed after g-, k- before front vowel, 310. Genteel thing, the, 22. -gh becomes -f, 287-8. Gill, Alexander (author of Legonomia, 1621), his activities as a flogger of schoolboys and as a writer on English pronunciation, 168 ; his list of words with short vowel from O.E. ii, 337; list of words with [0] from O.E. S, 238. Ooldsinith's She Stoops to Conquer cit., 22. Gosse, Mr. Edmund, on Sir Philip Sidney's Defense of Poesie, 107. Gower, a Kentishnian (rf. 1408), uses London dialect with bnt few Kenticisms, 57- Gray, Thomas, letter to Walpole (i 757), quoted on use of ' Lunnon ', 302. Greetings and Farewells, 377-9. Gregory, Thomas (Lord Mayor of London, 145 1-2), 64; style and lan- guage of his Chronicle, 92-5. Group Inflexion, 318. Qy>\M, jumble my guts out, said by young Lady Strafford, 22 ; swill his guts. Lady Heartfree, ib. h developed initially before vowels, 310. h-, loss of, 294-6 ; h lost before -t, 305. Harrison's account of Elizabeth's Court, 104. Harvey, Gabriel, his Letter Book cit., 237 ; his use of 3rd Sing. Pres. in -es and -ith, 333. Hervey, Lord, Memoirs cit,, 309. Historic forms of Snglish, destroyed by the pedagogue, 285. History of English, continuous, not really divided into clear-cut periods, 26. Hoocleve {d. 1450), his love of Chaucer ; his character and language, specimens of his style, 84, 85. -ht becomes/?, 288. Hungerford, Iiady, writes swam 'sworn', 240; youes 'use' vb,, 244. i-, y-. Prefix, 342. i becomes I, 226, &c. i, M.E. lengthening of in open syllables, 207. i (M.E.) diphthongized in Mod. period, 233 ; two lines of development likely, 225. I and me, indiscriminate use of, 331. Idiom, colloquial, varies according to company and class, 359 ; according to period, 360. D Infinitive, 341. -ing becomes ->'», 289. is as Plural, 356. Jespersen, Prof. Otto, on joist, boil, 224, 250, 251. Johnson, Dr. Samuel, his views on the 'best' pronunciation, 177; says that his speech showed where he came from if he did not ' watch himself, 167 ; his judgement on Elphinston, 179; his influence on his circle, 285 ; quotes Lord Chesterfield on pronunciation of great, 212. Jones, Dr. {Practical Phonographer, 1701), an unprejudiced writer on English pronunciation, account of, 174-5 j 'I's lists of [jJ] and [a] words from O.E. 0, 237 ; variety of pronuncia- tion shown by, 239. Eemble, John, the actor, his pronuncia- tion of quality, 203 ; said ' varlue ', 215 ; said ' sentimzht ', 'conshznce', &c., 272 ; said ' ejus ', ' hij/us ', &c., 294. Kentish and S.E. Dialects in M.E., chief features of, 40-3 ; specimens of, 43, &C- Ker, Mr. W. P., on Drydens use of ffit, 154- -kl- becomes -//-, 294. -kn- becomes -tn-, 294. -1^, loss of before cons., 297. Iiangland, William, author of Piers Plowman, account of his dialect, 58-9. Iiatimer, Bishop Hugh, account of, 123; language of his Sermons, 124-7 ; style of illustrated, 367-8. Lengthenings and Shortenings of Vowels in Mod. period, 253. Letters, beginnings and ends of, 379- 86. Literature, language of, identical with and rooted in that of ordinary life, loi, 109, no. III, 157, 158, 18S. London, Dialect of in 14th c, 7, &c., 45 ; specimens of, from 1066 to Chaucer, 46-9 ; grammatical details concerning, 49-54; used by Chancer, 52, &c. ; by Gower, 56; spread of in I6th c, 97, &c. London English, the basis of literary English, 5, 7, 8 ; from Early M.E. to Chaucer's death, 49-54; specim^is of from M.E. period, 46-8 ; adopted by Gower, 56, 57; by Hoccleve, 81; Lydgate, 82 ; two types of in 15th c, 84, 97; adopted by Caxton, 86-9; widely diffused in vrritten documents before printing, 76, &c, ; vulgar form d2 404 SUBJECT INDEX of in i6th c. seen in Machyn's Diary, 141, &c. ; vulgar London English of i8th c. satirized by Elphinston, 180; commented on by Walker, 182. Iiydgate (d. 1451), Monk of Bnry, E. Midi, colonring in his English, 82. Ijyly) John, his character and style, 131 ; language of Euphtus and the Plays, 133-6. Macaulay, Lord, quotes Lady Holland as objecting to certain words, 17; his account of speech of country squire in 17th c. criticized, 166. Maohyn, Henry, his Diary (1550-3), great value of as example of vulgar English, 99; detailed account of his language, 141-7 ; specimen of his style, 147. Marston's Insatiate Countess rh. tryall- disloyal, 224; Eastward Hoe rh. after- daughter, 241. lUassingeT, New Way to pay Old Debts, 378. metathesis, of r, 300. Middle Snglish Texts, List of, 61. Middleton's Chaste Maid in Cheapside, 3?8. Milton, John, his prose style charac- terized and illustrated, 150-1. Modern English, begins in 15th c, 70, &c. ; tests, 71-3. Modified Standard Snglish, defined, 3 ; illustrated, 4 ; importance of in his- tory of Engl., 4, &c., 1 1 ; spoken chiefly among Middle Classes in towns, 7 ; possibly recognized as an inferior type as early as isth c, 98 ; definitely dis- tinguishable in 1 6th c, 100; referred to in Arte of Poesie, 103 ; hinted at by Palsgrave(i53o),ib. ; Elyot(i53i),i04. More, Sir Thomas, examples of his conversation recorded by Roper, 363-5 ; used expletives in conversation, 388. More, most, before Comp. and Superl. forms of adjectives, 326. Mulcaster (Elementarie, 1582), distin- guishes a male and female pronuncia- tion of ai, 249 ; distinguishes two pro- nunciations of oi, 250 ; gives list of words which have lost /, 297. -nf becomes -mf, 294. -ng, 'dropping of^' in ing, 289. •ng written for -», 290. •nk for -ng, 290. o (M.E.) in Mod. period, 234, &c.; three types of development, 235 ; early shortening, 236 ; later shortening, 238. o (M. E.), imrounding of, 240. Oaths, see Swearing. • Obicure vowel ', recognized by Wallis (1653) in unstressed syllables, 170; by Cooper (1685), 172 ; term applied to '« short' (1713), 237. Occasional spellings, common in 15th c, which throw light on pronunciation, 66, &c. ; occurrence in printed works in i6th c, discussion of value, 1 12-15 i principles of interpretation, 114 ; testi- mony of compared with statements of grammarians, 115; main source of knowledge of pronunciation of un- stressed vowels, 285, &c oi (M.E.) in Mod. period, 249 ; in un- stressed syllables, 260, 267, 280, 281. Orthogpists, the early, criticism of, 115, 168; superiority of later 17th and i8th c. writers on English pronunciation, 170-6. Otway, Thomas, spelling Gaud in Soldier's Fortune, 253 ; example^ of his dialogue, 369-71, 395-6. Old-fashioned speakers, value of obser- vations on their pronunciation, 186. Outspokenness, avoided by Middle Classes, 21 ; as practised by great ladies, examples of, 22. Oxfordshire dialect, pronunciation of rain, way, fair m, 248. Fasten, Margaret, 80. Fecok, Bishop (author of Repressor, 1449), style and dialect, 81, 82. Flural of ITouns, in -es, 319 ; in -en, 320-1 ; invariables, 321-2 ; excep- tional plurals in -s, 322 ; irregular plurals, 323-4. Fole, Edmond de la (d. 1513), illus- tration of his epistolary style, 83. Pope's pronunciation, 178, 283 ; verses of quoted, 24 ; rhymes God and road, God and unawed, 253 ; sex and neglects, 304- Possessive Case of Nouns, confusion of suffix with his, is, 314-16 ; omission of sufSx, 316; after old Feminines, 317. Preciosity, 395-8. Present Plural Indie, in -en, -e, 337; cons., in -eth, -ith, 339 ; in -s, 340. Pronouns, Personal, forms of, 327, &c. Futtenham, defines hiest type of English, 103. r, loss of finally, and medially before cons,, 298-300 ; metathesis of, 300. Baleigh, Sir Walter, his adventures and accomplishments, 108 ; Aubrey's description of his appearance and Devonshire accent, 109. SUBJECT INDEX 405 Baleigh, Fiofessor Sir Walter, on Shakespeare's syntax and sentences, ISS- Beasons for Mr. Bays cliangiiig his Beligion, 393. Beceived Standard English, defined, 3 ; origin of, 4 ; now a Class Dialect, ib. ; began as Regional Dialect, 5, &c. Begional Dialects, defined, 2 ; gradual disappearance of in recent times, 6 ; slight influence of on Received Standard, 14-16 ; disappear from literature in Sth. by end of 15th c, 76 ; condemned for poets' use in Arte of English Poesie (1580), 103; Raleigh's use of, 109; would be tolerated in Elizabeth's Court rather than Citizens' Engl., iia ; survival of among upper classes in i^th and iSth c, 166, 167. Bichardson, Samuel, samples of dia- logue from Clarissa Harlowe (1748), 373-4- Bodericlc Bandom, reference to Scotch teacher of English pronunciation quoted, 176. Boister Doister, cit., 378. Boper, see More, s final or medial becomes ' sh'', 291. Sackville, Thomas Ziord Buckhurst (d. 1608), a true poet, his Mirour for Magistrates, 107. St. Editha, Life of (Wilts. 1420), 78. Shadwell, his Bury Fair quoted, 395. Sheridan, certain speech habits of ob- jected to by Lady Holland, 18 ; his wit nearer to that of Congreve than of Jerrold, l88. Shillingford, John (Mayor of Exeter, 1447-50), writes almost pure London English, with traces of S.W. dialect, 8 1 ; specimens of his style, 362. -ai- becomes 'sh', 293. Sidney, Sir Philip, his mastery of poetical technique, 108; specimens of his letters, 383. Sixteenth century, general account of period and language, 98, &c. Bkelton, John (rf. 1529), 91. Smith, Sir Thomas, allusions to the ' rustic ' or ' fat ' sound of ai, 248 ; his activities as vrriter, statesman, and scholar, 104. Smollett, ridicules Scottish teacher of English pronunciation, 176. so'- becomes swS-, 307. Social movements, their effect on speech and manners, 18, 19, 20. Sound Changes, precise chronology of impossible, 191 ; relative chronology, how determined, 193-4. Speech of Individual, adapted to com- pany, 338- Spelling, Caxton's conventional, 87; deviations from tradition of scribes in private letters, &c., in 15th c, 65 ; im- portance of ' bad ' spellings, 67, &c. Spenser, Edmund, example of his prose style, 149. Spratt, Bishop, his description of Cowley's conversation, 154. Standard of speech, conception of, when did it arise in English! 5; probably existed in 15th c, 97 ; defi- nitely referred to in i6th c, 103, 104; changes of view concerning, 384. Strong Verbs, 342-55. au- becomes ' shU'', 293. ■su becomes ' -shu', 293. Suckling, Sir John, said by Dryden to express 'the conversation of a gentle- man', 152; his ease and naturalness illustrated, 152-3; letters quoted, 384. Suffixes, treatment of vowels in, 261. Swearing ' like a lady ', demanded by Hotspur, 23 ; habit objected to by Lord Chesterfield, ib. ; present-day habits, 387 ; practised formerly to greater extent than now, 388 ; illustra- tions of from Sir T. More and his wife, Duke of Norfolk, Lord Chief Justice, &c., 388; illustrated from plays and novels of i6th to i8th c, 389-91. Swift, Dean, his tracts on the Englbh of his day, 158; enquires into causes of ' corruption ' of the language, 159; gives examples, 160 ; does not com- plain of features which we should criticize, concerned mainly with new slang, and propriety of vocabulary, 161 ; Folite Conversations, 392, 394, &c. Swinburne, on changes in speech from century to century, 148; his rhyme morning-dawning, 301. SyUabic /, «, r, 260. -t-, loss of before and after cons., 302 ; loss of when final, 303. th- becomes,/, 291. -th, substitution of for -gh, 289. The used formerly before names of com- plaints, 17. -ti- becomes ' sh ', 293. Transition, periods of, au artificial con- cession, every age one of transition, 26-7. u (M.E.) diphthongized, 230, &c. ii from French u in Mod. period, 242. u (M.E.) from O.E. y in Mod. period, 240 ; how long French sound survived, 243. 4o6 SUBJECT INDEX ti (M.E) from O.E. j? in Mod. period, 244. fi nnronnded, aja. Unrounding, of O.E, ^ in M.E., 30; of $ in Mod. period, 340, &c ; of -S- in unstressed syllables, 264, 275, &c. ; of French » in unstressed syllables, 265, 211. Unstressed syllables, vowels of in M.E. and 15th c,, 67, 68; detailed study of since 15th c, 258, &c Unvoicing of Consonants, 313. V and w, interchange of, 293. Vanbrugh, Prevok'd Wife quoted, 398 ; Journey to London, 22, 379; Con- federacy, 215. Verbal endings, 3rd Fers. Sing. Fres. in -eth, -ish, 332-4; in -es probably not Northern, 334-7 ; loss of ending, 337; Pres. PL, in -en, -e, 337-9; in -eth, -ith, 339 ; in -s, 340-1 : Infinitive, 341 ; Past Participle, 342. Vemey Memoirs described, 162 ; their value as exhibiting colloquial English among upper classes in 17th c, 103-4. Voicing, of W; 311 ; of other cons, medially and finally, 31a. Vulgarisms, forms of Modified Standard, 3 ; in vocabulary, 1 7 ; due to desire for correctness, 20 ; changing standards of, 31-22, &c.; perhaps recognized in 15th c, 98. w, loss of, 296 ; developed before M.E. P, 306, 307 ; before o*, 308 ; intro- duction of between cons, and follow- ing round vowel, 310; voiced initially, 311-12. Walker, John, account of, 181 ; truth of his observations tested and con. iirmed, 183 ; on prontmciation of -ing as in, 390 ; recommends ke-ind, ' kind,' &c ; ' first Englishman to admit mute- ness of -r,' 399. Wallis, John {Gramtitatica Linguae Anglicanae, 1653), his merits as a phonetician and observer of English Srontmciation, 170 ; first writer to put I.E. & among front vowels, 199 ; on pronunciation of f, 324 ; ' obscure 0' in done, 237. Walton, Izaak, example of his style, 150. was, as Plural, 356. Watts, Dr., rhymes door-to her, 300. ■Webbe, his praise of Lyly, 132. Wentworth Papers, importance of as exhibiting colloquial English of early l8th century, 164-5. who-, for old ho-, 307. Wilson, Thomas (Jlrte of Rhetorique, 1560-85), features of pronnnciation and grammar, 1 30-1 ; his colloquial style illustrated, 368. WychBrley, Country Wife, 390; Love in a Wood, 389 ; Plain Dealer, 390. Wyolif (rf. 1385), bom in Yorks., Master of BaUioI, account of dialect of his prose writings, 59, &c. ; excellence of his prose style, 60. y- develops initially before front vowels, 308. y-, »■- Prefix, 342. Zachrisson, Dr. B. S., his pioneer work, vi; on history of «', 210; on au- spellings for old », 330; on monophthonizing of old au, 252. WORD INDEX abanght 339 abay 'obey' 276 abedyenses 264, 275 abeyd 'bide'' 323 ableiage 226 abonght 305 acknowliges 273 accommodate, aco- midasyon 264, 2 76 ad 'had' 295 adishon 293 adnst rh, worst 298 advantig 263, 275 aege 195 after 203 after rh. carter 357 after rh. daughter 241 afletymes 240 1 aftir 270 agane 247 age 210 agryed 206 Albemal 299 alectyd 273 alf a pourul 295 alff'Aa^' 295 Allalows 295 almanac, almyneke 273 almnn 303 alpenny 295 Alpotts 299 alterafon 293 ambassiter 263, 274 'amel 'enamel' 281 anan 241 anethe 265, 278 amiy think else, anny thing kelse 291 anoint 250 anoy 250 Anslow 241 anynted 224 any ware 311 apinions 264, 276 apon 235, 265, 278 appeal 210 appoint 250 approachin 290 appyltre 272 apom 301 apwoyntyd 310 (iS'«»^)-arbomes 'St. Albans' 397 ard ' hard' 295 are rh. dispair 348 argament 277 Arlandoe 241 armyn 217 aronyoas 273 airand 217 Aryndelle 275 as ' has ' 395 ascape 263, 273 ascaped 273 ascnse 273 ashoure 244 ashoure 293 assemlyd 303 astate 373 as^Ay' hastily' 295 attemps 303 attinding 222 at ome, atom 295 aukard, awkard 297 anl 'all' 201 atinsion ' ancient ' 271 aur 'our' 330 Authiir 'Arthut' 399 ave ' have '295 awowe 292 axemyne 198 baathe 'bath' 257 babtis 303 back rh. neck 199 baight 'bate' 305 balks 304 baly, bailee 304 banchid 282 banquet 396 barbariousnes 281 bare 'bier' 194 bargen 279 bargis 209 Barkly 220 Bam 217 bames ' barrens '382 Barney, Bemey 314, 2 30 baron 'bam' 399 barrers 281 Bartly, Lord 294 bath 203, 257 battel 359, 279, 280 Bavarior 300 bawm 297 bax 241 bayde 248 beacon 210 bead 210 beam 310 bean 210 beast 210 beastly 302 beat 210 becas 240 bech ' bitch '238 becheler 198 becken't ' beckoned' 313 beckinged 276 becos 240 bedel 208 beeidid 247 beetle 207 begennyng 228 beger, begest 229 beggin 289 begyin 'begin' 310 behaf ' behalf 297 behanor 281 beheaddest 256 beheedyd 256 bein ' being' 289 belded ' built ' 246 bellets 239 bellowes 228 belovid 267 bend ' band' 198 bequeath 210 bequived 209, 391 berne 231 berthe ' birth ' 345 Beshope &c. 228 besiche 206 besichen 389 besy, besily 345 besychyn 206 bet 'bit' 229 bettar 271 Bewford 242 beyand 241 beye ' buy ' 245 bight 'bite' 305 bile ' boil' 251 biriede 246 birlve 209 bist 'best' 223 bisy 246 bl^e 256 blanckitt 273 blasyn sterre 289 bleach 210 blesshyng 291 blessid 268 bleynasse 301 bleynde, bleyna|se 223 bleynte 223 bleynte 'blind' 313 blind 225 blodd 237 blood 332, 236, 237 blonde 234, 235 bludde 233, 237 blnddynose 237 blue ' blew ' 243 blwe ' blew ' 242 blyn, blyne 303 boast 254 boddies 256 boft 'bought' 288 boie 250 boil 'inflamed swell- ing' 224 boodies,boody, boo- dys 256 book 235 Borgin 'Burgoyne ' 381 bottes 'boats' 255 botts 256 Bouclond 234 bow vb, 230 boyle 224, 250 Braban 303 braincicke 254 breach 210 break 209, 210 breath 254 breeches 254 breicht 323 BrenfTord 302 bresed 347 bride 346 bridegrumme 350 Bridgmen 363, 374 biiding 'breeding' 206 brinkers up 290 brinkinge ib. broil 350 brokyn 371 brother 235 brouk, -bronk 234 broute 305 4o8 WORD INDEX bnigge 245 bmise 246 brust 'burst'' 301 brybry 383 bryke-fast 209 brykyng 209 buck 232 bud 233, 337 Buforde 344 . buildin 290 baity 344 bull 233 BQllinbrook 333, footnote buUits 373 bun 232 bundle 333 bnrdon 371 burgine 375 burgishes 293 bum 234 bnistels 245 bnshop, bnsshop, booshop, 229 businis 273 busling 302 bust 'burst' 299 but 233 buted not 235 butter 232 buturhulle 245 bwoe, bwoy 'boy' 310 bwoU 310 byche 'buy' 313 byled 224 Bynche, Kynges 222 byskitt 277 bysshape 375 Cabul 305 caffen 240 Calis 279 Camerwell 303 Cammerell 303 camyth 333 candylstildce 272 cane 210 capable 313 capon eakipn 211 caprichious 293 capten 379 Car (Ker) 321 Carburer 300 card 310 care rh. were 194 carecter, carictor, 263, 274 carefiilst 283 caren 375 Caresbrouc 234 carnal 310 carpyntter 271 catrin 376 carrots 264 cartayne, carten 217 carter rh. after 257 carve 217 casement 313 cast 202 castyl 273 caught rh. wrought 252 caul 352 caumplet 252 cause 252 cawUe 201 cawlyd 301 cawm 297 Cawnpore 205 cease 210 ceme ' came '195 cenzure 313 certain 317 certen, certin, &c 259^ 279. 280 chaff 203, 257 chamley 233, 282 channge 355 chapling 290 Charlbury 305 Charret 376 chart ' short '241 Chawles 205 cheane ' chain ' 248 cheap 210 cheat 210 cheldren &c 238, 229 chene 228 cheryte 198 chesiple 198 chicking 290 chikynnes 271 cbildering 290 childem 301 childrin 272 Christmas 301 chockolet 263, 274 chorls ' Charles' 305 Chrismas 303 christen 303 chufTes 288 church rh. such 398 chylhode 301 citizins, cytsyn 279 clake 'clock' 241 clargy 215, 317 clarion 276 dark 217 clasp 202 clausset 25a clean 210 cleane rh. been 209, rh. Seine 211 clendlynes 309 clene rh. gteae 209 clepud 267 Clerk 212, 217, 221 clift ' clif 309 Clifte ' Cleave' 309 cloughts 305 Clousley 302 to clyme 304 (a) clyps 281 coast 2£4 cobard, coberd, cob- berdes, cubard 313 coffing, coffin 288, 290 coin 351 Cokepoule 234 Cole barber 303 collage 273 collidg 273 colling ' calling '253 colt's foot 303 combeanion 312 combly 'comely' 309 to come ' comb ' 304 comeners, comyners 277 comforde 312 comfation 294 comin 289, 290 commyne 277 commyngaschon293 commyshin 275, 293 compare rh, iai 248 compeny, compiny 263, 274 Comten 276 comynedtogeder377 comyngcasion 377 conceal 210 condishume 393 condytte 377 conquer 296 conschens 293 consedder 229 consedowring 239 conshince 272 consperacy 229 Constantinoble 312 consume 293 consyler 279 contagion 376 contenew 229 contenuely 328 continew 243 contrydicting 374 cook 237 coover 256 corige 275 cornel, cumels ' ker- nel' 245 cose 253 cost 254 costly 302 coting 'quoting' 296 cotingers 263, 275 cough 257 courtisie 279 Coven Garden 303 covetious 281 conitous 373 cow 230 craddle 256 crasse ' cross ' 240 cream 210 creature 210 crebulle ' cripple ' 312 credyll 194 creeple, creple, Cre- pnlgate 346, 247 Crenmer 198 crismus 263, 274, 302 crisned 302 crooft 204, 257 crub'd 'curbed' 301 cruel, cmilty 262, 272 Cryustynmus 274 Cubit, Cupid 313 cudgel 232 cummen 255 cummeth 256 cunys 250 cur 234 currers ' couriers ' 281 Curypoule 234 cushion 364, 276 cuss 299 cusshyns &c. 276 cutlash 292 cyan 'can' 310 dace^aw darse 300 dafter 288 Dantry 304 Darby 220 dare 213 dark 217 darkenis 273 darse 300 darth 217 Dasset 340, 398 dater, datter 241, 305 daufter 288 WORD INDEX 409 dinghterri.after288 dawning rh. morn- ing 301 dead 254 deal 210 Deanty 282 deaiist 270 dearth 217 Debity 313 debntye 312, 313 deceave 210 declare rh. theare, weare 195 deener 208 defarre aiT" defeat 210 deficnlt 228 de-file 246 defolte 252 defoyled 224 defoylynge 224 deleyer 229 dempt 309 denner, deener 228 dener 208 Denshyre 'Devon-' 304 derecshoDS 293 derectyd 268 desart 219 Desarve &c. 219 deshes 228 desiar 300 desyer, desyerd 300 desyoring 300 devartin 317, 290 devertin 290 devower 300 devyll, dyvyls 272 Devynshyre 275 devyr 279 dew 'due' 243 Dewke 243 deyl 'part' 248 deythe 248 dides 206 disablegin 226 disadfantige 275,313 disease 210 disoblegin 289 dispair rh. axe 248 disposishons 293 distinct, -ly 304 divaitid 217 divartion 217 divils 254 diuilysh 254 diwle 254 dixnery 293 dobel, double, dub- bil 272 done 232, 235, 236 done rh. rnn 237 Donkister 263, 274 door rh. too her 300 Dorsad 312 doset 'Dorset' 298 Dotchester 299 doter 253, 306 dought 305 doun 234 don]> 234 Dowerger 299 downed 'down ' 309 dowter, dowttyr 305 drane 'drawn' 142, 354 draught rh. thought 252 draw 252 drawers ' draws ' 299 drawyd 354 dream 210 dreame ^^.name 211 drempte 309 drongon 'they dranK 312 droute 305 drust 'durst' 301 dryardes 298 drynges 'drinks '312 drynkyn 289 duaring 300 Dugdel's 274 duggin ' dudgeon ' 27s DuUege 312 dumb 304 dungen 275 dungeon, dungin 204, 276, 290 dutchiss 273 dwarf 202 dwellith 269 dyme ' deem ' 206 dymeth 206 dynin-room 290 dyomons 303 dyot 273 dyre 'dear' 206 dysabey 275 dysshese 291 dyvysen 289 Dyzer ' Dysart ' 304 early rh. Farley 217 ease 210, 211 ease rh. days 211 Easter 210 eat 210 eat rh. gate 211 ectes 'acts' 199 Ed'ard 297 eddres ' adders ' 198 ede 'head' 295 edjucate 294 Edmond 303 Edwar the iiij 303 Edyngborth 288, 289 Egberde 312 Egyp(e)&c. 303,304 eldron 228 eldyste 270 elevant 312 elmet 295 embelshyn 282 emedgetly 294 enferre vb. rh. debar 218 England, English 222 enioie 250 ennes of court 229 enoyd 264, 275 entreded 312 ennf 288 er 'are' 194 eraftyr 295 erefter 295 eit' earth' 291 es 'as' 198, 274 es 'is' 228 Eslyngton 228 essue 228 evangill 272 evil 207 Evling 290 evyng-song 290 excep 303 exemynyde 198 expensis 269 exprestions 293 extream 210 extrodinary 299 eyer ' ere ' 248 Eylle of Wyght 223 eysterday ' Easter ' 24S fadr 270 faggot, fagets 264, 276 faire rh. compare 248 Fakonbrige 297 faly 240 b>.xa\y ' vanity' 313 far 202, 217 fardin 290 fardyng 218 farthing rh. 290 -garden fainiture 333 farther 217 farther 'father' 298 faruentlye 217 fashin'd 276 fashing, fashenges 276 fast 257 fasten 303 fate rh. deceit 211 father 257 father 'farthe*-' 299 fation 'fashion' 293 faul(e) 201, 230 fauleth 201 faunde 230 fawkyner 201 feale '/»■/• 248 feast 2 10 feder 'father' 195 fedryd fettered' 312 Feeldin 390 feer 247 fefty 229 felde 309 felthe 245 felwette 'velvet' 313 felyschepe, felly- schyppe, fele- schyppe 278 fenyshe(d) 228 ferme &c. 'farm' 221 ferre 221 ferst '/"'' 245 ferther 221 ferthing 221 fertill 278 fesshermen 228 fessychens 293 itt'fit' 228 fethem 198 fethful 248 feutir 265, 277, 278 feynde inf. 323 feynte 'fiend' 313 feyre 223 fiars 'fires ' 300 file 'vile' 313 find >-^. joined 251 fire 246 flaggin 'flagon' 276 flekeryngs 228 Flet Street 356 dodde 236 fludde 237 Fochsave 313 foil 250 fondashon 293 fonstone 302 food 235 fool 235 4IO fool 'fall' 253 foorde 256 forard 297 foigenenesse 208 forren 279 forsook 235 forsooth 237 forsuk 234 forten, fortin &c. fortewen, fortewn 243 forting 290 fortiune 243, 277 fortnet 278 fortressis 269 Fottescne &c. 298 fottman 236 Fox hall 313 Foynes 251 fram 241 frast 241 fireenly 301 frensheppe 301 fried 'freed' 206 fiiten 'frightened' 303 Frog, Mrs. 291 Frogmorton 291 fronters 281 frontishpiece, 292 froth 257 frust ' thrust ' 291 frynshypp 301 fiirst 245 fust '^rst ' 299 futt 236, 237, 256 fuyre 247 fyer 300 fyre rh, byre ' 6eer' 247 Gad 240, 241 gallands ' gallons ' 309 garmes 'guns ' 233 garnesey &c. 221 Gaskin 267, 281 gate rh, eat 211 Gath ' Garth ' 299 Gaud 'God' 253 Gearge 241 gearl 310 geestes 257 gelding 223 genelagye 375 generald 309 gentilwemen 208 gerddlis 241 geven 208 gevyn J'.P. 208 WORD INDEX ghostly 302 gidit 268 gidyn 289 gift rh. theft 229 gine 'join ' 224 Gintlemen 222 glass 203 glemeryng 228 gletteryng 228 glove 232, 235 gnaw 252 God rh. road 253, rh. unawed ib. godmores 304 gointer 277 goud 234, 235 gould 23s, 239 gowde 234 gownd 309 grafte 309 'grait' 212 granefather 301 grannam 301 granser 301 grasp 202 grass, graas 257 great 309, 210, rh. cheat 211, rh. state 212 gretis 303 grettist 270 greu rh. vertu 242 gridyll 301 gristle 302 grivoas 206 guard 310 gud 234 gnd soons 296, 302 Guees, Mons. de 206 guile rh. assoyle 251 guile 310 gurge 'grudge' 301 gwory 310 gyet *get'3lo gyide 510 halliday 256 Hambleton 'Hamil- ton' 309 Hambrose 311 Hammard 296 handkerchers 304 hanes ' hands ' 301 hanggyns 289 hankyng 291 hansomly 303 hanswered 311 haow 231 happinis 273 happon 271 harborowe 318 hard 203 hard(e) 'heard' 218 Harflew 300 harkne 213, 3l8 harme 'arm' 310 barmlys 262, 272 harms 'arms' 311 harrows 'arrows' 3" bars ' horse' 240 barse 241 Harvest 218 haruist 261, 270 has 'as' 311 basche ' ash tree ' 310 hash ' harsh ' 299 haske 'ark' 310 haskyd 310 bat 'o/' 311 haul 252 haunch 252 haxise' house' 230 hauonr 381 havyn 371 hawk 352 hawle 30I hayryn 389 Haystins 390 head 254 heal 210 heap 210 heart 212, 218 heat 310 heath 310 heathen 210 heauin 272 hevyn 271 bed < had' 198 hedde 255 hedeous 228 beeves 'hives' 347 height rh. stale 305 helmyttes 373 belpars 371 belpe 34S hende ' end' 310 bender 329 hendes 198 Hensblow 392 berand 310 Herborowe 222 here 'ear' 311 berlyche 'early' 310 berte 222 herth(e) 310, 311 bervest 222 bes 'his' 328, 229 hether, hetberto 228 betten 'eaten' 311 (?) beve ' have ' 198 hevelle 'evil' 310 hewers 'ewes' 311 hewmor 243 heyndynge 'ending' 310 beys 'eyes' 311 hiare ' hire ' 300 bide 246 bijjus 294 hinmost 301 hire 'hear' 206, 300 biresay 306 hive 246 hoate 256 bobble^ishons 393, 3" bofton 'often' 271 boke ' oak '310 bold 'whole' 309 holdyn 289 bomb ' home ' 309 bondyng 'hunting' 313 hondyrstonde 310 (the)hone ' one ' 310 bonis 303 honist, bonyst 270 hood 235. Set also wbndd hook 23s hop 'kolp'. Fret. 297 hopene ' halfpenny 253, 397 hopjack 311 horshedde 255 borsis 269 hosbanry 301 hosteries 398 hotte 356 hottest 255 bottist 270 bonjt 'out' 310 houitcb 312 bonnds rh downs 301 hour ' our ' 310 house 230 boweth 'oweth' iio howlde 'old' 310 howyn 'own' 310 hoyA ' oath '311 hudwinkt 237 hne Pret. 342 huisshers 293 -hulle 245 Hnlst 309 WORD INDEX hulte 'keld' ii^ Humbles ' homilies ' 309 htmderd 301 hundershaft 311 hangrie 232 hunt 232 hurt 334 hnrtid 267 husbon 303 hushband 292 hussee, hussy 304 huydes 247 hwntter ' hotter' 307-. See also wh- hylyn ' conceaP 209 hyndryn 289 hynon 'eyes' 310 hyrafter 206 hyrde 206 hyrdell 246 hyrdillys 245 hyre 206 Hyionside 310 Hyryssche 310 ilde ' aisle ' 309 impeach 210 imphants 294 implyment 224 incnrrich 375 indeferently 208 indied 206 indiscrestions 293 infenitt 278 in&nts 263, 274 ingagin 290 Ingland, &c. 222 inglende 263, 274 Inin ' onion ' 264, 276 Injan 294 Injean 294 injoin 250 innocint 272 insidjeons 294 interprit, interpritt 273 intrust 'interest 261, 270 isew 242 ishu 293 isle 251 ivel 246 Izic 263, 274 Jamyngham 221 Jaisis 'Jerseys ' 270 Jams 267 Jarzy 221 Jaylardes 309 jeallious 281 jebardy, jeberdy, juberte, Jubardy 313 iebet 208 Jenewery 198 ierre ' /ar' 222 jesper 198 jine 251 join rh. line, divine ioy 250 joynant 250 joyst 224, 350 Jubiter 312 Jubyter 313, 313 judge 232 junant 250 just 333 (vn)just rh, must 332 justisis 269 Justus a pesse 276 kainde 224 kaindom 291 kathem 301 kattum 301 ke-ard ' card' 310 kechyn 245 ketchyn 246 kecbyns 246 keeped 254 Keighley 289 ke-ind ' iind' 310 kendled 346 kerchys, &c. 304 kiff ' iith ' 291 kind 246 kindnis 273 kipe 206 kiping 206 kipn ' capon '211 latching 272, 290 knell 327 knet(t) 227, 346 knetted 338 knowlych, &c. 273 knywe 242 kusshing 290 kyind 310 kype ' ieep ' 206 kypt 254 kyrstemes 301 kysshed 291 ' kytchyn, &c. 371 laborous, -ousely 381 ladge 341 ladyll 373 hSe ' laag^h' 288 laft ' laughed ' 288 lamb 304 Lambefie 291 lameskynnes, lam- skin 304 Lametb 303, 304 Lamhyth 304 lamme 304 Lancoster 374 lam, lam'd 215, 2l3 la'ship 305 last ' lost ' 340 Latten 373 laught, inf. 309 law 3g2 laydinge 248 leaf 2 10 lean 210 leap 210 leamen 390 leauen 381 leave 210 led ' lad' 199 leece 246 leerne 256 • leetle ' 207 lemited, lemyted 228 lemonds 309 lenth 291 letel, leetle 208 letuse 377 leve ' live ' 208 lever ' liver' 208 leveray 229 levery 208 levin 'living' 290 levyd 208 levyn, in/. 308 levyng ' living' 308 leyjt 333 leynth 391 liked ' Hke ' 309 limb, Urn 304 linen 261 \imDg' linen 290 lipe 'leap' 209 liquid 296 lit 'let' 333 liv ' leave ' 209 liver ' rather ' 206 loay 'lie' 224 lodgins, lodgens 289, 290 lofFe ' loaf 255 lo«e' laugh' 388 lofte 'loathe' 291, 309 411 Lollebrouk 234 lombe ' loom ' 309 Lonan, Lonant 302 longege 274 loph ' loathe '291 (my) Lor 303 lost 353, 254 lost(e) of time 369 lonkej) 334 luncheon 364, 37^6 lunchion 276 Lunnon, Limnun 30a lupinge 'lupin ' 390 Lussam 'Lewisham ' 304 luste, vb. 245 Luthborow 289 lyfte ' left hand ' 246 Lymbryk 309 Lymoste 309 lynand 309 lyte 'light' io^ lyther 247 lytyl, &c. 272 maid 248 maik 248 mallicholie 303 malster 302 maltconceived 309 Mamsbury 397 Manchester 362 mannering the ground 277 manslaughter rh< laughter 288 mantion 198 marcy 318 margent 309 Margretys 282 (I) marie 'marvel' 304 marriges, &c. 263, 275 marrow ' morrow ' 240 marster 304, 357 Marten ' Merton ' College 319 marvylyously 319 Marybon 298 mash ' marsh ' 394 massage ' message ' 198 massangr 270 Masselsay 298 massis 269 massynger 198 mastee, masties, masty 304 412 WORD INDEX mead rh. shade Mnndy 280 oblygaschons 293 211 murdar 271 (Sent) Obornes 253 meal 210 murdre 271 Obroyn ' ffBrien' meat 210 Muscouits rh. witts 224 mech 245 278 obsticle 263, 274 Mede huUe 245 mushrompe 309 ode 'wood' 296 medigate ' mitigate ' must rh. vnjust 232 offen 302 312 must, mwst 234 offendid 267 meece 246 mutter 275 oftyn 271 meichti 223 myche 244 ofuU ' awful '252 meizt 223 myelde 223 oil 250 melch 229 mykely 206 ointment 2jo men ' man ' 241 mynchons 245 ojeons 294 men a warre 264, mynite 'a note'' 277 ojns 294 276 myrour rh. terrour ole drudge 303 mende ' mind' 247 228 (St.) Olive, Oleffes mengled 228 myry, myryly 245 274 menstralsy 228 mysdoun rh. en- oil • all • 253 mentshoned 293 chesoun 234 olso 252 menyster 228 myssomer 301 ombel 295 merouis 228 myte ' meet ' 206 Oman, ooman mesege 275 myve 206 ' woman ' 246 mesry 229 oppertunity 276 messynger 263, 274 namith 268 opprision 322 mester 241 nar 241 opprissing 223 mestris 228 nat 241 optayne 313 meynde 223 naty 241 opunii, opynli 271 meyte 248 naught 288 oringis 370 micklemust 274, naut 'naught' 305 orphant 309 309 necis 269 OS 'or' 273 mind 246 (sent) Necolas 228 oshan 293 mischevyous 281 nefew 313 Other 235 misirable 261, 271 neglects rh. sex 304 otmell 278 missin 289 nekkerchys 304 onld ' hold ' 295 mit ' meat ' 209 nevew 313 outiagionst 282 moathes 257 nevie, newys ' ne- own ' owned' 303 modist 370 phews' 266, 267 owsold 295 modre 300 nex 303 moil 250 neynthe 223 pade 248 moister 277 nideful 206 padrole 313 Molbefy, Duke of, nimlest 302 pagin 'pageant' 299 (a) nobe 'alb' 252 304 Montgwmbre 309 noble, nobil, nobole palice 279 month 235 272 Pamar 297 Moograve ' Mul- noise 250 pament 'pavement' grave' 297 (for the) nonest 309 304 moon 235 nonplush 292 panes 'pains ' 248 moome'>»o««j/' 256 Noifuck 297 Papeses 303 morgage 302 Northumberlain 303 parde 'part' 312 momin 290 nothink 290 parden 276 mornn ' mom ' 299 nns ' nurse ' 299 pardner 313 mosselle 298 nyew 242 parsballes 292 mossh 291 nyst ' nice ' 309 parsnage 282 mostly 302 parson 'person '214, mother 235 oatmell 278 219 monnth 235 obleged, obleginge particulerly 274 mouse 230 226 partyschon 293 (yron) Mowle 303 obleige 223, 226 pashens 293 mnd 233 oblige 226 pasitively 241 mug 233 obliged rh. beseiged pass 203 Munday 234 226 passell 298 passongers 264, 374 passons 'persons' 399 passport 313 past rh. waste 204 (to) past away 309 (to) paster 277 Pasteme 299 patent 'patett' 309 pation 'passion' 293 path 203, 257 pawnee 205 payt 'pay it' 282 peety 207 pejon 'pigeon' 228 peler(s) 228 pelere 228 pell 'pill' 239 peloiy 228 pepill 272 perfijjus 294 person 219, 222 persnadid 268 pertrych 322 pertyshon 293 pete 208 peted 'pitted' 229 petefullyste 208 petous 208 pettyful 229 pety 208 phylosophyr 270 pictner 266, 277 picturs 278 pigeon 359 Pigit 376 piuyshlye 206 plats 'plots' 341 play rh. sea 248 Playr's rh. cares 248 please rh. stays 211 pleshar,plesshuj394 plondarin 289 Poarchmonth> Porchmouth 293 point 250 poison 250 poUexis 198 porpice 281 porpoise,porpys&c., porposes 267,280, 281 poscrip 304 possestion 393 posshene 'portion' 376, 298 postyll 372 -poule 'pool' 234 poun 303 pounse 301 practisis 369 WORD INDEX 413 prancin 290 prast '■pressed'' 198 preach 210 preaty 256 prefarre 219 preferred rh. Black- guard 219 Fremrose 228 prensepalles 228 presnor 239 preson 208 prevelegys 228 preventid 268 Prevesell 208 preaie 208 prevyly 208 prevy seal 208 preyonrs ' prayers ' 270 prisiner 276 priste 206 prodistants 312, 313 prodistation 313 prompe 303 prosesschchon 293 prospeck 304 provest 275, 276 provesy 313 Prushee 293 Prutia 293 Prution ii. prych 209 prynche 291 pryved 'proved' 206 pryvit 265, 274 public 232 Puck 233 png 233 pull 233 pulse 233 pnnckid 'punished 368, 282 punchon, punchin 264, 276 Pnnjaub 205 puplishe 313 purchisse 263, 274 purse 234 pursew 242 pus 'purse ' 299 push 333 put 233 putte 'pit' 34s putts 245 pwot 310 pwoyntement 281, 310 pyson 224 quack 203 quagmire 203 quake 256 quality 199 quantity 201 quart 202 qnater 298, 299 queasie 210 quekyn 208 Quarry ' eqiterry ' 381 Quesontyde 301 questyans 275 quewre, quewored 'cure' &c. 244 quight 305 Quin 306 qnine 251 quoUity 202 quoUyfications 203 quorill 202 quote = '«a?' 396 radyfyde 313 rain 348 reasnable 382 reasons ' raisins ' 276 reasyn 259, 275, 276 reaver, rever 208 rebillion 223 rebowne 303 Kechard 228 rechis 228 reckin 275 red 'rid^ 228 Redriph 291 rege-ard 'regard' 310 regis ' rejoice '224 reiectid 368 reioshe 291 reioysshyng 291 rekenyng 375 relegos 229 rembnant 309 remembr 270, 300 renk ' rank ' 198 repeat 210 repetation 277 repint ' repent '223 requist 223 requyer 300 res ' rest' 304 resenably 37s resestance 329 respecks 303, 304 restytuschon 393 ret 'wrote' 229 retrate rh, late 196, 211 reveal 210 rewards rh. cards 203 ribbon, ribins 264, 275 richis ' richest ' 304 Richmon 303 Richmond 303 rick {of hay) 254 riddle 254 rightuons 281 rintes 332 rische 'rush' 245, 246 roast beef 302 Rochister 262, 273 rodde 'rode' 255 Rome rh. groome 239 rood 235 roude 334 ruight 324 run 233 Russll 263, 372 ryalste 282 rydyn 289 rysshe 345 sa 'say' 348 sa 'so' 375 saak 356 sadanly 233 sadyl, sadle 273 saft ' safe ' 309 safTurn 301 sagbottes 313 saifly 248 sail 310 St. Jamsis 370 saive 195 Sakefeld '■Sackuille' 309 sam 199 same 199 Samersett 333 Sant Towleys 304 sapose 265 Sargent 219 sarment, sarmon, sarmoun 213, 219 sarten &c. 217 sarve &c. 219 sarvent&c. 314,319 sarvyse &c. 319 sassages 241 [sat]y»r soot 339 saufte 352 Saulysbury 201 saume 201 sauth 230 savecondyte, -con- dute 277 Saveraigne 233 saw 252 sawgears 297 scaffels 303 scarmysshute 313 schawl 'shall' 201 schelyngys 228 scheppe 228 schollards 309 schyppe 206, 254 scomfytyd 267 scratch rh. wretch 199 scntchin 275 sea 210 searA. play and pray, away, survey 211 seas rh. these 209 seat 210 seates rh. states 211 sech 228 seek ' sack ' 198 secretery 274 sedness 198 seein 289 seicht 233 sekyr 3o8 Selenger 'St. Leger ' 380 sell 210 selver 228 sen 'since' 238 sence ' since ' 228, 239 senet, sennet 'se'n- night' 378, 304 sennet 'signet' 238 sens 'since' 328 sent Necolas 228 Sent Obomes 253 sentimint 272 senting ' sending ' 313 senty ' 70 ' 304 sepukyr 297 serjants 232 sennonte 309 serns 281 sesschyonys 293 sestems 229 sesters 229 sesyn &c. 359, 364, 275 sett 'sit' 229 settisfie 198 sewer ' sure ' 243 sey3t 333 Seynt Oleffes 274 shade rh. mead 311 shaiver 348 414 WORD INDEX shalde ' shaW 312 sbamee gloves 267, 281 shammy breeches 281 Shasbury 303 sha't 297 sheaf 210 sheath 210 Sheftesbuiy 198 shelings 229 shellyBgs 228 shepe ^ship' 228 sheuering 228 sheute 'suit' 293 shewtid 293 shin'd rh. joynd 351 shirlest 301 shitte, yshitte 'shut' 245, 246 shook 235 shrevyn 208 Shrineham 304 shrines 282 shroud 230 shad, shndd 297 shued ' showed' 243 shner, shur ' sure' 293 shues 235 shngar 293 shuite (of clothes) 293 shntyng 235 shype ' sheep ' 206 sick 254 sien 'seen' 206 sike ' sick ' 206 silie, sillie 254 silly 254 sincible 222 singi]> 369 singler 282 sistar 271 sith ' sigh ' 289 skasely 298 skirt 310 sky 310 slater ' slaughter ' 306 slaughter 252 slouinglie 290 slowe 'slew' rh. vowe 238 slyvys 2c6 smart 219 smectli 222 smet 228 smethe 'smith' 228 smol ' small' 253 smot 256 snenelyng 228 solX.' sought' 288 sogars 297 sogers 294, 297 solmon 252 solome 262, 372 som'at 276 sonner 236 Son y lawe 303 sor ' swore ' 296 sord 'sword' 296 soriful 264, 276 sossy 253 soudears 297 sonnd ' swoon ' 296 sonpar 270 sourd 'sword' 296 Sonthark, South- wick 263, 274 sow ' saw ' 253 sowlen 'ia;(;//«»' 296 spake inf. 311 Spaniald 309 spare rh. wheare 195 sparkyll 372 spaw ' spa ' 205, 253 spayke 248 speak 210 speake rh. make 196, rh. mistake 211 spence 'expenditure' 281 spenege 275 speriets 239 spetting 229 spidye 306 spike 'speak' 209 splettyd 228 spoon 235 spyde 'speed' 206 spykyng 209 spyrtys 382 sqnash 301 squeak 210 squTge 307 stabul(l) 272 standyn 289 stane 'stand' 301 stannes still 301 stap 240, 241 stapal, stapell, sta- pul 272 stapel &c. 259, 272 star 220 starlyng 320 starme 'storm' 198, rh. harm 240 startyl 272 states rh. seates 196 stanke 201, 297 stayffes 248 steak 209 steal 210 steek ' stick', steekid 208 stell 229 stepyll 272 steiid 245, 246 sterope 229 sterre 222 sterryng 346 stert 222 sterve, sterue 222 Steven 313 stirrill 278 stockins 290 stokes 252 stomechere 273 stomichers 263, 274 stomick 263, 274 stook ' stock ' 256 strape 240 stream 210 streechith 268 stren 'strand' 199 strenthe, strenth 291 strept 229 strett 256 strick 304 stricklier 303 strike ' stirk' 301 stnde 234 stude rk. fortitude 235 study 333 stummock 274 stupendions 281 sturgin 276 sturre 346 style 'steel' 306 stypylle 306 suck 232 suet (sh-) 293 snich 246 summer 232 sumptions, &c. 266, 277 snmptyme 309 Sunderlin 303 sundery 299 sune 'soon' 235 Sune elaw 303 suimer 'sooner' 236] surgeon 264 snrgiant ' surgeon ' 309 surgin 'surgeon' 276 suspishionsly 293 suthly 234 sutt'joo/' 233, 237, 256 swallow rh. holowe 202 swans rh. songs 202 swam ' sworn ' 240 swart 202 sweat 210, 254, 256 sweffte 228 swene ' dream ' 304 sveW sweet' , 'sweat' 356 swich 245 swine rh. groin 251 SW0I3 202 swolne rh. bemoan 297 swolwe-bridde 202 swone 'swollen ' 297 swound 296 swut 'soot' 237 symed 206 sympil 372 Syn, synt, sent 279 syngyne 389 synst 309 syttyn 389 takin 290 tale 210 Tarn 241 tarmes 214, 320 Taufs' Tofts' ^02 taught 388 taunt 252 taward 275 Tawbot 201, 297 tayking 248 teach 210 teach thee rh. be- seech thee 209 teerm 256 teges ' tedious ' 294 teU 210 temberall 313 tenne a clocke 364, 376 terry ed 222 testement 274 Thalia rh. higher 301 thames ' Thomas' 241 Thames rk. streames 211 thang God 312 thankfulst 283 Thanksgivin 390 tharchangill 373 theare r^. declare the, ther 380 themel 247 WORD INDEX 415 thenck 229 (y)thenge 'think' 312 thenking ' thanking' 198 therell Uhe earl' 299 thether 228 ]>e tou])ei 234 thingas 269 thir 'there' 206 thoat 305 thof 288 thonged ' thanked ' 312 thorf 288, 301 thonsan 303 thousent 313 thousind 271 thonzn 303 threed 256 threvoUes 'frivo- lous' 291 throngedone 271 thmsh 232 thrust 245 thrusty 246 thumb 304 Thursda 279 thursteth 245 thuisty 246 thusty' thirsty' 299 thwart 203 thyngeth 312 tile 251 aw tell' 227, tokyn 27a tomb 304 tomis ' Thomas ' 263, 274 toossed 257 tortoise, tortus, tor- tes, torteyse 267, 381 tortuce 267 tought rh. ywronght 252 toake 234 tuk234 toy 250 travills 280 trayvell 247 treat 210 trechrously 282 treded ' treated' a68, 310 tredid 268 tremlyng 302 Trenyte 228 trey 'try' 223 troffe 288 trunsheen 276 tryall rh, disloyal 224 iiic\i'took' 237,256 tnf 288 tnrkis, tnrkkas &c. 267, 281 turn 234 turquoise 267 tuyl 350 twelffe 313 twilete ' toilette ' Twittenham, Twit- nam 294 twoil 251, 310 twoile 310 nman 296 Umble 295 imdr 300 vndr 'under' 270 vndre 271 ungratefulst 282 nnkende 247 imkyU ' uncle ' 272 (nn)schette 245, 246 nnsoffethe ' un- sought ' 288 unt (him) ' unto ' 282 untel 229 utmyst 272 up 232 Uphowel = Ap- 274 upon 232, 233 uppard 296 uprigh 303 Usly 'Ursula' 299 Usquebath 289 utherwise 237 uyl 250 valkynge 292 vallyed 278 valy 'value' 277 Valys 392 vardy 220 Varment 220, 309 varsal 220 yartue 215, 220 vase 205 vasshelage 291 vayage 234 veal 210 veker ' vicar' 208 vele ' weal' 392 velyns 228 venyschyd 198 verchevir 294 verdjnre 294 vermin rh. fervent 309 Vemey (Vamy) 221 versis 269 verteous, vertious 266, 277 vertush 291 vesetars,veseturs 328 vesshell 291 vestit 229 Vestmynster 292 Vetyngton 292 veye 292 vey ver ' weaver ' 292 Vicaiidge 275 vilde, vylde, vildely 309 Voderoffe 292 voiolence 224 Volsake 292 volupteous 266, 277, 286 voman 292 vomen 292 Vosseter 292 vyne 292 vyves 292 wag 203 wagon, waggans 264, 37s waiker 248 waiter 'waier' 248 wan 202 wan ' one ' 307 Wanysday 198 war 202 warder 202 Warderop, Ward- rope, Wardroper 313 warff 'wharf 311 warkys &c. 230 warm 303 warn 202 warre 220 ^ wars, warsse 233 wart 202 was 203 was rh. cress 198 wascote, wascott 302 wasp 202 watch 202 wate 'wait' 248 water 202 watre 271 watter 255 wattle 202 Watton 233 way 248 weak 210 wean 210 wech 'which' 228 wecheman 198 wedewe 208 wedow(e) 208 weevil 307 weight rh. fate 305 weket, wekytt 208 wekyst 270 well 'will' 228, 229 welvet 293 Welyam 228 wemen 308 wen 'when' 311 wendow 228 wenger 292 Wensday 301, 303 werche 245 wergers 293 wermes 245 werof 'whereof 311 werst 345 wery, were 'very' 292 weshing ' wishing' 228, 246 wesshe 'wish' 198 Westmester, West- myster, Wasmes- ter, Westmuster 303 Westminster 302 wetch vb, 198 wete vb. 20S wete 'wheat' 311 weteleres 228 wetelle 293 weteth 208 wex 198 wexe vb. 198 weyjt 223 whack 203 whale 312 whalew 293 wharf 202 what 201 wheat 210 whight ' white' 305 yihirty ' wherry' 12^ whistle 302 whoate 'hot' 307 Whoddon-202 whole, whoUe 307 wholie 307 wholyn 271 whome ' home' 307 whoote 'hoot' 308 whore, whoredom 307 whos 'was' 302 4i6 WORD INDEX whot ' what ' 203 whot, whole, whott 'Aoi' 307 whott 356 whndd ' Aeod' 308, rA. bud 337 whylde ' w&ile ' 309 \n'ive' 306 wich 'which' 311 widgeon 264 wig 'whig"' 313 will 'well' 223 Wiltshire 302 wimin 372 winch'd 292 wind, 235, 250 wine 225 wit rh. coquet 229 withaught 230 woater 303 woching 302 wochsaft 309 woddes rh, goode is 25s wode ' would ' 397 wolde 307 Wolster ' C/lsier ' 308 womb 304 won, wone '«»«' 307 wonlyche ' only ' 307 wons ' once ' 307 wonst 309 wood 'word' 299 wood ^would' 297 woolen 361 woorde 356 woorke 256 woorse 256 woorthie 256 word 234 wore, worr ' war' 303 Worik ao2 woming 302 worse 234 WOS 303 woshing 303 wosse ' was ' 203 Wosseter 398 Wosted ' worsted ' 298 Woster 299 Wostrett 301 wother ' other ' 30S wounds rh. lam- poons 302 woyce 293 wrath 202 wretched, -id 261, 267 wreten 308 wretyn 208 Wright ' write ' 305 writins 290 wrothey ' worthy ' 301 wrynchynge 222 wrytyn 389 wnrst rh. adnst 298 wusted 299 wnts ' oats ' 306, 307 wyce ' vice '292 wyckes 254 wye 'why' 312 wyght ' white' 312 wyld ' will ' 309 Wyllars 393 wyped ' whipped ' 3" wypyng 306 yander 240 yeare 'ear' 308 yearl 308 yeamestly 308 yearth 236, 308 yearthy 308 yeate 'gate' 195 yelles'«//j' 308 jende ' end ' 308 yending 308 yerb 308 yere ' ere ' 308 yerly 308 yerst 'erst' 308 yese ' ease ' 308 yest 'east' 308 yeuen ' given' toi yeuen ' even ' 308 Seuery 308 yewthe 244 y-fole 'fallen '253 y-granndyd 312 y-leyche 223 ymbeiyng days 246 yocke 255, 256 yolk 297 yorth 'earth' 308 yoners 300 youes 'use' 244 yonmore, yonmored 244. 295 yousefull 244 yonst 'used' 244 yousyal 266, 278 yow, zu 279 ys ' oj' 273 yshette 245, 246 yt ' hit ' 29s y-tolte 313 yts 'it is' 282 ynel 245 yyell 246 y-writon 271 zu 'you' 279 PRINTED IN ENGLAND AT THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS BY FREDERICK HALL