:

TH£

ORIGIN AND HISTORY

ENGLISH LANGUAGE,

THE EARLY LITERATURE IT EMBODIES.

BY
GEORGE P. MARSH,
AUTHOR OF "LECTURES OX THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE," ETC., ETC.

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER, GRAND STREET
LONDON: SAMPSON LOW, SON AND CO.

1862.
 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862, by

CHAELES SCEIBNEE,
In tho Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of
New York.

Ji
 ADVERTISEMENT.

The lectures which compose the present volume

were delivered at the Lowell Institute, in Boston,

Massachusetts, in the autumn and winter of 1860

-1861, and they are now published, for the benefit of

the author, by the liberal permission of the Trustees

of that noble foundation. They were prepared in the

summer preceding, with such aids only as my private

library afforded ; and my departure from the United

States in the spring of 1861, together with the want
of access to collections of English books abroad, has

prevented me from giving them such a revision as I

hoped to be able to bestow upon them. They are

printed, therefore, very nearly as they were originally

written ; and I have not thought myself bound to
suppress opinions advanced, or illustrations employed,

in the delivery of the lectures, barely because they

are published under circumstances different from those

in which they were read.
It is proper to add that the frequent references in
 ADVERTISEMENT.

the foot-notes and elsewhere to the "First Series,"

apply to the fourth edition of a course of lectures on

the English Language, delivered by me at New York,
and published in 1861 by Scribner in that city, and
by Sampson Low, Son and Co., in London.

Geokge P. Maesh.
London, September 30, 1862.
 CONTENTS.

LECTUKE I.

Introductory • • . . .

LECTURE II. .

Origin and Composition of the Anglo-Saxon People and their Lan-

41

LECTURE III.

Anglo-Saxon Vocabulary, Literature, and Grammar . . .88

LECTURE IV.

Semi-Saxon Literature . . . . . . .138

LECTURE V.

English Language and Literature of the First Period: from the

Century .........
Middle of the Thirteenth to the Middle of the Fourteenth
188

LECTURE VI.

Commencement of Second Period

Author of Piers Ploughman ......
: from 1350 to the tlme of the
259
VI CONTENTS.

PAGB
LECTUEE VII.

The Author of Piers Ploughman and his Imitators . . . 295

LECTUEE VIII.

Wycliffe and his School . . , . . . .339

Chaucer and Gower .......

LECTUEE IX.

379

LECTUEE X.

Fifteenth Century to the time of Caxton ....

The English Language and Literature from the Beginning of the
454

LECTUEE XL

of Elizabeth ........
The English Language and Literature from Caxton to the Accession
482

LECTUEE XII.

beth ......:.
The English Language and Literature during the reign of Eliza-
535
 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL LIST OF WORKS CITED IN THESE
LECTURES.

Alexanders Saga, udgiven af Unger, 1848, 1 B. 8vo.

Alfred (King) Anglo-Saxon Version of Boethius de Consolatione Philosophise,

edited by Cardale, London, 1829, 1 vol. 8vo.

— Anglo-Saxon Version of the History of Paulus Orosius, with a translation by

Thorpe, in Pauli's Life of Alfred the Great. See Pauli.

Alfric or Aelfric, Homilies published by the Aelfric Society, London, 2 vols. 8vo.

Alisaunder Kyng, in Weber's Metrical Bomances, Vol. 1.

Ancren Biwle, The Ancren Kiwle, a Treatise on the Bules and Duties of Monastic
Life, edited and translated for the Camden Society, by James Morton, London,
1853, 1 vol. 4to.

Anecdota Literaria, a Collection of Short Poems in English, Latin and French,

illustrative of the Literature and History of England in the Thirteenth Century,
edited by T. Wright, London, 1845, 1 vol. 8vo.

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, The Saxon Chronicle, with an English translation by

J. Ingram, London, 1823, 1 vol. 4to.

— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, edited, with a translation, by B. Thorpe, London,

1861, 2 vols. 8vo. in the series Berum Britannicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores,
or Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during the
Middle Ages.
Anglo-Saxon Gospels, The Anglo-Saxon Version of the Holy Gospels, edited by
B. Thorpe, reprinted by L. F. Klipstein, New York, 1846, 1 vol. 12mo. See,
also, Gospels.

Arnold, The Customs of London, otherwise called Arnold's Chronicle, reprinted,

London, 1811, 1 vol. 4to.

Aschcrm, Roger, The Schole Master, &c, London, 1570, 1 vol. small 4to.
Ausonius, D. Magni Ausonii Burdegalensis Opera, Amstelsedami, 1750, 1 vol. 18mo.

Bacon (Lord) Essayes or Counsels, civil and morall, newly enlarged, London, 1625,
1 vol. small 4to.
Ballads, English and Scotch Ballads, edited by Francis James Child, Boston and
London, 1861, 8 vols. 12mo.
Vlll BIBLIOGRAPHICAL LIST OF

Ballot y Torres, Gramatiea y Apologia de la Llengua Cathalana, Barcelona, 1 vol.

12mo. s.A.
Beowulf, Text in Groin's Bibliothek, B. I.

Berncrs (Lord). See Froissart.

Bible, English, The Holy Bible, conteyning the Old Testament and the New,
London, 1611, 1 vol. folio.

— Platt-Deutsch. See Bugcnhagen.

— Hoch-Deutsch, or Luther's. See Luther.
— Polyglott. See unci Thick.
Sticr

Biondelli, B., Poesie Lorabarde Inedite del Secolo XIIL, Milano, 1856, 1 vol. Svo.

— Saggio sui Dialetti Gallo-Italici, Milano, 1853, 1 vol. 8vo.

Body and Soul, Dialogue between, in Appendix to the Latin Poems attributed to
Walter Mapes, edited by Wright for the Camden Society, London, 1841, 1 vol. 4to.

Bodhhis. See Alfred.

Bonncmerc, Histoire des Paysans depuis la fin du Moyen Age jusqu'a nos jours,
par Eugene Bonnemere, Paris, 1856, 2 T. Svo.
Bosivorth, A Dictionary of the Anglo-Saxon Language, by Kev. J. Bosworth,
London, 1835, 1 vol. Svo.

— The Origin of the Germanic and Scandinavian Languages and Nations, London,
1846, 1 vol. Svo.

Bugcnhagen, Platt-Deutsch translation of the Bible, Dat ys, De gantze Hillige

Schrift vordudtschet dorch D. Marti. Luth. Magdeborch, 1545, 1 B. folio.

Burguy, Grammaire de la Langue d'Oil, Berlin, 1S53, 3 B. 8vo.

Ccedmon, Genesis, Exodus, Daniel, Text in Groin's Bibliothek, B. I.

Caxton, The Game of the Chesse, reproduced in fac-simile by V. Figgins, London,

1860, 1 vol. folio.

— Preface to the Morte d' Arthur, q.v.

Chaucer, The Canterbury Talcs of Geoffrey Chaucer, a new text, edited by T.

Wright for the Percy Society, London, 1847-1851, 3 vols. 12mo.
— Reprint of same text. s. A. 1 vol. Svo.

— The Poetical Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, with Tyrwhitt's Introductory Dis-

course, Notes and Glossary, London, 1859, 1 vol. 8vo.

Choice, Sir John, The Hurt of Sedition, in Holinshed, Vol. 3. q.v.

— Gospel of Matthew and part of St. Mark's, London, 1843, 1 vol. 8vo.

Churchyard, Thomas, Chips concerning Scotland, reprint, London, IS 17, 1 vol. Svo.

Coleridge, A Glossarial Index to the Printed English Literature of the Thirteenth

Century, by Herbert Coleridge, London, 1S59, 1 vol. Svo.

Constancio, Novo Diccionario critico e etymologico da Lingua Portugucza, por

F. S. Constancio, Septima Edi^-ao, Paris, 1S59, 1 T. 4to.
 WORKS CITED IN THESE LECTURES IX

Contzen, Die "Wanderungen der Kelten, historisch-kritiscli dargelegt, von Leopold

Contzen, Leipsig, 1861, 1 T. Svo.

Courier, P. L., Oeuvres completes de Paul-Louis Courier, Bruxelles, 1833, 1 T. 8vo.

Craik, G. L., History of the English Literature and Language, London, 1862,
2 vols. 8vo.
— Outlines of the History of the English Language, 1 vol. 12mo.

Curtasye, Boke of, The Boke of Curtasye, an English Poem of the Fourteenth
Century, edited by Halliwell for the Percy Society, London, 1841, 1 vol. 12mo.

Cury, Forme of, The Forme of Cory, a Eoll of Ancient Cookery, London, 1780,
1 vol. Svo.

Cyncwulfs Crist, Text in Greirts Biblicthek, B. I.

Dante, II Convito di Dante Alighieri e le Epistole, con illustrazioni e note di

Pietro Fraticelli, Firenze, 1857, 1 vol. 12mo.
Denkmaler Altniederlandischer Sprache und Litteratur, herausgegeben von Kausler,
Tubingen, 1841, 1844, 2 B. Svo.
Diez, Grammatik der Romanischen Sprachen, von Friedrich Diez, 2 te Ausgabe,
Bonn, 1856, 1860, 3 B. 8vo.
Dubartas. See Sylvester.
Ducangc, Glossarium Medise et Infimse Latinitatis, cum Sup. int. Carpenterii et
aliorum, digessit Henschel, Parisiis, 1840, 1850, 7 T. 4to.

Edda, elder or poetical, Edda Ssemundar hins FroSa, Edda Rhythmica seu
antiquior, Havnioe, 1787-1827, 3 T. 4to.

— younger or prose, Edda Snorra Sturlusonar, Havnise, 1848, 1852, T. 1 et 2, 8vo.

Edward III , Poem on death of, in Political Poems and Songs of England, Vol. 1.

Egilsson, Lexicon Poeticum Antiquse Linguae Septentrionalis (Icelandic and Latin),

conscripsit Sveinbjorn Egilsson, Hafniee, 1860, 1 T. 8vo.

Fardle of Facions, London, 1555, 1 vol. ISmo., reprinted in Supplement to

Hakluyt, 1812.
Fauriel, Dante et la Litterature Italienne, Paris, 1854, 2 T. 8vo.

Ferguut, Volksroman uit de XIVde Eeuw, uitgegeven door Visscher, Utrecht, 1830,
1 B. Svo.

Ferreras, monosyllabic poem, in Berflot y Torres, Gramatica de la Llengua Cathalana.

Fiedler und Sacks, TVissenchaftliche Grammatik der Englischen Sprache, von

E. Fiedler und Carl Sachs, Leipsig, 1861, 2 B. 8vo.

Firmenich, Germaniens Volkerstimmen, Berlin, various years to 1862, 3 B. 8vo.

Fisher, Sermon on the death of the Countess of Derby, reprint, London, 1708,
1 vol. 12mo.
Fonseca e Carolino, O Novo Guia da Conversacao em Portuguez e Inglez, Paris,
1855, 1 T. 12mo.
X BIBLIOGRAPHICAL LIST OF

Forby, The Vocabulary of East Anglia, by Eobert Forby, London, 1830, 2 vols. 8vo.
Froissart, Sir John, Chronicles of England, France, Spain, Scotland, &c, trans-
lated by John Bourchier, Lord Berners, London, 1523, 1525, 2 vols, folio ; reprint,
London, 1812, 2 vols. 4to.

Fuller, The Church History of Britain, from the Birth of Jesus Christ until the
year 1648, London, 1665, 1 vol. folio.

Gil, Alexander, Logonomia Anglica, 2nd edition, London, 1621, small 4to.

Golding, The XV
Books of P. Ouidius Naso, entituled Metamorphosis, a work
verie pleasant and delectable, translated out of Latin into English meeter by
Arthvr Golding, Gentleman, London, 1595, 1 vol. small 4 to.
Gospel, The Gospel according to Matthew in Anglo-Saxon and Northumbrian
Versions, Cambridge, 1858, 1 vol. 4to.

Gower, The Confessio Amantis of John Gower, edited by Dr. Keinhold Pauli,
London, 1857, 3 vols. 8vo.

Graff, E. G., Diutiska, Denkmaler Deutscher Sprache und Litteratur, Stuttgart und
Tubingen, 1826, 1829, 3 B. 8vo.

Grein, Bibliothek der Angelsachsischen Poesie, Gottingen, 18^7-1862, 8vo., text*

2 B. ; Deutsche Uebersetzung, B. I. II. ; Glossar. H. 1, 2.

Grimm, Jacob und Wilhelm, Deutsches "Worterbuch, Leipzig, 1852-62, B. I. II.

III. 4to.

— Jacob, Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache, 2 te Auflage, Leipzig, 1852, 2 B.

8vo.

Hakluyt, Bichard, The principal Navigations, Voyages, and Discoveries made by

the English Nation, London, 1598, 1599, 1600, 3 vols, folio.

— Supplement to Hakluyt, &c, London, 1812, 1 vol. 4to.

Hardynge, John, Chronicle in Metre, with continuation in Prose, edited by Grafton,

reprint, London, 1812, 1 vol. 4to.

Haupt, Zeitschrift fur Deutsches Alterthum, Leipzig, 1841-62, 12 B. 8vo.

Hawes, Stephen, The Pastime of Pleasure, reprint, edited by Wright for Percy
Society, London, 1845, 1 vol. 12mo.

HeimsJcringla, Historia Kegum Norvegicorum, auctore Snorrio Sturlseo, Hafnise,

1777-1826, 6 T. folio.

Heliand, Poema Saxonicum Seculi Noni, edidit G. A. Schmeller, Monaci, 1830,

1 T. 4to.

Hereford, Translation of part of Old Testament, in Wycliffite Versions, q.v.

Hcywood, John, The Four Ps, a very merry Enterlude of a Palmer, a Pardoner, a
Potecary, and a Pedlar, reprint in Dodsley's Collection of Old Plays also many :

single plays ; no collected edition exists.

Hoffmann von Fallerslcben, Horoe Belgicse (various years down to 1857), 2 t9

Ausgabe, 11 B. 8vo.
 WORKS CITED IN THESE LECTURES xi

Holinsked, Ralph, Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, reprint, London,

1807-1808, 6 vols. 4to.

Holland. See Pliny.

Hooker, Richard, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie, by Eichard Hooker,
Bookesl. to IV., London, without date (1594), 1 vol. folio; The Fift Booke,
London, 1597, 1 vol. folio.

Horn (Kyng) The Geste of Kyng Horn, in Horn et Kimenhild, edited for the
Bannatyne Club by Francisque Michel, Paris, 1845, 1 T. 4to.
Huydccopcr, Breeder Aantekeningen op Melis Stoke, in his edition of that author,
Leyden, 1772, 3 B. 8vo.

James (King) /., Poetical Kemains of James the First, Perth, 1787, 1 vol. 12mo.
Jonson, Ben, Works, London, 1616-1631, 2 vols, folio.

Kansler. See Denkmaler Altniederl. Sp. und Lit.

Klipstein, Louis F., A Grammar of the Anglo-Saxon Language, New York, 1849,
1 vol. 12mo.
Knox, John, First Blast of the Trumpet against the monstrous Kegiment of
Women, in Appendix to Knox's Historie of the Keformation of Eeligioun
within the Eealme of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1732, 1 vol. folio.

Knytlinga Saga in Fornmanna Sogur, B. XL, Kaupmannahofn, 1828, 8vo.

Koenen, De Nederlandsche Boerenstand Historisch Beschreven, Haarlem, 1858,
1 B. 8vo.

Langlandc. See Piers Ploughman.

Langtoft. See Robert of Brunne.
Latimer, The Fyrste Sermon of Mayster Hughe Latemer, whych he preached
before the kynges maiestie, &c, y e viii. day of Marche, mcccccxxix. (with six
other sermons), London, John Daye, n. d.
Layamon, Lajamon's Brut, or Chronicle of Britain, edited by Sir Frederic
Madden, for the Society of Antiquaries, London, 1847, 3 vols. 8vo.
Libel of English Policy, in Political Poems and Songs, relating to English
History, &c. Vol. 2.

Lillie or Lilly, Euphues, the Anatomie of Wit, Euphues and His England, by
John Lylie, London, 1636, 1 vol. small 4to.
Lindisfarne Gospels. See Gospel.
Lorris, Guillaume de. See Eoman de la Eose.
Luther's German (Hoch-Deutsch) Bible. See Stier und Thiele.
Lydgatc, J., Various extracts in Warton and other critical writers.

Malorye, Sir Thomas. See Morte d' Arthur.

Mandeville, The Voiage and Travaile of Sir John Maundeville, Kt. London,
 ;

Xll BIBLIOGRAPHICAL LIST OF

1725 ; reprint, with Introduction, Notes, and Glossary by Halliwell, London,

1839, 1 vol. 8vo.

Manning, Robert. See Robert of Brunne.

Martyr, Peter, Decades, in Supplement to HaMuyt.
Meung, J. de. See Eoman de la Kose.
Minot, Poems of Laurence Minot in Political Poems and Songs of England,
Vol. 1.

Miracle Plays, Sermon against, in Keliquise Antiquse, Vol. 2.

Mirror for Magistrates, reprint, London, 1815, 3 vols. 4to.

Moeso-Gothic Scriptures. See TJlfila.

Molbcch, C, Dansk Ordbog, anden Udgave, Kjobenhavn, 1859, 2 B. 8vo.

More, Sir Thomas, The Apology e of syr Thomas More, knyght, London, n.d.
(1533) 1 vol. 18mo.
— The Workes of Sir Thomas More, Knyght, &c, wrytten by him in the Englysh
tonge, London, 1557, 1 vol. folio.

Morte d' Arthur, The Byrth, Lyf, and Actes of Kyng Arthur, &c, and in the end

Le Morte Darthur, London, 1485 reprint, edited by Southey, London, 1817,

;

2 vols. 4to.
Mulcaster, Richard, First Part of the Elementarie, London, 1581, 1 vol. sm. 4to.

Njala, Sagan af Niali j?orgeirssyni ok Sonura hans, Kavpmannahavfn, 1772,

1 vol. 4to.

— Nials Saga, Historia Mali et Filiorum, Latine reddita, cum Glossario, Havniae,
1809, 1 vol. 4to.
Nibelungen, Der Nibelunge Lied, Abdruck der Handschrifb des Freiherrn von
Lassberg, Leipzig, 1840, 1 vol. 4 to.

Occleve or Hocclcvc, Poems never before printed, &c, London, 1796, 1 vol. 4to.

also excerpts in Warton and other critical writers.

Ohthcr's narrative in Alfred's Orosius, q.v.

Orm or Ormin, The Ormulum, from the original manuscript, edited by P. M.

White, Oxford, 1852, 2 vols. 8vo.

Otfrid, Krist, herausgegeben von Graff, Konigsberg, 1831, 1 T. 4to.

Owl and Nightingale, The Owl and the Nightingale, an early English Poem,
edited by T. Wright for the Percy Society, London, 1843, 1 vol. 12mo.

Pauli, Br. R., The Life of Alfred the Great, to which is appended Alfred's Anglo-
Saxon version of Orcsius, London, 1857, 1 vol. 12mo.
Palsgrave, L'Eclaircis.semcnt de la Langue Franchise, par Jeau Palsgrave ; reprint,

edited byF. Genin, Paris, 1852, 1 vol. folio.

Pt c :>clc, The Eepressor of over much blaming of the Clergy, by Keginald Pecock,
London, 1860, 2 vols. 8vo.
 WORKS CITED IN THESE LECTURES Xlll

Tederscn, Christen, Det Ny Testamente, 1531, reprinted in Pedersen's Danske

Skrifter, Kjobenhavn, 1853, B. III.

Phacr, Translation of Virgil's Aeneid, completed by Twyne, London, 1584.

Piers Ploughman, The Vision and the Creed of Piers Ploughman, edited by
Wright, London, 1842, 2 vols. 12mo.
Platt-Dcutsch Bible. See Bugcnhagen.
Pliny, the elder, Natural History, translated by Philemon Holland, London, 1601,
2 vols, folio. .

Political Songs, The Political Songs of England from the Keign of John to that
of Edward II., edited by Wright for the Camden Society, London, 1839,

1 vol. 4to.

— Poems and Songs relating to English History, from the accession of

Political
Edward III. to that of Eichard III., edited by Wright in Eev. Brit. Med.
Aevi Script. Vol. 1, 1859, Vol. 2, 1861.

Porter Com. David, Constantinople and its Environs, New York, 1835, 2 vols. 8vo.
Promptorium Parvulorum, sive Clericorum, edited by Way for Camden Society,
London, T. 1, 1843, T. 2, 1853, 4to.

Purchas, Pilgrimes and Pilgrimages, or Voiages and Land Travels to all parts of
the World, London, 1625-6, 5 vols, folio.

Purvey, Becension of the Wycliffite Bible. See Wycliffc.

Puttcnham, The Arte of English Poesie, London, 1589 ; reprint, edited by Hasle-
wood, London, 1811, 1 vol. 4to.

Basic, Erasmits, A Grammar of the Anglo-Saxon Tongue, translated by Thorpe,

Copenhagen, 1830, 1 vol. Svo.

Baynouard, Lexique Boman, ou Dictionnaire de la Langue des Troubadours, Paris,

1844, 6 T. Svo.

Beliquia? Antiquae, Scraps from ancient Manuscripts, by T. Wright and J. 0.

Halliwell, London, 1841, 2 vols. Svo.

Berum Britannicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores, or Chronicles and Memorials of

Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages, now publishing in Svo.
volumes, by the British Government, under the direction of the Master of the
Eolls. See Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Capgrave, PecocJc, Political Poems and
Songs, Eoyal and Historical Letters.

Eichard, Cceur de Lion, Poem on, in Weber's Metrical Bomances, Vol. 2, q.v.

Bobert of Brunne, or Bobcrt Manning, Peter Langtoffs Chronicle (as illus-

trated and improv'd by Bobert of Brunne), edited by Thomas Hearne, Oxford,
1725, 2 vols. Svo.
Bobcrt of Gloucester, Chronicle Transcrib'd and now first publish'd from a MS.
in the Harleyan Library, by Thomas Hearne, Oxford, 1724, 2 vols. Svo;
reprint, London, 1810, 2 vols. 8vo.

— Lives and Legends of the Saints : St. Brandan, Percy Society, London
XIV BIBLIOGEAPHICAL LIST OF

1844, 1 vol. 12mo; Life and Martyrdom of Thomas a Becket, do. London,
1845, 1 vol. 12mo; Fragment on Popular Science, in Wright's Popular
Treatises on Science, q.v.

Koman de la Eose, le, par Guillaume de Lorris et Jehan de Meung, edited by

Meon, Paris, 1844, 4 T. 8vo.

Roquefort, G. B. B., Glossaire de la Langue Komane, Paris, 1808, 2 T. 8vo.

Supplement, ibid. 1820, 1 T. 8vo.

Eoyal and Historical Letters during the Eeign of Henry IV., London, 1860,
Vol. 1, 8vo. in Eer. Brit, Med. Aev. Script.

Eushworth Gospels. See Gospels.

SetcTcville, T\, Induction, &c, in Mirrour for Magistrates.

— Poetical Works, London, 1820, 8vo. 1 vol.

— Gorboduc, or Ferrex and Porrex Dodsley's Old Plays. in

Sandras, E. G., Etude sur Chaucer, Paris, 1859, 1 vol. 8vo.

Schmid, Gesetze der Angel-Sachsen, 2 te Ausgabe, 1858, 1 B. 8vo.

Shakespeare, "Works of, Knight's Pictorial Edition, London, 1839, 8 vols. 8vo.

Sidney, Sir Philip, Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, Defence of Poesy, and other
works, London, 1665, 1 vol. folio.

Skelton, J., Poetical Works, edited by Dyce, London, 1843, 2 vols. 8vo.

Snorri Sturluson. See Edda the younger, and Heimskringla.

Specimens of Lyric Poetry composed in England in the Eeign of Edward I.,

edited by Wright for the Percy Society, London, 1842, 1 vol. 12mo.
Spenser, Edmund, Poetical Works, edited byHillard, Boston, 1842, 5 vols. 8vo.

Stalder, P. J., Die Landessprachen der Schweiz, oder Schweizerische Dialektologie,

Aarau, 1819, 1 vol. 8vo.

Stanihurst, Richard, Description, &c, of Ireland in Holinshed, Vol. 6.

— Translations, &c, extracts in Warton.

Stier und Thiele, Polyglotten-Bibel zum Handgebrauch, Bielefeld, 1854, 4 B.

in 5, 8vo.

Surrey and Wyatt, Songs and Sonnets, reprint, London, 1717, 1 vol. 8vo.

Surtees Psalter, Anglo-Saxon and Early English Psalter, published by the Surtees
Society, London, 1843, 1847, 2 vols. 8vo.

Sylvester, Du Beirtas, his Divine Weekes and Workes, translated by Sylvester,

London, 1611, 1 vol. 4to.

Tcgner, Esaias, Samlade Skrifter, Stockholm, 1847-1851, 7 B. 8vo.

Turner, Sharon, The History of the Anglo-Saxons, Philadelphia, 1841, 2

vols. 8vo.

Tyndale, William, The Newe Testament, 1526 ; reprint, after Bagster, by G. P.

Dabney, Andover, 1837, 1 vol. 8vo.
 WORKS CITED IN THESE LECTURES XV

Tyndale, William, The Supper of the Lorde, London, Mcccccxxxni. v. daye of

Apryll, 1 vol. 18mo.
Tyrwhitt. See Chaucer.

Oder die uns erhaltenen Denkmaler der Gothischen Sprache, Text.

Ulfila,

Grammatik und Worterbucb, bearbeitet und herausgegeben von F. L. Stamm,

Paderborn, 1858, 1 B. 8vo. I have used also the very valuable edition of the
Fragments of the Mceso-Gothic Scriptures by Gabelentz and Loebe, 1843,
2 B. 4to.

Van Maerlant, Jacob, Spiegel Historiael, uitgegeven door de Maatschappij der

Nederlandsche Letterkunde, te Leiden, 1859—1862, 3 B. 4to.
Vcrtomannus, Travels in the East, in Supplement to Halcluyt.
Villemarque, Les Romans de la Table Ronde, et les Contes des anciens Bretons,
Paris, 1861, 1 vol. 8vo.

Warton, Thomas, The History of English Poetry from the Close of the Eleventh
to the Commencement of the Eighteenth Century, edited by Price, London, 1840,
3 vols. 8vo.

Weber, Metrical Eomances of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Cen-

turies, Edinburgh, 1810, 3 vols. 12mo.
Wedgwood, Henslcigh, A Dictionary of English Etymology, with Notes by George
P. Marsh, Vol. 1, New York, 1861, 8vo.
Wilson, " or Wylson, The Three Orations of Demosthenes in Favour of the
Olynthians, and the Four Philippics, London, 1570, 1 vol. 4to.

Wright, 71, Popular Treatises on Science, written during the Middle Ages,
London, 1841, 1 vol. 8vo. See also Piers Ploughman, Anecdota Literaria.
Reliquiae Antiquse, &c. &c.

Wycliffe, Apology for the Lollards, Camden Society, London, 1842, 1 vol. 4to.

— The Holy Bible in the earliest English Versions, made from the Latin
Vulgate by John "Wycliffe and his Followers {Hereford and Purvey), edited
by Rev. J. Forshall and Sir F. Madden, Oxford, University Press, 1850,
4 vols. 4to.
 LECTURES
ON THE

ENGLISH LANGUAGE

LECTUEE I.

INTKODUCTOKY.

The subject of the course upon which I am about to enter will

be, as nearly as I am able to express it in a comprehensive title,
the Origin and History of the English Language, and of the
Early Literature it embodies. I shall not notice the works of
those natives of England who have on domestic as
written,
well as on more general Latin and
topics, in foreign tongues,
French, because those works, though composing a part of the
national literature, do not belong to the literature of the En-
glish language, which alone is embraced in the plan of the pre-
sent readings. I confine myself to the history of early English
literature for two reasons. The first is the impossibility of survey-
ing, in so short a series of discourses, the whole field of English
intellectual action ; the second, that the harmonious execution
of my purpose — which is to discuss the two branches of the
subject, language and literature, with constant reference to
their reciprocal influence on each other — excludes those periods
when their history had ceased to be concurrent.
The English language had already gone through its principal
phases when the earliest of the works, which are now collec-
B
 2 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE Lect. I.

lively known to most grammarians, lexicographers, and common

readers as the body of English literature, made its appearance.
A single epoch witnessed the completion of that organic action
by which the English speech was developed from its elements,
and the beginning of that one era of English authorship, the
products of which still subsist as a consciously-felt and recog-
nised agency in the world of letters. The language had passed
the stages of infancy and youth, attained to the ripe perfection
of manhood, and thus completed its physiological history, before
the existing period of its literature began. In treating the two,
then, the speech and its literature, conjointly, I am necessarily
limited to the centuries when both were undergoing the suc-
cessive processes of evolution and growth, and when the pro-
gress of each was dependent on that of the other, and conditioned
by it.

This period extends from a little before the commencement

of the reign of Henry III. to the latter years of Queen Eliza-
beth, and thus embraces not far from four hundred years.
During this space, the intellect of England, stirred at once by
inborn impulses, and by external influences, had become luxu-
riantly productive, and was constantly struggling to find articu-
late symbols and syntactical combinations, wherein to embody
and communicate the vivid images, deep thoughts, and earnest
aspirations which it had either spontaneously originated, or
appropriated from the literatures of ancient or foreign nations,
while the language, stimulated to a continually renewed evolu-
tion of organic action by the necessities of a regenerated literary,
and commercial life, was gradually expanding
political, social,

into a largeness of capacity, and moulding itself into a fitness of

form, to serve as a vehicle for the vast, and varied, and strange
conceptions it was now called upon to express,
i This process, or rather this double series of processes, was
completed, as I have said, about the end of the sixteenth cen-
tury,) and our view of the language and its monuments will

embrace little which belongs to later dates, except so far as I

Lect. I. ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE 6

may incidentally refer to subsequent verbal forms or intellectual

products,, as results of tendencies already manifested in the
English mind and its speech, in the era which we are more
particularly considering.
The tongue of England and her intellectual culture had now
respectively attained to a stage of advancement where neither
imperiously demanded new capabilities in the other. The lan-
guage no longer showed the want of that affluence, and polish,
and clearness, and force, which human speech can acquire only.
by long use as the medium of written composition in the various
forms of narrative, imaginative and discursive literature, and,
in modern times at least, by the further aid of exposure to the
stimulating and modifying influences of the history, and poetry,
and philosophy, and grammar, and vocabulary of foreign
tongues. The English mind and heart, meanwhile, had been
gathering knowledge, and experience, and strength, and catho-
licity of sympathy, and they were now able to expand to
the full dimensions of their growth, gird themselves to their
mightiest moral and intellectual efforts, and burst into song, or
sermon, or story, or parliamentary or forensic harangue, without
fear that the mother-tongue of England would want words to
give adequate and melodious expression to their truest feelings,
their most solemn convictions, and their loftiest aspirations.*
The history of this philological and intellectual progress is

the too vast theme of the present course; and if I shall succeed
in conveying a general notion of the gradual living processes
by which the English tongue and its literature grew up, from
the impotent utterance and feeble conceptions of the thirteenth
century, to the divine power of expression displayed in Tyndale's
version of the New Testament, in the sixteenth, and the revela-
tion of man's moral nature in the dramas of Shakespeare, at the
commencement of the seventeenth, I shall have accomplished
the task I have undertaken.

* See Illustration I. at the end of this lecture.

4 OLD ENGLISH LITEEATUKE Lect. I.

The linguistic facts and literary illustrations required for the

comprehension of such a sketch will be drawn chiefly from
sources familiar indeed to many of the audience, but which
do not come within the habitual observation and knowledge of
what is called the reading public but I shall endeavour not to
;

advance theories, employ technical terms, or introduce citations,

which will not easily be understood by any person possessed of
sufficient literary culture to feel an intelligent interest in the
subject.
In all inquiries into the history of past ages, whether as
respects the material concerns or the intellectual action of men,
the question constantly presents itself: what was the inherent
worth, or what is the surviving practical importance, of the
objects, or the acts, the monuments of which we are investi-
gating? — and hence we must ask: what was the actual signifi-

cance of that bygone literature, into which, both for own

its

sake as an interesting chapter in the annals of the human mind,

and for the sake of the language, of whose changes it constitutes
the only record, we propose The few examples which
to look ?

can be cited will not, of themselves, suffice to convey an ade-

quate conception of the special character, still less of the wealth,
of old English literature ; but I shall endeavour to illustrate
them by such biographical or historical notices as may serve to
show their connection with the social and intellectual life of the
periods and the people to which they belong, and thus help my
hearers to arrive at conclusions for themselves which I may not
think it necessary in all cases formally to express. I shall strive
tl us to invest my subject with a higher philosophical interest
than belongs to mere historical grammar, and the considerations
which suggest themselves in our survey will, I hope, give some
additional incitement to the impulse now beginning to be felt
by so many scholars towards the study of the neglected and
forgotten authors of ages which want, indeed, the polish acd
refinement of subsequent centuries, but are, nevertheless, ani-
mated and informed with a spontaneous life, a freshness, and

,
Lect. L INDEPENDENCY OF ENGLAND 5

vigour, rare in the productions of eras more advanced in artificial

culture.
A literature which extends through four centuries, and which
was successively exposed to the stimulating influences of such
radical revolutions in Church and in State, of such important
advances in every branch of knowledge, such achievements
in fine and industrial art, and such triumphs of human power
over physical nature, cannot be described by any one series of
epithets, nor, indeed, were its traits always so marked that all its

products are recognizable as unmistakably of English growth.

Bat it may be said, in general, that,more than most other
equally imaginative literatures, it was practically and visibly
connected with the actual social being of man, with his enjoy-
ments and sufferings in this world, and his hopes and fears in
reference to another. It was a reflection of the waking life of
an earnest, active nation, not, like so much of the contempo-
raneous expression of Continental genius, a magic mirror showing
forth the unsubstantial dreams of an idle, luxurious, and fantastic
people.
The eminently practical character of old English literature is
due, in a considerable degree, to the political condition of the
English government. The insular position of England made
that kingdom, from the beginning, more than any other Euro-
pean state, independent of the international combinations which,
in a greatdegree, controlled the destiny and moulded the
institutions and characters of the Continental peoples, and this
isolation of the government was felt and shared by the nation.
It entered into the English heart, and has, in all the best
periods of English literature, constituted a marked and peculiar
characteristic of its genius. While the writers of most other
European countries have had their periods and their schools,
when now classic, now romantic, now Gallic, and now Grothic
influences predominated, and stamped with a special character,
not merely the works of individual authors, but the entire lite-
rary effort of the time, the literature of England has never
6 ENGLAND INDEPENDENT OF ROME Lect. I.

submitted itself to any such trammels, but has always maintained

a self-guided, if not a wholly self-inspired, existence and this
;

is perhaps the best reason that can be given why Continental

recently they have been, In the tradi-
critics, trained, as until

tionsand observances of their schools, have so generally proved

unable to comprehend the drift and true significance of English
letters.

(, The political and literary independence of England grew with

the diminution of its continental territory. .'So long as the
British throne heldany important portion of its dominions by a
feudal tenure which obliged it to acknowledge the suzerainty of
the crown of France, it was a party to the Continental political
compact, and, as such, involved in all the feuds, and warfares,

and and industrial interests which distracted

conflicts of social
that organization. And, what was even a greater evil, it was
subject to the overshadowing domination of Eome, which claimed
and received the homage theoretically due to the eternal city as
the earthly metropolis of the universal Church, but practically
accorded to her as the natural representative of the temporal
supremacy exercised by the ancient mistress and capital of the
world. ( But though England shared with the Continent in the
baneful influence of this spiritual and semi-political despotism,
yet it was only at comparatively rare intervals that it was felt

and submitted to, in its full extent, by the English government

and people. There was always something of a disposition to
inquire into the foundation of the authority claimed by the
Eoman pontiff, to doubt the infallibility of his decisions, and
to tread on forbidden ground, by debating questions which,
according to the doctrine of papal supremacy, had been for
ever settled by a tribunal incapable of error and armed with
the thunderbolts of Heaven for the enforcement of its decrees.
The Eomish see itself, well knowing that the geographical
position of England secured it from physical coercion, was slow
to proceed to extremities against a crown and a people who
might, at any time, despise its mandates with impunity. Hence

,
 — :

LECT. I. ENGLAND INDEPENDENT OF ROME 7

the relations between the papacy and England were generally

like those between a sovereign who shuts his eyes to insurrec-
tionary movements in a rebellious province too strong or too
distant to be reduced by force of arms, and a people that
submits under protest, and is biding its time to throw off a
foreign and obnoxious yoke. The English nation and its writers,
then, were not habitually sunk in that humiliating submission
to the papacy which long paralyzed the intellectual energy of
other Christian races, and restrained them from the discussion

of high and noble themes, nor was the occupant of the Roman
see regarded with that abject reverence which so often in Con-
tinental history bestowed upon him the name and attributes of
the Most High. While Charles V. of France, in the great
schism of the fourteenth century, a little before the close of his
reign,was making, as Froissart says, ( a specyall commandement
through oute his realm e, that every manne shulde take and
repute Clement for pope, and that every manne shulde obey
him as Grod on erthe,'* Wycliffe, cheered and sustained by
many of the nobility as well as commonalty of England f, was

* Froissart, Lord Berners's Translation, I. c. 345. See Illustration II. at the

end of this lecture.
t 'Hodid men were cleped thanne the Lolardis, that wold never avale here hood
in presens of the Sacrament, of whech at that tyme these were the principales
— William Xevyle, [Sir] Lodewic Clifforth, Jon Clamhowh, Richard Sturry,
Thomas Latymer, and werst of alle, Jon Mountagu [Earl of Salisbury] " * And
"
;:

of J. Mountagu thei sei he was a gret distroyer of ymages.' Capgrave's ChronicU,

p. 245, an. 1387.
These noblemen and gentlemen seem to have been rather obstinate heretics,
for seven years later, as we learn from Capgrave, p. 260, an. 1394, 'The Lolardis
set up scrowis at Westminster and at Poules, with abhominable accusaciones of
hem that long to the Cherch, whech sounded in destruccioune of the Sacramentis,
and of statutes of the Cherch. The meynteyneris of the puple that were so infect
were these: —
Richard Storry, Loclewik Clifforth, Thomas Latymer, Jon Moun-
tagw. Thei were principal iustructouris of heretikes. The kyng, whan he had
coneeyved the malice of these men, he cleped hem to his presens and snybbed
hem forbad hem eke thei schuld no more meynten no swech opiniones.'
;

The Earl of Salisbury, at least, died in the faith he had espoused, for, when in
1400, at Cicetir,' an insurrection was put down and 'the town drow hem [the
'

rebels] onto of the Abbey, and smet of many of her hedis,' it appears that 'the
oil of Salesbury was ded there and worthi, for he was a gret favorere of the
;
8 ENGLAND INDEPENDENT OF ROME Lvct. I.

impressing upon Urban, then recognised by the English nation

as the lawful incumbent of the papal throne, the lesson that
Victor Emanuel and Graribaldi are, with stronger means of
6
moral suasion,' inculcating upon a stiff-necked successor of
Urban to-day. c
I take as bileve,' wrote Wycliffe to the pope,
6
that none schulde sue the Pope, ne no saint that now is in
hevene, bot in alsmyche as he sued Christ : for James and John
errid, and Peter and Powl sinned. And this I take as holesome
counseile, that the Pope leeve his worldly lordschip to worldly
lords, as Christ gaf him, and move speedily all his clerks to do
so ; for thus did Christ, and taught thus his disciples, till the
fende had blynded this world. * * * And I suppose of our
Pope that he will not be Antichrist and reverse Christ in this
wirking to the contrary of Christ's wille. For if he summons
agens resoun by him or any of his, and pursue this unskilful
summoning, he is an open Antichrist.'*
Lollardis, a despiser of sacramentis, for lie wold not be confessed when lie schuld
deie.' — Capgrave, p. 276.
* The orthography of this passage is evidently somewhat modernised, and there
are apparently some trifling verbal errors in the text, but I print it as I find it in
Vanghan's Life of Wycliffe, ii. 456. The deliberate judgment of Thomas a Becket,
stoutly as the interests of his order led him to uphold the monstrous abuse which
exempted the clergy from the jurisdiction of lay criminal tribunals, was far from
favourable to the papal court. In writing to Cardinal Albert, he said I know :
'

not how it always happens that, at the court of Eome, Barabbas is delivered and
Christ condemned and crucified.' I cite from Bonnemere, Histoire des Paysans,
i. 163, which I am happy to have an opportunity to recommend as a work of
great research and merit.
Capgrave, anno 1385, says: 'In the IX -ere of this king, John Wiclef, the
orgon of the devel, the enemy of the Cherch, the confusion of men, the ydol
of heresie, the meroure of ypocrisie, the norischer of scisme, be the rithful dome
of God, was smet with a horibil paralsie thorw oute his body,' &c. &c. But not-
withstanding this bitterness against Wycliffe, he expresses no disapprobation of
the application of Lynch law to those who, in 1358, broute the bulles for the
'
'

excommunication of certain living transgressors against the Church, and the ex-
humation of the bodies of their deceased accomplices. He cites, with apparent
assent, a.d. 1390, the common opinion that Urban was a very tiraunt,' and had '

deposed the English cardinal Adam 'for non other cause' than that 'he lettid
him mech of his wrong desire and he evidently believes that Pope Innocent IV.,
;'

who had interfered with the right of royal and seignorial ecclesiastical patronage
in England, died by the visitation of God in 1251, after having been summoned to
judgment by Eobert Grostede, late Bishop of Lincoln, who appeared to him in a
LECT. I. ENGLAND INDEPENDENT OF HOME 9

The occasional contests between the Continental sovereigns

and the popes chiefly concerned the temporalities of the
Church, or grew out of questions affecting them, and there was,
usually, less disposition tomeddle with doctrinal points or mat-
ters of ecclesiastical discipline than in England.* There a
bolder spirit of inquiry prevailed, and though the sovereigns
professed due spiritual obedience to the papacy, we may apply
many of them what Fuller says of Henry VII. ' To the
to :

Pope he was submissive, not servile, his devotion being seldom

without design, so using his Holiness, that he seldom stooped
down to him in any low reverence, but, with the same gesture,
he took up something in order to his own ends.' f
The independence of the English people gave their literature
a freer character, brought it to bear on all their interests, spi-

ritual and temporal, and thus invested it with a reality and

straightforward naturalness of thought and expression not often
met with in the contemporaneous writings of Germanic or
Romance authors.
The reality of old English literature, and its truth to nature,
do by no means imply that it is not as highly original and inven-
tive as those of other countries, which are less faithful expres-
sions of the every-day thoughts, and feelings, and passions of
humanity. No man supposes that Callot's fantastic figures are
more imaginative than Raphael's life-like creations ; or that Da
vision, and smet him on the side with the pike of his crosse staff, and seid thus
'

Eise, wrech, and come to the dom.'

Kor does the chronicler manifest any indignation at the ungracious reception of
an unjust bull issued in 1402 In this tyme cam oute a bulle fro the Court
:
•

[Curia Eomana], whech revokid alle the graces that had be graunted many 5eres
before of whech ros mech slaundir and obliqui ageyn the Cherch for thei seide
; ;

pleynly that it was no more trost to the Pope writing than to a dogge tail for a3 ;

ofte as he wold gader mony, so oftyn wold he anullen eld graces and graunt newe.
— Capgrave, p. 281.
The Guelf and Ghibelline feud
* though originating in the rivalry of
in Italy,
two German princely houses, was in however disguised, at bottom, little
general,
else than a contest between the imperial throne and the papal see for the temporal
supremacy, which both aspired to wield as the representative and successor of the
Eoman Caesars.
t Church History, iv. 155.
10 ENGLISH LITERATURE IMAGINATIVE Lect. I.

Vinci wrought under a higher inspiration when he drew his

'*
caricatures than when he designed the Last Supper. The
early literature of England, which originated comparatively few
of what are technically called romantic works, was abundantly
fertile in the exercise of that best function of the imagination,
the creation of forms of humanity whose constitution and action
are, throughout, in accordance with the law of man's nature
and we find in it, before we arrive at the close of the fourteenth
century, the germs of every species of inventive composition
which English bards and dramatists have since made illustrious.
Indeed, so truly did imaginative and creative power characterise
the early vernacular literature of England, that, in spite of the
life-like,homely truth of its personages and its scenery, actual
historical narrative had but a very subordinate place in it. The
northern and southern extremes of Christendom, Grothic Iceland
and Eomance Spain, as well as polished France, had produced
historical works which almost dispute the palm with Herodotus*,
but their literatures, though teeming with extravagant fictions
and elaborate and cunningly wrought versified compositions,
could not yet boast a single great poet. Anglo-Norman Eng-
land, on the other hand, had given birth to no annalist who de-
serves the name of a historian; but had, in Chaucer, bestowed
upon the world a poet who, both in sympathy with external
nature, and in the principal element of dramatic composition —
the conception of character, the individualising of his personages
— had far outstripped whatever else the imaginative literature
of Christendom had produced.
In these studies, the progress' of our investigations is often
arrested by the want of sufficient materials to enable us satis-
factorily to determine the true character of particular branches
of literary effort, or even to decide questions of pure gram-
matical form. The publication of such of the remaining me-
morials of early English and Anglo-Saxon literature as still
survive only in manuscript will do something to supply our
* See Illustration III. at the end of this lecture.
Lrcr. I. LOSS OF EARLY WKITEKS 11

defect of knowledge in these particulars ; but much of what we

know to have once existed in those dialects has irrecoverably
perished, and the extant records of the intellectual action of
England in the fourteenth and previous centuries have come
down to us in such an imperfect, and often evidently corrupted
form, that we shall never be as well acquainted with the gram-
mar and the literature of the Anglo-Saxon and the transition
periods as with tho.se of the corresponding eras in the history of
Continental philology.
The destruction of the products of Anglo-Saxon, of Anglo-
Norman, and of early English genius, occasioned by the Danish
invasions, the civil wars of different periods, and the suppression
of the monasteries in the sixteenth century, is in many aspects
much to be deplored, but for such apparent calamities there are,
.

in the scheme of Providence, always sufficient compensations.

Not only must the old crop be removed from the earth to make
way for the new, but it must also be in a good measure con-
sumed, before adequate stimulus can be felt for the industry
which is required to produce another harvest. "We have abun-
dant reason to rejoice that Homer, and Thucydides, and Plato,
and many master-pieces of the Greek dramatists, that Terence,
and Cicero, and Horace, and Virgil, and much of Tacitus, have
escaped the casualties which have destroyed the works of other
scarcely less renowned ancient authors but whether the exist-
;

ence of the whole body of Greek and Eoman literature, down to

the present day, would have been an advantage to modern
genius, is quite another question. I have heard one of the
most accomplished of American scholars, the most eloquent of
American forensic orators, say —
though, indeed, in that playful
tone which so often left you in doubt whether his words were
to be taken in earnest or in jest —
that he thought the burning
of the Alexandrian library a most fortunate event for the
interests of letters. Modern originality, he contended, would
otherwise have been smothered, modern independence of thought
overawed, and modem elasticity of intellect crushed down, by
 12 EFFECTS OF THE REFORMATION Lect. I.

the luxuriant abundance, and authority, and weight of ancient

literature.
Genius cannot thrive under too dense a shade. It requires
room for its expansion, and air and sunlight for its nourish-
ment. It is the solitary pasture-oak, not the sapling from the
sheltered and crowded forest, that has made that tree a symbol
of healthful vigour, and permanence, and strength. When the
language and the literature of Athens had become so familiar at
Rome that every Latin author wrote under the influence of
Grecian models, and every work of the imagination was tried
by the canons of Greek criticism, when the republic and the
empire had plundered Hellas, and Sicily, and Asia Minor of their
artistic wealth, and the capital counted as many statues as

citizens, then native literature declined, and formative art —

which, indeed, at Eome had never fairly risen above the imitative
stage —became debased, and neither revived until, in the storms
of the Middle Ages, so many of those precious achievements of
Grecian intellect and fancy had perished, that only enough were
left to serve as incitements by their excellence, not enough to

discourage further effort by a variety which had anticipated

every conception of the creative imagination. The life and
literature of a people may be inspirited, stimulated, modified,
but not habitually sustained and nourished, by exotic food or
the dried fruits of remote ages. Fresh nutriment must enter
largely into the daily supply, and the intellect and heart of
every nation must be stirred by living sympathies with the
special good and evil of its own land and time, as well as with
1he permanent interests of universal humanity.
Hence the destruction of so many of the works of Anglo-
Saxon, Anglo-Norman, and early English writers is a loss, not
to literature, but only to what is of less importance, the history
of literatureand we may find, in the direct benefits resulting
;

from the events which occasioned much of that destruction,

sufficient consolation for the partial evils they caused. To that
fierce Reformation which levelled the monasteries with the
Lect. I. POPUIAR LITER ATUHE 13

ground and scattered or annihilated their literary accumulations,

but sowed living seed wherever it plucked up dry stubble, we
owe Spenser, and Hooker, and Bacon, and Shakespeare, and
Milton, not one of whom had been possible but for the fresh
north-wind, which, by sweeping away the swarm of old opinions,
old facts, old thoughts, that hung like a darkening cloud over
Europe, opened once more the blue sky, and the sun and stars

of heaven to the vision of men.

/Bat though no inconsiderable share of the fruits of Saxon and
of early English genius has perished, we have reason to think
that most of their products which possessed intrinsic worth, or
were of practical value to their own time, have come down to us
in a more or less complete state ;\ for we do not find mention of
many lost authors in terms which give reason to suppose that
they were of special interest or importance. There is, however,
evidence that certain branches of popular literature, in their
rudimentary stages (if indeed that can be called literature which
was perhaps never reduced to writing), are imperfectly repre-
sented by their existing remains. I refer especially to the un-
historical, traditional, or legendary narratives, which, whether
song or saga, verse or prose, appear to have constituted, from
the earliest times, a favourite amusement, and, indeed, almost
the only refined enjoyment, of the secular orders among our
remote progenitors. These were probably, in general, only
orally transmitted from age to age, and we do not know enough
of their character to be able to determine in what degree of
relationship they stand to the national folk-lore of later ages.
Several of the yet extant minor poems of the Anglo-Saxons
possess much excellence and the lays which Alfred conde-
;

scended to learn and sing could not have been absolutely without
merit. I do not know that any Anglo-Saxon songs have been
preserved which bear much resemblance to the English ballad,
nor could this branch of poetical composition have originated
in longpoems like Beowulf, or the story of Brut, or the later
romance of Alexander for the ballad properly turns on biogra-
;
14 POPULAR POETRY Lect. I.

and is there-
phical incidents, not mythical or historical events,
from these works, both in conception and
fore radically different
in form, f There are popular poems belonging to the youth,
not the infancy, of English literature, which stand out so pro-
minently from the lighter poetry of their time, and seem so
completely to have anticipated the tone of later centuries, that
we know not how to account for their appearance. The an-
tiquity of these is and we cannot but suspect that they
certain ;

are fragmentary remains of a body of certainly not Saxon, but

early English poetry, of which most of the known ballad, and
other popular literature of England, would give us no idea.
Perhaps the most remarkable of them are the well-known ana-
creontic, called by Warton 'a drinking-ball ad,' though not tech-
nically a ballad, first printed in Gammer Grurton's Needle, in
1575 J— but of which there are manuscript copies much older in
date —
and the poetical dialogue/The Nut-brown Maid, which
first appeared in that strange medley, Arnold's Chronicle,
printed in 1521.; Were these compositions now
judged to be
upon internal evidence, and by comparison with other English
poetry of their time and class, they would be unhesitatingly
pronounced clever literary impostures, of a much later date;
but their genuineness is not open to question.
Although much of Saxon as well as of old English prose and
verse has perished, there still remains enough of the latter, if
not to enable us to form a complete estimate of the intellectual
products, popular and scholastic, of the transition period, }^et at
least to disclose the primitive form of nearly every branch of
English literature which has flourished in later ages.
In discussing the subject before us, I shall endeavour to draw
the attention of my hearers rather to the literary adaptations
and capacities of the English language than to the peculiarities
of its grammar. I adopt this method partly because the mi-
nutiae of inflectional and syntactical structure cannot, without
much difficulty, be made clearly intelligible to the ear ;
partly
because, in the want of accessible material for study and com-
Lect. l the romance languages 15

parison, there are many important questions of grammatical

history upon which it is not yet possible to arrive at definite
conclusions; and the mere suggestion of conjectural theories,
unsupported by probable evidence, would tend only to mislead
and embarrass.
The Eomance languages are much more homogeneous in con-
S
struction than the Euglish they are all derived, by more or
;

less direct processes, from one and the same ancient tongue, or,

rather, group of nearly related dialects, and they so far conform,

in their grammatical structure, to the Latin, the common repre-
sentative of them and to each other, that the means of
all,

illustrating their forms by comparison and analogy are very

abundant. If there be a hiatus in the table of descent in one
of these languages, it may generally be supplied from the gene-
alogy of another, and hence there are comparatively few points
in their etymology, or in their early history, which are either
wholly unexplained, or which stand as anomalous, unrelated
philological facts.* Another circumstance has contributed to
save their grammar from much of the confusion and obscurity
in which, as we shall see, the inflectional and syntactical system
of early English is involved. The Latin was the only Italic
dialect known to the Middle Ages which possessed an alphabetic
system and the new popular speeches, when first reduced to
;

writing, naturally conformed in their leading features to the

orthography of that language, which still remained a living
tongue among the clergy of the one only organised branch of
the visible Church in Western Europe — one might almost acid,

among the common people of Italy — and furnished at once a

model and a standard of comparison for the expression of vocal
sounds by written characters in all the Eomance family. f Hence,

* See Illustration IV. at the end of this lecture.

t The student will find in Fauriel, '
Dante, et les origines de la Langue et de la
Litterature Italiennes,' much interesting information on the extensive use of the
Latin language in Italy in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. Not
only -was popular preaching in Latin common in that country in the last-mentioned
century, but Dante was expounded to the people in that language.
16 THE ROMANCE LANGUAGES Lect. I.

although manuscripts of the Middle Ages in those dialects are

sufficiently discrepant in then orthography to create occasional
embarrassment, yet, in the notation of the inflectional syllables
in any one of them, there is not the same wide range of varia-
tion as in early English, where, from the want of a general
authoritative standard, orthography fluctuated, following now
Grothic and now Eomance precedent, with an uncertainty which
conspired with great irregularity in the use of the inflections
themselves, to produce an irreconcilable diversity.' . For these
reasons has been found practicable to construct, for the
it

successive periods in the philological history of the different

Eomance dialects, accidences and rules of concord and regimen,

which probably approach almost as nearly to accuracy as the

dialects themselves approached to uniformity in use. But with
all these advantages, the precise knowledge of the primitive
grammar of the Eomance languages has advanced
slowly, and it
is scarcely a generation Eaynouard discovered even so
since
simple a thing as the difference between the plural and singular
form of the noun in the dialect of Northern France.
For a variety of reasons, both the facilities and the induce-
ments for the study of early English grammar have been fewer
and less effectual than for corresponding researches in France
and other Continental countries and when we take into account
;

ako the greater inherent difficulties of the subject, it is not sur-

prising that thus far there is not a general agreement of scholars
on many cardinal points of early English inflection, and indeed
that no thorough, systematic and comprehensive attempt at the
investigation of these questions has yet been made.* The
serious study of English has but just begun, and it is not a

* I ought here to draw the attention of the reader to the remarkable Wissen- '

schaftliche Grammatik der Englischen Spraehe of Fiedler and the valuable con-
'

tinuation of it by Sachs, neither of which became known to me until after this

volume was ready for the press. They are, however, unsatisfactory, not so much
from want of philological acumen, as because they are founded on a too limited
range of early authorities, and because they do not trace, with sufficient distinct-
ness, the historical development of the language.
Lect. I. GOOD EDITIONS WANTED 17

generation since sound linguistic philosophy was first brought

to bear actively and effectively upon it. The method of this
study Anglican scholars have learned from German teachers,
and, from the natural inclination of the pupil to tread in the
steps of his master, there is a strong tendency now, while the
facts of English philological history are yet but imperfectly
known, to place the theory of English grammar on the same
advanced footing as that of the G-erman, the early stages of which
have been far more thoroughly investigated.
The great mass of scholars otherwise competent to enter on
such speculations have at present the means of using but a part
of the material which is absolutely indispensable to the esta-
blishment of general conclusions. Manuscripts are accessible to
comparatively few, and accurately printed editions of old authors
are not yet numerous enough to furnish the necessary data.
We have admirable editions of Layamon and the Ormulum, as
well as of some less conspicuous literary monuments not widely
distant in date from those works. We possess the Wyclimte
versions, also, in an extremely satisfactory form, but very few
other English authors of the fourteenth century exist in editions
which at all meet the demands of critical scholarship. Chaucer
is, both for literary and for grammatical purposes, the most im-
portant source of information respecting the vigorous youth of
the English tongue, but — with the possible exception of
Wright's Canterbury Tales, founded almost entirely on a
single manuscript — we have, so far as I am aware, no edition
of any of the works of that great author which is worthy of
confidence as an exhibition of the grammatical system, I will
not say of Chaucer himself, but even of any one of the scribes
who have copied his writings. No competent scholar has yet
subjected the manuscripts of Chaucer to a critical examination
and comparison and hence we cannot pretend to pronounce
;

with certainty upon what is a very important, and would seem

beforehand a very obvious matter, the precise extent, namely, to
c
18 IRREGULARITY OF EARLY ENGLISH Lect. I.

which, in that author's works, the syntactical relations of words

are determined by inflection.*
Only a single English work of the thirteenth century has been
brought within our reach in such a form as to authorise us to
speak positively upon the syntactical system which the author
followed. This is the Ormulum, of which, fortunately, but a
single manuscript, apparently the original itself, is known. But
the value of this otherwise most important philological monu-
ment is much diminished by
the uncertainty of its date and of
the locality of and by the fact that there does not
its dialect,

exist, at least in print, enough literary material of its own pro-

bable period to serve as a test by which its conformity to the

general contemporary usage of the language can be tried, or to
which it can itself be applied as a standard of comparison.
But in all inquiries into the grammatical history of early
English, it must be borne in mind that such was the dialectic
confusion, and such the irregularity of orthography, that we are
not warranted in affirming of scarcely any one form, or any one
spelling, that it was normal for its time. It is as true of ortho-
/

graphy and grammar as of literary form, that there is no unity

until great authors arise, and become generally recognised as
authoritative standards. The founders of a national literature,
therefore, conform not to previously settled and acknowledged
canons of national speech, for none such exist, but to some par-
ticular dialect, or they perhaps frame a more or less eclectic
diction, and by their authority establish a grammar, first for

* I think no man who

has made Chaucer a study can doubt that he had an
orthographical, a grammatical, and a pi'osodical system, though we have not yet
succeeded in finding the key to them. Besides the very strong internal evidence
of his works, we have, in his address to Adam, scrivener, and in Troilus and
Creseide, —
Book V. v. 1804 7, direct testimony to a solicitude for the careful
copying of his manuscripts, which proves that he by no means wrote at random.
What is wanted is not a made-up text of Chaucer, conjectural or eclectic, but a
literal reproduction of one or more of the best manuscripts, with various readings
from all the others which have any pretensions to authority, —
in short, an edition
conducted on the same principles as the noble Wycliffite versions by Forshall and
Madden.
LECr. I. GERMAN DIALECTS 19

their literary followers, and, after some time, for the nation.
No and comprehensive general work on English dialecto-
full

logy, ancient or modern, has yet appeared. Very confident

opinions, indeed, are pronounced with respect to early English
dialects and their relation to modern local patois, but certainly
very many of these find no sufficient support in the printed evi-
dence on the subject and if we are yet authorised to draw any
;

conclusion, it is that the diversities were too numerous to admit

of being grouped or classified at all, with any precision of chro-
nological or geographical limitation.
Grerman must be considered to have been a written language,
and to have possessed a literature much earlier than our com-
posite English. The Nibelungen-Lied in its recorded form
is placed at about the year 1200, and there were numerous
written compositions between that period and the year 1300, in
different Grerman dialects, and of a character likely to be, and
which we know actually to have been, widely circulated. Now
the tendency of a popular written literature is to harmonise the
discordances of language, and we have sufficient evidence that,
formany centuries, the dialects have been dying out, and that
Grerman has been both spoken and written with constantly in-
creasing uniformity ; and yet, in spite of all this, we find in
Firmenich's collection examples of some hundreds of Grermanic
dialects alleged to be actually spoken at the present day, and
Stalder has given us the parable of the Prodigal Son in forty-
two Grerman and twenty-seven Eomance patois employed in
Switzerland alone. In all this, no doubt, there is an enormous
exaggeration, which has been produced by giving a phonographic
spelling of the colloquial pronunciation of words really the same
almost everywhere, and differenced in form only as any two
speakers would vary in uttering, and any two listeners in pho-
nographically recording them. There are shades of difference
in the articulation of almost any two members of the same
family, brother and sister, husband and wife, for example, and
two persons often differently hear, and would differently express
c 2
20 LOCAL DIALECTS Lect. I.

in alphabetical characters, the pronunciation of the same indi-

vidual. If a half-hour's conversation in one of the most culti-
vated circles in England or America were to be written down by
two observers, from the ear, and without regard to the conven-
tional orthography of the words employed, we should have, not
simply a dialect which to the eye would vary widely from that
of books, but the two reporters would give us two dialects vary-
ing almost as much from each other as either from the standard
orthography ; besides which, each of the speakers would appear
to have his own subordinate patois. Hence, most of this alleged
diversity of dialect is imaginary, subjective in the listener, or
accidental in the speaker, and the well-trained ear of a single
person would find no such extent of constant difference as the
printed collections would lead us to suppose.
Until, however, the smaller states and communities of mediae-
val Europe were absorbed into the larger political organizations,
and until national literatures had been created, and a greater
fixity and universality given to linguistic forms by the invention

of printing, the real local differences of speech were constantly

augmenting, but in more recent periods, the written and printed
page, the frequent reference to acknowledged standards of gram-
mar and orthography, have served as a constant corrective,
which, in England as well as on the Continent, is always bring-
ing all deviations back to the normal form.* In the thirteenth,
and until near the close of the fourteenth centuries, the people
of England had no such standards, and the actual diversities of
dialect, though perhaps less numerous and important than the
orthographical differences between the manuscripts would seem
to indicate, were nevertheless probably greater than they are
in any European nation, of equal numbers, at the present day.
From all this it will be evident that whatever may be the
value of a precise historical knowledge of primitive English
grammar and literature in all their manifestations, such know-

* See First Series, Lecture XXI., p. 453 and folio-wing pages.

Lect. I. ENGLISH GRAMMAR PECULIAR 21

ledge is not attainable at this time, and with such means as are
accessible to American, and, generally, English scholars ; and
an attempt to present to you anything more than an approxi-
mate estimate of their peculiarities ^ould be but a piece of
charlatanism, alike discreditable to the speaker and unprofitable
to the audience.
But there is a further difficulty. The Anglo-Saxon and the
Norman-French, from the union of which the English is chiefly
derived, were inflected languages, and had the syntactical
peculiarities common to most grammars with inflections but ;

in the friction between the two, the variable and more loosely
attached growths of both were rubbed off, and the speech of
England, in becoming stamped as distinctively English, dropped
so many native, and supplied their place with so few borrowed,
verbal and nominal endings, that it ceased, to belong to the
inflected class of tongues, and adopted a grammar, founded in a
considerable degree upon principles which characterise that of
neither of the parent stocks from which it is derived. It is
altogether a new philological individual, distinct in linguistic
character from all other European speeches, and not theore-
tically to be assimilated to them.
But the difference between English and the Continental
languages does not consist in the greater or less amount of
inflection alone. The Danish, with the remarkable exceptions
of the passive verb and the coalescent definite form of the
noun, is almost as simple as English in this respect, but it is

descended from an inflected tongue, with little mixture except

from the German, which belongs also to the Gothic stock, and
has most of the same syntactical peculiarities as the Old-
Xorthern, a local dialect of which is the more immediate parent
of the Danish. Danish, then, is the product of two cognate
languages, minus a certain number of inflections, not, indeed,
strictly common to both, but represented in both. But English
stands in no such relation to its Gothic and Romance sources.
The Danish is an intimate mixture of substances much alike in
 22 CONTINENTAL GRAMMAR LscT. L

their elementary character,and it is often impossible to say from

which of two constituents particular linguistic features have
its

been derived. English is a patchwork of two, or rather, three

form, and to a distant
tissues, dissimilar in material as well as in

observer has a prevailing hue very different from that of either

of them, though, upon a nearer approach, the special colour and
texture of each web is discernible.*
The general and obvious distinction between the grammar of
the English and that of the Continental tongues is, that whereas
in the latter the relations of words are determined by their
form, or by a traditional structure of period handed down from

/ a more strictly inflectional phase of those languages, in English,

on the other hand, those relations do not indicate, but are
deduced from, the logical categories of the words which compose
the period, and hence they must be demonstrated by a very
different process from that which is appropriate for syntaxes
depending on other principles. f A truly philosophical system
of English syntax cannot, then, be built up by means of the
Latin scaffolding, which has served for the construction of all

the Continental theories of grammar, and with which alone the

literary public is familiar, but must be conceived and executed
on a wholly new and original plan.
The Continental method of grammatical demonstration is un-
suited to the philosophy of the English speech, because it subor-
dinates syntax to inflection, the logical to the formal. We may
regard syntax, the analysis of the period or the synthesis of its ele-

ments, in two different aspects an assemblage of rules for

: as
determining the agreement and government of words by corre-
spondence of form, or as a theory of the structure of sentences
founded upon the logical relations of words, without special con-
sideration of their forms. The first, or more material and mechani-
cal view belongs especially to highly inflected languages, as to the
Latin, for example, and in a less degree to the German; the latter,

* See, on French and Latin constructions in English, Lecture II.

f See First Series, Lecture XVL, p. 347.
Lect. I. FRENCH GRAMMAR 23

or more intellectual, to those whose words are invariable, or nearly

so, as the English. English grammar is not to be taught by-
tables of paradigms and rules of concord and regimen, and we
must either, as we do with young children, treat syntax as a
collection of arbitrary models for the arrangement of words in
periods, which are to be learned by rote, and followed afterwards
as unreflectingly as the processes of a handicraft, or we must
consider the construction of the sentence a logical problem, to
be solved by an almost purely intellectual calculus, and with
very few of the mechanical facilities which simplify, if they do
not lighten, grammatical study in most other tongues.
The French presents the curious phenomenon of a language
inflected in its written forms, but for the most part uninflected
in actual speech, and hence its syntax is mixed but still the
;

word has been mightier than the letter, in so far that it has
imposed upon even the written dialect a structure of period in
some degree approximating to that of languages whose words
are unchangeable in form.* But grammarians think in the
language of books, and all oral departures from that dialect are,
with them, anomalies or corruptions not entitled to a place in a
philosophical view of speech.
Hence there exists no grammar of spoken French, and the
theorists of that nation persist in regarding wha/t are really

* This distinction between oral and written French is important to be kept in

mind in all inquiries into the influence of Norman-French on English syntax
There is indeed much
uncertainty as to the pronunciation of Norman-French at
and for some centuries
after the Conquest, but various circumstances render it
probable that there was, at that period, almost as great a discrepancy between the
language of books and that of the market, in all the dialects of Northern France,
as there is at the present day. Written French had its special influence on
English but the spoken tongue of the Norman immigrants was undoubtedly a
;

much more important agent in modifying the language of England. See First
Series, Lecture XXL, and the works of Palsgrave and Genin there referred to.
It must be remembered that Anglo-Saxon also had not only its local dialects, but
its general colloquial forms, which, in all probability, differed very widely from the
written tongue. Anglo-Saxon English is derived not wholly from the Anglo-
Saxon of books, which alone is known to us, but in a great measure, no doubt,
from a spoken tongue that has now utterly perished, except so far as it has lived
on, first in the mouths and then in the literature, of the modern English people.
 f

24 STUDY OF LANGUAGE Lect. I.

syntactical differences between their two dialects as mere ques-

tions of pronunciation. The French of the grammarians is an
inflected, and properly a dead language *, the German inflected
but living, and the signification of the period is controlled by
the inflections in both. It is natural, therefore, that the philolo-
gists of those nations should, in their grammatical inquiries, be
specially by the variable portion, the inflectional
attracted
characteristics of words, and should less regard the logical
relations which may, and in English do exist almost indepen-
dently of form. However learned Continental scholars may be
in the literature, the concrete philology of tongues foreign to
their own, they have, in their grammatical speculations on those
tongues, until recently, rather neglected syntax, except so far as
it necessarily connects itself with correspondence of endings.
The ultimate objects of the present course are philological, not
linguistic. I shall therefore make the presentation of gram-
matical facts and theories always subordinate to the elucidation
and capacities of the English speech, and,
of the literary products
so far as the grammar concerned, I shall attempt little beyond
is

a general view of the processes —

loss and gain of inflections,
and changes in the arrangement of words —
by which the Anglo-
Saxon syntactical period has been converted into an English
one.
I have already urged what seem to me sufficient reasons for
adopting this method, but were these grounds wanting, I should

* The theoretical supremacy of the alphabetical, written, oyer the oral tongue of
France is remarkably exemplified in the laws of verse, for coupled endings in
French poetry must, in general, rhyme to the eye as well as the ear. Thus, for
example, the feminine possessive pronoun, or its homonym the first and third
person singular present subjunctive, tienne, cannot be rhymed with the plural
verb viennent, nor is mien a good rhyme to liens, though the consonance in
both cases is unimpeachable.
f Burguy's grammar of the Langue d'Oil, though exceedingly full upon the
forms of individual words, is altogether silent upon syntax, except in the mere
matter of concord. Rask's numerous grammars pursue much the same method,
but Diez, Grammatik der Eomanischcn Sprachen. and other late German philo-
logists, are much more complete on this roinf.
Lect. I. LINGUISTIC STUDIES 25

find others not less satisfactory in the opinion I entertain that

the study of language is, in this country at least, taking too
generally a wrong direction.
What is properly called philology, that is, the study of lan-
guages in connection with, and as a means to the knowledge of
the literature, the history, the whole moral and intellectual action
of different peoples, is much neglected by American scholars, and
a professedly profound, but really most superficial research into
linguistic analogies and ethnological relations is substituted
instead.The modern science of linguistics, or comparative
grammar and etymology, requires for its successful pursuit a
command of facilities, and above all a previous discipline, which,
in the United States, is within the reach of but a small propor-
tion of men disposed to literary occupations, and hence for the
present it must be the vocation of a few, not a part of the general
education of the many. American scholars seldom possess the
elementary grammatical training which is the first requisite to
success in the study I am speaking of, and it is a very gross
and a very prevalent error to suppose that this training can be
acquired by the perusal of theoretical treatises, or, in other
words, that it is possible to become a linguist without first being
a philologist. The best, indeed the only means we at present
possess of imbuing ourselves with the necessary preparatory
attainment is, a thorough mastery both of the forms and of the
practical synthesis of the words which compose the languages of
Greece and Eome, and are organically combined in their lite-
ratures. This attainment at once involves a discipline fitting us
for linguistic investigation, and provides us with a standard of
comparison by which measure and test the peculiarities of other
to
tongues. Now, though forms may be taught by tables of stems
and endings, yet combinations cannot, and the mastery we speak
of is not to be attained by conning grammars and consulting
dictionaries. It must be the product of two factors, a rote-
knowledge of paradigms and definitions, and a long and familiar
converse with the intellect of classic antiquity as it still lives and
26 LINGUISTIC STUDIES Lect. I.

moves in the extant literary remains of Greece and Eome. We

must know words not as abstract grammatical and logical quan-
tities, but as animated and social beings. Koots, inflections,
word-book definitions, are products of the decomposition of
speech, not speech itself. They are dead remains, stripped of
their native attachments and functions, and hence it is that a
living Danish scholar, himself a man of rare philological attain-
ment and of keen linguistic perceptions, calls scholastic grammar
'the grave of language.'* Had the founder of comparative
anatomy contented himself with the examination of the osseous
remains of dead animals alone, his science would have died, and
deserved to die, with him; but it was his knowledge of par-
ticular skeletons as the framework of living organisms that
enabled him to divine and reconstruct the muscles, and
veins, and fleshy tissues, and integuments that once made the
bones of Montmartre breathing and moving beings. Indi-
vidually, words have no inherent force, inflected forms no sig-
nificance, and they become organic and expressive only when
they are united in certain combinations, according to their special
affinities, and inspired with life by the breath of man. The
study of forms and of the primary or abstract meaning of words
must go hand in hand with wide observation of those forms and
of the plastic modification and development of the signification
of words, as exemplified in the living movement of actual speech
or literature, and no amount of grammatical and lexical know-
ledge is a substitute for the fruits of such observation. A scholar
might know by rote every paradigm and every syntactical rule
in the completest Greek grammars, every definition in the most
voluminous Greek lexicons, and yet fairly be said to have no
knowledge of the G-reek language at all. In short, a student of
Greek, possessed of these elements only, is just in the position
of an arithmetical pupil who has learned the forms, names, and
abstract values of the Arabic numerals and the theory of the
decimal notation ; that is, he is barely prepared to begin the real
* N. F. S. Grundtvig, Verdens Histor-.e, I. iv.
Lect. I. CAUSATIVE SPECULATION 27

study of his subject. Inherently, his attainments are worth

nothing, and it is only by practical familiarity with numerical
combinations that they acquire real significance.*
The want of a thorough knowledge of language as a vehicle
of literature and of actual speech is painfully manifested in much
of the philological, and especially etymological, discussion of our
time and country. We have bold ethnological theories founded
on alleged linguistic affinities, comprehensive speculations on
the inherent significance of radical combinations, and confident
phonological systems, propounded by writers who are unable to
construe a page, or properly articulate the shortest phrase in any
language but their own. f Nor is this theoreticaldreaming by
any means confined to the scholarship of the United States. A
rage for causative speculation is characteristic of the philosophy
of the day. Vast as is the accumulation of facts in every branch
of human knowledge, the multiplication of theories has been
still more and
rapid,even in Germany, where the unflagging
industry of Teutonic research is heaping up such immense

stores of real knowledge, the imaginative and the constructive

faculties are yet more active than the acquisitive. A German
inquirer, indeed, does not pause until he has amassed all the
known facts belonging to or bearing upon his subject, but the
want of sufficient data, where the necessary elements are not all
attainable, rarety deters him from advancing a theory. However
inadequate his observations may prove to warrant final conclusions,
he seldom fails to give the rationale of the recorded phenomena,
and if he can obtain but one linguistic fact, he turns that one

* See Illustration V. at the end of this lecture.

f It would indeed be absurd to insist that a linguist can never be competent to

compare the structure of languages whose literature he has not mastered, but he
can become so only by an intimate knowledge of not the grammar alone, but the
living philology of several tongues possessing fully developed inflectional systems.
It is only by means of an acquaintance with multifarious literatures in combina-
tion with the anatomy of their vehicles, that scholars are able to rise to those
philosophical and comprehensive views of the essential character of language and
the relations of languages which distinguish the writings of Max Miiller and
some other linguists of the Continental schools.
28 LINGUISTIC THEORIES Lect. I.

into a law, or, in other words, generalises it, with scarcely less
confidence than he sums up the results of a million.
Comparative philology is in its infancy, — a strong and vigorous
infancy indeed, but still, in its tendencies and habits, too preco-
cious. It is the youngest of the sciences. Modern inquirers
have collected a very great number of apparently isolated
philological facts, they have detected multitudes of seeming,
as well asnumerous well-established linguistic analogies, and
they have found harmony and resemblance where, until lately,
nothing had been discovered but confusion and diversity. But
still here, as everywhere else, speculation is much in advance of
knowledge, and many of the hypotheses which are sprouting
likemushrooms to-day, are destined, like mushrooms, to pass
away to-morrow.
The too exclusive contemplation of isolated forms has led to
the adoption of many linguistic theories which, I am persuaded,
will not stand the test of investigation, conducted with wider
knowledge and with more comprehensive lights, drawn, not
from comparison of paradigms alone, but from the whole field
of social and literary history. It is maintained, for instance, by
a class of linguists who insist on explaining changes in language,
not by facts within the reach of actual observation, but by as-
sumed inherent laws of speech, that the stage of development
when languages form inflections belongs wholly to the ante-his-
torical, I might almost say, the fossil ages and it is confidently
;

asserted that no new inflections now are, or, within the period
through which we can trace the history of language by its monu-
ments, ever have been, constructed in any human tongue. Yet
every Komance, and some of the Gothic dialects, present not one
only, but several demonstrable, recent instances of the formation
of new coalescent inflections, precisely analogous in force to
those of ancient languages.*

"*
See First Series, Lectures XV. and XVI. The historical evidences of a ten-
dency to the formation of new coalescent inflections in the European languages in
the Middle Ages are, I believe, more numerous in the Dutch literature of the thir
 ;

Lect. I. HASTY ETYMOLOGIES 29

In like manner, the general reception of the well-established

theory of a relationship between most European languages, and
their common, or rather parallel, descent from an Oriental
source or sources, has given birth to very hasty conclusions
with regard to the actual biography of individual vocables.
Etymologists incline to neglect the historical method of deduc-
tion in their inquiries, and to refer Grothic and Komance words
directly to any Sanscrit, which happens
Celtic, or Sclavonic root

to resemble them, instead of tracing, in literature and in speech,

the true route by which, and the source from which, they have
migrated into our mother-tongue.* The former is the least
laborious and the most ambitious method. It is easier, by the

teentliand fourteenth centuries than in any other. The student will find lists of
such coalescences, some of which are very curious and instructive, in the notes to
Floris ende Blancefioer, in Hoffmann von Eallersleben's Horse Belgicse, Part III.
to Caerl ende Elegast, same collection, Part IV. to Ferrgunt, published by Viss-
;

cher, and to the Leven van Sinte Christina, edited by Bormans, &c. The in-
clination of children to conform the conjugation of the English verb, in all cases,
to what is called the weak (better, the regular) method of inflection is familiar to
every observing person. There was a similar tendency in the early stages of some
of the modern Italian dialects. Biondelli, 'Poesie Lombarde Inedite,' p. 108, note,
observes: '
Volio per voile, ci e nuova prova dello sforzo col quale ai tempi del
Bescape si evitavano tutte formazione dei tempi passati e dei
le irregolarita nella

partecipj. Possiamo asserire, che le regole grammaticali a cio destinate erano

senza eccezione.' These departures from precedent are not, indeed, strictly new
inflections,but they are instances of the operation of a principle which might lead
to new It is to the same cause that we are to ascribe the completion
inflections.
of the conjugation of the defective Latin verbs in modern Italian. The associate
verb, Esse, sum, fui, I believe, never became regular; but an dare, now asso-
ciate, was originally regularly conjugated in Italian, as its compounds riandare,
&c, are still. An dare is indeed not classical Latin, but it belongs to an early
period of Romance etymology.
* To scholars of any pretensions to sound linguistic learning, this train of
remark is certainly superfluous but when we find, in a dictionary which popular
;

favour has carried through seven editions, such astonishing absurdities as the
Portuguese etymologies of Constancio, and in the most widely circulated of En-
glish dictionaries such speculations as those of "Webster on the words alleged to
be cognate with the Hebrew barak, it is evident that there is a large class of
book-buyers and book-makers who need to be enlightened in regard to the true
principles of etymological research. See Webster's Dictionary, Introduction, p.
xxxvi., and etymology of preach, s. v., which, as well as the cognate words of the
same meaning in other European languages, is simply the Latin prsedico, but is
referred by Webster to the Hebrew barak.
 *
30 UNSOUND ETYMOLOGIES Lect. I.

help of the alphabetic arrangement of vocabularies, to turn over

a dozen dictionaries, and gather around a given English word a
group of foreign roots which contain more or fewer of the same
vocal elements, and exhibit a greater or less analogy of mean-
ing, than to seek the actual history of the word by painful
research into the records of travel, and commerce, and political
combination, and religious propagandism, and immigration, and
conquest, which are the ordinary means of the dissemination of
words ; but the result obtained by this tedious and unostenta-
tious method are of far greater value, and far deeper philosophi-
cal interest, than theories which, by reversing the process, found
ethnological descent, and build the whole fabric of a national
history, extending through ten centuries, on the Roman ortho-
graphy of a single proper name belonging to a tongue wholly
unknown to the Eomans themselves.
In fact, undeniable as are many of the unexpected results of
modern mass of speculative inquirers are,
linguistic research, the
under different circumstances, going beyond the extravagance
of the etymologists of the seventeenth century. Of dead or
remote languages these latter knew only Greek, Latin, Hebrew,
and Arabic, and they made no scruple to derive any modern
word directly from any root, in any of these tongues, which in
the least resembles it in form and signification, without at all
troubling themselves about the historical probabilities of the
case. Modern have added to the attainments of
philologists
their predecessors a knowledge of the vocabularies of the San-
scrit, and Celtic, and Sclavonic, not to speak of numerous other
dialects and not only are the root-cellars of all these considered
;

as lawful plunder, whenever a radical is wanted, but, in the

lack of historical evidence to show a connection between nations
widely separated by space or time, the coincidence of a few
words or syllables is held to be sufficient proof of blood-relation-
ship. Hence etymology has become not an aid in historical
investigation, but a substitute for it. A shelf of dictionaries is

certainly a more cheaply wrought, and is thought a richer mine

 ;

LECT. I. CONJECTURAL LINGUISTS 31

of ethnological truth, than a library of chronicles or a maga-

zine of archives ; and the most positive testimony of ancient
annalists is overruled upon evidence derived from the comparison
of a few words, the very existence of which, in the forms ascribed
to them, is often a matter of much uncertainty.*
The conjectural speculations of the present day on the gene-
ral tendencies and fundamental laws of language are even more
doubtful than the historical deductions from supposed philologi-
cal facts. We cannot, indeed, assume to place arbitrary limits
to the advance of any branch of human knowledge, and there is
no one philological truth which we are authorised to say must
for ever remain an ultimate fact, incapable of further resolution
or explanation, but there are many phenomena in speech
which, in the present state of linguistic science, must be treated
as ultimate. With respect to these, it is wise to forbear attempts
to guess out theirhidden meaning and analogies until we shall
discover related facts, by comparison with which we may at
length be able safely to generalise.
But in all the uncertainty and imperfection of our knowledge
on the subject of English philology, there still remains enough
of positive fact to lead us to safe conclusions on the most promi-
nent phenomena of our great grammatical and lexical revolu-
tions and in a course which, it may be hoped, will serve to
;

some as an introduction to the earnest study, if not of the in-

flectional forms, yet of the spirit of early English literature,
such a general view must suffice.

* Contzen's Wanderungen der Kelten historisch-kritisch dargelegt, 1861, is a

remarkable instance of pure historical investigation. With a courage and in-
industry rare even in Germany, the author, to use his own words, has endeavoured
'
an der Hand der Schriftsteller des Alterthums Schritt vor Schritt voranzugehen,
und den das Auge einladenden "VVeg der Etymologien moglichst zu vermeiden, und
hat iiberhaupt den aus der Sprache geschopften Belegen nie die erste Stelle einge-
riiumt,obwohl er die hohe Bedeutung derselben, zumal da wo die Alten schweigen,
nirgends verkannt hat.' In researches so conducted, etymology may safely be
called in as a critical help in estimating the weight of testimony and in deter-
mining questions upon which the historical proofs are conflicting or suspicious
but it is a hysteron-proteron to subordinate the positive evidence of credible
witnesses to linguistic deduction.
32 ENGLISH PHILOLOGY Lect. I.

AmoDg the many ends which we may propose to ourselves in the

study of language, there is but one which is common and neces-

sary to every man. I mean such

a facility in comprehending,
and such a mother-tongue, that he can play
skill in using, his

well his part in the never-ceasing dialogue which, whether be-

tween the living and the living or the living aud the dead,
whether breathed from the lips or figured with the pen, takes
up so large a part of the life of every one of us. For this pur-
pose, the information I shall strive to communicate will be, cer-
tainly not in quantity, but in kind, sufficient and though genius
;

gifted with nice linguistic sense, and rare demonstrative powers,

may dispense with such studies as I am advocating and illus-
trating, I believe they will be found in general the most efficient
helps to a complete mastery of the English tongue.
 NOTES AND ILLUSTEATIONS.

I. ( P . 3.)

CHANGES IN ENGLISH.

I AM far from maintaining that the language of England has at any

time become a fixed and inflexible thing. In the adult man, physio-
logical processes, not properly constitutional changes, go on for years
before decay can fairly be said to have commenced. His organs,
indeed, when he manhood, are already fully de-
passes from youth to
veloped, but, under favourable circumstances, and with proper training,
they continue for some time longer to acquire additional strength,
power of action and of resistance, flexibility, and, one might almost say,
dexterity, in the performance of their appropriate functions. New
organic material is absorbed and assimilated, and effete and superfluous
particles arethrown off; but in all this there are no revolutions analo-
gous to those by which the nursling becomes a child, the child a man.
So in languages employed as the medium of varied literary effort, there
is, as subjects of intellectual discourse, practical applications of scien-
tific principle, and new conditions of social and material life multiply,
an increasing pliancy and adaptability of speech, a constant appropria-
tion and formation of new vocables, rejection of old and worn-out
phrases, and revivification of asphyxiated words, a rhetorical, in short,
not a grammatical change, which, to the superficial observer, may give
to the language a new aspect, while it yet remains substantially the
same.
The chief accessions to the English vocabulary since the time of
Shakespeare have been in the departments of industrial art and of
mathematical, physical, and linguistic science. They merely compose
nomenclatures, as in the case of chemistry, whose new terminology —
though it enables us to speak and write of things, the existence and
properties of which analysis has but lately revealed to us — has not
appreciably affected the structure of the English tongue or the laws of
D
34 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS Lect. I.

its movement. In the dialect of imaginative composition, in all pure

literature, in our vocabulary remains in the main unchanged,
fact,

except, indeed, as it has been enriched by the revival of expressive

words or forms which had unfortunately been suffered to become
obsolete.

n. ( P . 7.)

THE PAPACY.
This ascription of divine authority and honours to the Pope is of
frequent occurrence both in the Chronicle of Froissart, who was an
ecclesiastic, and in the writings of secular Continental authors in the
Middle Ages. Indeed, it was so well understood to be a homage
acceptable to the Bishops of Rome, that even Moslem monarchs appear
to have used it in the complimentary addresses of their letters to the
pontiff when they had a favour to ask. During the pontificate of Inno-
cent VIII., a son of Mohammed
the Conqueror, the accomplished Prince
Djem, or Zizim, as he was often called in Europe, who had fled from
Turkey after his father's death to escape the certain doom which im-
pended over the head of the brothers of the reigning Sultan, was
inveigled into the power of the Grand Master of the Knights of Ehodes
by a safe- conduct, and thrown into prison. The mother and sisters of
Djem retired to Cairo, and asked the intercession of Abd-ul-Aziz,
1
Soldan of Babilon,' for the release of the captive. Abd-ul-Aziz in-
voked the intervention of Pope Innocent VIII. in a curious epistle, a
translation of which is found in Arnold's Chronicle, reprint of 1811,
pp. 159, 160. The letter is addressed: 'Unto the most holyest and
fauorablist Price in erthe, Vicary and Lieftenant of Cryst, evermore
during Lord Innocence the viii., extirpator of synners
. . . the . . .

stede of God vsing in erthe

;
and elsewhere in the letter the pope is
'

styled as in a maner a God I erthe, and the sacred brethe of Cryst.'

'

The subsequent details of this affair are worth adding, as an illustra-

tion of the somewhat unfamiliar history of the times. Djem was sur-
rendered by the Grand Master to Innocent VIII., and kept under
surveillance during the life of that pontiff. Innocent was succeeded by
a more celebrated extirpator of sinners,' Alexander VI., who treated
'

the unfortunate prince with greater rigour, and soon received

—
perhaps
proposals from Sultan Bayezid II. for his assassination, and
—
invited
from Charles VIII. of France (who wished to use him as an instrument
in a Avar with Bayezid) for his purchase. After some higgling about
terms, his Holiness accepted the proposals and the money of both
Lect. I. NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 35

monarchs, and honourably redeemed his pledges by first administering

a dose of poison to Djem, and then delivering him over, while yet
the King of France.
alive, to
Innocent VIII. was so little ashamed of his conduct in the matter,
that he caused to be struck, or rather cast, a medal in commemoration
of the bargain by which he engaged to act as the jailor of Djem — or
perhaps he, to use a phrase of our day, merely accepted as a fait
accompli the coining of the medal by some devout contemporary.
Among the other treasures by which he was bribed to this dishonour-
able stipulation, Bayezid had sent him a real or fictitious emerald, with
the portraits of our Saviour and of St. Paul engraved upon it. This
rare medal, which
about three and one-third inches in diameter, and
is

in the specimen before me of gold, very thickly cast on a copper blank,

has, upon the obverse, the head of Christ, with the legend ihs xpc '
. .

salvator mvndi,' or of St. Paul, and upon the reverse is this inscrip-
.

tion, in a Latin worthy of the subject:

PRESENTES . FIGVRE . AD . SDIILITVDINEM . DOMINI . IHESV . SALVATORIS .

KOSTRI ET APOSTOLI PAVLI IN AMIRALDO IMPRESSE PER MAGNI TIIEVCRI

. . . . . . . . . .

PREDECESSORES ANTIA SINGVLARITER . OBSERVATE MISSE SVNT AB IPSO

. . . . . . .

MAGNO THEVCRO S.D.N. PAPE INNOCENCIO OCTAVO PRO SIXGVLARI

. . . . . . .

CLENODI0 AD HVNC FINEM VT SVVM FPATREM CAPTIVVM RETINERET.

. . . . . . . .

It is remarkable that this ascription of divinity to the head of the

Romish Church, after having fallen much into disuse, should have been
revived in the days of the present pope. The Ultramontanist journals
freely employ it and Bedini, Archbishop of Viterbo and Toscanella,
;

now Cardinal, in a recent pastoral (1861) addressed to his diocesans,

not only calls Pius IX. Christ's '
vicar on earth,' but asks the faithful to
deposit their tribute of Peter's pence '
at the feet of the persecuted
Man-God ' —
ai piedi del perseguitato Uom-Dio,'
' — thus applying to the
pope the name by which the fathers of the Church expressed the incar-
nation of the Divinity in man. Christ was to them the Qe-apdpuirog or
Qi-avcpog ; to Cardinal Bedini, Pius IX. is the Man-God.

III. (p. 10.)

HISTORICAL LITERATURE OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

In Icelandic, the authors of Njala, Laxdasla-Saga, and the Heims-

kringla in French, Ville-Hardouin, Joinville, Froissart, and many
;

other less important chroniclers ;

in Catalan, Ramon Muntaner and
Bernat d'Esclot, are all entitled to a place in the front rank of historical
D 2
36 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS Lect. I.

writers, but no poet of those ages and countries still survives as an

actually living influence in literature. Even the Eoman
cle la Eose is

but little and that rather for linguistic than for literary purposes.
read,
The neglect into which this and other poems of this class have fallen,
in spite of their abundant beauty of imagery, of thought, and even of
expression, is the natural consequence of their deficiency in power of
delineating character, and their want of unity of conception in plan and
execution. The rhymed chronicles of the Middle Ages are generally
wholly destitute of poetical merit, and they are rarely of much value
considered simply as annals. They disregard historical truth, but fail

to secure the graces of fable by the sacrifice.

These observations, so far as poetry is concerned, do not apply to the
literature ofGermany. The admirable Teutonic epic, the Nibelungen-
Lied, is almost as wonderful a phenomenon as the Iliad itself. The
oldest manuscripts of this poem belong to the earlier part of the thir-
teenth century, and though founded on ancient and wide-spread
it is

Gothic traditions, it is neither proved nor probable that the rhapsodies

of which it is- composed existed in a collected, harmonised, and
recorded form, at a period long previous to the date of these manuscripts.
Considered, then, as a literary monument, the Nibelungen-Lied is
contemporaneous with the chronicle of Ville-Hardouin. But Germany
has no vernacular historian of that epoch to boast, and in fact it may be
said to be generally true of the infant age of every modern literature,
with the exception of that of Italy, that it has not produced at the same
time great poets and great historians. In point of literary merit, the
Icelandic historical school ranks far above any other of the Middle
Ages, and it is worth noticing that, —
while the ablest chroniclers of
the Eomance nations confine themselves chiefly to the narration of
events occurring under their own observation, or very near their own
time, and in which they had often personally participated, or at least,
known the principal agents, —
very many of the most celebrated
Icelandic sagas were composed at dates considerably later than the
periods whose history they record. Hence, in early Eomance historical
literature, the personality of the annalist often makes itself conspicuous,
and his narrative has a more subjective character than those of the
sagas, the authors of which are for the most part unknown, and not
themselves dramatis persona?. However spirited and brilliant may be
the Eomance chronicles in the description of events, they are vastly
inferior to the sagas in the portraiture of all that goes to make up the
personality of the individual. Few historical narrators have produced
more completely full and rounded models of flesh and blood humanity
Lect. I. NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 37

than Njall, and Gunnarr, and Hallgerdr, in Njala, and Hbskuldr, and
Olaf the Peacock, and Kjartan, in Laxdasla.

IV. (p. 15.)

ORIGIN OF TnE ROMANCE LANGUAGES.

Until recently, philologists have habitually spoken loosely of the
Eomance languages as derived from the Latin, and are understood by
common readers as meaning thereby the classical speech which served
Rome. That the structure,
as the vehicle of the literature of ancient
and more especially the vocabulary, of the modern Romance tongues
have been very greatly affected by the influence of Latin, as the lan-
guage of Roman literature and of the Romish Church, is indisputably
true ;but there is abundant evidence to show that, contemporaneously
with the written language of ancient Rome, there existed a popular
speech, comparatively simple in inflectional, and, of course, syntactical
structure, and bearing a considerable resemblance to the modern written
and spoken dialects of the Romance nations. This humble tongue is
mentioned by many ancient writers under the, name of lingua rustica, and
it and its provincial dialects are considered by most philologists as the true

parents of the languages now employed throughout Southern Europe.

Although it is usually referred to by a collective name, there can be no
question that it was divided into a great number of local dialects, more
or less differing from each other and from written Latin, and that the
differences between these dialects have been, to some extent at least,
perpetuated in the modern languages which have succeeded to and now
represent them. It is further possible, perhaps we may even say
probable, that there existed between the oral and the recorded dialects
of the capital itself, some such relation as that between the written and
the spoken French of the present day, and hence, that the language of
conversation at Rome differed very considerably from that of literature.
Besides the tendency to division and ramification which all languages
show whenever the nations that speak them are themselves divided into
fragments separated by physical or political barriers, there was, in
ancient Italy, a special cause of confusion of speech, which of itself
would account for a great departure of the oral from the written tongue,
as well as for the breaking up of the spoken language, had it ever been
uniform, into a multitude of dialects. I refer to the exhaustion of the
rural population, and the substitution of foreign -born predial slaves and
disbanded soldiers, from every part of the ancient known world, for the
native and aboriginal inhabitants of the soil. This exhaustion was
38 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS Lect. I.

produced by the military conscription, by the tendency of population

towards great commercial and industrial centres, which has again become
so marked a feature of the associate life of Europe, and by the absorp-
tion of the lesser estates into the domains of the great proprietors.
The place of the conscript, or emigrant native peasant, was taken by
servile and discharged military strangers to such an extent, that the
Latin and other Italic races were said to have become almost extinct in
the rural districts even before the days of the empire. These foreigners
were of many different stocks and different tongues, and though the
enslaved captives were distributed without much regard to community
of origin or of speech, yet the disbanded veterans would naturally be
colonised with some reference to their nationality, and hence each con-
siderable allotment of military bounty lands would be a centre which
would exercise a peculiar influence upon the language of its own vicinity,
and thus tend to create a local patois, if none existed there before.
Raynouard, Lexique Roman, I. xiii., observes II est reconnu
:
'

aujourd'hui que la romane rustique se forma de la corruption de la

langue latine, que l'ignorance de ceux qui parlaient encore cette
langue, a l'epoque de l'invasion des hordes du Nord, et leur melange
avec ces hordes, modinerent d'une maniere speciale, par suite de laquelle
le nouvel idiome acquit un caractere distinct d'individualite.'

This theory supposes that the classical Latin was once the general
popular speech, not only of Italy, but of Spain, Portugal, and France.
This is an assumption, not only without proof, but at variance with
probability, and there is no reason to believe that any one vulgar dialect
ever had a great territorial range in the Italian peninsula, still less in
the distant subjected provinces. We know historically that Italy was
very early period, peopled by many different
originally, or at least, at a
races, which were under the government, and forced into
at last united
a conformity with the institutions of Rome. But we have no proof
that their vernaculars ever melted and harmonised into one uniform
lingua rustica, and, indeed, the period through which the sway of Rome
extended was altogether too short for such an amalgamation to have
taken place under such circumstances. The rustic dialects are to be
regarded not as corruptions of the Latin, or of any other single speech,
but each as in a certain sense the representative of an older and more
primitive tongue. Their natural resemblances are results of a tendency
to coalesce, imposed upon them by the social and political influence of
Rome, not evidence of greater likeness and closer relationship at an
earlier stage. The Latin itself is but a compromise and an amalgama-
tion of the linguistic peculiarities of older speeches, and it was probably
Lect. I. NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 39

never employed as the vulgar tongue of Eoman Italy to a greater extent

than Tuscan is spoken at this day in the modern Italian States. So
far from being the mother of the rustic patois, the Latin itself may
with greater truth be regarded as derivative, and as a coalescence of
more ancient forms of them. This, indeed, is apparently less true of
the grammar than of the vocabulary. The stock of words in Latin is
evidently of a very mixed character, but the regularity and complete-
ness of the inflections show that the grammar of some one ancient
dialect very greatly predominates in the composite literary tongue of
Eome.
On the other hand,must be admitted, that the general coincidence
it

of vocabulary in the Eomance

languages, and especially the occurrence
of numerous words, substantially the same in all of them, but which can
hardly be traced to a classical Latin source —
such, for example, as It.
acciajo, Sp. acero, Fr. acier; It, aguglia, Sp. aguja, Fr.
aiguille; It. arrivare, Sp. arribar, Fr. arriver; It. bianco, Sp.
bianco, Fr. blanc; It. bocca, Sp. boca, Fr. bouche; It. cac-
ciare, Sp. cazar, Fr. chasser —
seems to point to a community of
origin which their grammatical discrepancies tend to disprove. Lite-
rary and ecclesiastical influences have been very important agencies in
bringing about a uniformity in the stock of words, and as to those voca^-
bles common to all the Romance dialects, but unknown to classical
Latin, not improbable that they belonged to popular nomenclatures
it is

connected with the military or civil administration of the Eoman

government, and which were employed as widely as that government
extended, though not forming a part of the literary tongue. —
See On the
Divergence of Dialects, Lecture II.

V. p. (27.)

GRAMMAR AND PHILOLOGY.

A syntax which looks no higher than to rules of concord and regi-
men, the determination of logical relations by the tallying of endings, is
not a whit more intellectual than the game of dominoes. The study of
linguistics is valuable, less as an independent pursuit, than as a means
of access to a wider range of philologies, understood in that broad sense
in which the word is now used in German criticism. Happily for the
interests of learning, most distinguished Continental linguists are phi-
lologists also. On the other hand, American, and, I must add, English
professed linguists, are in general but nibbling the shell while they
imagine themselves to be enjoying the kernel of the fruit. I desire not
40 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS I.Ecr. I.

to be understood as undervaluing the linguistic works of sucli men as

Bopp and the brothers Grimm, whose labours have furnished the key to
such vast stores of literary wealth, but at the same time I maintain that
the student of language who ends with the linguistics of Bopp and
Grimm had better never have begun for grammar has but a value,
;

not a worth it is a means, not an end it teaches but half-truths, and,

; ;

except as an introduction to literature and that which literature embo-

dies, it is a melancholy heap of leached ashes, marrowless bones, and
empty oyster-shells. You may feed the human intellect upon roots,
stems, and endings, as you may keep a horse upon saw-dust ; but you
must add a little literature in the one case, a little meal in the other,
and the more the better in both. Many years ago, Brown, an Ameri-
can grammarian, invented what he called a parsing-machine, for teach-
ing grammar. It was a mahogany box, some two feet square, provided
with a crank, filled with cog and crown-wheels, pulleys, bands, shafts,
gudgeons, couplings, springs, cams, and eccentrics; and with several
trap -sticks projecting through slots in the top of it. When played
upon by an expert operator, it functioned, as the French say, very well,
and ran through the syntactical categories as glibly as the footman in
Scriblerus did through the predicates. But it had one capital defect,
namely, that the pupil must have learned grammar by some simpler
method, before he could understand the working of the contrivance,
and its lessons, therefore, came rather late. There are many sad com-
'

pounds of printer's ink and brain- dribble,' styled English Grammars, 7

'

which, as means of instruction, are, upon the whole, inferior to Brown's

gimcrack.
 LECTUEE II.

OKIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF THE ANGLO-SAXON PEOPLE AND

THEIR LANGUAGE.

Before proceeding to the immediate subject of the present

lecture, I will offer an explanatory remark upon the nomencla-
ture which, in common with many writers on European philo-
logy, I employ. I shall make frequent use of the ethnological
epithets, Grothic, Teutonic, Grermanic, Scandinavian, and Eo-
mance. Under the term Grothic I include not only the extinct
Mceso-Grothic nation and language, and the contemporaneous
kindred tribes and tongues, but all the later peoples, speeches,
and dialects commonly known as Anglo-Saxon, Grerman, Dutch,
Flemish, Norse, Swedish, Danish, and Icelandic, together with
our composite modern English. All these are marked by a
strong family likeness, and hence are assumed, though by no
means historically proved, to be descended from a common
original. With the exception of a few words, chiefly proper
names, which occur in the writings of the Grreek and Latin
historians and geographers, the oldest specimen we possess of
any of the Grothic languages is the remnant of a translation of
the Scriptures executed by Ulfilas, a bishop of the Mceso-Groths,
but himself, according to Philostorgius, of Cappadocian descent,
who lived on the shores of the Lower Danube, in the fourth
century after Christ.* The Grothic languages divide themselves
into —
I. The Teutonic or Grermanic branch, which consists of — 1,
the Mceso-Grothic ; 2, the Anglo-Saxon ; 3, the Low-GJ-erman,
or Saxon; 4, the Dutch, or Netherlandish, including the
* See Illustrations II. and V. at the end of this lecture.
42 GOTHIC LANGUAGES Lect. II.

Flemish; 5, the Frisic; and 6, the High-German, to which

may be added the Cimbric of the Sette and the Tredici Comuni
in Italy*, and many Swiss and even Piedmontese patois.
II. The Scandinavian branch, which embraces — 1, the- Old-
Northern, or Icelandic, improperly called Eunic by many earlier
English philologists; 2, the Swedish 3 -
3, the Danish, including
the Norse, or Norwegian.
III. The English, which, though less than half the words
composing its total vocabulary are of Gothic descent, is classed
with that family, because in somewhat mixed grammatical
its

structure the Gothic syntax very greatly predominates, and a

majority of the w ords employed in the ordinary oral intercourse
T

of life, and even in almost any given literary composition, are

of Gothic etymology. Perhaps, also, the Scottish should be
regarded as a distinct speech, rather than as a mere dialect of
English.
All these, excepting the Mceso-Gothic, and presumably that
also, have or had a great number of spoken, and many of them
even written, more or less divergent dialects. I am aware
that the propriety of this application of the terms Gothic,
Teutonic, and Germanic is disputed but it has long been
;

received, and will be better understood than any new phraseology.

Eomance^ormerly meant —
and is still defined in most dic-
tionaries —
the dialects of the Spanish and Italian borders of
France but, in recent criticism, it is a generic term embracing
;

all the modern languages usually regarded as cognate with the

Latin, — in a word, the Italian,. Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, or
Lemosinf, Provencal, French, the Eoumansch of several Swiss
•
See First Series, Lecture VL, p. 140.
;;'

f The Catalan or Lemosin is often spoken of as a dialect of Spanish. If by

Spanish he meant the assemblage of speeches employed in Spain, the expression
may be correct hut if the Castilian, the written language of most parts of Spain,
;

he intended, it is no more true that Catalan is a dialect of Spanish than it is that

Spanish is a dialect of Catalan. Neither is a derivative or an offshoot of the
other. The development and history of each is independent of that of the other,
and the Catalan is, in the important point of the construction of periods, quite
as near to the French as to the Castilian.
Lect. II. OBIGIN OP THE ANGLO-SAXONS 43

communities in its various forms, and the YVallachian. These,

also, are subdivided into many local dialects, or patois, several

of which, especially in Italy, have been reduced to writing, and

may not improperly be said to have their special literatures.
We cannot affix a chronological date to the epoch of change
from the rustic or provincial Eoman to the modern Eomance
in any language of this family but, with the exception of single
;

phrases in ancient liturgies, laws, and chronicles, the oldest

extant monuments in a Eomance dialect are generally con^
sidered to be the oaths of Louis le Germanique and of certain

French lords, subjects of Charles the Bald, sworn at Strasburg

in 842.*
Many recent inquirers believe that the Continental invaders,
of Gothic origin, who reduced Celtic England to subjection a
few centuries after Christ, emigrated from a small district in
Sleswick now and were all of one race
called Angeln, the —
Angles, —
that the designation Saxon Was not the proper appel-
lation of any of them, but a name ignorantly bestowed upon
them by the native Celts, and at last, to some small extent,
adopted by themselves. It is hence argued that the proper
name of their language is not Saxon, or even Anglo-Saxon, but
Angle, or, in the modern form, English. It is farther insisted
that the present speech of England is nearly identical with the
dialect introduced into the island by the immigrants in question,
and consequently, that there is no ground for distinguishing the
old and the new by different names, it being sufficient to cha-
racterise the successive periods and phases of the Anglican
speech by epithets indicative of mere chronological relation,
sa}dng, for instance, for Anglo-Saxon, old, or primitive English,
— for our present tongue, new, or modern English.
I differ from these theorists as to both premises and conclu-
sion.! By those who maintain such doctrines, it appears to be
assumed that if the evidence upon which it has been hitherto

* See Illustration I. at the end of this lecture.

—
f See First Series, Lecture I., pp. 41 45.

/ m f

K
44 ORIGIN OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS Lect. IT.

believed that the immigration was composed of three different

tribes, — Jutes, or Jutlanders, Angles, and Saxons, — could be
overthrown, it would follow that it consisted of Angles alone.
This is altogether a non sequitur ; and it must not be forgotten
that the only historical proof which establishes the participation
of a tribe called Angles in the invasions of the fifth and sixth
centuries at all is precisely the evidence which is adduced to
show that Saxons accompanied or followed them. It must be
admitted, indeed, that the extant direct testimony upon the
whole subject is open to great objections, and that scarcely any
of the narrative accounts of the Germanic conquest of England
will stand the test of historical criticism. That the new-comers
themselves styled portions of the territory they occupied Essex,
Sussex, Wessex, and Middlesex, — that is, the districts of the
East Saxons, South Saxons, West Saxons, and Middle Saxons,
is undisputed ; and it is a violently improbable supposition, that
they bestowed on these localities a name mistakenly applied to
themselves by the natives, instead of calling them by their own
proper and familiar national, or at least tribal, appellation.
They also often spoke of themselves, or of portions of them-
selves, as Saxons, of their language as the Saxon speech, and
Alfred's usual royal signature was e
Eex Saxonum,' though, indeed,
they more generally called the whole people and the language
Angle, or English.
Apart from the testimony of the chroniclerswhich modern —
inquirers seem generally and with good reason much inclined
to suspect —
the only proof which identifies the Angles of
England with any Continental people is the perhaps accidental
coincidence between their name and that of a Germanic, or, as
some writers maintain, a Scandinavian tribe, occupying a
corner of Sleswick so narrow in extent as hardly to be noticed
at all in Continental history. It is equally true that there is
no external testimony to show that any nation, known to itself
as Saxon while yet resident on Teutonic soil, furnished any
contingent to the bodies of invaders. Germanic and Scandi-

»
 ;

Lect. II. LINGUISTIC CHANGES 45

navian history are silent on the whole subject*, except in some

few passages probably borrowed from Anglo-Saxon authorities
and in the want of trustworthy information from native annalists,
we must have recourse to the internal evidence supplied by the
language, and to the probabilities deduced from such indirect
and fragmentary facts as have come down to us, through other
channels, from the dark and remote period of emigration.
What then does the character of the language commonly, and,
as I think, appropriately, called Anglo-Saxon, when examined
.

in the earliest forms known to us, indicate with respect to the

origin of those who spoke it ?

According to the present views of the ablest linguists, gram-

matical structure is a much more essential and permanent
characteristic of languages than the vocabulary, and is therefore
alone to be considered in tracing their history and determining
their ethnological affinities. This theory, I think, is carried too
far, when it is insisted that no amalgamation of the grammatical
characteristics of different speeches is possible ; for though
languages often receive and assimilate a great amount of foreign
material without much change of structure, yet, on the other
hand, there are cases of the adoption of more or less of foreign
syntax while the vocabulary remains in a good degree the same,
and even while the people who employ it continue almost wholly
unmixed in blood with other nations. The Armenians, for
example, can boast of a purer and more ancient descent than
any other Christian people, and they have kept themselves,
during the whole period since their conversion to Christianity
in the fourth century, almost as distinct in blood and as marked
in nationality as the Hebrews. Their language is lineally
descended from the old Armenian tongue, its radicals remaining
substantially the same, but its grammar is everywhere modified
by that of the prevailing idiom of the different countries where,
in the wide dispersion of the Armenian people, it is spoken.

* It deserves to be specially noticed that the names of neither Angle nor Saxon
occur in Beowulf.
46 MIXTURE OF GRAMMARS Lect. II.

According to our learned countryman, Mr. Riggs, the syntax

of the Armenian spoken in Turkey has conformed itself to the
structure of the Turkish, and while the ancient Armenian
Scriptures correspond with the Hebrew text in the logical
construction of periods and the arrangemeut of the words that
compose them, the modern Armenian exactly inverts the order
of position, and, in accordance with Turkish syntax, places first
all instrumental, local, and circumstantial qualifications, and

announces the principal proposition at the end of the sentence.

Thus, to use the illustration of Mr. Riggs, a Turco-Armenian,
in saying, c
that a Greek shot an Egyptian yesterday with a
pistol, in a drunken quarrel, in one of the streets of the city,'

instead of arranging the words in the ancient

Armenian order,
which nearly corresponds with the English, would announce
the proposition in this form: (
Yesterday —
of this city of —
the streets — one — in — of wine —
the use —
in originating
— of a quarrel — in consequence —
with a pistol —
a Grreek —
*
an Egyptian killed.'

A linguistic inquirer, who adopts the theory I am discussing,

might conclude from the study of modern Armenian grammar
that the people and the language belonged to the Tartar stock;
whereas nothing is more certain than that the Armenians and
their speech are ethnologically unrelated to theOttoman race and
the Turkish tongue. were true that the gram-
If therefore it

matical coincidence between Anglo-Saxon and any given Con-

tinental dialect were closer than it is, the identity of the two
would not thereby alone be conclusively proved. In point of
fact, Anglo-Saxon grammar does not precisely correspond to

that of any other Gothic speech, but, on the contrary, embraces

some characteristics of several Germanic and even Scandinavian
dialects.

The Anglo-Saxon, and especially the English language, have

been affected in both vocabulary and structure by the influence
of all the Gothic and Romance tongues with which they have

* Transactions of the American Oriental (Society for 1 860.

Lect. it. mixture of grammars 47

been brought into long and close contact. Doubtless this

influence is most readily perceived and appreciated in the stock
of words, but although more obscure and much smaller in actual
amount of results, it is, I think, not less unequivocal in its effects
upon the syntax.
A comparisonof the Anglo-Saxon gospels with older monu-
ments of the language, Beowulf and the poems of Casdmon, for
instance, on the one hand, and with the Latin text on the other,
appears to me to show very clearly that the syntax of the transla-
tion, and, through the influence of that translation, of the general
Anglo-Saxon speech, was sensibly affected by the incorporation
of Latin constructions previously unknown to it. I cannot
here go into this question at length, but I may refer to a single
exemplification of this influence in the employment of the
active or present participle, in both absolute and dependent
phrases, in close accordance with the Latin usage.* /

The Anglo-Saxon compared the adjective by change of ending

only, or inflection, and not by the adverbs onore and most;
the Norman-French, by the help of adverbs. The English
employs both methods, the latter almost uniformly in long
words. The possessive relation between nouns was expressed
in Anglo-Saxon by a regular possessive or genitive case, and
not by a preposition in Norman-French, in general, by a prepo-
;

sition only. In English both modes are used. The Anglo-Saxon

did not employ a preposition before the infinitive, but had a
.

special verbal form nearly analogous to the Latin gerund, which

isby some considered as a dative case of the infinitive the Nor- ;

man-French infinitive, in many cases, took a preposition. The

English first dropped the characteristic ending of the gerundial,
thus reducing it to the infinitive form, and then regularly preceded
the infinitive, except when coupled with an auxiliary verb, by
a preposition thus amalgamating, or rather confounding, the
;

offices of the two forms.f

* See Illustration II. at the end of this lecture.

t See Illustration III. at the end of this lecture.
 48 ANGLO-SAXON LANGUAGE Lect. II.

Now these and other analogous cases are instances of the sub-
stitution of foreign grammatical combinations for native inflec-
. mixture of grammars pro tanto.
tions, or, in other words, of a
They are, indeed, not numerous or important enough to affect
the general character of English syntax, which is in very large
measure derived from that of the Anglo-Saxon but they are
;

sufficient to prove that the doctrine of the impossibility of any

grammatical mixture is a too hasty generalisation ; and hence
the extent of syntactical amalgamation is simply a question of
proportion.
The Anglo-Saxon is not grammatically or lexically identi-
fiable with the extant remains of any Continental dialect ; but, so
far as it is to be considered a homogeneous tongue, it much re-
sembles what is Old-Saxon of the Heliand (a religious
called the
poem of the ninth century), and the Frisic, both of which belong
to the Low-Grerman or Saxon branch of the Teutonic and hence ;

we are authorised to presume, that the bulk of the invaders

emigrated from some territory not remote from the coast of the
North Sea, where the population employed a Low-Grerman dia-
lect or dialects. The composite and heterogeneous character of
the Anglo-Saxon vocabulary, or, in other words, the internal
evidence derived from the language itself, tends to the same con-
clusions, in respect to the origin of the tongue and the people,
to which we should be led by the little we know of the history
of maritime Grermany and the Netherlands during the period
succeeding the Roman occupation of a part of that territory. It
is evidently a mixed speech ; and we can, in many instances,
trace its different ingredients to sources not having much imme-
diate relation to each other.
The martial triumphs and extended despotism of Rome dis-
lodged and expelled from their native seats great numbers, if

not whole tribes, of a people who, at that period, were just in

the state of semi-civilization which Thucydides describes as that
of the early Greeks, —a state which offersno obstacle to emi-
gration, but facilitates it, because it has no permanent and well-
Lect. II. EFFECTS OF ROMAN CONQUEST 49

secured homes, no strong local attachments, and at the same

time is far enough advanced in pastoral and mechanical art, to

be provided with the means of locomotion and of the transporta-

tion of such objects as man in that condition of life most highly
prizes.
The march of the fugitives who retreated before the
line of
Roman would be to the north-west both because the
legions, ;

Rhine, the Elbe, and their tributary streams, on which many of

them would embark, flow in that direction, and because the dif-
ficult nature of the country lying between the outlets of the
great northern rivers opposed the most formidable obstacles to
the advance of a pursuing force and, while it offered ample
;

means of subsistence abundance of the sea, yet held out

in the
few attractions of a character to tempt the cupidity of the Roman
robber. Hence, independently of other more or less similar,
earlier or contemporaneous, concurrent causes, it is extremely
probable that, in consequence of the progress of the Roman
arms about the commencement of the Christian era, and during
the immediately preceding and succeeding centuries, a multi-
tude of tribes, and fragments of tribes, languages, and frag-
ments of languages, were distributed along the coasts of the
German Ocean, and the navigable waters which discharge them-
selves into it.

The jealousies of family and of class, which are such a con-

spicuous feature in the character of all rude races, would long
prevent the coalescence of distinct bodies of these people, or the
fusion of their unwritten dialects ; and these, indeed, by the iso-
lation of those who spoke them, would tend to diverge rather
than assimilate, until some one group or confederacy of tribes
should become strong enough to conquer or absorb the rest.
We have no historical evidence whatever, of any political or lin-
guistic unity between the inhabitants of different portions of the
coast and no legitimate deduction from the known habits and
;

tendencies of half-savage life would lead to such conclusion.

At this period, the low lands, subject to overflow by the Grer-
E
 ;

50 COASTS OF GERMAN OCEAN Lect. II.

man Ocean and by the great rivers which empty into it, were
not diked ; but, as appears from Pliny*, the few inhabitants of
the tide-washed flats lived in huts erected on artificial mounds,
as upon the The art of diking
coast-islands they do at this day.
seems to have been suggested by the causeways and the mili-
tary engineering of the Eomans. But the labour and expense
involved in it were so great, that it made very slow progress

and no considerable extent of this coast was diked in until long

after the Saxon conquest of England. Upon the firm land were
vast woods and morasses, which prevented free communication
between the population, and it was consequently separated into
independent bodies, united by no tie of common interest.
Wherever man, in the state of life in which the concurrent
testimony of all history places the Northern Germans at the
period of which we speak, is accessible to observation, he is
found divided into small and hostile clans, distinguished by con-
siderable, and constantly widening, differences of dialect, and
incapable of harmonious or extended political or social action.
The traditional accounts of the Saxon conquest of England
speak of numerous* successive and totally distinct bodies of in-
vaders and the probability that any one tribe, or any one con-
;

tinuous territorial district, even if all its clans were united under
one head, could have furnished a sufficient force to subdue the
island in any one or any ten successive expeditions, is too slen-
der to be admitted for a moment.
The people who inhabit the coasts of the North Sea have now
been Christianised for a thousand years, and brought under the
sway of two or three governments. During all these ten cen-
turies, all religious and all political influences have powerfully
tended to the extirpation of local differences of speech, and to
the reduction of the multiplied patois, if not to one, to two or
three leading dialects. Yet, though all known external causes
of discrepancy have long since ceased to act, we find that, in
spite of the harmonising influences to which I have alluded,

* Nat. Hist. xvi. 1.

LECT. II. MULTITUDE OF DIALECTS 51

every hour of travel, as we advance from the Ehine to the Eider,

brings ns to a new vernacular. Within the space of three hun-
dred miles, we meet with at least a dozen, mostly unwritten,
dialects, not only so discrepant as to be mutually unintelligible
to those who speak them, but often marked by lexical and gram-
matical differences scarcely less wide than those which distin-
guish any two Grothic or any two Eomance tongues.* There is

not a shadow of proof, there no semblance of probability, that

is

the inhabitants of these coasts spoke with more uniformity four-

teen centuries ago than to-day, but every presumption is to the
contrary.
Jacob (xrimm, indeed, observes that and patois
all dialects
develope themselves progressively, and the further we look back
in language, the smaller is their number and the less marked
are they.f This is in accordance with all linguistic theory, and
if human annals reached far enough back to exhibit to us earlier

stages of divergence of speech, the proposition would probably

be found historically true but if we take the different linguistic
;

families of Europe, and follow them up as far as documentary

evidence can be traced, the reverse appears, in very many cases,
to be the fact. I The dialects diverge as we ascend. If we com-
pare any one of the Low-Grerman dialects of the present day

* See Halbertsma's very remarkable account of the confusion and instability of

speech in the Frisian provinces of Holland, in Bosworth's Origin of the Germanic
and Scandinavian languages, pp. 36-38. See also First Series, Lectures II., p. 43,
and XVIII., p. 378. And yet the- multitude of dialects was greater within the
memory of persons now living than it is at present.
f Alle Mundarten und Dialecte entfalten sich vorschreitend, und je weiter man in
'

der Sprache zurucksehaut, desto geringer ist ihre Zahl, desto schwacher ausgepragt
sind sie. Ohne diese Aimahme wiirde uberhaupt der Ursprung der Dialecte, wie
der Vielheit der Sprachen unbegreiflich sein.'
Although the learned author declares that this proposition is aus der Gesehichte
'

der Sprache geschopft und in der Natur ihrer Spaltung gegrundet,' it must never-
theless be considered rather as a corollary from the doctrine of the descent of the
human family from a single .stock, than as a statement of historically established
fact. The proofs, or rather illustrations, adduced by Grimm amount to very little,
and the conclusion is drawn not from evidence, but from assumptions founded on
the supposed impossibility of otherwise explaining the origin of dialects and the
midtiplicity of languages.

E 2
 f

52 SCANDINAVIAN DIALECTS L;:ct. II.

with the contemporaneous High German, we shall find a marked

difference indeed, which, if the former now had a living litera-
ture and were spoken by a people governed by a distinct politi-
cal organisation, would perhaps be held sufficient to entitle
them to be considered as different languages. But between the
poem Heliand and the Krist of Otfrid — both of the ninth
century and therefore nearly contemporaneous — the former
being taken as the representative of the Low, the latter as that of
the High German, there is a much more palpable difference than
exists at the present day, or at any intermediate period, between
the dialects which stand in the place of them. If we extend
the comparison so embrace the Mceso-Gothic, which
as to
Grimm* declares to have become wholly extinct and to have
left no surviving posterity, we find a greater diversity still.
Over how large a space either of these three Germanic speeches
prevailed, we do not know nor have we any warrant whatever
;

for affirming, any probable ground for presuming, that there did
not exist, by the side of these, numerous other dialects as unlike
either of them as they are to each other.
In the case of the Scandinavian languages, the Swedish,
Danish, and modern Icelandic, indeed, the facts are said to be
different. It is affirmed that, at a period not very remote, a
tongue substantially the same as what is now called Icelandic
was spoken in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, and that the pre-
sent languages of those three countries are lineally descended
from the primitive Old-Northern speech.J Admitting this to be
so, a reason why we are able to trace the Scandinavian dialects

historically to a common original might be found in the fact,

that the migration of the Scandinavians into their present seats,
the multiplication of their numbers, their consequent spread
over a wide surface, and their separation and division into dis-

* '
Die gotische ist ganz, olme clasz etwas neueres an ihre stelle getreten ware,
erloschen.'

t See Illustrations IV. and V. at the end of this lecture,

t See Illustration VI. at the end of this lecture.
Lect. II. ROMANCE LANGUAGES 53

tinct tribes with divergent speeches — all these events are very
much more recent than the occupation of Germany by the an-
cestors of its present population, and the division of that popu-
lation, if indeed ever homogeneous, into separate tribes.
The comparatively late date of the Gothic colonisation of
Scandinavia is proved by a variety of circumstances which can-
not now be detailed, but it is —
well to refer to one of them
the namely, that the older race whom the Scandinavian
fact,

Goths expelled from Norway, Sweden, and perhaps Denmark —

the Laplanders, or, as the Old-Northern writers call them, the
Finns — is not yet extirpated, but still exists as a distinct
people, with its original speech ; whereas nearly every trace of a
more ancient population of Germany has utterly disappeared.
We have no similar evidence with respect to the unity, or
even close relationship, of the Germanic peoples and their dia-
lects within any calculable period. It is not proved that any
modern High-German or Low-German speech is derived from
the Moeso-Gothic of Ulfilas, or from the dialect of Otfrid, or of
the Heliand; and it is just as probable that all the Germanic
patois are descended from parallel old dialects, the memory of
which is lost because their written monuments have perished, if
any such ever existed.
•If we do not find a similar state of things in the Eomance

languages, it is because they are all directly derived, not indeed

from the classical Latin, but from cognate unwritten dialects
which group themselves around the Latin as their common re-
presentative and only mouthpiece. Hence their tendencies to a
wider divergence were always checked by the influence of a
central, written, authoritative, ever-living and immutable speech,
no parallel to which, so far as we have any reason to believe,
existed in Germany.
As a general rule, then, applicable to what is called the his-
torical period, or that through which written records extend,
dialects have usually tended to uniformity and amalgamation as
they descend the stream of time; and as we trace them back-
54 ANGLO-SAXON LANGUAGE Lect. II.

wards, they ramify like rivers and their tributaries, until the
main current is lost in a dispersion as distracting as the con-
fusion of Babel.*
From all this it follows that we have no reason to suppose
that the conquerors of England were a people of one name or of
one speech, but on the contrary there is every probability that
they were, though ethnologically and linguistically nearly or
remotely allied, yet practically, and as they viewed themselves,
composed of fragments of peoples more or less alien to each
other in blood and in tongue.
They were Christianized not far from the close of the sixth
century, and from this epoch all influences tended to amalga-
mation and community of speech. We have monuments of the
language which date very soon after this period, but, as they
are extant only in copies executed in later centuries, we know
not their primitive orthography, nor have we any actual know-
ledge of the forms or grammatical character of the language
earlier than the eighth or ninth century, because we possess no
manuscripts of greater antiquity.f
Whatever, then, may have been the original discrepancies of
the speech, they had been, at our earliest acquaintance with it,

in some degree at least, harmonised. Still we cannot say that

Anglo- Saxon, even at that period, presents the characteristics "Of

a homogeneous, self-developed tongue. Its inflections, as exhi-

* See Illustration VII. at the end of this lecture.

t The determination of the age of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts from internal evi-
dence is a matter of much difficulty and uncertainty, because there are few such
writings of known date, by which the antiquity of undated copies can be tested.
An expression of Alfred, in the preface to. his translation of Boethius, would tend
to show that Anglo-Saxon was hardly a commonly written language until he made
it so; for in the phrase, 'of bcc-ledene on Englisc wende,' bee ledene
means not so properly Latin, as simply the booJc-langiiage, the written tongue —
a
term not likely to be used if Anglo-Saxon books were then common. This con-
sideration may be thought to furnish another argument against the authenticity of
Asser, who puts a manuscript of Anglo-Saxon poetry with illuminated capitals
into Alfred's hands when he could have been but four years old. It would, how-
ever, be going quite too far to deny that the Anglo-Saxon had been written at all
until so late a period as the birth of Alfred.
Lect. II. ANGLO-SAXON MIXED 55

bite.d in the works of different writers, and in different manu-

scripts of the same an extent that indicates a
writer, vary to
great diversity of orthography, if not of actual declension and
conjugation. Its syntax is irregular and discrepant and though
;

both its grammar and its vocabulary connect it most nearly with
the Low, or Platt-Deutsch branch of the German, yet it has
grammatical forms, as well as verbal combinations and vocables,
which indicate now a relationship to High-German, and now to
Scandinavian, not to speak of Celtic roots which it may have
borrowed from the Britons, or may have received, at an earlier
date, from the ancient fountain of Indo-European speech whence
the Celtic and Gothic, as well as the Eomance and Hellenic,
languages of Europe are theoretically considered to have flowed.
In short, the Anglo-Saxon was much such a language as it
might be supposed would result from a fusion of the Old-Saxon
with smaller proportions of High-German, Scandinavian, and
even Celtic and Sclavonic elements; and it bears nearly the
same relation to those ingredients as modern English bears to
its own constituents, though, indeed, no single influence was

exerted upon it so disturbing in character as the Norman-French

has proved to our present tongue.
We find, then, neither in historical record, nor in the structure
of the Anglo-Saxon speech, any sufficient evidence of the con-
trolling predominance of any one tribe, or any one now identi-
fiable dialect, in the Saxon colonisation of England; and we
may fairly suppose that both are derived, in proportions no
longer ascertainable, from all the races and tongues which were
found between the Ehine and the Eider, with contributions from
the Scandinavian and Sclavonic tribes of the Atlantic and Baltic
shores, and from other even more remote sources which have
left no traces sufficiently distinct for recognition.

Although we are unable to say when the revolution took

place, or by precisely what succession of steps the common
speech of England advanced from the simple accents of the
Saxon poet Coedmon to the ornate culture of Chaucer, it is not
56 ANGLO-SAXON NOT ENGLISH Lect. II.

the less certain that a change has occurred, which has separated
the dialect that embodies the modern literature of England, from
the Anglo-Saxon tongue, by an interval wider than the space
which divides the language of modern Tuscany from that of
ancient Rome.
There is little force in the argument, that we ought to call
the language of King Alfred English because his contemporaries
usually so styled it. That appellation has been irrevocably
transferred to the present speech of England, and has become
its exclusive right. To designate by one term things logically
distinct is to purchase simplicity of nomenclature at the expense
of precision of thought and there is no linguistic test by which
;

the identity of Anglo-Saxon and modern English can be esta-

blished. Words, whether spoken or written, whether addressed
to the ear or to the eye, are formed and grouped into periods
as a means of communication between man and man. When-
ever a given set of words and of syntactical forms becomes
constant, and is generally accepted by a people or a tribe, the
assemblage of them constitutes a language ; but when the voca-
bulary and the inflections of a particular speech have been so
changed, either by the decay of native and the substitution of
foreign roots, or by grammatical corruptions or improvements,
that the old and the new dialects would no longer be mutually
intelligible, in either their spoken or their written forms, to
those trained to use them, it isthen an abuse of words to give
to them a common appellation. To call by the same name a
language like the Anglo-Saxon — whose vocabulary is mainly
derived from the single Grothic stock, and whose syntax is regu-
lated by inflection — and a language like the English — more
than one half of whose words are borrowed from Romance, or
other remotely related sources, and whose syntax depends upon
auxiliaries, particles, and position — would lead to a mischievous
confusion of ideas, and an entire misconception of our true
philological position and relations.*

* The eminent German scholar Pauli, in his Life of Alfred, p. 128, speaks of
Lect. II. LATIN AND ITALIAN 57

A modern Italian guide, in conducting the traveller over an

ancient field of battle, and pointing out the positions of the
hostile forces — old Eomans and their Gallic, Epirotic or Car-

thaginian enemies — speak of the Eomans

will as i nost r ali, our
troops; yet no man insistson giving a common name to the
Latin and Italian, or Latin and Spanish, or Latin and Portuguese,
though either of these living languages is much more closely
allied to the speech of ancient Eome, than is modern English to
Anglo-Saxon. It is true we can frame sentences, and even write
pao-es upon many topics without employing words of Eomance
or other foreign origin ; but none would think it possible to com-
pose an epic, a tragedy, a metaphysical or a critical discussion
wholly in Anglo-Saxon. On the other hand, entire volumes
may be written in either of the three Southern Eomance lan-
guages on almost any subject, except modern mechanical and
scientific pursuits and achievements, with as close a conformity
to the Latin syntax as English construction exhibits to Anglo-
Saxon, and at the same time, without employing any but Latin
roots, and that in so natural and easy a style that the omission
of borrowed words would never be noticed by the reader.
We do not yet know enough of the nature of language to be
able to affirm that the vocabulary of a given tongue has absolutely
no influence upon or connection with its grammatical structure.
There are facts which seem to indicate the contrary and when ;

we find, in Early English, inflectional and syntactical features

foreign to the genius of the Anglo-Saxon, but which had long-
before existed in the Latin or in its Eomance descendants most
favourably situated to exercise upon the speech of England the
strongest influence that one language can exert upon another,
it seems quite unphilosophical to say that these new character-
istics were spontaneously developed, and not borrowed from those

the Anglo-Saxon 'vehicle of the laws' as 'the German language,' which he may
certainly do with as great propriety as others call the Anglo-Saxon, English. If
the language of Alfred was at once German and English, we must admit that it is
not a misnomer to style the dialect of Shakspeare, Platt-Dcutsch.
58 ENGLISH AND NOEMAN-FEENCH Lect. IL

older or more advanced tongues which were then the sole

mediums of literary culture for Englishmen.
The pride of nationality, if it has not prompted the views I
am criticising, has at least promoted their acceptance, and they
seem to me destitute of any more solid foundation. The French-
man might, with little less show of reason, maintain that French is
identical with the ancient Gallic, or with Latin, or with Francic,
according as he inclines to Celtic, or Eomance, or Grothic par-
and might argue that the present language of France
tialities,

derives grammatical character wholly from one of them,

its

without having been at all affected by the inflections or the

syntax of the others. The difference in the extent to which the
tongues of England and of France have been affected by extra-
neous influences is wholly a question of degree, not of kind.
French, indeed, in the opinion of some linguists, is more
emphatically composite than English.* Still its material is

chiefly Latin, though it may be impossible to say how far it is

based upon classical Latin, and how far upon one or more of the
unwritten popular dialects usually spoken of collectively as the
lingua rustica; but there is no reasonable doubt, that both
English and French are, and in all ages have been, as suscep-
tible of modification by external influences, as the opinions, the
characters, the modes of life of those who have spoken them, or
as any other manifestation of the intellectual activity of man.
It is true that the tendencies of all modern languages known
in literature are in one and the same direction, namely, to
simplification of structure, by rejection of inflections; but this
is precisely the tendency that would be impressed upon them by

the common causes, which, in modern times, have operated alike,

though in different degrees of intensity, upon every people whose
history is known to us.f

* In the number of syntactical irregularities, of conventional phrases, of ano-

malous facts which are not so much exceptions to particular rules as departures
from all rule, French exceeds every other European language. Does not this fact
furnish some evidence of the very heterogeneous character of the elements which
compose the present speech of France ?
f See First Series, Lecture XVII., p. 367.
LbCT.IL ANGLO-SAXON LANGUAGE•
59

I cannot assume my audience to be familiar with the lexical

or grammatical peculiarities of the Anglo-Saxon tongue, and
therefore, inasmuch as some acquaintance with the vocabulary
and the syntactical structure of that language is necessary to the
clear understanding of the early history of English, I hope I
shall be pardoned for something, both of general discussion and
of dry detail on these subjects.
The inflectional system of languages is in some respects their
least important feature, for it is, in the present condition of
most tongues known in literature, their most mechanical and
least expressive characteristic. We will, therefore, first inquire
into what is of greater interest : the nature and extent of the
stock of words which compose the raw material of the Anglo-
Saxon vocabulary.
Independently of the evidence afforded by its grammatical
structure, a comparison of its root-forms with those of Continen-
tal and Oriental vocabularies shows, that the Anglo-Saxon be-
longs to what has been called the Indo-Grermanic, but is now
more generally styled the Indo-European family, and of which
the Sanscrit is regarded as at once the oldest and most perfect

type. In its more immediate relations to the modern languages

of Western Europe, the Anglo-Saxon, as I have more than once
remarked, is classed with the Low-Grerman branch of the Teu-
tonic, and has, therefore, a close lexical affinity, not only with
the many dialects known b}T the common appellation of Platt-
Deutsch, but also with those grouped under the denomination of
Frisic, and with the Netherlandish, or, as it is commonly called,
the Dutch or Flemish.
Its vocabulary contains also a considerable number of words
not met with in Continental High or Low Grerman, but which
are found in Celtic dialects. The Celtic contribution to the
vocabulary, or, at least, that portion of it introduced by actual
contact with British Celts after the Conquest, does not appear to
have at all modified the syntax or otherwise affected the struc-
ture, or, so far as we have reason to believe, the articulation of
the language. Hence it must be considered as having never
60 LATIN WORDS IN ANGLO-SAXON Lf.ct. II.

entered into any organic combination with it, or become one of

its elementary constituents ; but as having remained a foreign
uuassimilated accretion. Indeed, there seems to have always
existed, during the whole historical period, a reciprocal repul-
sion between the Celts and all other European families, and
their respective tongues, which have intermixed in a less degree
than is usual between contiguous dialects. This feelino- of an-
tagonism was particularly strong with the Anglo-Saxons and their
immediate descendants, and it finds very frequent expression in
every age of English history.* Upon the whole, though the
speech of continental Germany may, in remote ages, have been
affected to an unknown extent by now extinct Celtic dialects,
there no reason to believe that the development and history
is

of insular Anglo-Saxon and English have .been sensibly modi-

fied by any such influences.
There is a class of words, small indeed, but not unimportant,
which are thought to have been introduced into Britain by the
ancient Eomans, and to have been retained by the Celtic inhabi-
tants —
or possibly by some early colonists, of Gothic blood,
already established in Britain at the time of the Eoman conquest
— and which passed into the Anglo-Saxon dialect, if not before
the conversion of that people to Christianity, at least very soon
after. One of these is cester, or ceaster, now a common
ending of the names of English towns, which is the Latin
castrum, a fortified camp or garrison; another is the syllable
coin, in the name of the town of Lincoln, which is the Latin
colonia, colony. Still another, probably, is cese, or cyse,
cheese, from the Latin case us, for we have reason to believe,
that in this case both the thing and the name were made known
to the Britons by the Romans.f Street, also, may be the Latin

stratum, a paved way, and still more probably may the Saxon
munt, a mountain, have been taken from the Latin mons. It
* See Illustration VIII. at the end of this lecture.
f See a note on the word cheese in the American edition of Wedgwood's Ety-
mological Dictionary.
See also Illustration IX. at the end of this lecture.
Lkci. IT. GREEK WORDS IN ANGLO-SAXON 61

would indeed seem that no human speech could be so poor in

words descriptive of natural scenery as to need ftg borrow a name
for mountain, but there are no mountains on or near the conti-
nental shores of the German Ocean, and hence the inhabitants
of those coastsmay have had no name for them.
But the great majority of Latin words adopted by the Saxons
were, no doubt, derived from Christian missionaries, who at once
established the Latin as the official language of the Church, and,
to some extent, as the medium of general religious, moral, and
intellectual instruction.
The best Anglo-Saxon writers were purists in style, and re-
luctantly admitted Latin words into their vocabulary. Hence
the number of such in the Anglo-Saxon Gospels, the works of
Alfric and of Alfred, and, indeed, in all the native literature of
Eno-land, so long as Anglo-Saxon continued to be a written
language, is very small.* This fact seems to authorise the infer-
ence which other evidence abundantly confirms, that the large
introduction of Latin words into every department of the En-
glish speech, soon after it became recognisable as a new dialect,
was due more to secular Norman-French than to Eomish eccle-
siastical influence, though the form of the words of Latin ety-

mology often leaves it very doubtful from which of the two lan-
guages they were immediately borrowed.
Besides the roots derived from these various sources, there are
in Anglo-Saxon a small number of words, such for example as
circ, circe, ciric, cyric, or cyricea, church, which are sup-
posed by some to have been taken directly from the Greek ; and
there are also a few which etymologists have referred to Sclavonic
roots ; but these, though interesting in ethnological inquiry, are
not sufficiently numerous to have perceptibly affected the cha-
racter of the speech, and they are, therefore, philologically un-
important.
There occur in Anglo-Saxon writers, as might naturally be
expected from the territorial proximity of the Germanic and
* See First Series, Lecture X., p. 199.
62 YOCABULAHY OF ANGLO-SAXON Li ct. IL

Scandinavian tribes, many words belonging to the Old-Northern

tongue*, and a considerable number whose etymology is totally
uncertain, but the vocabulary is in very large proportion
Grermanic, while its composite character is further shown by
the fact that a greater number of Teutonic patois find their
analogons, or representatives, in it than in any other one of the
cognate dialects.
Thus much for the proximate sources of Anglo-Saxon, for
the immediate genealogy of its vocabulary; but what is the
essential character of the words which compose it? The
articulation, the mere sound of the words, is a matter of little

importance in the view I am now taking of the subject, but

were it of greater moment and interest, it would be altogether
impracticable to present a satisfactory view of it. We know
Anglo-Saxon only as it is written, and no ancient grammarian
or lexicographer has recorded for us the figured pronunciation
of its vocabulary. That it varied much in different provinces
and centuries we may readily believe, and very probably many
of the local peculiarities of utterance are faithfully represented
in the present provincial patois of different English shires.
The Norman influence, however, must have produced a very

* See First Series, Lecture XXII., p. 471. I attach much importance to the
remarkable coincidence between the pronunciation of the languages of the Scan-
dinavian countries and of England, as an evidence that the former had upon the
latter an influence powerful enough both to introduce into it some new phonological
elements, and to preserve others probably once common to all the Gothic tongues,
but which have now disappeared from the articulation of the Teutonic dialects. I
ascribe the loss of these sounds in those languages in some measure to the influ-
ence of classical Latin and the Eomance dialects, just as the later suppression of
the th in Swedish and its partial disappearance in Danish may be thought more
immediately due to the influence of German. The lost sounds in German are
wanting in Latin and generally in its modern representatives, and it is a strong
proof of the tenacious hold of Anglo-Saxon upon the English organs of speech,
that it held fast its \> and S and hw in spite both of Romish ecclcsiasticism and
Norman conquest. The Scandinavian element in English orthoepy may fairly be
appealed to as a confirmation of the statement of the chroniclers that the Jutes par-
ticipated largely in the original Gothic immigrations for even if the Jutes wero
;

net of Old-Northern blood, they had, from close proximity to that race, very pro-
bably adopted some of its linguistic peculiarities.
LECT. II. PHONOLOGICAL INQUIRIES 63

great derangement of the native orthoepy, if not a total revolu-

tion in it ; and if on Mulcaster, and Gill, and other
we can rely
English orthoepists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
there have been important changes in the standard pronuncia-
tion of English within the last two or three hundred years.*
modes of articulation are extremely
Inquiries into ancient
and doubtful in result, not only from the uncertainty
difficult,

which must always exist, first as to the extent to which any

particular system of orthography was regularly phonographic,
and secondly, as to the normal force of single letters, the
standard sound of which is only traditionally known and ;

besides this, we are embarrassed by the confusion that attends

all phonological discussion in consequence
' of the different
appreciation of familiar sounds by different persons who hear
and use them. We wrangle about the identity or diversity of
vowels, and even of consonantal sounds in our own vernacular,
which we have heard and employed every day of our lives and ;

pronunciation itself is so fluctuating that we cannot rely upon the

traditional articulation, even of those sounds which seem most
constant, as sufficient evidence of the ancient utterance of them.f
Theresomething surprising in the boldness with which
is

pronounce on the orthoepy of dialects which have

philologists
been dead for a thousand years, or which are known to them
* See First Series, Lecture XXII.
f See, on the uncertainty of the pronunciation of English in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, First Series, Lecture XXII. In that Lecture, p. 484, I
treat oe as representing the long or name sound of o, in Churchyard's system.
Doubtless it does, but upon further examination I am not clear what Churchyard

considered the elementary character of the vowel to be, and I am doubtful whether
his long or name sound was like that of our modern o, or like oo in boot. In his
letter to Sir W. Cecil, (Chips concerning Scotland, reprint, 1817, pp. 66 — 69,) he
writes boclcl, mocst, hocp, hocll (whole), boeth, lenoe {know), onocr, in all which words
we give the vowel the long o sound; but he spells also tock, whocs, trocth (truth),
which we pronounce with the oo sound, and oen (one) and bloed, where modern
English employs the short u sound. Several of Churchyard's contemporaries
write with oo words which we spell and pronounce with long o. And as B. Jonson
ascribes the sound of French on to o in many words where at present short u is
heard, it seems almost impossible to determine what the normal articulation of
this vowel was.
64 ALT GL0-SAX0N ORTHOGRAPHY Lect. IL

only by written notation.* It would be very extravagant to

say that the most learned phonologist has any means of ascer-
taining the true articulation of Anglo-Saxon, or of any form of
old German, any considerable degree, approach to the
that, in
facilities we at present possess of learning any contemporaneous

foreign pronunciation, French for example, by the help of

figured spelling. But what approximation could an Englishman,
who had never heard French spoken, make to the exact utter-
ance of the nasals or of the vowel and diphthong u and eu, or
how near would a Frenchman come to the two sounds of our
th, by the study of written treatises alone ? In these cases,
indeed, we may very often convey the true pronunciation of a
foreign vowel or consonant by comparison with the same, or a
very closely analogous, sound in a language already known to
the student but in our inquiries into extinct phonologies we
;

have no such guide, and our conclusions, though sometimes

made very plausible, are nevertheless extremely uncertain.
The orthography of a very large proportion of indigenous
English words has undergone successive revolutions, which it is

not easy to explain upon any supposition but that of somewhat

corresponding changes in articulation although it must be
;

admitted that, we suppose the individual letters to have had,

if

in general, the same force as in our modern system, the Anglo-

Saxon spelling of many words more truly represents the pro-
nunciation of to-day than our present orthography.
Take, for example, that peculiar English sound, or rather
combination of simple sounds, which we represent by eiv, as in

* Halbertsma speaks positively as to the essential character of Anglo-Saxon vowel

sounds, and yet admits that the very people who used them were so doubtful as
to the true articulation, and so variable in their pronunciation, of them, that they
did not know how them in alphabetic characters.
to express Unable to satisfy
'

himself, he [the writer] often interchanged kindred vowels in the same words, at
one time putting a or co, and afterwards oe and ?/.' And in the next paragraph he
adds : While the writer is groping about him for proper letters, we guess the
'

sound he wished to express by assuming some middle sound between the letters he
employs.' —
Halbertsma in liosworth, Gcr. §• Scand. Larg. p. 37.
f See Illustration X. at the end of this lecture.
Llct. II. ANGLO-SAXON ORTHOGRAPHY Q5

neiv, and, in other cases,by the vowel u, as in tube. Now an

attentive analysis of this sound will show that, without regard
to the semi-consonantal y which is introduced
9
immediately after
the consonant preceding the u, it is composed of two articula-
tions so rapidly pronounced as almost to coalesce into one. So
near as this coalescence of sounds is capable of resolution, the
first is the short sound of i in jpm, the second is the semi-

consonantal w. This class of syllables the Anglo-Saxon, and

to some extent early English writers, spelt with iw instead of
ew or u. Thus hue, complexion, clew or clue, new, brew, in
Anglo-Saxon are spelt respectively, hiw, cliwe, niwe, briw.
So the word rule —
which it is doubtful whether we are to
consider of native or foreign extraction in the Ancren Kiwle, —
a code of early English monastic precepts, is written rhvle* In
these cases the Anglo-Saxon and Old English spelling appears
to be more truly phonographic than the modern.
If we assume that there is a general resemblance between
the Anglo-Saxon and the modern English pronunciation of the
words which are spelt substantially alike in both, we are driven
to the conclusion that the former must have differed very re-
markably in articulation from the contemporaneous Grermanic
dialects ;would be a strong argument in favour of the
and this
position that was widely distinct from any of them. If, on
it

the contrary, we suppose that Anglo-Saxon resembled any

Continental language of its own era in sound, we must conclude
that our English pronunciation of Saxon words has been changed
to a degree very difficult to account for.f It has been suggested
that many important points of difference between Anglo-Saxon
and English pronunciation on the one hand, and German and

* At present, u preceded by r, j, or I, in the same syllable is, according to most

orthoepists,pronounced oo, so that rule rhymes with pool. This pronunciation has
arisen from the difficulty of articulating the semi-consonantal y between the r, J,
or I and the u but the orthography riwle, and other like evidence, show that this
;

was not the ancient orthoepy, nor is it now by any means universal among good
speakers.
f See First Series, Lecture XXII., p. 471.

F
66 PRONUNCIATION OF ENGLISH Lect. II.

Scandinavian on the other, are due to 'the Celtic element in the

former but it is incredible that a language, which has added
;

little and in no appreciable degree modified

to the vocabulary,
the syntax of either, should have produced any sensible effect
upon the pronunciation; and besides, it does not appear that
there is any such resemblance between the articulation of

the Celtic and the neighbouring Saxon and English dialects,

that one can be reasonably supposed to have influenced the
other.
There is, indeed, one way in which English, though hardly
Saxon, orthoepy has probably been modified by comparatively
modern Celtic influences. French philologists maintain that
the pronunciation of the Latin, in becoming the speech of the
French people, must have accommodated itself to the organs
and habitual utterance of a nation which if not strictly Celtic,
had certainly a large infusion of Celtic blood. The modifica-
tions thus introduced constituted a permanent and normal part of
old French articulation, and have consequently, so far as French
influence is perceptible at all in English pronunciation, given a
special character to that influence.
There are several points in which national pronunciation may
be affected by foreign influence. The essential character of
vowels or consonants may be changed, or the temporal quantity
of the former lengthened or shortened ; sounds long established
may be dropped altogether, or new ones introduced ; the accen-
tuation of word,s or classes of words may be deranged, or finally
the predominant periodic accent or emphasis may be shifted.
This last revolution is usually connected with a change of
syntactical arrangement, and a familiar illustration will show
how the Anglo-Saxon periodic accent may have taken, and in
many cases doubtless did take, a new position in passing into
English. In short, direct propositions, if there be no motive
for making another word specially prominent, the verb in most
languages usually takes the emphasis : Thus, English, I saiu
him; Danish, j eg saae ham ; but French, je le vis; Italian
Lkct. II. CHANGES IN EMPHASIS 67

io lo vidi, the periodic accent, in each case, resting on the

verb, in whatever part of the phrase itis placed. As a result
of this and other analogous rules, every language has its
peculiar modulation, depending much upon its syntax, and a
change of verbal arrangement involves a change in that modu-
lation. We see the effects of the habit of emphasizing the
period at a particular point, in the pronunciation of persons
who are learning foreign languages. A Frenchman just begin-
ning to speak English will be sure to say, I saw him, instead of
I saiv him, because, the verb coming last in French, he has
been accustomed to say, je le vis. If we could suppose that
by means of a greater influx of French syntactical forms, the
places of the verb and the object should be reversed in the Eng-
lish period, so that inthe phrase I have cited, him, should pre-
cede saw, we should learn to say, I him saw, not I him saw, and
thus the periodic accent or emphasis would be transferred from
the last but one to the last word in the phrase.
Now, something like the converse of this change actually did
take place in the transition of Anglo-Saxon into English for, ;

though the position of both the nominative and of the oblique

cases in the Anglo-Saxon period was variable, yet the latter, es-
pecially at the end of a period or member of a period, more
frequently preceded than followed the verb, and therefore I '

him saiv, would oftener be heard than 1 saw him.' *

9 6

* As the case, not only of the pronoun, which in English remains throughout
declinable, but of the noun, which in English has no objective or accusative form,
was indicated by the ending in Anglo-Saxon, it was grammatically indifferent
whether either the nominative or the oblique case preceded or followed the verb.
But when, by the loss of the inflection of the noun, the syntax became positional,
the prepositive place was assigned to the nominative, the postpositive to the
objective. By this arrangement we have lost an elocutional advantage which the
Anglo-Saxon possessed. In reading or speaking, the voice is sustained until the
emphatic word of the proposition, or member, is pronounced, after which it sinks
and becomes comparatively inaudible. The verb is generally an emphatic, if not
the most emphatic word in the sentence and hence if it be reserved to end the
;

period, the whole proposition will be more intelligibly pronounced, and therefore
strike the listener more forcibly, than if the verb occur at an earlier point. The
best Anglo-Saxon writers show much dexterity in availing themselves of the
liberty of arrangement which the structure of their language allowed.

F 2
 ;

68 DIFFERENCES IN PRONUNCIATION Lect. II.

In the whole subject of the difference in the articulation

fact,

of cognate dialects spoken by nations exposed to similar, if not

identical influences, has been hitherto not sufficiently investi-
gated and the principles of phonology, the radical analysis of
;

articulate sounds, must be better understood than they now are

before any very satisfactory explanations of the causes, or even
any very accurate statement of the facts, can be arrived at.
We find between the Swedish and Danish, for example, closely
allied as they are in vocabulary and structure, not merely dis-
crepancies in the pronunciation of particular words, for which
an explanation might sometimes be suggested, but radical and
wide-reaching differences of articulation, which no known facts
connected with the history of either throw much light upon,
unless we adopt the theory of a greater ancient diversity between
those dialects than exists in their present condition. Thus the
Swedes pronounce the consonants in general, as well as the
vowels, with a distinctness of resonance which justifies the boast
of Tegner, that the ring of Swedish is as clear as that of metal *
while the Danes confound and half suppress the consonants, and
split up the well-discriminated vowels of the Old-Northern into
a multitude of almost imperceptible shades of less energetic and
expressive breathings.
In like manner, the Portuguese and Castilian, which have
grown up under not widely dissimilar circumstances, are cha-
racterised*, the former by an abundance of nasals, and by the sh

and zh (ch and j), which the Spanish wants altogether, the —
latter by gutturals and lisping sounds, which are unknown to
the 'Portuguese.
The recovery of the true pronunciation of Anglo-Saxon would
be important, because it would facilitate etymological research

by the comparison of its radicals with those of languages em-

ploying other orthographical systems; and would be conve-
it

nient for the purposes of academical instruction and oral quota-

tion : but the present state of phonology, which, like other
* Ecu, som malmens, din klang.
Leo. II. PRONUNCIATION OF ANGLO-SAXON G9

branches of linguistic knowledge, is hurrying to conclusions

before the necessary facts are accumulated, does not authorise
us to expect that we shall soon attain to a very precise know-
ledge of its articulation, or be able to trace the steps by which
its accents have been changed into those of modern English.
Inasmuch as the Anglo-Saxons learned the art of writing from
Koman missionaries, the presumption is strong that their alpha-
betic notation corresponded nearly with the contemporaneous
orthography of Kome, and hence that the departures of English
pronunciation from the sounds indicated by the Latin vowels
and consonants in Continental usage are comparatively recent
innovations in the orthoepy of the Anglican tongue.*

* Although the runic characters were employed by some of the Germanic as

well as Scandinavian tribes before their conversion to Christianity, there is no

evidence that they were known to the Anglo-Saxons until a much later period.
The only Anglo-Saxon character which resembles the corresponding runic letter is
and we know not when either this character or the 5 were introduced into that
£>,

alphabet. It has been said that the Scandinavians borrowed the S from the
Anglo-Saxons. The earlier Christianisation of this latter people, and their known
missionary efforts, render this probable enough but the Old-Northern races dis-
;

tinguished these two letters much more accurately than their insular neighbours,
while the Anglo-Saxons employed them with a confusion, which seems to indi-
cate more indistinct notions of their value than we should expect if either of
them was of their own invention. Old-Northern literature shows no trace of
Anglo-Saxon influence, and the instances of the use of grammatical forms resem-
bling the Anglo-Saxon in early Scandinavian writings, or rather inscriptions, are
too few and too uncertain to authorise the inference that they were the fruits of
such influence.
There is little reason to believe that the Scandinavians themselves ever employed
the runes for what can properly be called literary purposes. They wrote incanta-
tions, carved calendars and brief inscriptions, in these letters, but it remains to be
proved that either the mystic lays or the prose sagas of that people were ever
written down at all before Christian missionaries introduced into Scandinavia a
new religion. and a new alphabet.
The fact that the Old-Northern bards were well understood at the courts of
the Anglo-Saxon kings, and other similar evidence, tend to show that, though
the Old-Northern and Saxon were not regarded as the same speech, yet they must
have much resembled each other in articulation. The Icelandic vowel-sounds, for
the most part, coincide with the Latin —
though the accented vowels of the Old-
Northern appear to have had a diphthongal pronunciation unknown to any of the
alphabets of Southern Europe —
and here we have a further argument in support
of the general resemblance between the Anglo-Saxon and the Continental vowels.
Eask supposes the orthographic accents to have lengthened the vowel in Anglo-
lO PRONUNCIATION OF ANGLO-SAXON Lect. II.

Saxon, and, in some cases, to hare changed its quality, but not to have made it
diphthongal and I believe it is generally considered simply as a sign of prosodical
;

length, not of stress of voice. But Craik — whose History of English Literature
and of the English Language did not become known to me until after the text of
this volume was prepared for the press — argues in a note on p. 297, vol. i. of that
work, that, in some cases at least, the unaccented vowel had the name or long
sound, while the accented vowel was pronounced short. Bosworth, Origin of Ger.
and Scand. Lang., p. 37, speaks of the diphthongal nature of the whole system of
'

Anglo-Saxon vowels.' Indeed, there are very fair arguments to prove that the
Anglo-Saxon accents indicated prosodical length and that they did not, that the
vowels were diphthongal and that they were not and we may as well confess
;

what we cannot conceal, namely, that we know next to nothing at all on the
subject.
There are many cases where the diphthongal character of an English vowel is
the result of a coalescence between two vowels which, in Anglo-Saxon and early
English, belonged to different syllables. In the word own, the w stands for the
Anglo-Saxon j, which in modern English is usually represented by, and pro-
nounced as, either y or g, though in other cases it has been succeeded by w, or by
gh, with its strange variety of articulation. The w, then, is not an element in the
diphthongal sound of the o, in this particular word, and o has precisely the same
sound in very many syllables where it is not followed by w or by a vowel. The
Anglo-Saxon word for own, adj., was ajen, sometimes spelled a; an, which was a
dissyllable. In the Ormulum it is spelled ajhenn, in old English awcn, awun, owen,
ownn, and was, as prosody proves, pronounced in two syllables. The latter forms
very easily pass into own, or on, with the diphthongal o, and the origin of the
diphthongal sound in very many English long vowels may be traced to a similar
crasis.
I may here observe, what should have been stated before, that, in printing Anglo-
Saxon, I omit the accents, because they are wanting in very many of the best
MSS. and printed editions, because the uncertainty of their value would only
embarrass readers whom I suppose not to be masters of the language, and be-
cause I should, by employing them, increase the chances of errors of the press in
printing a volume the proofs of which I shall not have an opportunity to
correct.
 NOTES AND ILLUSTEATIONS.

I. (p. 43.)

OATnS OF LOUIS OP GERMANY, AND OF CERTAIN FRENCH LORDS SUB-

JECTS OF CHARLES THE EOLD, SWORN AT STRASBURG, A.D. 842.

The text of these oaths, as given by different authorities, varies considerably.

I print from Burguy, Grammaire de la Langue d'Oil, 1853, vol. i. p. 19.

A.
OATH OF LOUIS OF GERMANY.
Pro Deo amur et pro christian poblo et nostro commun salvament,
d'ist di in avant, in quant Deus savir et podir me dunat, si salvarai eo
cist meon fradre Karlo et in ajudha et in cadnna cosa, si cum om per
dreit son fradra salvar dift, in o quid il mi altresi fazet, etab Ludher
nul plaid nunquam prindrai, qui, meon vol, cist meon fradre Karle in
damno sit.

B.
OATH OF THE FRENCH LORDS.
Si Lodhuwigs sagrament, que son fradre Karlo jurat, conservat, et
Karlus meos sendra de suo part non lo stanit, si io returnar non Tint
pois, ne io ne neuls, cui.eo returnar hit pois, in nulla ajudha contra
Lodhuwig nun li iuer.

Perhaps the most important point be noticed in these monuments

to
is the use of the futures salvarai andprindrai in the oath of Louis.
There is much evidence to prove that the modern Romance future is a
coalescent formation (see First Series, Lecture XV., p. 336) but we ;

have here very nearly the present French future in this oldest specimen
of the language. It is, however, certainly a new inflection, whatever
may be its origin; for the Latin salvabo could never have become
salvarai. The orthographical combination dh in ajudha in both
oaths is remarkable, as probably indicating that the d was aspirated or
pronoimced <5, in that word and in other similar combinations.
 :

72 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS LeCT. II.

II. (p. 47.)

USE OF PARTICIPLES IN GOTHIC LANGUAGES.

The participle absolute often occurs in the Anglo-Saxon gospels.

Thus, in Matthew i. 20 Him ]?a soSlice fas ping pencendum,
:

Vulgate, Ha? c autem eo cogitante. In the Lindisfarne gospels we

have the double form, Sas soMice $e he Sencende + Sohte,
which shows that the translator hesitated between the Latin construc-
tion, (5as soSlice he Sencende, and the more idiomatic 8as soSlice
8e he Sohte. The Rush worth text gives, Sendi he fa f polite,
and, ]?is sodlice he ]> oh te, not venturing upon the participial con-
struction at all. The older Wyclifhte text has Sothely hym thenkynge
:

these thingus the later, But while he thougte thes thingis.

; In this
particular case, the more modern translations all employ the verb but, ;

nevertheless, the absolute participial construction has become established

in English syntax and nobody scruples to write The weather becoming
; :

fine, we started on our journey The season proving severe, and the
;

roads being impracticable, the troops went into winter-quarters though ;

it must be admitted that this form is less freely used in the colloquial

dialect.
The present or active participle in older Anglo-Saxon is very gener-
ally, and, so far as I have observed, uniformly, used either with an
auxiliary verb in such constructions as ivas pursuing, or as an adjective
or descriptive epithet, or as a noun. In this latter case, it is often a
compound of a noun, and a participle which originally may have
governed the noun and its employment as a technical participle in a
;

dependent or an independent phrase (which is so very common in Latin

and Greek), is at least exceedingly rare, if, indeed, it occurs at all, in
Beowulf or in Casdmon. In the Anglo-Saxon gospels, and in later
writers, this construction is very frequent, and we in English still say
Seeing my way clear, I went on with my project; Having large means
at his disposal, he gave liberally.
I see no reasonable ground for doubting that these constructions
were borrowed from the Latin and incorporated into the Anglo-Saxon
as a new syntactical element and if so, they are cases of a mixture of
;

grammars.
I am aware that the active participle is employed by Ulfilas in ac-
cordance with the Latin and Greek usage, and that it is often found in
interlinear, word-for-word, Anglo-Saxon translations from the Latin.
But the very closeness with which the translation of Ulfilas corre-
sponds to the grammatical construction of his original is a suspicious
LfiCT. II. NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS ('6

circumstance and whatever changes the translator or his copyists may-

;

have made in the original arrangement of the words, I think no person,

who has practised the art of translation enough to be a competent judge
on the subject, can doubt that Ulfilas rendered the Greek, first, word by
word, and not sentence by sentence. These participial constructions
are so adverse to the general syntax of all the Gothic tongues, and they
so completely failed to secure adoption in those which had created a
literature before translations of the Scriptures were attempted in them,
that I think we are justified in believing that, in the employment of
these constructions, Ulfilas was following the idiom of the Greek, and
not of his own language.
I admit that the Anglo-Saxon compound participial nouns, in which
the noun-element may have been originally an accusative governed by
the participle, give some countenance to the supposition that, in an
earlier stage of the language, the active participle, was used as a techni-
cal verbal form but that construction had certainly become nearly, if
;

not altogether, obsolete before the translation of the gospels, if indeed

it ever existed. These compounds are as easily explicable upon the
theory that the participial element was used as a noun, as upon that of
their having a regimen and I think that this is their true etymological
;

history. I am too well aware of the difficulty of proving a negative to

affirm that no case of true participial construction exists in primitive
Anglo-Saxon, but I know of none where the active participle is not
used as a noun, as an adjective, or as a descriptive adverb. This last
emj)loyment of this part of speech occurs in older, and sometimes in
modern Danish; as, han kom rid end es, he came ridingZy; hun
ko miner kjorendes, she comes driving///. In German, curiously
enough, the passive participle is employed in such cases; as er kain
geritten, sie kommt gefahren. It is true that, in the admirable
Danish Bible of 1550, as well as in Christian Pedersen's earlier New
Testament, the active participle used as an adjective (and it is not em-
ployed otherwise than adjectively or adverbially), has the same ending;
but at present, when a descriptive, it ends in e, and the genitival s is
added only in adverbial constructions.
The opinion of even J. Grimm respecting the Frisic language, and
the facts on which those opinions are founded, may be cited in proof of
the possibility of linguistic amalgamation. That great grammarian
observes, Gesch. der D. S., 680 (472) :
'
Die friesische sprache halt
eine mitte zwischen angelsachsischer und altncrdischer,' and p. 668
(464) : In denkmalern aus der mhd. und mnl. zeit erscheint sie noch
'

mit formen, die sich den altsachsischen und althochdeutschen an die

74 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS Lect. II.

seite stellendie abgeschiedenheit des volks hat, beinahe wie auf Island,
;

den alten sprachstand geliegt, und man ist zu dem schlusz bereclitigt,
dasz von dem mittelalter riickwarts bis zum beginn des neunten jh.,
wo im lateinisclien volksrecht einzelne friesische worter begegnen, und
von da bis zur zeit der Romer, in der friesischen sprache verhaltnis-
maszig weniger veranclerungen eingetreten sein werden, als in jeder
andern deutschen. audi in den jetzigen friesischen dialecten dauert noch
viel alterthiimliches, wiewol auf den westfriesischen die niederlandische,
auf den ostfriesischen die nieder-und hochdeutsche, auf den nordfrie-
sischen die niederdeutsche und danische sprache starken einflusz geiibt
haben.' Now neighbouring languages on the
this influence of the
Frisic is not confined to the vocabulary, but extends to grammatical
forms and constructions, and, beginning on either the Netherlandish, the
Low-German, or the High-German frontier of the Frisians, you may
pass, sometimes by almost imperceptible gradations, but, in the case of
districts separated by physical barriers, often by more abrupt transitions',
from any of the first-mentioned languages to a Frisian dialect containing
1
viel alterthiimliches,' and thence, by a like succession of steps, through
the Germanised Danish of southern Jutland, to the less mixed Scandi-
navian of the Baltic islands.

III. (p. 47.)

FOREIGN CONSTRUCTIONS IN ENGLISH.

Some of these borrowed forms in English have been supposed to be

of Scandinavian rather than of Norman-French extraction. I think
it more probable that they are derived from the latter source, because
they did not make their appearance in England until after the Norman
Conquest. So mixed
far as the general question of the possibility of
grammar is concerned, it is of little consequence whether we ascribe
them to Scandinavian or to Romance influence, so long as the fact that
they are foreign constructions is admitted.
In Icelandic, and in Swedish and Danish, the comparative of adjec-
tives may, under certain circumstances, be formed by the equivalent of
more, but the superlative is always an inflection, and not, as in the
Romance languages, formed by the comparative adverb with the
article.
The by
Icelandic did not express the possessive or genitive relation
a preposition. The Old-Northern af always took the dative, and is
translated in Latin by ab, de, or ex. The modern Scandinavian
Lect. II. NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 75

dialects use, in many cases, a preposition as the sign of the possessive

or genitive, and they present some curious coincidences with English
in the use of the particle. Neither the Danish nor the English emplo}'s
the preposition af, of, as a sign of the genitive, with all nouns indis-
criminately. In English, we may say a man of intelligence, of
:
'

learning, of capacity,' but not, *

a field of fertility.' In the latter case
we can use the particle only with the adjective, as a field of great :
'

fertility.' So, asMolbech observes, in Danish, en Mand af Opdra- '

gelse, af Loerdom, af Dygtighed,' not, 'en Ager af Frugt-

barhed,' though we may say en Ager af stor Frugtbarhed.'
:
'

In both languages, where the preposition is used directly with the

noun, a moderate degree of the quality ascribed is very often expressed,
and hence we may suppose that an adjective of limitation is understood.
The Old-Northern, as well as its modern representatives, use a
particle before the infinitive much and sometimes two,
as in English,
til at with an being found in Icelandic, as well as til at and
infinitive
for at in Danish. This corresponds with the vulgar English for to,
as,for to go. It is said that the infinitive with set occurs in the Nor-
thumbrian gospels and rituals. I am not disposed to dispute the fact,
though I have not been able to find an example of this construction in
the printed texts. But however this may be, this form is not the
origin of the English infinitive with to, which can clearly be traced back
to the Anglo-Saxon gerundial. It should be noticed that to wyrce,
which occurs in the Cambridge edition of the Lindisfarne text of St.
Matthew xii. 2, as an alternative for to doanne, is probably either a
misprint, or an error of the scribe, for to wyrcenne, arising from the
fact that the next word is insunnadagum (printed in one), the first
syllable of which, in, so closely resembles ne in manuscript as to have
led to the omission of the latter by the copyist.
It is a not improbable suggestion, that some of the Eomance con-
structions, to which
have referred the corresponding English
I
forms, are themselves of Gothic origin, for all Europe was exposed to
Gothic influences at the period of the formation of the Eomance
languages.
7G NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS Lect. II.

IV. (p. 52) and illustration V. (p. 80.)

COMPARISON OF OLD GERMAN DIALECTS.

THE LORD S PRATER IN DIFFERENT GERMANIC DIALECTS.

1.

LOW GERMAN.
A.
Mceso-G-othic of TJlfilas. Fourth Century. From Stamm's edition, 1858, p. C.

Atta unsar, }m in himinam, veihnai namo ]>em. Qimai ]>iudinassus

j?eins. Vair]?ai vilja ])eins, sve in liimina jali ana airpai. Hlaif unsarana
])ana sinteinan gif uns himma daga. Jah aflet uns, atei skulans |

sijaima, svasve jah veis afletam paim skulam unsaraim. Jah ni

briggais uns in frastubnjai, ak lausei uns af pamma ubilin unte peina ;

ist ]>iudangardi jah mahts jah villous in aivins. Amen.

B.
Old-Saxon of the Heliand. Ninth century. Alliterative and rhythmical para-
phrase. From Schmeller's text, 1830, p. 48.

Fadar if ufa* firiho barno. the if an them hohon*

himilarikea. Geuuihid fi thin namo*
uuordo gehuuilico. cuina thin craftag riki.

Uuerda thin uuilleo* obar thefa uuerold.

al fo fama an erdo. fo thar uppa iff an them hohon*
himilrikea. Gef uf dago gehuuilikei rad*
drohtin the godo. thina helaga helpa.
Endi alat uf hebenes uuard* managoro mensculdio.
al fouue odrum mannum doan. Ne lat ul farledean*
letha uuihti. So ford an iro uuilleon*
So uui uuirdige find. Ac help uf uuidar allnn*
ubilon dadiun.

C.

Anglo-Saxon alliterative and rhythmical paraphrase. Grein's Text, ii. 285.

Age of MS. not stated.

[Hfdig] fader, ])u ]>e on heofonum eardast

geve[or6ad] vuldres dreame Sy pinum veorcum halgad
!

noma ni55a bearnum ]m eart nergend vera.

!
Lect. II. NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 77

Cyme fin rice vide and |>in rcedfast villa

araered under rodores hrofe, eac pon on rumre foldan !

Syle us to dage domfastne bked,

hlaf iiseme, helpend vera,
pone singalan, soSfast meotod !

Ne ket usic costunga cnyssan to svide,

ac ]>u us freadom gief, folca valdend,
from yfla gehvam a to vidan feore !

D.
Anglo-Saxon from the New Testament, Matthew vi. 9 — 13. Text of the
University Edition, Cambridge, 1858. Age of MS. not stated.

Feeder dre jra J?e nama gehalgod To-becume

eart on heofenum, Si pin .

pin rice . GewurSe swa swa on heofonum

J?in willa on eorSan, Urne .

gedaeghwamlican hlaf syle us to da3g And forgyf us lire gyltas swa .

swa we forgyfao" drum gyltendum. And no gelsed J>u us on costnunge,

ac alys us of yfele : Soolice.

E.
Platt-Deutsch or Sassesch. Sixteenth century. From Bugenhagen's version of
Luther's High-German translation, text of 1541. Magdeburg, 15-15.
Vnse Vader in dem Hemmel. Dyn Name werde gehilliget. Dyn
Eike kame. Dyn "Wille geschee, vp Erden alse im Hemmel. Vnse
dachlike Brod giff vns hiiden. Vnd vorgiff vns vnse Schlilde, alse
vy vnsen Schiildeners vorgeuen. Vnd vore vns nicht in Vorsbkinge,
sunder vorlb'se vns van dem ouel , wente dyne ys dat Ryke , vii de
Krafft , vn de Herlicheit in Ewicheit , Amen.

HIGH GERMAN.

A.
From Otfrid's Krist, Ninth century. Ehymed paraphrase. Graff's Text, 1831,
p. 163.

Fater unfer guato . bift driihtin thu gimiiato .

in himilon io holier . uuih ii namo thiner .

Biqueme uns thinag riclii . thaz lioha himilricki .

thara uuir zua io gingen . ioh emmizigen thingen .

Si uuillo thin hiar nidare . fof er ift ufan himile .

in erdu hilf uns hiare . fo thu engilon duift nu thare .

 ;; .

78 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS IiECT, IL

Thia dagalichun zuhti gib hiutu uns mit giniihti

.

ioh folicn ouh theift mera thfnes felbes lera .

.

Sciild bilaz uns alien fo uuir ouh duan uuollen

. .

fiinta thia uuir thenken ioli emmizigen uuirken

. .

Ni firlaze unfih tliin uuara in thes uuidaruuerten fara=

.

thaz uuir ni miffigangen . tliar ana ni gifallen .

Lofi unfih. io thanana . thaz uuir fin thine thegana.

B.
Luther's translation, from Stier and Thiele, 1854, after the edition of 1544,
p. 21.

Unser Vater in dem Himmel, dein Name werde geheiliget, dein

Reich komme, dein Wille geschehe auf Erden wie im Himmel, unser
taglich Brot gib uns heute, und vergib uns unsere Schulden wie wir
unsern Schuldigern vergeben und flihre uns nicht in Versuchung,
soudern erlose uns von dem Uebel denn dein ist das Reich und die
:

Kraft und die Herrlichkeit, in Ewigkeit, Amen !

I here insert several Semi- Saxon and old English versions of the
Lord's Prayer, not for their bearing on the question of the divergence
of dialects, but because it is convenient to have all the translations of
the Paternoster together, for the purpose of tracing the changes in
English.

From a MS. of the early part of the thirteenth century. Reliquiae An-
tiquse, I. 235.
Fader ure Satt art in hevene blisse,
Sin hege name itt wurSe bliscedd,
Cumen itt mote Si kingdom,
din hali wil it be al don,
In hevene and in ero'e all so,
So itt sail ben ful wel ic tro
Gif us alle one Sis dai
Ure bred of iche dai
And forgive us ure shine
Als we don ure wiSerwinnes
Leet us noct in fondinge falle,
Ooc fro ivel Su sild us alle. Amen.

From a MS. of the thirteenth century, Reliquiae Antiquse, i. 2S2.

Fader oure ]>at art in heve, i-halgeed bee J)i nome, i-cume ])i
kinereiche, y-worthe \>i wylle also is in hevene so be on erthe, oure
Lect. II NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 79

& forgif us our gultes, also Ave forgifet

ich-dayes-bred gif us to-day,
oure gultare, & ne led ows nowtli into fonclingge, auth ales ows of
harme. So be hit.

From a MS. of the thirteenth century, Reliquiae Antiquse, i„ 57.

Ure fader in hevene riche,

pi name be haliid ever i-liche,
pu bringe us to ]>i michil blisce,
pi wille to wirche pu us wisse,
Als hit is in hevene i do
Ever in eorpe ben it al so,

pat holi bred pat lestep ay

pu send hit ous |us ilke day,
Forgive ous alle pat we havip don,
Als we forgivet uch opir man,
Ne lete us falle in no fondinge,
Ak scilde us fro pe foule pinge.

From Wycliffe's New Testament. Oxford, 1850. Matthew vi. 9—13.

Oure fadir that art in heuenes, halwid be thi name ; thi kyngdom
cumme be thi wille don as in heuen and in erthe
to ; jif to vs this ;

day ouer breed oure other substaunce and forgeue to vs oure dettis
;

as we forgeue to oure dettours and leede vs nat in to temptacioun,

;

but delyuere vs fro yuel. Amen.

From Purvey's recension, same edition.

Oure halewid be thi name ; thi kingdoom

fadir that art in heuenes,
come to be thi wille don in erthe as in heuene
; jyue to vs this dai ;

oure breed ouer othir substaunce and forjyue to vs oure dettis as we

;

forjyuen to oure dettouris and lede vs not in to temptacioun, but

;

delyuere vs fro yuel. Amen.

From Tyndale's Testament. 1526. Reprint. Boston, 1837.

Ooure lather which art in heven, halowed be thy name. Let thy
kingdom come. Thy wyll be fulfilled, as well in erth, as hitys in heven.
Geve vs this daye our day ly breacle. And forgeve vs oure treaspases
euen as we forgeve them which treaspas vs. Leede vs not into tempta-
tion, but delyvre vs from yvell. Amen.
In comparing the versions of the Heliand and of Otfrid with each
other and with the other specimens, allowance must be made for
80 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS Lect. II.

variations due to their poetical forms, for the paraphrastical character

of both, and perhaps for differences of orthographical system but ;

after all deductions, there still remain parallel words and forms enough
to serve as a reasonably satisfactory test of the logical and grammatical
resemblance and diversities between the Low-German dialect of the
former and the High-German of the latter, as also between the poetical
Old-Saxon of the Heliand, the Anglo-Saxon of the text from. Grein,
and the prose of the Anglo-Saxon Testament.
Between the Platt-Deutsch or modern Saxon of Bugenhagen and the
High-German of Luther the parallelism is perfect, the one being a
translation from the other, and of course the correspondence is almost
equally close between the Mocso-Gothic of Ulfilas, the Anglo-Saxon
Testament, and the Platt-Deutsch of Bugenhagen, all of which belong
to the Low- German branch of the Teutonic.
In comparing these monuments of the Teutonic language in different
dialects and from different chronological periods, I do not find proof
that at remote historical periods the dialects of the German speech
were less plainly distinguished than in later eras.' On the contrary, it
'

appears to me that the great divisions of the language were much less
widely separated in the sixteenth century than in the ninth. So far as
the evidence deducible from Ulfilas goes, the distance must have been
greater still in the fourth century, and consequently the dialects appear
to approximate as they advance, diverge as they ascend.
It is true that, in order to arrive at conclusive results, much more
extended comparisons must be made, but I think that an examination
of Hildibrand and Hadubrand, Muspilli, Notker, the numerous philo-
logical monuments in Haupt's Zeitschrift, and Graff's Diutiska,
especially the ancient vocabularies and interlinear glosses of the Middle
Ages, — for example, the glossary in Graff", I. 128, et. seq., from two

MSS. of the eighth century, — cannot fail to strengthen the inference I

draw from the different texts of the Lord's Prayer.

V. (pp. 41, 52.)

OLD GERMAN DIALECTS.

This, I am aware, is contrary to the opinion of J. Grimm, who

says, Gesch. der D. S. 834 :
" Zur zeit, wo deutsche sprache in der
gcschichtc auftritt .... ihre eignen dialecte scheinen unbedeutender
und nnentschiedener als in der folge." In a certain sense, the German
language makes its appearance in history in the classic ages of Greek
and Roman literature, that is, the language is often spoken of, and a
LECT. II. NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 81

few proper and common nouns belonging to it are recorded by the

•writers of those periods. But these few remains give us no notion
whatever of the inflexional or syntactical system of the language, or of
the mutual relations of its dialects, and consequently no means of
comparing or estimating the discrepancies of those dialects. On the
former point Ulfilas furnishes us our earliest information, and, of course,
our first knowledge of any Germanic speech dates from the fourth
century. We have no contemporaneous or nearly contemporaneous
remains of any cognate dialect, except a few single words from which
no safe conclusions can be drawn, and hence we know nothing of the
resemblances or diversities between the different branches of the
Teutonic speech at that period. The assertion, then, that the German
dialects, at our first historical acquaintance with that language, c appear
to have been less broadly distinguished than afterwards,' is a pure
conjecture sustained by no known fact. For comparisons of the early
and modern Germanic speeches, see illustration IV. at end of this lecture.

VI. (p. 52.)

SCANDINAVIAN LANGUAGES-

There is strong evidence to prove an identity of speech m

all the
Scandinavian countries at the commencement of their literature, or
rather to show that, in spite of local differences of dialect, the language
was regarded as one by those who used it. The testimony on this
subject will be found in the preface to Egilsson's Lexicon Poeticum
Antiquae Linguae Septentrionalis, where all the passages in Old-Northern
literature which bear on the question are collected. But, on the other
hand, a comparison of the diction of the manuscripts establishes rather
a diversity than a unity of language at the earliest period to which thev
reach. We
have no manuscripts in any of the Scandinavian dialects
older than the twelfth, in all probability none older than the thirteenth
century, though very many of the works found in these manuscripts
are of much earlier date, and, so far as can be judged by internal
evidence, more or less faithfully conformed to a more- primitive ortho-
graphy and grammar. In original manuscripts, or contemporaneous
copies, of works composed in Denmark and Sweden as early as the
oldest existing codex of any Icelandic author, there occur numerous
words, forms, and constructions which are more closely allied to those of
the modern dialects of those countries than to the vocabulary and
grammar of the Old-Northern. It has been hence argued, that the
G
 82 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS Lsof. II.

Danish and Swedish are descended, not from the Old-Northern of the
Icelandic writers, but from cognate parallel dialects of equal antiquity.
The evidence from the runic inscriptions found in the Northern King-
—
doms many of which are believed, and some almost certainly known
to be much more ancient than any extant manuscript in any Scandina-
vian dialect —although their orthography is very variable and uncertain,
points to the same conclusion. The strictly common origin, then, of
the Icelandic, Swedish, and Danish, though very generally admitted, is
not absolutely proved, and my own language on this subject in my First
Series, Lecture XVII., p. 368 and elsewhere, must be taken with some
qualification. But the error, if it be an error, was not material to my
argument in the passages referred to, for the essential fact still subsists,
namely, that while the Icelandic, protected from foreign influences by
the almost complete social and literary, as well as physical isolation of
the people which uses it, has undergone little change, the Danish and
Swedish, on the contrary, have departed from their earlier forms to an
extent, and in directions, proportionate to, and determined by, the
amount and character of the alien influences to which they have been
respectively exposed. The Swedish is still essentially a Scandinavian
tongue, in both words and forms, but, though the Danes have preserved
the principal characteristics of their ancient grammar, their vocabulary
is lamentably denationalized.

See Molbech's sketch of the history of the Danish language, in the

last edition of his Danish Dictionary, 1859.

VII. (p. 54.)

DIVERGENCE OF DIALECTS.

I beg not to be misunderstood as covertly arguing, in any of the

foregoing remarks, against the received opinion of a common origin of
the whole human race. I am not a convert to the opposite theory, nor
do be competent to weigh the purely physical evidence on
I profess to
this question but the force of truth is always weakened when it is
;

sustained by unsound arguments, and I do not hesitate to say that in

my judgment, the evidence derivable from actual, as distinguished from
conjectural linguistic history, does not support the doctrine of the unity
and common descent of the human species.
The opinion I have advanced of the divergence of languages as we
follow them up to their earliest recorded forms, and their convergence
as they descend, is not irreconcilable with the well-established fact of
Lect. il notes and illustrations 83

the tendency of every human speech to self-division, and the progres-

sive development of dialects under certain circumstances. Whenever
a homogeneous people with a common tongue is divided into separate
and unconnected tribes, by emigration, by local changes in religious or
political institutions, or by any of the numerous causes which break up
large nations into smaller fragments, the speeches of the different mem-
bers of the race become distinct, not by virtue of laws of repulsion
and divergence inherent in the language itself, but just in proportion to
the character and energy of the new circumstances under which the
separate divisions of the family are placed, and the degree in which the
communication between them is interrupted.
Now, admitting that all men are descended from a single pair, these
divisions of nation and of tongue must have been very common at that
primitive period when agriculture and art did not yet admit of density of
population, and when for the children of every swarming hive,
* The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest,'

and hence the primitive language or languages were soon split up into a
multitude of patois, more or less unlike to each other and to their com-
mon source. These are events of which human annals have preserved
only scanty and imperfect records; but the dialectic changes, produced by
emigration and colonisation within the historical period, are sufficiently
well known to enable us to conceive of the extent of the linguistic revo-
lutions which must have occurred in remoter eras. But from the most
ancient date to which authentic profane records extend, the general ten-
dency of human political society has been towards increased communi-
cation, intermixture, confusion, and amalgamation of races and tongues.
Hence, during this period —
the only period through which we can
trace the history of language with any approach to certainty all influ- —
ences, with the exception of those of emigration and analogous causes of
little comparative importance, have co-operated to produce a constantly

increasing convergence of the more widely diffused dialects, and an

extirpation of the less important and more narrowly limited patois.
While then it is theoretically not improbable that the age of general
approximation was preceded by a long period of general divergence of
tongues, it must be remembered that this conclusion is mere matter of
inference from analogy, and by no means an established fact for all that ;

history teaches us is, that the further we go back the wider was the
diversity of speech among men. Tout ce que nous savons des langues
'

aux epoques les plus voisines de leur origine,' says Fauriel, nous les '

G 2
84 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS Lect. II.

montre divisees en dialectes et sous-dialectes peu etendus. II faut, pour

lcs amener a 1'imite, pour les y fondre, d'immenses evenements et un
temps tres-long relativement a la vie, je ne dis pas des individus et des
families, mais des peuples,' &c. Fauriel Dante et la Langue Itaiienne,
1854, ii. 303.
The proposition, that languages descended from the same stock are
incapable of grammatical mixture, seems to me to involve a contradic-
tion, and which I am
at last to lead inevitably to the conclusion against
protesting. assumes that speeches derived from a common original,
It
and developed from it by organic law, independently of external lin-
guistic influences, become, by the action of this common law of their
being, so diverse from each other in structure and specific nature, that
although they still retain the essential characteristics of their common
parent, no alliance or coalescence between them is possible. This is at
variance with all that organic physiology has taught us, and if the
alleged repugnance and irreconcilability be admitted, we must resort
to the hypothesis of an independent creation for every known language.
I am not prepared to adopt this hypothesis, but, at the same time, I
admit that in the phenomena of language considered by themselves,
and without reference to theological doctrines or ethnological theories,
I do not find any serious objection to it and if I believed in the impos-
;

sibility of grammatical mixture, permanent linguistic hybridism, I

'

should find myself compelled to espouse it.

None but the followers of the school of which Darwin is now the most
conspicuous teacher infer, from similarity of structure, a community of
origin between different organic species of the same genus in a particu-
lar country, or between representative species in different countries.
By most botanists, oaks, between which no constant difference can be
pointed out except in the shape of the cup of the acorn, are maintained
to be specifically distinct, and not descended from a common stock.
"Why, then, is it not equally probable that the community of nature in
man has produced any number of languages closely resembling each
other, but not genealogically related ? In comparing very many species
of plants and animals, the points of coincidence are vastly more numerous
and important than those of difference, but while a slight divergence in
normal type is held to establish a specific diversity in the tree or the
quadruped, an enormous discrepancy in vocabulary and syntax is not
considered as disproving community of origin in languages. If language
be considered as a gift from an external source —
a machine with a
certain limited range of movements —it is difficult to get rid of the

theory of hereditary or rather traditional descent but if we regard it

;
Lect. II. NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 85

as an organic product, a natural result of the constitution and condition

of man, and not as an assemblage of arbitrary or conventional symbols,
it follows that lexical or grammatical resemblances in languages no
more prove their original identity than a certain coincidence in struc-
ture and function of organ establishes a consanguinity between all the
species of the genus felis in quadrupeds, or the descent of all the plants
embraced under the generic term ficus from a single germ.

VIII. (p. 60.)

ANTIPATHY BETWEEN SAXONS AND CELTS.

Not to speak of earlier and less familiar instances, I may refer to the
quaintly ludicrous account of the Irish and of the four wild kings caught
and tamed by Richard II., in Froissart (who of course was speaking the
sentiments of his English friends); to Stanihurst's Ireland, in Ilolinshed;
to Wren's papers, quoted in the notes to Wilkins's edition of Sir Thomas
Browne; and finally to Pinkerton, who argued so stoutly the inferiority of
the Celtic race Show me a great O',' said he, and I am done.' These
:
' '

opinions of course are not authorities, nor worth citing for any purpose
except as expressions of a feeling which, as we have abundant evidence,
has been entertained by all the non-Celtic inhabitants of England, from
the Saxon invasion to the present day; and this is an important fact,
because it tends to explain why English has borrowed so few words from
any existing forms of the Celtic. If the Celtic Britons were a Christian
2)eople at the time of their subjugation by the Saxons, to the extent
which their advocates maintain, and had the culture which has every-
where accompanied the diffusion of Christianity, they could not have
failed to propagate that religion among their conquerors, unless an in-
vincible obstacle was found in the mutual antipathy between the nations.
But the Anglo-Saxons were converted by missionaries from Rome, and
the same cause which prevented the incorporation of any considerable
portion of the Celtic vocabulary into the Saxon speech —
whether the
intellectual inferiority of the Celt or the hatred of race — prevented also
the adoption of the Christian religion by the invaders.

IX. (p. 60.)

CELTIC ETYMOLOGIES.
Koenen, De Nederlandsche Boerenstand Historisch Beschreven, p. 17,
Dutch words akker,
following Boot, ascribes a Latin origin to the
ager* zaad, satam, hooi-vork, furca, juk, jugum, wan,
oO NOTES AND ILLUSTEATIONS Lect. II.

vannus, dorschvlegel, flagellum, sikkel, secula, spade,

spatha. Every one of these words, and others of the same class,
such as cult or, culter, or coulter, are found in Anglo-Saxon, and the
argument is equally strong to show that that language took them from
the same source.
The generally inferior culture of the Celtic to the Latin and Gothic
races would afford a presumption that the Celts also had borrowed from
the Eomans such of these words as occur in their speech. But the
curious and almost unnoticed fact of the existence of reaping-machines
among the Gauls, stated by the elder Pliny, shows an advanced condition
of both agricultural and mechanical art in that people, and, of course,
authorises us to suppose that they had a proportionately complete rural
vocabulary. The probability is that most of the words in question
belong to an earlier period of human speech than that of the existence
of any language identifiable as distinctly Celtic, Gothic, or Italic.
I have elsewhere adverted to the probability that many words alleged
to be Celtic were of Latin origin, and that in many cases, roots supposed
Celtic are, as probably, Gothic. Mr. Davies says that cart is Welsh
from car, a dray or sledge, but as I have observed in a note on the
word cart, in the American edition of Wedgwood, cart occurs in the
Norse Alexandur's Saga, of the thirteenth century, and may, therefore,
with equal plausibility, be claimed as Gothic. Gown has been supposed
to be of Welsh origin, but as this word is found in mediaeval Greek and
Latin, as well as in Old-French and Italian, it is a historical, not an
etymological question, to what stock it belongs. See Du Cange gun a,
2. gunna, gonna, gouna, gunella. The Welsh gwn, towhichitis
referred, is said to mean toga, but, as a question of radical etymology,
more probable sources for gown may be found elsewhere for the name ;

of so complex a garment is not likely to be a primitive. Garnett

thinks barrow is Welsh berfa, button, W. botwm, crook, W. crog,
tenter, W. deintur, ivain, W. gwain, pan, W. pan, solder, W.
sawduriaw, &c, &c. But is not barrow more probably the A. S.
her ewe from be ran to carry button the French bout on, a bud or
;

knob, from bout er, to push or sprout; crook cognate with Icelandic
krokr, a hook; tenter from the Latin tend ere, to stretch icain, the ;

Gothic wagen, vagn; pan, the Gothic panna, pande, pfanne;

and especially solder, which is found in all the Romance languages, the
Latin solidare, from solidus, used by Pliny in the precise sense, to
solder? These are purely questions of historical etymology, and we
can no more determine them by comparison of forms, than we can
prove by the linguistic character of the name Alfred, that that prince
had, or had not a real existence.
Lkct. II. NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 87

X. (p. 64.)

DIFFICULTY OF APPRECIATING FOREIGN SOUNDS.

Persons whose attention has not been specially drawn to the subject
are little aware of the difficulty, I will not say, of imitating or of

writing down, but even of hearing the peculiar sounds of foreign

languages. Anmay serve to illustrate this. There is a
anecdote
Persian word in very common use throughout the East bakhsheesh —
— meaning a gift or a present. It is the equivalent in meaning of the
Old-English largess, and employed by the attendants on great men
is

and strangers, when made or expected, in just the same

gifts are

way. The Turkish articulation of all words is exceedingly distinct,

and this particular word, bakhsheesh, which every traveller in Turkey
hears a hundred times a day, is uttered with an unction that makes it
very impressive to the ears of a stranger hence one would imagine ;

that its true pronunciation would be readily seized by the obtusest ear.
Notwithstanding this, a distinguished gentleman who had passed most
of his life in foreign lands, and had spent many years at Constantinople
in a diplomatic capacity, was unable to come any nearer to the sound
of bakhsheesh than bactshtasch. He thus writes in one of his published
letters :
' There is only one word in all my letters which I am certain,
(however they may be written), of not having spelt wrong, and that is

the word which signifies a present. I have heard it so

bactshtasch,
often, and my ear is so accustomed to the sound, and my tongue to the
pronunciation, that I am now certain I am not wrong the hundredth
part of a whisper or lisp. There is no other word in the Turkish, so
well impressed on my mind, and so well remembered. Whatever else
I have written, bactshtasch my earliest acquaintance in the Turkish
!

language, I shall never forget you ! '— Constantinople and its Environs,
in a series of letters, by an American long resident. N. Y. 1835. II.

p. 151.
If, then, persons of fair intelligence are liable so strangely to pervert

the sounds of foreign words which they have heard and used for years,
what can any man's opinions be worth on the sounds of a language
which he never heard at all ?
 LECTUEE III.

ANGLO-SAXON VOCABULARY, LITERATURE, AND GRAMiMAE.

In order to a just estimate of the capacities of the Anglo-

Saxon tongue, we must pass from the forms and sounds of its

words, the sensuous impressions they produce on the organ of

hearing, to their significance, their power of communicating
fact and exciting emotion, which constitutes the essence of
human speech.
We must here admit that our knowledge of Anglo-Saxon is

not such as to enable us to pronounce on this point with as

much certainty as in the case of many other languages, dead as
well as living. The extant, or at least printed, literature of
.

that tongue is not sufficiently extensive and varied in subject

and in treatment to furnish us with the true and only means

we can ever possess of learning the actual force of words,
namely, observation of their use at different periods, in different
combinations, and by different writers, and we therefore do not
understand an Anglo-Saxon book as we do a work in a living
foreign, or evenan ancient classical, language.* True the
between the Anglo-Saxon and English helps us
close alliance
to run through Anglo-Saxon narrative works, and simple
homines like those of Alfr'ic. with great ease: but wnen we

* Anglo-Saxon lexicography was in a very unsatisfactory condition until the

appearance of Bosworth's learned and laborious dictionary, which was a very timely
and important addition to our facilities for studying the ancient mother tongue of
England. The glossaries to Schmid's Gesetze der Angel-Sachsen, and to Grein's
Bibliothek der Angel-Sachsisehen Poesie, are also extremely valuable contributions
to the same branch of philology. But, after all, word-books cannot go beyond
their authorities, and a fragmentary literature can have but imperfect lexicons.
Lect. III. CAPACITIES OF ANGLO-SAXON 89

take an Anglo-Saxon poem in hand, we interpret, not read our

author, and no man can make himself as much at home in
Beowulf and Caedmon as a good Grecian may in Homer.*
But imperfect as is our knowledge of nice distinctions and eva-
nescent shades of meaning in Anglo-Saxon words, we can say,
with confidence, that 'in the highest quality of speech, the power
of varied expression upon moral and intellectual topics, this
language was certainly not inferior to any other of the Grothic
stock. )

In estimating its capacities in this respect, we are not to

compare it with the modern Scandinavian and Teutonic tongues,
which have received centuries of culture since Anglo-Saxon
became extinct, but with those languages at periods when they
had enjoyed a much inferior amount of Christian and classic
influence. Christianity was introduced among the Anglo-Saxons
in the sixth century, into those parts of Germany with which <

the Anglo-Saxons were most nearly connected, some centuries

after the emigration of that people, and into Scandinavia and
Iceland not far from the year 1000, though some small progress
had been made by Christian missionaries in Denmark, Norway,
and Sweden at an earlier period. It would not be fair to run
a parallel between the Anglo-Saxon of the age of Caedmon,

* It may seem a trifling, but I believe

a just observation, that one of the
it is

best practical tests of proficiency in a foreign languageis the degree in which the

student is capable of enjoying a blunder in the use of it. "When we have so far
appropriated a new speech that the mistakes of a stranger, in its grammar or
pronunciation, produce upon us the same odd and ludicrous effect as errors in our
vernacular, we may be sure that we have pretty fully mastered it but we must ;

regard ourselves as tiros until we have become thus far imbued with its spirit.
Learned Lepsius engraved upon the Great Pyramid, for the delectation of
the disembodied sprites that haunt that 'pile stupendous,' and of such future
travellers in the East as might happen to know no language more modern than
that of Cheops, a hieroglyphic record of his antiquarian pilgrimage to Egypt;
but I doubt whether Mr. Birch could contrive to extract an honest laugh cut of
the possible solecisms in sequence and juxtaposition of the birds, reptiles, and
horned cattle that figure in that inscription and I fear that the perhaps too
;

poetical licenses of Mr. Conybeare's Anglo-Saxon rhythms did not strike Mr.
Kemble as comical enough to produce that salutary dcopilation of the spleen which
the French hold to be so serviceable to the health of sedentary gentlemen.
 ;

90 MCESO-GOTHIC Lect. III.

who lived in the seventh century, and the German of Goethe

the comparison ought to be instituted between corresponding
stages of philological development. Such a correspondence
cannot be arrived at by a mere computation of time, because
we have no means of knowing the precise syntactical
sufficient
some time after Chris-
or lexical character of either speech until
tianity had bestowed upon them the Koman alphabet, and sup-
plied both the means and the incentives for an extended literary
culture. To this remark the Mceso-Gothic is an apparent
exception. It is said that Ulfilas, who translated the Scriptures
into his native tongue, in the fourth century, himself invented
his alphabet, or rather accommodated the Greek and Latin
characters to his purposes, and first reduced the Mceso-Gothic
language to writing.* We should therefore suppose that he
would have employed, in his translation, the current forms and
the standard vocabulary of the heathen period ; for the conver-
Mceso-Goths was then too recent to allow any very
sion of the
by Christian influences to
essential modification of their speech
have taken place. In the want of evidence to the contrary,
we should think ourselves authorised to suppose that we have,
in the remains of thework of Ulfilas, a specimen of a Gothic
dialect inwhat may be called a normal form, that is, a form
spontaneously developed by the operation of its own organic
laws and native tendencies, uncontrolled by alien influences,

* Tkeopliilus, a Gothic bishop, or rather a bishop of the Goths (possibly an

episcopus in partibus), was present at the Council of Nice, a.d. 325, and it is hence
inferred that some considerable proportion of the Moeso-Goths were Christianized
a couple of generations before the execution of Ulfilas's translation. There is also
other evidence of the introduction of Christianity among this people, by Cappa-
docian captives, in the third century. It is not probable that a Christian nation
would remain a hundred years without letters, and it is hardly credible that they
contented themselves, so long, with so rude an alphabet as the runic. Ulfilas
must, then, be taken rather as the improver than as the inventor of the alphabet
he used. I see no ground for the opinion that the monkish or black-letter
characters of the Middle Ages were borrowed from those of Ulfilas. Those who
did not inherit his speech would not have succeeded to his alphabet. There is no
very close resemblance between his system and the mediaeval black letter, and the
latter does not follow the arrangement of the former, or retain all its characters.
Lect. III. SCANDINAVIAN LANGUAGES 91

except, indeed, so far as the diction of a translation is always

modified by the idiom of its original and the nature of its

subject. But I have shown, I think, that the force of the par-
ticiple and the syntactical construction of the period were,
contrary to the genius of the Gothic family of tongues, pro-
bably conformed by Ulfilas to the usage of the Greek ; and it

is possible that other grammatical innovations were introduced

by him. With respect to the inflectional forms and the general
vocabulary of the Mceso-Gothic, however, we have no evidence
of any corruption or change.*
Of other Teutonic dialects, we have only a few fragments,
too inconsiderable in amount and of too doubtful reading, to
serve as a basis for any general conclusions, until a sufficient
time after the christianisation of Germany for important changes
to have taken place.
The oldest existing Scandinavian manuscripts date only from
the thirteenth century, though some of the works of which they
are copies were no doubt composed during the heathen era,
and many within a few years after. But it was the almost
universal habit of scribes to conform orthography and inflection
to the standard of their own time, and therefore a manuscript
copy of a work of an earlier period is, in general, not admissible
evidence as to the formal characteristics of the dialect of the
original, f
The Mceso-Gothic, as we have seen, cannot be identified as
the direct parent of any later Teutonic dialect ; and as its lite-

* The Upsala MS. of Ulfilas, called the Coclex Argenteus, either because bound
iu silver, or because it is executed almost wholly in silver characters, is thought
to have been written not later than a hundred or a hundred and fifty years after
the death of the translator, and the few other extant remains of that language
are referred to about the same period. It is not impossible that the Mceso-Gothic
had undergone some change in the interim, but its literature was apparently so
restricted that there was little room for the written secular dialect to influence
the sacred, and it is probable that in accidence and vocabulary the Mceso-Gothic
of Ulfilas is purer and more unsophisticated than any other philological monument
of European literature.
t See First Series, Lecture XIX., p. 421.
92 MCESO-GOTHIC AND ANGLO-SAXON Lect. III.

rature perished almost as soon as it was born, we are acquainted

with it only in a single phase, that, namely, when it sprang
into sudden existence as a finished medium of literary effort.
All the other Gothic tongues, on the contrary, become first
known to us, at periods when they had been subjected for a con-
siderable time to influences which cannot have failed to pro-
duce very essential modifications in them, and when they were
still in an unstable and revolutionary condition.

Between the Mceso-Gothic and the Anglo-Saxon, then, no

fair comparison can be instituted, and as to the other cognate

languages, the only just method of testing their respective capa-

would be to take each at the highest pitch of culture
bilities

and of power attained by it, under those fresh impulses of

youthful civilisation which, in most respects, were the same for
them all.
The Anglo-Saxon reached this its most classic stage as early
as the ninth century, and the works of King Alfred, and of
Alfric the grammarian (who, however, died a hundred years
later,) may be taken as specimens of the language in its best
estate ; the Icelandic was at its acme probably in the twelfth
century, the saga of Njall being the best exemplification ; and
the High-German, as it appears in the Nibelungen Lied, about
the year Half a century later, the voluminous works of Van
1 200.

Maerlant, and other contemporaneous writers, first gave form

and consistence to the Netherlandish or Dutch, and established

its syntax substantially as it has since remained.
In comparing these languages at these respective periods,
we shall observe that the Anglo-Saxon laboured under what
was in some respects a disadvantage, that of being a more
mixed and composite speech in point of vocabulary and, in
some degree, of syntax, and therefore was less harmonious and
symmetrical in its growth and development than the different
Continental branches of the Gothic. Its derivatives are gene-
rally less easily and less certainly traced to more primitive
forms and simpler significations. Hence the meaning of a
Lect. III. ANGLO-SAXON COPIOUS 93

larger proportion of its words is apparently arbitrary, and not

deducible from the primary sense of known radicals ; and with
respect to that portion of its roots which are not identifiable as

Gothic, power of derivation and composition is less than that

its

possessed by other Gothic dialects over their own indigenous

stock.
It is partly, no doubt, to its mixed character that the Anglo-
Saxon is indebted for its copiousness, which is perhaps the
feature of its vocabulary that first strikes a student familiar
with the Scandinavian and German languages. In mere num-
ber of vocables, its poetical nomenclature, indeed, falls far short
of that of the Icelandic ; but the copiousness and wealth of a
speech is not to be estimated by a numerical computation of
words. The true test is : for what variety of distinct sensuous
impressions, images, and objects, and of moral sentiment and
intellectual conception, for what amount of attributives of
quality, for what categories of being and what manifestations of
action it has specific names. The mere multiplication of desig-
nations for a single thing, though it may increase the power of
picturesque expression, and is therefore a convenient poetical
and rhetorical resource, does not add to the real copiousness of
a speech. Thus, the Icelandic prose Edda, or Art of Poetry,
enumerates more than a hundred names for the sword, and a
large number for the ship, and for other objects conspicuous in
Northern life. Most of these were no doubt originally de-
scriptive epithets, and their use suggested, in place of the
generalisation of the leading properties or uses of the object
which is expressed by its ordinary name, a sensuous image
derived from some one of its characteristics, or a traditional
recollection connected with the epithet, and thus incidentally
increased the stock of imagery at the command of the poet.
But when epithets become obsolete in daily speech, their ety-
mological significance is soon forgotten, though they may con-
tinue to be used in the dialect of verse merely as synonyms for
each other — a means of avoiding too frequent repetition — or in
y4 TEST OF COPIOUSNESS Lect. III.

order to employ a diction which is thought poetical, simply

because it is not familiar.
The power of substituting a hundred epithets for the proper
name of the object to which they are applied
is not a proof of

the copiousness of a language, even while the etymology of the

epithets is remembered, and while they are consequently de-
scriptive or suggestive: but when their origin is forgotten
and they become synonyms, they are hindrances rather than
helps, and even in poetical diction are little better than tinsel.
To exemplify to those who know that falchion is derived from
:

the Latin falx, a sickle or scythe, the word suggests an image

which sivord does not excite, and therefore increases the pic-
turesqueness of the poetical phrase in which it occurs. But to
those who are ignorant of its etymology, it is simply what may
be called a sensation-synonym for sword. It is recommended
only by metrical adaptation, or simply by its unfamiliarity it ;

adds absolutely nothing to the expressiveness of the diction

which employs it, and in most cases is, both to writer and
reader, simply fustian. In words of this must be ad-
class, it

mitted that the Anglo-Saxon is not particularly rich, and it

may therefore be said to be inferior to the Icelandic in the
metrical and rhetorical instrumentalities, the mechanical ap-
pliances, of the poetic art.
But when we come to the words which indicate different
states, emotions, passions, mental processes, all, in short, that
expresses the moral or intellectual man, the Anglo-Saxon vo-
cabulary is eminently affluent. Hence Icelandic paints, while
Anglo-Saxon describes and philosophises. The Icelandic saga
is a pantomime, in which you see the actors in all the suc-

cessive scenes of the drama, and infer their emotions, their

aims, their motives, from their acts. The Anglo-Saxon gives
utterance to the inward status, and discloses men's thoughts
rather than depicts their material shape and their external
actions. A better proof of the rich moral expressiveness of
Anglo-Saxon than any citation of examples is found in the
Lect. III. POWER OF COMPOSITION 95

fact, that those English dramatists and poets, who have most
clearly revealed the workings of the heart and thrown most
light into the deep abysses of the soul, have employed a diction
composed in the largest measure of words legitimately de-
scended from the ancient mother of the English speech.* It
is in this inherited quality of moral revelation, which has been

perpetuated and handed down from the tongue of the Grothic

conquerors to its English first-born, that lies in good part the
secret of Shakspeare's power of bodying forth so much of man's
internal being, and clothing so many of his mysterious sym-
pathies in living words.
Although, as I have remarked, Anglo-Saxon words not ap-
parently of Gothic origin are not freely used as material for
derivation and composition, the indigenous roots, on the other
hand, exhibit a remarkable plasticity in the way of derivative
formation, and a great aptitude for organic combination. Turner
well illustrates this property of Anglo-Saxon by tables of pri-
mitives with their secondary forms, and he enumerates more
than twenty derivatives from the noun hyge (or hige) which
signifies both mind aud thought, that is, intellect quiescent, and

intellect in action. Among these are verbs, secondary nouns,

adjectives and adverbs, which, by various modifications, express
not only mental states and mental acts, but a variety of moral
emotions and affections. From mod, mind, temper, and
gethanc, a word of allied original meaning, are given an
equal number of derivatives so that from these three roots we
;

have, by the aid of significant terminations and a few subordinate

compound elements, not less than sixty words expressive of
intellectual and moral conceptions.! There are, besides these,
a great number of other almost equally fertile radicals be-
longing to the same department of the vocabulary, and hence
it will be obvious that its power of expression on moral and

intellectual subjects must have been very considerable. Indeed

* See First Series, Lecture VI.
f See Illustration I., at end of this Lecture.
96 ANGLO-SAXON GOSPELS Lect. III.

it would be difficult to find, in any language, a term indi-

cative of moral state or emotion, or of intellectual action or
perception, excepting, of course, the artificial terms belonging
to the technical dialect of metaphysics, which is not at least
approximately represented in the Anglo-Saxon vocabulary.
The Anglo-Saxon translation of the Gospels well illustrates
the capacities of the tongue for a varied and comprehensive
range of expression. We know not the history, the author, or
the precise date of this translation, but it belongs to the best
period of the literature, and was made from the Vulgate, or
more probably, perhaps, from some nearly similar Latin ver-
sion.* Our authorised translation of the same books is remark-
able for its freedom from Greek, Latin, and Romance idioms
but it falls in this respect far behind the Anglo-Saxon, which
admits scarcely any but indigenous words, and substitutes native
compounds, or specially framed derivatives, for those foreign
words which the English translators have adopted from Hebrew,
Greek, Latin, and French, and incorporated into the modern
religious dialect.
Although the Anglo-Saxon admitted of composition and de-
rivation to a great extent, the number of its primitives, or at
least of words treated as primitives because they were inca-

* To determine what
text the Anglo-Saxon translation of the Evangelists followed,
would require a more critical examination of the various recensions of the Latin
far
Gospels than I have had an opportunity to make. I will, however, notice a departure
from the common Vulgate reading in a passage which happens to be at this moment
under my eye. The present authorised Vulgate version of the Lord's Prayer, in Mat-
thew vi., gives the fourth (the first personal) petition thus :
—
panem nostrum super-
substantialem da nobis hodie, supersubstantialem being used as the equivalent
of the Greek iiriovcnov, while the same word in Luke xi. is rendered by quotidianum.
In the first rendering, imowios is treated as a participial adjective from eirei/xi =
e7n iifii, in the latter, as from eVe^i =
In the Anglo-Saxon Gospels,
€7ri %ijxi.

gedseghwamlican, or dseghwamlican, daily,is employed in both Evangelists.

The Lindisfarne text of Matthew has ofer wistlic, which etymologically should
mean dainty, the Kushworth, dseghwgemlicu, and, as an alternative, ins ton-
den lice, which latter word corresponds very closely to emovaios («rt eifii). The
word used in the Lindisfarne text is the only one which can be regarded as a
translation of supersubstantialis. Ulfilas, who made his version from the

Greek, employs sinteins. daily.

Lect. III. ANGLO-SAXON MONOSYLLABIC 97

pable of resolution into simpler forms and meanings, was so

large that there was less occasion for compounds than in most
other languages of the same stock. This fact, together with
the mode of inflection employed in the grammar, accounts for

the monosyllabic character of the words. Compounds are built

up of two syllabic elements, and must, except in some

at least
few cases of coalescence of syllables, be generally longer than
primitives. Hence, other things being equal, the language
which employs fewest compounds will have the shortest words.
If the same speech varies or inflects its words for tense, person,
number, and case, by what is called the strong method that —
is, by change of letters of the radical, instead of addition of

syllables, as wh,en we make the past tense of the verb lead, not
leaded, but led — this is still another cause of greater brevity
of words than is found in languages which inflect by augmen-
tation.
It is surprising how far we may carry literary composition in
English, without introducing any word which requires more
than a single emission of breath for its articulation. The late
Professor Addison Alexander, of Princeton, has well illustrated
this property of Anglo-Saxon, or rather Saxon-En glish, by two
spirited sonnets in which only words monosyllabic in pronun-
ciation are employed. Some few of these, indeed, are Latin or
Romance, and some of the verbs are declined by the weak or
augmentative but much the largest proportion of
inflection,
the words are native, and in our articulation those written
with two syllables are habitually pronounced in one.* One of
these monosyllabic sonnets is as follows :
—
* Something of the same sort may be done in French, and with greater facility
in Catalan, because those languages, in naturalizing Latin words, often retain the
stem or radical syllable only, and the Catalan very frequently drops even the
final consonant of that. Ferreras wrote a Catalan poem of ninety-six seven-syllabled
lines, consisting wholly of monosyllables, but in Eomance compositions of this sort
there is much less variety of thought and imagery, and less flexibility and grace
of expression, than in the English examples I have cited. See Illustration EL,
at end of this lecture.
H
98 MONOSYLLABIC COMPOSITION Lfct. III.

Think not that strength lies in the big round word,

Or that the brief and plain must needs be weak.
To whom can this be true, who once has heard
The cry for help, the tongue that all men speak
When want, or woe, or fear, is in the throat,
So that each word gasped out is like a shriek
Pressed from the sore heart, or a strange wild note
Sung by some fay or fiend There is a strength
!

Which dies if stretched too far or spun too fine,

Which has more height than breadth, more depth than length.
Let but this force of thought and speech be mine,
And he that will may take the sleek, fat, phrase,
Which glows but burns not, though it beam and shine —
Light, but no heat —a flash, but not a blaze !

These ingenious productions are interesting, not as possessing

high poetical merit in themselves, or as models to be followed
in the selection of words, but because they open curious views
of the composition and structure of our native tongue and its

related dialects, and because they well illustrate what is con-

sidered as the general modern tendency of all human speech to
simplification of form, and to a less mechanical and artificial
syntactical system. Truly able writers select their words, not
with reference to their historical origin, but solely for the sake
of their adaptation to the effect aimed at on the mind of the
reader or hearer, and he who deliberately uses an Anglo-Saxon
instead of a more expressive Romance word, is as much a
pedant, as were composed, in the largest possible
if his diction

proportion, of words borrowed from the vocabulary of Eome.

The masters of the English tongue know that each of its
great branches has its special adaptations. The subject, in very
man} 7,
instances, as especially in metaphysical, philological,
and compels a diction
critical or gesthetical discussion, prescribes

composed, in a liberal percentage, of Grreek and Latin imme-

diate or secondary derivatives and this not always because the
;

Anglo-Saxon wanted corresponding words, but often because

they have become obsolete. Hence an author, who, in a dis-
Lect. III. REVIVAL OF OBSOLETE WORDS 99

course or a poem designed for popular effect, would speak

almost pure Anglo-Saxon, might, very likely, in treating the

themes to which I have just referred, find it convenient to

exceed even the Latinism of Johnson.
There is at present a very strong tendency to the revival of
obsolete English and Anglo-Saxon words, and the effect of an
increasing study of our ancient literature is very visible in the
style of the best prose, and more especially, poetic compositions
of the present day. Our vocabulary is capable of great enrich-
ment from the store-house of the ancient Anglican speech, and
the revival of a taste Anglo-Saxon and early English
for
literature will exert a very important influence on the intellec-
tual activity of the next generation. The pedantry of individuals
may, no doubt, as the same affectation has done in Germany and
Holland*, carry puristic partialities to a length as absurd as
lipogrammatism in literature, but the general familiarity of
literary men with classic and Continental philology will always
supply a corrective, and no great danger is to be apprehended in
this direction. In any event, the evil will be less than was
experienced from the stilted classicism of Johnson, or the Gallic
imitations of Gibbon. The recovery of forgotten native words
will affect Englishsomething in the same way, though not in
the same direction, as did the influx of French words in the
fourteenth century, and of Latin in the sixteenth and the gain ;

will be as real as it was in those instances. But it is not by an

accession of words alone, that the stud} of Anglo-Saxon and 5"

ancient English literature is destined to affect that of the

present and coming generations. The recovery of the best
portion of the obsolete vocabulary will bring with it, not only
new expressiveness of diction, but something of the vigour and
freshness of thought and wealth of poetic imagery which usually
accompanies the revival of a national spirit in literature.
Although the Anglo-Saxon is the bubbling well-spring whose

* See First Series, Lecture IX.

H 2
 100 ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE Lect. III.

sweet waters have given a specific flavour to the broader and

more impetuous current of our maternal speech —
and therefore
some knowledge of the more primitive is essential to a com-
prehension of the history of the derivative language — yet the
literature of ancient Anglia stands in no such relation to that
of modern England. Beowulf, and the songs of Caednion and
Cynewulf, and even the relics of the great Alfred, were buried
out of sight and forgotten long before any work, now recognised
as distinctively English in spirit, had been conceived in the
imagination of its author. The earliest truly English writers
borrowed neither imagery nor thought nor plan, seldom even
form, from older native models, and hence Anglo-Saxon lite-

rature, so farfrom being the mother, was not even the nurse of
the infant genius which opened its eyes to the sun of England
five centuries ago. The history and criticism of Anglo-Saxon
literature are therefore almost foreign to our subject but were
;

they more nearly related to it, I should be obliged to exclude

them from present consideration, because the illustrations I
mast adduce would be borrowed from a tongue generally un-
known to my audience, and no translation could fairly represent
them.
Although the literary character of Anglo-Saxon writers had
no appreciable influence on the spirit, little on the form, of
early English authorship, yet certain traits of the specific intel-
lectual and social life of the Anglian people survived for a time,
and manifested themselves in the nascent literature of the
mixed race which had succeeded to the name and place of the
Grothic immigrant. Hence, some general remarks on the lead-
ing characteristics of the poetry and prose of the Anglo-Saxons,
considered as an expression of the mind and heart of that
nation, will not be altogether out of place. The poetry of the
Anglo-Saxons, so far as we know it by its extant remains, is

chiefly sacred, or at least religious in subject, and, though not

remarkable for plan or invention, is very elevated in tone, and
exhibits much nobleness of sentiment and beauty of detaiL )
Lrcr. III. BEOWULF 101

The poems of the early Christian era among the Scandinavians

have, with some remarkable exceptions, not much merit except
that of skill in overcoming the difficulties imposed by highly
artificial forms and canons of metrical composition. , In the
higher excellences of poetry, the celebrated epic, Beowulf, ranks
perhaps first among the monuments of Anglo-Saxon literature,
but in subject, plau, and treatment, it differs so widely from
the general character of the versified compositions in the lan-
guage, that it cannot be considered as a product of the same
genius or the same influences which have given form and spirit
to the other literary efforts of that people. It is, I think, un-
questionably of Continental and heathen origin, though in
passing through the hands of Christian revisers and copyists, it

has undergone the modifications necessary to render it less

objectionable to the tastes and opinions of a converted nation.

We cannot affirm it to be a translation, because we have no
knowledge of any Continental source from which it could have
been taken. In its machinery, it has many points of re-
semblance to Scandinavian mythic poetry, and though there
exists no Old-Northern poem of very similar character, there are
prose sagas —
generally indeed of much later date which in —
tone and treatment are not unlike the story of Beowulf. Its
scenery and personages are Danish, and the whole poem be-
longs both in form and essence to the Scandinavian, not to the
Grermanic school of art. The substance of Beowulf, either as
saga or as poem, came over, I believe, with some of the con-
querors ; and its existence in Anglo-Saxon literature I consider
as one among the many proofs of an infusion of the Scandi-
navian element in the immigration.*
The poetry of the Anglo-Saxons is to be comprehended only

* The fact, that not the most remote allusion to the poem of Beowulf or to the
story embalms has yet been discovered in any Anglo-Saxon author, proves that
it

it canuot have been generally known to the scholars of that nation, and it is not

improbable that its un-Germanic character rendered it so little acceptable to a

people chiefly of Teutonic origin, that it never obtained^ much circulatiou among
them.
102 THE NORTHMEN Lect. III.

through a knowledge of their language, and I must refer those

who are contented with merely general views of its character to
the many translations and critical works on the subject which
English and German scholars have recently produced. I shall,
however, in bringing out the prominent traits of early English
literature, as they from time to time develop themselves, have
occasion to notice points of contrast and of coincidence between
the products oi Saxon and of English genius, and to present
them more effectively than I could now do by a more extended
special criticism. But I will here again refer, somewhat in
an important deficiency in Anglo-Saxon literature,
detail, to

which I have already noticed as characteristic also of early

English letters — f the want of a vernacular historical school,
which that people seems never to have possessed.
The contrast in this respect between the Anglo-Saxons and
the Scandinavian Northmen, who were nearly allied to them in
speech, and probably in blood, is very remarkable. The North-
men were men of action, enterprising merchants, navigators,
hunters,soldiers of fortune, leading the van of every battle
from Norway to Byzantium, subduers of savage and of effemi-
nate, exhausted races, colonists, legislators, conquerors over the
rigours of climate and the forces of inanimate nature. These
heroic qualities were perpetuated in the energetic adventurers
who made themselves masters of Normandy, were infused by
them into their Grallic, Eomance, and Francic subjects, and
finally became the leaven, by which the now torpid elements of
the Anglo-Saxon character were thrown into a new fermenta-
tion, and stirred to that marvellous physical and moral ac-
tion which has made the English nation so long foremost among
men.
The admiration felt by such a people for the high qualities,
which alone had rendered possible the great exploits of their
kings and chieftains, naturally disposed the Northmen to the
preservation of the memory of heroic achievements, and to an
interest in the personal history of men distinguished for prowess
LECT. III. TIIE SAXON CHRONICLE 103

and success. The saga-man, or reciter, was everywhere a

favoured guest, and the skill with which these artists con-
structed the plan of their historical, or rather biographical,
narrations, and filled in the details, has never been surpassed in
the annals of any people.
The Anglo-Saxons, on the other hand, when by a series of
spasmodic efforts they had expelled the Britons from their
native homes, and established themselves in the enjoyment of
the comparative abundance and comfort which the milder
climate and more genial England afforded, seem to have
soil of
relapsed into a life of inglorious ease. If they were ever roused
to deeds of vigorous action and martial daring, it was in strifes
among themselves about the division of the spoil they had won,
or in the defence of their new homes against invasion and
plunder by the successive swarms of hardy and hungry warriors,
whom the North was ever sending forth to tear from them the
booty which they had wrung from the imbecile Celt. They
had ceased to be an active, and had become a contemplative
people ;and so insignificant were the contests between the
Saxon kinglings, recorded in the meagre native annals, that,
as Milton says, they were not ' more worth to chronicle than
the wars of kites or crows flocking and fighting in the air.'
The life and reign of Alfred form a brilliant exception to
the uninteresting character of Anglo-Saxon history but in ;

general, vapid, empty, and uncritical as are the Saxon chro-

niclers, they are, in the words of the same writer, 'worthy
enough for the things they register.' Such being the true cha-
racter of the Anglo-Saxon secular historians, it is strange that
national pride should have led English critics to attach such
extravagant value to the series of annals generally known by
thename of the Saxon Chronicle.
The Saxon Chronicle is a dry chronological record, noting in
the same lifeless tone important and trifling events, without the
slightest tinge of dramatic colour, of criticism in weighing evi-
104: THE SAXON CIIIIONICLE Lect. III.

dence, or of judgment in the selection of the facts narrated.

Tl^e following extracts are fair specimens :
—
An. In this year Martian and Valentinian succeeded to
cccc.xlix.
the empire and reigned seven winters. And in their days Hengest and
Horsa, invited by Wyrtgeorn, king of the Britons, sought Britain, on
the shore which is named Yp wines fleot first in support of the Bri-
;

but afterwards they fought against them.

tons,
An. cccclxxiii. In this year Hengest and JEsc fought against the
Welsh and took countless booty and the Welsh fled from the Angles
;

as fire.

An. d.ix. In this year St. Benedict the abbot, father of all monks,
went to heaven.
An. dcxvi. In this year iEthelberht, king of the Kentish people,
died he reigned lvi winters and Eadbald, his son, succeeded to the
; ;

kingdom, who contemned his baptism and lived in heathen manner, so

that he had his father's relict to wife. Then Laurentius, who was
archbishop of Kent, was minded that he would go south over sea and
forsake all. But by night the Apostle Peter came to him, and severely
scourged him, because he would so forsake God's flock and bade him ;

to go to the king and preach to him the true faith and he did so and
;

the king was converted, and was baptized. In this king's day, Lau-
rentius, wTho was in Kent after Augustine, died on the ivth day of the
nones of February, and was buried beside Augustine. After him Mel-
litus succeeded to the Archbishopric, who had been bishop of London.
And within five years after, Mellitus died. Then after him Justus
succeeded to the archbishopric, who had been bishop of Rochester, and
hallowed Romanus bishop thereto.
An. dc.lxxi. In this year was the great destruction of birds.
An. dccxciii. In this year dire forwarnings came over the land of
the Northumbrians, and miserably terrified the people: there were
excessive whirlwinds and lightnings, and fiery dragons were seen flying
in the air. A
great famine soon followed these tokens and a little ;

after that, in thesame year, on the vith of the Ides of January, the
havoc of heathen men miserably destroyed God's church at Lindis-
farne, through rapine and slaughter. And Sicga died on the vinth of
the kal. of March.*

Sometimes the events of a year, especially in the later parts

* I adopt Thorpe's translation in the Rer. Brit. Med. Aer. Scriptores.

Lect. III. ANGLO-SAXON LIFE 105

of the chronicle, are extended over a page or two, but, in these

cases, we have generally a mere accumulation of facts as barren

and as insignificant as those I have cited, or, perhaps, an ac-

count of the foundation or endowment of a monastery, the
institution of a bishop or the relations between the English
church and the see of Eome. 01 course, in all this, there Is

occasionally a fact which gives us a faint glimpse of the actual

life of the English man and woman, as for example the nar-
rative of the assassination of King Cynewulf in 755 (properly
784), and there are, here and there, notices of unusual astro-
nomical and meteorological phenomena but taking the chro-
;

nicle as a whole, I know not where else to find a series of annals

which is so barren of all human interest, and for all purposes
of real history so worthless. And yet Ingram, the editor of the
e
second edition of this work, declares in his preface that philo-
sophically considered, this 'ancient record is the second great
phenomenon in the history of mankind,' the first place being
generously awarded to ' the sacred annals of the Jews.' After
such commendation upon a work so destitute of merit and of
value, we must admit that the Danish critic spoke in terms of
great moderation when he affirmed that, as compared with the
Heimskringia of the Icelander Snorri Sturluson, the history of
Herodotus was the work of a bungler, and that of John Muller
no better than a first essay.
From the want of historical talent among the Anglo-Saxons,
we know little of their social life, and of the practical working
of their institutions but their literature, and especially their
;

legislation, are those of a people by no means advanced in social

culture, and their art seems to have always remained at a
very humble level.* The specific causes of their decay we are

* Anglo-Saxon writers ascribe to their countrymen much skill in some of the

minor arts, especially those subservient to the material pomp of the Romish
worship but the surviving specimens of their handy-work do not give by any
;

means an exalted impression of their abilities in this respect. It is disputed

•whether any remains of Anglo-Saxon architecture still exist, and the testimony is
strong to show that their churches and other public as well as private buildings
106 LANGUAGES INFLECTED AND UNINFLECTED Lect. III.

unable to assign^ but it is evident that at the time of the Con-

quest, the people and their literature were in a state of languish-

ing depression, which was enlivened and cheered by no symptom
of returning life and vigour.
The Norman Conquest did not cause, it only hastened, the
downfall of the Saxon commonwealth, and by infusing the ele-
ments of a new lifean exhausted race, it restored its organs
into
once more to healthy action and thus rescued it from sinking
into the state of utter barbarism to which it was rapidly tending.
In order more clearly to exhibit the relations between the old
and the new features of the speech of England, and to explain the
process of transition from that which was to that which is, it
will be necessary to devote a few words to a general account of
the grammatical structure of Anglo-Saxon.
Of languages considered as grammatical individuals, there
t

are, theoretically, two great classes ;

(a), those in which the
syntactical relations of words are determined by coincidence or
correspondence of form, the forms being varied according to
number, person, case, mood, tense, gender, degree of com-
parison and other conditions, as for example, when by adding
an s to the indeterminate or stem form of the verb give, we
make it an indicative present third person singular, gives; and
(6), those where these relations are indicated by position, auxili-
aries and particles, the words themselves remaining unvaried,
as when we make the same verb, give, a future by placing the
auxiliary ivill before it. Practically, however, there are few,
if any, speeches in which either of these syntactical systems is

fully carried out, and the two are almost everywhere more or
less intermixed. All assignments of languages, therefore, to
either class, must be considered only as approximate and com-
parative statements of the fact.

were at best humble structures. Of all the works of man's hands, architecture is

the best test of the artistic capacity of a people, and we may be sure that those
who have never raised a worthy church or temple have never gone beyond medio-
crity in the inferior arts.
Lect. III. AXGLO-SAXON GEAMMAK 107

The Anglo-Saxon, partly, no doubt, in consequence of its

composite structure, partakes largely of the characteristics of

both classes but, as compared with modern English, its syntax
;

may be considered as inflectional, and in a considerable degree

independent of position, the sense being often equally une-
quivocal, whether the words of a period are arranged in one
order or another. inflections of the verb were more precise
The
in the indication of number, and, though in a less degree, of
person than of time or condition still they were not sufficiently
;

so to allow of the omission of the nominative pronoun. Aux-

iliary verbs were used much as in modern English for the
expression of accidents, yet they were employed with greater
reserve, and we can consequently, by means of auxiliaries,

express in English a greater variety of conditions and qualifica-

by the verb than the Anglo-
tions of the act or state indicated
Saxons were able to do. singular that though there
It is

existed a simple as well as compound past tenses, there was no

mode of expressing the future of verbs by either inflection or
auxiliaries, and the Saxon could only say, I give to-day, I give
to-morrow, not I shall or will give to-morrow. This was un-
doubtedly a defect, and we have improved upon the Anglo-
Saxon syntax by developing future auxiliaries out of the inde-
pendent verbs shall and will, the former of which originally
expressed duty or necessity, the latter intention or desire, with-
out reference to time.
The want of the Saxon verbal inflections for number and
person can hardly be considered an imperfection in the English
language; for inflection though it may reduce the number of
words, gives no greater precision, but on the contrary, less force
of expression in these respects than may be obtained by the
use of auxiliaries, pronouns, and other determinatives.* In

* The employment of the nominative pronoun was felt by the Latins them-
selves to strengthen the force of expression, and therefore, though the distinction
of persons is very marked in the inflections of the Latin verb, they often made it
more emphatic by introducing the pronoun, as we do by re-duplicating it, though
in another form. Thus the Koman would say, not simply vidi, (/) saw, but ego
vidi, or even egometvidi, in cases where we should say, I saw (it) my serf.
108 ANGLO-SAXON GRAMMAR Lect. III.

syntaxes where the pronoun is always expressed, as it is in

Anglo-Saxon and English except in the imperative, the distinc-
tion of number and person is wholly superfluous. Thus, where
a foreigner says, in his broken English, he give, instead of he
gives, we understand him perfectly. The omission of the s,
the sign of the singularnumber and third person, occasions no
embarrassment, and would be no detriment to English syntax
it

if we ourselves were to omit it altogether. But in Latin and

Italian, where the pronoun is very often omitted, a mistake in
the characteristic ending confounds the listener.
So the limitation of particular past or future inflections, or
even auxiliary combinations, to specific portions of time, is a
source of constant embarrassment in the use of words, without
any corresponding logical or rhetorical benefit. Thus the French
rule, strict conformity to which requires us to say: — elle
chant a hier au lever du soleil, she sang yesterday at
sunrise, but, elle a chante ce matin au lever du soleil,
she has sung this morning at sunrise, is a blemish in the

syntax, not an advantage. In these and other like phrases, the

time is really fixed, not by the form of the verb, but by the
words yesterday and this morning, and the distinction between
the tenses has, in their present use, no solid foundation ; whereas
in English the difference between the preterite and the com-
pound, he sang, and he has sung, is a logical one. The conse-
quence is that in French practice, the grammatical distinction
has been found too subtle to be observed, and the compound is
very frequently employed when the preterite should be.
Another difference between Anglo-Saxon and English is, that
the latter has nearly got rid of the perplexing and unprofitable
distinction of grammatical gender. In Anglo-Saxon, as in
Greek, Latin and Grerman, nouns have three genders, and these
do not depend upon sex, even in the case of organised beings
This confusion is, how-
capable of being thus distinguished.
Anglo-Saxon as in Grerman, where
ever, not carried so far in
Frauenzimmer, woman, is neuter, and Mannsperson, a
 LECT. III. GRAMMATICAL GENDER 109

male person, is feminine, or as in Swedish, where menniskja,

man in the abstract, is feminine; but still the Saxon mas den,
our modern maiden, is, like the German corresponding mad-
chen, a neuter, and in the case of inanimate objects, to which
genders are conventionally ascribed, they are applied in a very
way from our own. Thus in Anglo-Saxon, as also in
different
Icelandic,the word for moon, 111 on a, is masculine, that for
sun, sunne, feminine.*
It may be remarked, in passing, that the theory of gram-
matical gender has not been much attended to by most phi-
lologists, and, so far as I am aware, has not been satisfactorily
discussed by any. The distinction of gender, however arbi-
trarily it may be applied — and there are few languages where
it is not much more than
so English — seems
in be more to
tenaciously and constantly adhered to than any other gram-
matical peculiarity^. In Grerman and French, where the genders
appear to be almost wholly conventional, mistakes in gender
are rarer than any other error in speech, and in all languages
with grammatical gender, the blunders of foreigners in this
more ludicrous to a native ear than any others what-
respect are
ever, even when they occur in pronouns or in the names of
inanimate objects. We cannot without a smile hear a French-

* In German, the diminutives are neuter, without regard to sex. Vater

and Mutter, B ruder and Schwester, father, mother, brother and sister, lose
their sexuality and become neuter in taking the affectionate or coaxing forms,
Vaterchen, Mutterchen, Bruderlein, Schwesterlein. So far is this
carried that the distinctive designations of sex in the lower animals, Mannchen
and Weibchen, male and female, are grammatically neuter, and when the heroine
of a popular tale has a pet diminutive name, as Mariechen, the neuter pronoun
es, it, is used instead of the feminine, in speaking of her. In Italian, the dimi-
nutive of feminine nouns is often masculine, which here represents the Latin
neuter, that gender not being recognised in Italian grammar, and la tavola, the
table, may have iltavolino, the little table, for its diminutive.
In the young of animals, the general external form marks the distinction of sex
much less plainly than in the adult. This is doubtless the reason why the neuter
pronoun it is so commonly applied to infants and other j'oung creatures in
English, and it may be from analogy with this fact that the diminutives I have
mentioned have been made neuter. There are many reasons, however, for be-
lieving that grammatical gender was originally wholly independent of sex.
110 GRAMMATICAL GENDER Lect. III.

man speak of a woman as he, or read the cod eluding sentence

of the preface to the PortugueseGuide of Fonseca and Carolino,
in which the authors, hope that their book
after expressing the

may secure acceptance with studious persons, add and espe- :

'

cially of youth, at which we dedicate him particularly.'* But

to us, who in general treat inanimate obiects as without gender,
it is why it should provoke the mirth of a French-
hard to see
man, when a foreigner, in speaking French, makes the noun
t a b 1 e a masculine instead of a feminine.

The Anglo-Saxon adjectives also had three genders, though

these were by no means accurately or uniformly discriminated,
and they had that farther inconvenience, which beginners find
such a stumbling-block in German grammar, of distinct de-
finite and indefinite forms —
a subtlety which answers no pur-
pose but to embarrass and confound. The adjectives were
compared by inflection, and both adjective and noun had several
inflections for case, but these were not so well discriminated as
to add essentially to precision of expression and I do not know
;

that English syntax is in any respect more equivocal or am-

biguous for the want of them.
Upon the whole, I am inclined to think that while our pre-
sent syntax is in many respects more direct, precise and simple
than the ancient, the Anglo-Saxon grammar had no advantages
over the modern English but these : first, greater liberty in the
arrangement of words in the period, which is an important
rhetorical convenience, both with respect to force of expression
and to melodious sequence of sound ; and, second, a somewhat
greater abundance of rhymes, as well as variety of metrical feet,
which, in inflected languages, facilitate poetical composition and
relieve the ear from the perpetual recurrence of the same

* Novo Guia da Conversacjao, em Portuguez e Inglez. The New Guide of

the Conversation in Portuguese and English, por Jose da Fonseca e Pedro Caro-
lino. Paris, 1855.
This is, I imagine, the most ridiculous collection of blunders anywhere to he
found in a single volume.
Lect. III. ENGLISH GRAMMAR 111

pairs of rhyming words now become so wearisome in English

poetry.*
English grammar is now too settled, if not in its forms, at
least in its tendencies, to be likely to revive any of the obsolete
characteristics of Anglo-Saxon inflection, but we may possibly
restore, for poetical purposes, the old English infinitive and
plural verbal endings in en, as to loven for to love, they loven
for they love, which Spenser did not scruple freely to use,
though in his time they were quite obsolete in prose. Lan-
guage seldom goes back in its forms, though the re-animation
of seemingly dead words is common in all literatures. The
freedom of syntactical arrangement which was possessed by the
Anglo-Saxon is irrecoverably gone, and it is the only one of our
losses for which modern syntax gives us no equivalent. But
this was a rhetorical, not a logical advantage; for the usual

order of words in Anglo-Saxon did not conform to any natural

and therefore
or so called logical succession, —
though it might
make a period more effective, in a spoken harangue, by putting
the most stirring words in the most prominent positions, or
where, according to the national periodic intonation, the em-
phasis naturally falls — yet it did not make the grammatical
construction clearer, but, on the contrary, rather tended to
involve and obscure it.f

The principal philological gains to be expected from the

study of Anglo-Saxon are, a more thorough acquaintance with
English etymology and a better understanding of the radical lin-
which are the foundation of the grammatical
guistic principles
structure of our mother tongue and we shall gain, as I have
;

already remarked, a considerable addition of expressive native

words to the present vocabulary and a corresponding enrich-
ment of our literary diction. That the revival of words of the
Gothic stock will supplant or expel much of the Romance por-
tion of our modern English is neither to be expected nor de-

* See First Series, Lectures XXIII. and XXIV.

t See First Series, Lecture XVI., pp. 352, 358.
112 REVIVAL OP ANGLO-SAXON WORDS Lect. III.

sired. Social life in our time has become too many-sided, it

appropriates too much of the new and foreign, and resuscitates
too much of the departed and the dormant, to be content with
aDything short of the utmost largeness of expression. Images,
if not ideas, are multiplying more rapidly than appropriate
names for them, and our vocabulary will continue to extend as
long as our culture advances.
The view I have taken of Anglo-Saxon grammar is extremely
general, would be nearer the truth to say, superficial, but
it

anything of minuteness and fulness would be inconsistent with

oral exhibition, and would, moreover, consume such an amount
of time that too little would be left for the discussion of points
of more immediate interest. A comparison of a few periods
from the narrative of Ohther in King Alfred's Orosius, and from
the preface to Alfred's Boethius, with English translations,
will serve better than more of formal detail, to illustrate the
most important differences between the two languages*; and in
future lectures I shall endeavour to convey a general notion of
the gradual processes of linguistic change, by presenting a
psalm and a chapter of the Anglo-Saxon Grospels with a series
of versions of the same in the successive stages of English. Be-
fore proceeding to the comparative analysis, it is necessary to
present a few paradigms of the principal parts of speech in
Anglo-Saxon the other grammatical peculiarities of the lan-
;

guage may be gradually brought out as we advance in the de-

composition and construction of sentences.f

* See Illustration IV., at end of this Lecture,

t See Illustration III., at end of this Lecture.

 : : :

NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

I. (p. 95.)

ANGLO-SAXON POWER OF DERIVATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF

RADICAL SIGNIFICATION OF WORDS.

From Turner's History of the Anglo-Saxons, Appendix I.

Ancient Noun:
hyge or hige, mind or thought.
Secondary meaning —
care, diligence, study,
:

hoga, care,
hogu, care, industry, effort.

Adjectives, being the noun so applied:

hige, diligent, studious, attentive,
hoga, prudent, solicitous.
Verbs from the noun
hogian, to meditate, to study, to think, to be wise; to be
anxious and hence,
: to groan.

^ to study, to be
i
'
t solicitous, to endeavour.

hi eg an, )
to study, to explore, to seek vehemently, to en-
hyegan, j deavour, to struggle.
Secondary noun derived from the verb
hogung, care, effort, endeavour.
Secondary nouns compounded of the ancient noun and another
hige eras ft, acuteness of mind.
higeleast, negligence, carelessness.
higesorga, anxieties, mental griefs.
hogascip, ) ,
, ° / prudence.
hogoscip, )\ l
hy gel east, folly, madness, scurrility.
hygesceaft, the mind or thought.
I
114 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS Lect. III.

Adjectives composed of the ancient noun and a meaning word:

hygelease, void of mind, foolish.

~ & '
magnanimous, excellent in mind.
, v } to
hige ro^ J

&
, % ' L prudent.
x
hogoieart, J

hogfull, anxious, full of care,

hige fr o d, wise, prudent in mind,
hige leas, negligent, incurious,
hige Strang, strong in mind,
hige th ancle, cautious, provident, thoughtful.

Adverbs from the adjective:

higeleaslice, negligently, incuriously,
hogfull lice, anxiously.

Ancient Noun:
Mod, the mind; also, passion, irritability.

Verb:
modi an, ) to be high-minded,
modigan, I to rage,
modgian, j
to swell.

Adjectives composed of the noun and another word or syllable:

mod eg, "j irritable,
mo dig, J
angry, proud,
modful, full of mind, irritable,
modga, elated, proud, distinguished,
m o d h w a t a, fervid in mind,
modilic, magnanimous.
mod leas, weak-minded, pusillanimous,
mod stathol, firm-minded,
modthwer, patient in mind, meek, mild

Secondary nouns composed of the ancient noun and some other

mod gethanc, thoughts of the mind, council.
mod gethoht, strength of mind, reasoning,
mod g e w i n n e, conflicts of mind.
modes mynla, the affections of the mind, the inclinations,
m o d h e t e, heat of mind, anger,
modleaste, folly, pusillanimity, slothfulness.
mo dn esse, pride.
modsefa, the intellect, sensation, intelligence,
mod s o r g, grief of mind.
 . : : : ,

Li-ct. III. NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 115

Secondary nouns, of later formation, composed of an adjective and

another noun
modignesse, ) ,. .

, [ moodiness, pride, animosity,

modmesse, )
x J

mod seocnesse, sickness of mind.

mod statholnysse, firmness of mind, fortitude.
mod sumnesse, concord.
tiiod thwemesse, patience, meekness.

Adverb formed from the adjective :

modiglice, proudly, angrily.

Ancient Noun:

r* '., \ the mind, o

genius, intellect, sense.
Gewit, > > i

— wisdom, prudence.
j

Secondary meaning:

Noun applied as an adjective

wita, ) . .

wise, skilful.
wite,
gewit a, conscious; hence, a witness.

Verb formed from the noun :

wit an, to know, to perceive,

gewit an, to understand,
witegian, to prophesy.
Adjectives composed of the ancient noun, and an additional syllable
or word
wit tig, wise, skilled, ingenious, prudent,
ge-witig, knowing,
ge-witleas, ignorant, foolish,
ge-wittig, intelligent, conscious,
g e - w i t s e o c, ill in mind, demoniac,
witol, wittol, wise, knowing.

Secondary nouns formed of the ancient noun and another noun :

witedom, the knowledge of judgment, prediction,

witega, a prophet,
witegung, prophecy,
wite saga, a prophet,
ge-witleast, folly, madness,
ge-wit loca, the mind,
ge- witness, witness.
I 2
 :

116 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS Lect. III.

ge-witscipe, witness.
wite-clofe, trifles.
witsord, the answer of the wise.
Nouns of more recent date, having been formed out of the adjectives:
gewitseocness, insanity,
witigdom, knowledge, wisdom, prescience,
wi to In esse, knowledge, wisdom.
Secondary adjective, formed upon the secondary noun:
witedomlic, prophetical.

Conjunctions;
witedlice,
,,
. .[ indeed, for, but, to-wit.
.
>-,,-..,..
witodlice, ) ' ' '

Adverbs formed irom participles and adjectives

witendlice, ) . . .

. , r, knowingly,
.
n b J •

wittiglice, )
Ancient Noun:
Ge-thanc, )
the mmd tnou Snt °P im °n.
.

Ge-thonc, } ' >

thane, the will.

thonc, the thought.
Secondary meaning : an act of the will, or thanks.

.M a council,
ge-thmg,]r
And from the consequence conferred from sitting at the council came
ge-thincth, honour, dignity.
Verbs formed from the noun :

thin can, j to think, to conceive, to feel, to reason, to con-

then can, j sider.
ncan, )
re-theno^
to thmk.
ge-thengcan, j

thancian ) , ,

4l [to thank, .

ge-thancian, )

thingan, to address, to speak, to supplicate.

ge-thancmetan, to consider.
Adjectives formed from the ancient noun :

A, i' ° r thoughtful, meditative,7 cautious,

thoncol, j

ge-thancol, mindful.
Lect. III. NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS H7

thancful, thankful, ingenious, content,

thancwurth, grateful.
thancolmod, provident, wise.

Secondary nouns formed from the verb :

thoht,
,
°' thought,
thinking, °
ge-thoht, )
ge-theaht, council.
ge-theahtere, councillor.
thancung, thanking.
thancmetuncg, deliberation.
Secondary verb from secondary noun :

ge-theahtian, to consult.

More recent noun from this verb :

ge-theathing, council, consultation.

Another secondary verb :

ymbethencan, to think about any thing.

Adjective from secondary verb :

ge-theahtendlic, consulting.

Adverb from adjective :

thancwurthlice, gratefully.

It is evident that in this list, which might be considerably enlarged

from the same roots, different orthographical forms are occasionally
given as different words, and the proficient in Anglo-Saxon will see
that there is room for criticism in several other respects. But I choose
to print my
author as I find him in the Philadelphia edition of 1841,
making no changes in the words, except, to lessen the chances of typo-
graphical mistake, the substitution of the modern English for the Saxon
character. There is always something to bo learned from even the
errors of a scholar, — at least the lesson of humility, when we consider
our own liability to similar shortcomings.

II. (p. 97.)

MONOSYLLABIC CATALAN POETRY.

The rarity of Catalan books in America justifies me, I think, in

printing a part of this poem, which Ballot y Torres, who quotes it in
 : ;

118 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS Lkct. III.

the preface to his* Gramatica y Apologia de la Llengua Cathalana,

thus introduces :

1
He ja dit tanibe que ab podra trobar altra llengua, que
dificultat se
sia mes breu y concisa que la nostraes per la abundancia que
; y axo
te de raonossfllabos, com es de veurer en las seguents quartetas, que
compongue lo numen poetich de Don Ignasi Ferreras, doctor en niedi-
cina.'

QUAETETAS.
A Deu, un en tres, y al Fill fet horn.

Un sol Deu, que tot ho pot,

Es lo qui es, un ser en tres
No son tres Deus, un sol es
Lo Deu del eel, que es en tot.

Si ab est un sol ser tres son,

Com pot ser no mes que un Deu,
Qui fa lo foch y la neu,
La Hum, los eels y lo mon ?

Un sol es ; puix a ser tres,

Fins a tres sers se han de dar
Y si es un sol ser, es clar
Que es un sol Deu y no mes.

Es ell lo qui ha fet lo Hum,

Lo blanch, lo foch y lo net,
Per qui dels pits surt la llet,
Per qui del foch ix lo fum.

Es del mon y dels eels rey,

Qui ho te dins sa ma
tot :

Tot lo que vol ell, se fa,

Que tot quant vol es sa lley.

Al torn seu son tots los sants,

Y prop d'ell son los chors nou,
Y en un sol chor la veu se on,
De sant, sant, sant, en fins cants.

etc. etc. etc.

I/ECT. III. NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS H9

III. (p. 112.)

ANGLO-SAXON INFLECTIONAL PARADIGMS.

THE ARTICLE.
Most grammarians agree that the Anglo-Saxon had neither definite
nor indefinite article. Klipstein treats the declinable se, seo, pzet,
and the indeclinable ]>e, both of which are generally considered pro-
perly pronouns, as definite articles, but he denies that there was an in-
definite. In the early stages of the language, for example in Beowulf,
the poems of Caedmon, and other ancient monuments, the nouns are
commonly construed, as in Latin, without a determinative but at later ;

periods both se, seo, past, and J>e, are employed as definite articles.
But it is equally true that an, one, served as an indefinite, as in the

second of the passages quoted from Ohther, in Illustration IV., post,

an port, a harbour, and an mycel ea, a great river, Pauli's Alfred,
p. 248, &c. We must therefore either admit both articles or reject
both.
Se, seo, Jjset, is thus inflected

Singular,

m. /. n.
N. se seo \&t
G. ]>aes ])se're J>393
D. ])am ]>Ee're ]?am
A. ]><me pa J>set.

Plural.

m.f. n.
N.
G-. ]>ara
D. |?am
A.

NOUNS.
The following table shows the variable endings of the nouns in the
different declensions.
120 BOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS Lect. III.

SIMPLE ORDER.

Fir st Declension.

Singular.

Masc. Fern. Neut.

Nom. -a -e -e
Gen. -an -an -an
Dat. and )
" an -an -an
Abl. j
Acc. -an -an -e

Plural.

Nom. and Acc. -an

Gen. -ena
Dat. and Abl. -una

COMPLEX ORDER.
Second Declension. Third Declension.
lar. Singular.
Masc. Fern. Newt. Masc. Fern. Neut.
Nom. _ _e
( ) — — -u -u -(-e)
Gen. -es -e -es -a -e -es
Dat. and
Qd .
"J
j--e ( -e -e -a -e -e
Abl.
Acc. -(e) -e — -u -e -(-e)

Plural. Plural.
Nom. and
Acc. )
-as -a — -a -a -u

Gen. -a -a (-ena) -a -a -a (-ena) -a

at. and "1
Dat.
-um -um -um
.

-um -um -urn

Abl. J
ADJECTIVES.
Indefinite endings.

Singular. Plural,

m. n. m.f. n.
N. — f.
— — -e (-u)
G. -es -re -es -ra
D. -um -re -nm -um (-on, -an)
A. -ne -e — -e.
 .

Lect. III. NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 121

Definite endings

Singular. Plural.

m. /. n. m.f. n.
N. -a -e -e -an
G. -an -an -an -ena
D. -an -an -an -nm (-on, -an)
A. -an -an -e -an

COMPARISON.
The Comparative formed from the Positive indefinite by annexing
is

-ra for the masculine, -re for the feminine and neuter; the Superlative
from the same by. adding -ost or -est for the indefinite, and -est a for
the masculine, -este for the feminine and neuter, definite form.

PRONOUNS.
First Person.
Singular. Dual, Plural.
N. ic wit we
G. min uncer ure
D. me unc us
A. me unc us.

Secoih d Person.
Singular, Dual. Plural.
N. )m git ge
G. pin incer eower
D. ]>e inc eow
A. ),e inc eow.

Third Person.
Si ngular. Plural.
m. f n. m.f n.
N. he heo hit hi
G. his hire his hira
D. him hire him him
A. hine hi hit hi.

The Possessive Pronouns are the genitives of personal pronouns of

the and second persons, treated as nominative stem-forms, and de-
first

clined like the indefinite adjective. There is no pcssessive pronoun of

the third person, the genitive plural of the personal pronoun being used
instead.
122 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS Lect. HI.

RELATIVE AND INTERROGATIVE PEONOUNS.

The parts of speech given under the head Article, declinable and
indeclinable, are generally used as Kelative Pronouns. The Interro-
gative is thus declined :

Singular,

ra. f. 71.

N. hwa liwaet
G. hwses hwses
r>. hwam hwam
A. hwone hwast.

VERBS.
There are several classes of verbs, both strong, or inflected by aug-
mentation, and weak, or inflected by letter-change. A few examples
of each must suffice.

SIMPLE ORDER, OR FIRST CONJUGATION.

INDICATIVE MODE.
Present.

Class I. Class II. Class III.

Sing, ic luf-ige hyr-e tell-e
j»ii luf-ast hyr-st tel-st

he luf-aS lryr-S tel-S

Plur. we, ge, hi luf-iatS hyr-aS tell-a'8

If, as in interrogative sentences, the pronoun follow the verb, the

plural is luf-ige, hyr-e, tell-e.

Imperfect.

Sing. ic luf-ode hyr-de teal-de

]m luf-odest hyr-dest teal-dest
he luf-ode hyr-de teal-de
Plur. we, ge, hi luf-odon hyr-don teal-don

SUBJUNCTIVE MODE.
Present.

Sing. luf-ige hyr-e tcll-e

Plur. luf-ion hyr-on tell-on.

Ll-CT. III.
T
]S OTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 123

Imperfect.

Sing. luf-ode hyr-de teal-de

Plur. luf-odon hyr-don teal- don.

IMPERATIVE MODE.
Sing. luf-a hyr tel-e
f liif-iaS f hyr-aS f tell-aS
Plur.
1 luf-ige 1 hyr-e 1 tell-e.

INFINITIVE MODE.
Pres. luf-ian lryr-an tell-an
Gerund. to luf-igenne to hyr-enne to tell-anne
Part. Pres. 1
luf-igende hyr-ende tell-ende
and Active J
Part. Past "1

(ge-) luf-od (ge-) hyr-ed (ge-) teal-d.

and Passive f

COMPLEX OEDEE, OE SECOND CONJUGATION.

INDICATIVE MODE.
Present.

Class I. Class II. Class III

Sing, brece healde drage
bricst hyltst drasgst
bricS hylt (healt) draegS

Plur
brecao*
J healdaS J"
dragaft

{ brece \ healde \ drage

Imperfect.

Sing. brasc heold droh

brsece heolde droge
braec heold droh
Plur. brae con heold on drogon,

SUBJUNCTIVE MODE.
Present.

Sing. brece healde drage

Plur. brecon healdon dragon
124 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS Lect. III.

Imperfect.

Sing. brae'ce heolde droge

Plur. brse'con heoldon drogon.

IMPERATIVE MODE.
Sing. brec heald drag

Plur.
brecaft f healdaS {dragatS
{ brece \ healde drage.

INFINITIVE MODE.
Pres. brecan healdan dragan
Gerund. to brecanne to healdanne to draganne
Part. Pres. 1
A ,. Y brecenc healdende dragende
and7 Active J
Part. Past \ ,
j Passive
t> - (ge-)
v°
brocen (ge-) liealden (ge-) dragen.
and t

J
'

The perfect and pluperfect tenses are formed, as in the cognate

Gothic languages and in modern English, by the verb h abb an, to
have, used as an auxiliary with the past or passive participle.
There is no true passive voice but, as in English, the place of the
;

passive is supplied by the past or passive participle, with the substan-

tive verb wesan, to be, as an auxiliary.
Wesan is thus conjugated :

INDICATIVE MODE.
Present ic eom |~ W32S
pu eart
^J waere
waer<
he is, ys Sh I
WQ3S
Plur. we, gG, hi synd, syndon ^ t waen

SUBJUNCTIVE MODE.
Present, s. sy, sig, seo Imperfect, s. wsere
Plur. syn Plur. wceron.

IMPERATIVE.
wesaS
Sing. wes Plur.
wese
Gerund. 16 wesanne
Part. Pres. wesende
„ Past (ge-) wesen.
Lect. III. NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 125

The Anglo-Saxon verb lias no future tense in either mode the pre- ;

sent being employed instead of a future. The present of the defective

verb beon, to be, however, has frequently a distinct future significa-
tion, and thus serves as a future to wesan.
Beon is thus conjugated :

Indie, pres. 1. beo Subj.pres. beo

2. byst . Plur. beon
3. byS Imper. beo
J,, f be65 -ni fbeoS
[ beo I beo
Injin. beon, Ger. to beonne, Part.pres. beonde.

IV. (p. 112.)

EXTRACTS FROM OIITHER's NARRATIVE, AND FR03I ALFRED'S

TRANSLATION OF BOETIIIUS.
This narrative, which is introduced by King Alfred into his transla-
tion of Orosius, is interesting both as being, so far as style is concerned,
probably Alfred's own work, and as containing the earliest authentic
information we possess concerning the geography and the people of the
countries it describes. In what language Ohtlier communicated with
the king does not appear, but it was probably in the Old-Northern
rather than in the Anglo-Saxon. We have reason to believe that
the two speeches resembled each other sufficiently, in the ninth century,
to be mutually intelligible to those using them, and there is evidence
that the lays of the Northern bards who visited England were under-
stood by at least the Saxon nobles.
I give : 1. the Anglo-Saxon text, from the appendix to Pauli's Life
of Alfred. London, 1857; I have, however, to diminish the chances
of typographical error, used the common English type instead of the
Anglo-Saxon letter, so far as the alphabets correspond; 2. an English
word-for-word version; 3. Thorpe's translation, in which, as will be
seen by the notes, I have corrected an obvious error; 4. A French
translation of Thorpe's version.

1. Fela spella him sa?don pa Beormas, Q2g]>er ge

2. Many things him told the Beormas, both
3. The Beormas told him many particulars, both
4. Les Beormas lui raconterent plusieurs details, tant
 ; : :

126 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS Lect. III.

1. of hyra agenum lande. ge of ])Eem lande

2. of their own land and of the land
3 of their own land, and of the other lands
4. de leur propre pays, que des autres pays

1. ]>e ymb hy utan wseron. ac he nyste hwset

2. that around them about were ; but he wist-not what
3. tying around them; but he knew not what
4. qui les environnaient mais il ne savait pas ce qui

1 ]>ses socSes wasr. forpsem he hit sylf ne geseah

2. (of-) the sooth was, for-that he it self not saw.
3. was true, because he did not see it himself.
4. etait vrai, parce qu'il ne le voyait pas lui-meme.

1. Da Finnas him ]mhte. and pa Beormas spreecon

2. The Finns him thought, and the Beormas spoke
3. It seemed to him that the Finns and the Beormas spoke
4. II lui semblait que les Finois et les Beormas parlaient

neah an gefteode SwiSost he for oyder.

nigh one language. Chieniest he fared thither,
nearly one language. He went thither chiefly,
a peu pr s un seul langage. II y alia principalement,

to-eacan }>aes landes sceawunge. for ]j£em

besides the land's seeing, for the
in addition to seeing the country, on account of the
non-seulement pour voir la contree, mais a cause des

hors-hweelum, forpaBm hi habbat) swyoe seftele ban on

horse-whales, for-that they have very noble bones in
walrusses, because they have very noble bones in
morses, parce qu'ils ont de belles defenses a

hyra toSum. ]m teS hy brohton sume

their teeth, these teeth they brought some
their teeth, some of these teeth they brought
leurs mtichoires, defenses clont ils porterent quelques-unes

J>sem cynincge. and hyra hyd bi5 swySe god to

(to-) the king: and their hide is very good for

to the king: and their hides are very good for

au roi: et leurs peaux sont bonnes pour les

Lect. III. NOTES AKD ILLUSTRATIONS 127

scip-rapum Se hwcel bi5 micle lsessa

ship-ropes. This whale is much less

ship-ropes. This whale is much less

cordages des navires. Cette baleine est beaucoup plus petite

Sonne oore hwalas. ne bi5 he lenora ]>onne syfan

than other whales, not is he longer than seven
than other whales, it being not longer than seven
que les autres baleines, n'etant pas plus longue que sept

elna Ian ac on his agnum lande is se betsta

ells long but in his own land is the best
ells but in his own country is the best
4. amies mais dans son propre pays il ya la meilleure

1. hwael-huntao*, ]>a beoS eahta and feowertiges elna

2. whale-hunting, they are eight and forty ells

3. whale -hunting, there they are eight -and-forty ells

4. chasse a la baleine, la elles ont quarante-huit amies

1. lange. and ]>& maestan fiftiges elna lange. para

2. long, and the largest fifty ells long ;
(of-) these
3. long, and the largest fifty ells long; of these
4. de longueur. et les plus grandes en ont cinquante ; de celles-ci

1. he soede past he syxa sum ofsloge syxtig on

2. he said that he (of-) six some slew sixty in
3. he said that he and five others slew sixty in
4. il dit que lui et cinq autres en avaient tue soixante en

1. twam daguni:* lie was swySe spedig man on psem

2. two days. He was (a)very wealthy man in the
3. two days. He was a very wealthy man in those
4. deux jours. C'etait un homme tres-riche dans les

1. am turn ]>e heora speda on beoo\ f is on

2. ownings that their wealth in is, that is in
3. possessions in which their wealth consists, that is in
4. biens qui constituent leurs richesses, e'est-a-dire en

1. wild-deorum :* He hasfde pa-gyt. ]>a he pone cyningc sohte,

2. wild deer. He had yet, when he the king sought,
3. wild deer. He had at the time he came to the king,
4. cerfs sauvages. II avait a l'epoque ou il vint vers le roi,
 — — —

128 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS Lect. III.

1. tamra deora unbebohtra syx hund :• Da deor hi hatatS

2. (of-) tame deer unsold six hundred. These deer they hight
3. six hundred unsold tame deer. These deer they call
4. six cents cerfs apprivoises invendus. lis appellent ces cerfs

1. hranas. ]?ara waeron syx stsel-hranas. 6a

2. reins, them
(of-)were six stale-reins, these
3. rein-deer, of which there were six decoy rein-deer, which
4. des rennes, parmi ceux-ci six etaient des rennes prives, qui

1. beocS swySedyre mid Finnum. forSaem

2. are very dear with (the) Finns, for-that
3. are very valuable amongst the Fins, because
4. ont une grande valeur chez les Finois, parce que

1. hy fod wildan hranas

]?a mid:*
2. they catch the wild reins with (them).
3. they catch the wild rein-deer with them.
4. par leur moyen ils prennent les rennes sauvages.

Notes, fela, indeclinable adj. obsolete in English, but extant in Sc.

feil; spell a, ace. pi. from spell, tidings, information, &c, obsolete
in this sense, but extant in spell, a charm, the verb to spell, and the
last syllableof Gospel; —
scedon, 3. p. pi. imp. indie, from secgan,
segg an, sag an, to say, or tell; a?g]>er ge — ge, both —
and, extant, —
as an alternative only, in either, not as a conjunctive. A eg\er is more
generally used in the sense of both than bd, bu, bdtivd (bd, both,
tivd, two), but a, butu, butiva, which are the etymological equivalents
of both, or than beg en; — of, about, from, out of, but never sign of
possessive in Anglo-Saxon; — hyra, poss. pi. of the 3. p. of the personal
pronoun. See p. 121; \ozm, dat. for more common form ]idm; —ymb,
Ger. um, about, around, obsolete; ac, — but, obsolete. But an, bute,
exists inAnglo-Saxon as a conjunction, though seldom used. Alfred
employs it in Boethius, c. xxxiv. § 10. ; —
nyste, 3. p. sing. imp. indie,
from nit an or nytan, not to know, a negative verb formed by the
coalescence of the particle ne, not, and ivitan, to know. The tendency
to coalescent formations was carried further in Early English than in
Anglo-Saxon. See First Series, Lecture XVIII \>o?s softes, softes ;

is the genitive of the noun soft, and the phrase nearly corresponds to

the of a truth, of the scriptural dialect; —

]>uhte, 3. p. sing. imp. indie,
from ]> in can, to seem, here used impersonally with the dative him,
as, in the modern form, with the first person, me-thought ; gefieode, —
Lect. III. NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 129

language, obsolete; siviftost, superlative, from sivifte, very much.

The root is adj. swift, sivyft, strong, powerful, great, which, with its

twenty derivatives and compounds, is entirely obsolete. It is a singular

instance of the mixture of vocabularies in English, that so common and
so simple a native word should have been superseded by a borrowed
root. Very is the Latin verum, French vrai, and was at first used in
English as an adjective. Thus Chaucer, "Wife of Bath's Tale :

Thurgh which he may his vcray frendes see ;

—
to-eacan, extant in eke; sceaivunge, root extant in shoiv, but with
an objective meaning; hors-liwcelum, Icel. rosmhvalr, walrus; —
ceftele, Ger. edel, noble, precious, obsolete in English; mosstan, —
nom. pi. superlative, definite, associate with my eel, large. Thorpe
translates \a mcestan, the most of them,'' which is a strange oversight,
l

for mo3St is properly significative of quantity, not of number and be- ;

sides, this rendering is inconsistent with the context, because if the

general length of the whole was forty-eight ells, 'the most of them'
could not have been fifty ells long ; spedig, prosperous. Our modern
verb to speed means, often, to prosper; — f, contraction for ]>03t;
—
hatah, we use hight only in a passive sense, but hatan like the Ger.
heissen, meant both to call and to be called.

EKOM THE SAME.

1. Ohthere ssede f sio scir hatte Halgoland ]>& he on
2. Ohthere said that the shire hight Halgoland that he in
3. Ohthere said that the shire in which he dwelt is called

4. Ohthere dit que le comte ou il demeurait s'appelle

1. budev He cwaeS f nan man ne bude be nor§an

2. dwelt. He said that no man not dwelt by north
3. Halgoland. He said that no one dwelt to the north
4. Halgoland. II dit que personne n'habitait plusaunord

1. himv Donneis an port on suSeweardum ]>sem

2. (of) him. There is a port to southwards (of) that
3. of him. There is likewise a port to the south of that
4. que ltd. II y a aussi tin port au sud de cette

1. lande, pone man hset Scyringes-heal. ]>yScr he cwaaS

2. land, which men hight Scyringes-heal; thither, he said,
3. land, which is called Scyringes-heal; thither, he said,
4. contree, qui est appele Scyringes-heal; a ce port, dit-il,
130 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS Lect. III.

1. f man ne mihte geseglian on anurn monde, gyf man

2. that one not might sail in one month, if one
3. no one could sail in a month, if he
4. personne ne peut naviguer dans un mois, s'il

1. on niht wicode, and aslce da?ge hasfde ambyrne wind,

2. by night lay-by, and each day had fair wind
3. landed at night, and every day had a fair wind
4. abordait de nuit, et que chaque jour il eut un vent favorable

1. and ealle \>& hwile he sceal seglian be lande. and on \>set

2. and all the while he should sail by (the) land, and on the
3. and all the while he would sail along the land, and on the
4. et tout le temps il cotoyerait la terre, et au

1. steorbord him biS serest Iraland. and ponne J>a

2. starboard (of ) him will-be erst Iraland, and then the
3. starboard will first be Iraland, and then the
4. tribord il y aura premierement Iraland, et ensuite les

1 igland ]>e synd betux Iralande. and ]?issum lande*. * Donne

2. islands which are betwixt Iraland and this land. Then
3. islands which are between Iraland and this land. Then
4. iles qui sont entre Iraland et cette contree. Ensuite

1. is ])is land oS he cymb* to Sciringes-heale, and

2. is this land till he cometh to Sciringes-heal, and
3. it is this land until he comes to Sciringes-heal, and
4. c'est cette contree jusqu'a ce qu'il vienne a Sciringes-heal, et

1. ealne weg on past baecbordNorSwege. wi5 suSan pone

2. all (the) way on the larboard, Norway. To south (of)
3. all the way on the larboard, Norway. To the south of
4. tout le trajet au babord, c'est la Norvege. Au sud de

1. Sciringes-heal fylS swySe my eel sa? up m on ])03t

2. Sciringes-heal runs(a) very great sea up into the

3. Sciringes-heal a very great sea runs up into the
4. Sciringes-heal une vastc mer s avance dans la

1. land, seo is bradre ponne amig man oferseon masge

2. land, which is broader than any man over-see uiay,
3. land, which is broader than any one can see over,
4. terre, qui est si large que personne nepeutvoirdel'autrecote,
Lect. III. NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 131

1. and is Gotland on o'Sre healfe ongean. and siSSa Sill endev

2. and is Gotland on(the) other side against, and then Seeland.
3. and Jutland is opposite on the other side, and then Seeland.
4. et Jutland est vis-a-vis de l'autre cote, et apres Seelande.

1. Seo sa3 li5 msenig hund mila tip in on ])£et land.

2. This sea lieth many hundred miles up in that land.
3. This sea lies many miles up in that land.
4. Cette mer s'avance plusieurs milles dans ce pays.

1. and of Sciringes-heal he cwas'5 f he

. seorlode on fif dagan
2. And from Sciringes-heal he said that he sailed in five days
3. And from Sciringes-heal he said that he sailed in five days
4. Et de Sciringes-heal il dit qu'il navigua en cinq jours

1. to })£em porte ])C mon hset set-HseSum. se stent

2. to the port that men hight at-Heaths; this stands
3. to the port which is called iEt-Hoethum; which is

4. a ce port qui est appele JEt-Hsethum; qui est

1. betuh Winedum and Seaxum. and Angle, and hyriS

2. betwixt (the) Wends and Saxons, and Angles, and belongs
3. between the Wends and Seaxons, and Angles, and belongs
4. situe entre lesWendes et les Saxons, et les Angles, et qui appartient

1. in on Dene.
2. to (the) Danes.
3. to Denmark.
4. au Danemarc.

Notes. be observed that the construction of this passage conforms

It will

more nearly than that of the former to the English idiom. I make no attempt
to solve the geographical difficulties it presents, but it is well to observe that
some critics suppose that Ir aland should be read Isaland or Island,
Iceland, and that Gotland is not Jutland, as translated by Thorpe,
but the island of Goth land, bude is still extant in the noun booth,
and the last syllable of neighbour is from the same root; cwazft, from
cweftan or cwcelSan, is the modern quoth; —
an, one, is the origin of
the indefinite article a,' an; —
port is no doubt the Latin portus;
— wicode, imp. indie, from ivician. The root ivic seems to have
meant originally an abiding or resting place, a station. The Northmen,
who depended principally on navigation for a livelihood, applied the
corresponding Old-Northern vik, exclusively, to a bay or harbour of
K 2
132 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS Lect. III.

refuge; the Anglo-Saxons, to any place of abode, as a town. This is

the probable origin of the termination -ivich in Norwich, &c. In this

passage, w icode involves the notion of a bay, as a coaster could not lie-
by without entering a harbour; —
ambyrne, obsolete in English; —
cere st, erst, superlative of 02 r, ere; — bift, from beon, to be, has here
the force of a future; —bcecbord, iioav superseded by larboard.
Eichardson gives no earlier authority for this latter word than Raleigh.
Babord, evidently identical with bcecbord, is found in most of the
European languages, but no satisfactory etymology has been suggested
for either word; ]>e man host att-Hccftiim. This use of the dative,
singular or plural, with a preposition, as the appellative of a town, is

very common in Icelandic. The fact is important, shows

because it

that the derivation of the ending —um in the names of towns from Ger.
heim is, in many cases, erroneous. See First Series, Lecture II. p. 44,
and Appendix, 4. In the sagas, cet-Hceftum is generally called
Hei5aba3r or Heiftabyr, in which forms the name often occurs in
Knytlinga-Saga. In the present instance, the form is no doubt that
which the Norwegian Ohther gave it, but this construction, though
rare, appears not to be unprecedented in Anglo-Saxon, at least in the
singular. Kemble, Cod. Dip. JEv. Sax. No. 353, as quoted for another
purpose in Haupt's Zeitschrift, XII. 282., gives this phrase from a grant
of Athelstan to Wulfgar :quandam telluris particulam in loco quern
'

solicole at Ham me vocitant;' —

hyrft, 3. p. indie, pres. sing, from
hyran, to hear, to obey, and hence, like the German g eh or en, to
belong.
I have introduced a French translation made by a friend from
Thorpe's version, for the purpose of a comparative view of the Anglo-
Saxon, the English, and the French periodic construction. I think the
latter might,without violence to the idiom of the language, have been
made to show a closer conformity to Thorpe's syntax, but, though it
was not executed with any such purpose, it will be apparent from a
comparison of the different texts that English syntax corresponds almost
as nearly with French as with Gothic precedent. I believe port and
mil are the only words of Latin extraction used by Alfred in these
extracts. Thorpe's translation, which studiously avoids non-Saxon
words, has thirteen derived from French and Latin. About ten of the
words employed by Alfred are now obsolete.
LCCT. III. NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 133

PREFACE TO ALFRED'S TRANSLATION OF BOETHIUS.

From Cardale's edition, London, 1829; with (2) a literal version;

and (3) Cardale's translation.

1. Aelfred Kuning wses wealhstod (Sisse bee and

2. Alfred, king, was translator (of-) this hook and
3. Alfred, king, was translator of this book and

1. hie of bee Ledene on Englisc wende swa hio nu is gedon.

2. it from book-leden into English turned as it now is done.
3. turned it from book-latin into English as it now is done.

1. hwilum he sette word be worde. hwilum andgit of

2. Whiles he set word by word, whiles sense for
3. Sometimes he set word by word, sometimes meaning of

1. andgite. swa swa he hit ]>a sweotolost and andgitfullicost

2. sense, just as he it the most-clearly and intelligibly
3. meaning, as he the most plainly and most clearly

1 . gereccan mihte. for ]>aem mistlicum and manigfealdum weoruld

2. speak might, for the distracting and manifold world
3. could render it, for the various and manifold worldly

1. bisgum ]>e hine oft 03gper ge on mode ge on lichoman

2. which him oft both
business in mind and in body
3. occupations which often busied him both in mind and in body.

1. bisgodan. Da bisgu us sint swi]?e earfo]? rime

2. busied. The businesses us are very hard (to) count
3. The occupations are to us very difficult to be numbered

1. pe on his dagum on ]>a ricu becomon ]?e he

2. which in his days upon those realms came that he
3. which in his days came upon the kingdoms which he

1. underfangen hrefde, and J>eah ]>a, he ]>as boc

2. undertaken had, and yet when he this book
3. had undertaken, and nevertheless when he had learned

1. hasfde geleornode, and of Ledene to Engliscum

2. had learned, and from Latin into English
3. this book, and turned it from Latin into the
 — :

134 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS Lect. III.

1. spelle gewende.
]>& geworhte lie hi efter to leope.
2. speech then wrought he it afterwards
turned, to (a) lay,
3. English language, he afterwards composed it in verse,

1. swa swa heo nu gedon is, and nu bit and for Godes
2. so as it now done is; and now prays and for God's
3. as it now is done. And he now prays and for God's

1. naman healsa]? aslcne para fte pas boc rsedan lyste.

2. name begs each (of-) them that this book (to) read lists,

3. name implores every one of those whom it lists to read this book,

1. f he for hine gebidde and him ne wite gif he

2. that he for him pray and him not blame if he
3. that he would pray for him and not blame him if he

1. hit rihtlicor ongite ponne he mihte. forpamide £elc mon

2. it understand than he might;
rightlier for that each man
3. more rightly understand it than he could. For every man
1. sceal be his andgites and
msefte
2. should by his understanding's measure
and
3. must according to the measure of his understanding and

1. be his semettan sprecan Sset he spree]?, and

2. by his leisure, speak that he speaketh, and
3. according to his leisure, speak that which he speaks, and

1. don f f he de]>.
2. do that that he doeth.
3. do that which he does.

Notes, wealhstod, from wealh, a foreigner, stranger, Welshman,

stool is apparently allied to standan, to stand, but its force in this com-
pound is not clear. We alhstod
wholly obsolete is bec-ledene, ;
—
led en is used for Latin and for language. See First Series, Appendix,
1. Chaucer uses leden, in this latter sense, in the Squieres Tale

Eight in hire haukes leden thus she sayde.

The phrase bec-leden belongs to a period when Anglo-Saxon was so

rarely, and Latin so universally employed for literary purposes, that the
latter was emphatically the language of books; wende from wen dan,
to turn, obsolete in this sense, but surviving probably in wend, to go,
and went, associate imp. of go; — hwilum, dative pi. from hwil, hwile,
 ;

Lect. III. NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 135

a ivh He, time, space — a n dg i t, a n dg y t, or andge t, mind, intelligence,

meaning, physical sense, wholly obsolete with its many derivatives and

compounds. The moral and intellectual nomenclature of the Anglo-

Saxon had become almost wholly lost before Chaucer's time, as will be
shown in Lecture VIII. The substitution of Eomance words for Gothic,
or Anglo-Saxon, extended also very far in the vocabulary of common
material life. Of the English names of the five senses, two, taste and
touch, are Romance. See also First Series, Lecture VI. p. 139. Bos-
worth, under andget, quotes an Anglo-Saxon writer as saying: pa
fif andgita ]>£es lichoman synd. gesiht, hlyst, sprwc, stceng or
stenc, and hrmpung ; the five senses of the body are sight, hearing,
{hlyst, Engl, listen), speech, smell, and touch. Bosworth does not ap-
pear to suspect any error in this passage, but it is possible that sprwc,
speech, is a misreading for smo3C, taste, still extant in smack. But this
is by no means certain. In the Ancren Eiwle, about 1200, it is said:
a.d.
])e heorte wardeins beoft ])e vif wittes — sihfte & herunge, spekunge and
smellunge, & eueriches limes uelunge ; and we wulle<5 speken of alle,
uor hwo se wit ]>eos wel, he de8 Salomones heste. The wardens of the
heart are the Jive senses : sight and hearing, speaking and smell, and
every limb's feeling, and ice will speak of them all ; for whosoever keeps
these well, he doeth* Solomon's hest. Another manuscript reads smec-
chinge for spekunge, and the learned editor of the Camden Society's
edition of the Ancren Eiwle thinks copy he printed from,
that, in the
spekunge. is an error for smekunge. But the author of the Ancren
Eiwle, in discussing the temptations to which the indulgence of the
senses exposes us, dilates first upon sight, then upon speech, thus pre-
facing his remarks on this subject Spellunge & smecchunge beo5 ine
:

muSe boSe, ase sihSe is i5en f eien auh we schulen leten smecchunge:

vort til we speken of ower mete. Talking and taste are both in the
mouth, as the sight is in the eyes : but ice shall omit taste until we sp>eak

of your meat. He then goes on to treat of hearing, then of sight, speech

and hearing, jointly, concluding this section by saying ]ns beoS nu )>e :

|>reo wittes f ich habben ispeken of.Speke we nu schortliche of ]?e two

o5re : ]>auh nis nout spellunge ]>e muSes wit, ase smecchunge, pauh heo
beon beo(5e ine muSe. These are now the three senses that I have spoken
of. Speak we now shortly of the other two ; though talking is not a

* Doeth. It is to be
be regretted that the ialse of
false learning oi grammarians has re-
md docth, independent,
jected the important distinction between doth, auxiliary, and independent.
f Note the curious coalescences, ine for in the, sing. ; i $ e n for in the, (J^sem)
 — —

136 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS Lect. I IT.

sense of the mouth as tasting is, though they are both in the mouth. He
then proceeds to treat of the smell and of the touch or feeling, but makes
no mention of the taste, though in the VHIth and concluding part, he
gives rules of abstinence. In the second paragraph of this part he says:
Of sihSe and of speche, and of the o'Sre wittes is inouh i-seid Of sight, ;

and of speech, and of enough has been said. Notwith-

the other senses
standing the writer's protest, then, that talking is not a sense of the
i

mouth as tasting is,' yet he habitually treated speech as a sense. Of

the five names of the senses enumerated in the passage cited by Bos-
worth under and get, gesiht, sight is the only one now used to indi-
cate a sense, and hrwpung, from hrcepan, to touch, with all its cog-
nates, is lost altogether.
There was a strange confusion in the use of the names of the senses
in theMiddle Ages. Chaucer's employment of feel for smell is an
instance :

Iwas so nigh, I might fele

Of the bothum the swete odour.
liomaunt of the Rose, v. 1844.

Whan I so nigh me might fele

Of the bothum the swete odour.
R. R. v. 3012.

In the original, the verb is entire, to perceive; sentir

sentir, Lat. s

signifies to smell in modern French siveotolost, adverb superl.

also ;

from siveotol, plain, clear, which is obsolete, with all its progeny;
gereccan, recan, to speak, extant only in reckon. Between re can,
to speak, and reckon, to count, there is the same analogy as between the
—
two corresponding senses of the verb to tell ; fo r has here nearly the
meaning of in spite of, notwithstanding; —
mistlicum, dat. pi. from
mist lie or mis lie, is not allied to mix, but is a compound from mis
and lie, mis-like, unlike, discordant; — lichoman, body, obsolete ex-
cept in the un-English lyke- or like-wake, corpse-watch; earfo]>, —
obsolete; — rime, number, not the Gra:co-Latin rhythmus, is the
true source of our rhyme. The resemblance between rime and Greek
afjidfiUQ in both form and meaning deserves notice; ricu, realm, Ger.
Reich, allied to rich, but otherwise obsolete; geivorhte x x to —
leo\e, turned a lay or verse. This may, and probably does refer
into
to the metrical, or rather rhythmical portions of Boethius, which Alfred
translated into both prose and verse but some have supposed that the
;

whole version is to be considered as a species of measured composition.

 — —

Lect. III. NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 137

It would be hard, however, to liken it to anything we call verse, unless

it be Richter's Streckvers; hcalsa\i, infill, halsian, from hals,
the neck, to implore, to persuade by embracing. The root and all its de-
rivatives are now obsolete in English; ivite, blame, allied to twit; —
?no3$e, measure, extant in verb, to mete; — cemettan, leisure, allied to
empty. The Latin vacuus, the equivalent of empty, was used in the
sense of at leisure.
In this preface, Alfred uses no Latin word. Cardale's translation
has seventeen, of Latin and French derivation. Many
of Alfred's most
important words, as will be seen by the above notes, have entirely dis-
appeared from the English vocabulary.
 LECTUEE IV.

SEMI-SAXON LITEKATURE.

That which is sown is not quickened except it die. The

decay of an old literature is a necessary condition precedent for
the origination of anew mode of intellectual life, in any people
which has a prose and a poetry of its own. Had not the speech
of the Anglo-Saxons perished, and with it the forms of literary
effort which employed it as a medium, the broader-spreadino-
and more generous vine, which now refreshes the whole earth,
had never sprung from the regenerated root of that old stock.
The Norman Conquest gave the finishing stroke to the effete
commonwealth of which I spoke in a former lecture, and through
the intellectual winter and spring-time of three centuries, which
followed that event, the germ of a new and nobler nationality
lay buried in the soil, undergoing the slow and almost imper-
ceptible changes that were gradually fitting it for a vigorous
and prolific growth.
During this period, the Saxon, the Norman, the Danish
settler and the few remains of the Celt were slowly melting and

coalescing into a harmonized whole, if not into a homogeneous

mass, and thus a new nation, a new character, and a new social
and political influence in the world of letters, of art and of arms,
were gradually developed.

( The immediate moral and intellectual results of the Conquest

were fully realized, and the character of English intellect, taste
and temper, so far at least as foreign action was concerned, was
completely formed in the reign of Edward III. —
the era of
Langlande, and Chaucer, and Grower, and Wycliffe. The new
Lect. IV. CONTINENTAL INFLUENCE 139

ingredients had been introduced and incorporated, and a unity

of feeling and spirit established, before those great writers com-
menced their labours. In short, English nationality had become
full-grown, and all that it remained for the Continent to do, in
its capacity of an informing influence, was to furnish new ad-
ditions to the stock of words at the command of the English
writer, and models of literary form to serve as leading-strings
for the first essays of an incipient literature.
In the history of Anglo-Norman England, we find compara-
which is so common
tively few traces of that hostility of race
between a conquered and a conquering people, and I think that
recent English writers have exaggerated the reciprocal dislike
and repugnance of the Norman and the Anglo-Saxon. A j ealousy,
indeed, existed — for the causes of it lie too deep in human
nature to be eradicated — and there are not wanting evidences
of its but the civil and social discords
occasional manifestation ;

seem generally results of the conflicting interests and sympathies

of ranks and classes, rather than of a settled animosity between
the home-born and the comeling.
Down to the time of Edward III. the two languages, native
and stranger, if not the two peoples, existed side by side, each
forming a separate current in the common channel. Their
intermingling was very gradual. Norman-French, which was
the language of the schools, disturbed the inflections and the
articulation of English, while English contributed no inconsider-
able number of words to the vocabulary of Norman-French,
modified its grammar in some particulars*, and thus created the
dialect known as Anglo-Norman, which still survives in import-
ant literary remains, but is most familiarly known as, for a long
period, the forensic and judicial language of England.
The Normans found in England as many objects and insti-
tutions new to themselves as they brought with them and

* For instance, it overthrew the Norman-French law of the formation of the

plural in nouns.
140 ENGLISH OF THIRTEEN TH CENTUET Lect. IV.

imposed upon the English people. Hence, so long as the two

dialects co-existed as independent speeches, the Norman, in its
various applications and uses, borrowed as much as it gave; and
accordingly, down at least to the accession of Edward III. we
French used in England, including the nomenclature
find in the
of law and government, quite as large a proportion of Saxon
words as contemporaneous English had borrowed from the
Norman.
The entire English vocabulary of the thirteenth century, as
far as it is known to us by its printed literature, consists, accord-
ing to Coleridge's Grlossarial Index, of about eight thousand
words. Of these, only about one thousand, or between twelve
and thirteen per cent., are of Latin and Eomance derivation. In
the actual usage of any single author, such words do not exceed
four or five per cent., and of this small proportion, some were
probably taken directly from Latin moral and theological lite-

rature, though in form they may have been accommodated to

Norman modes of derivation. The language thus far was sub-
stantially Anglo-Saxon, but modified in its periodic structure,
and stripped of a certain number of inflections, the loss of which
was compensated by newly developed auxiliaries, and by a more
liberal use of particles and determinatives.
Philologists have found it impossible to fix, on linguistic
grounds, a period when Anglo-Saxon can be said to have ceased
and English to have begun and this is one of the reasons why
;

some are disposed to deny that any such metamorphosis ever

took place, and to maintain the identity of the old speech and
the new. The change from the one to the other was so gradual,
that if we take any quarter or even half of a centuiy, it is not

easy to point out any marked characteristic difference between

the general language of the beginning and the end of it, though
particular manuscripts of the same work, differing not very

much in date, sometimes exhibit dialects in very different states

of resolution and reconstructions The difficulty of discriminating
the successive phases of the language by a chronological arrange-
Lect. IV. STANDARD OF LANGUAGE 141

ment is much increased by the fact, that although there are

numerous written monuments from every age of English history,
yet there is, in the series of printed vernacular writings, almost
a hiatus, which extends through a large part of the thirteenth
century, or in other words through one of the most important
eras of English philological revolution. Besides this, we are in
many cases wholly unable to distinguish with certainty, or even
with reasonable probability, dialectic or individual peculiarities
from the landmarks of general change and progress ; for not-
withstanding the confidence with which critics assign particular

writings to particular localities, upon internal evidence alone,

we realty know very little on the subject. In fact, in the pre-
sent linguistic school, British as well as Continental, hastily
generalized conclusions and positive assertion are so often sub-
documentary proof, that he, who studies
stituted for sufficient
the early philology of modern Europe only so far as it is ex-
hibited in grammars and dictionaries, and speculative essays, is
very frequent accumulating unsubstantial theories, instead of
acquiring definite truths which can be shown to have ever had
a real existence.
In ages, when a native literature has not yet been created, or
the structural forms of language established by the authorita-
tive example of great and generally circulated works of genius,
there can be no standard of diction or of grammar. Most writers
will be persons whose intellectual training has been acquired
through older literatures and foreign tongues. Their first efforts
will incline to be imitative, and they will follow alien models
not only in theme and treatment, but even in grammatical com-
position. Every author will aim to be a philological reformer,
and will adopt such system of orthography and of syntactical
form and arrangement as accidental circumstances, or his own
special tastes and habits of study, may have suggested to him.
Hence no safe conclusions as to the common dialect of an age
or country, at a period of linguistic transition, can be drawn
from a single example, or from the consistent usage of a single
142 PERIODS IN ENGLISH Lect. IV

writer. No historically probable theory of progress and change

can explain the remarkable grammatical differences between
the older and the not much later text of Layamon, or between
either of these and the nearly contemporaneous work of Ormin,
because the intervening period is entirely too short for such
revolutions to have been accomplished. And in like manner,
even after the language had assumed the general character
which now marks it, we find between the two texts of the Wy-
clifnte translations of the Bible, or rather between Hereford's
and Wycliffe's translation and the first recension of it, gram-
matical differences, which it would be extravagant to ascribe to
a general change in English syntax during the very few years
that are supposed to have elapsed between the execution of the
version and the revision of it by Purvey.
first

Although the process of transformation from Anglo-Saxon to

English was too gradual and too obscure to admit of precise
chronological determination, yet subsequent epochs of change
in our vernacular, after it had once dropped the formal, or, to

speak more accurately, the inflectional peculiarities of Anglo-

Saxon grammar, are somewhat more distinctly marked, and it is
practicable to indicate its successive periods by tolerably well
characterised and easily recognisable tokens, though, as in the
history of other languages, the datesassumed as the beginning
and the end of those epochs are somewhat arbitrary. It is not,
however, that the later growth of English has actually been
more per saltum than at earlier periods, but because, from the
increasing uniformity of the written dialect — a natural result
of the general circulation of the works of distinguished authors,
and the consequent universal prevalence of the forms which
they had consecrated —
and also from the much greater number
of literary monuments which are historically known to have
been produced in different parts of the we can trace the
island,

history of the language, and follow all movements with far

its

greater facility than through periods when contemporaneous

Lect. IV. PERIODS IN ENGLISH 143

writers differed more widely and the philological memorials are

fewer.
The London Philological Society, in its
e
Proposal for the
publication of a New English. Dictionary,' divides English, for
philological purposes, into three periods : the first, from its rise,

about 1250, to the Reformation, of which the first printed

English translation of the New Testament, in 1526, may be
taken as the earliest monument; the second, from the Reform-
ation to and including the time of Milton, or from 1526 to
1674, the date of Milton's death and the third, from Milton
;

to our own day.

These periods, I suppose, are fixed for lexicographical con-
venience in the collection of authorities, as I do not discover
any other sufficient ground for the division. Neither is Craik's
distribution altogether satisfactory. The first, or Early English
period of that author extends from 1250 to 1350; his second,
or Middle English, from the latter date to 1530 ; and his third,
or Modern English, from the middle of the sixteenth century
to the present day.* This, however, seems an objectionable
division as to the second period, because it embraces, in one
group, writers so unlike in literary and philological character
as Langlande and Wyatt, Wycliffe and Sir Thomas More ; and
as to the last, because it overlooks the philological revolution
due to the introduction of printing, the more general diffusion
of classical literature, and the first impulse of the Reformation,
and classes together writers who have so little in common as
Sir Philip Sidney and Walter Scott. I attach very little im-
portance to these arbitrary divisions of the annals of our lan-
guage and literature, but having on a former occasion adopted
an arrangement not coinciding with either of these systems, I
both for the sake of uniformity, and because I have found
shall,

it at once convenient and suited to my views of English philo-

logical history, substantially adhere to it in this course.f The
* Outlines of the History of the English Language.
t See First Series, Lecture I., p. 48.
144 PERIODS IN ENGLISH Lect. IV.

first period I would, with Craik, consider as extending from

about the middle of the thirteenth to the middle of the four-
teenth century; the second would terminate with the third
quarter of the sixteenth century ; the third would embrace all

subsequent phases of both the language and the literature

down to the time of Milton, with whom the second period of
the Philological Society concludes. The question of subsequent
division or subdivision is at present unimportant, because, for
reasons already given, I do not propose to carry down my
sketches later than to the age of Shaksp ear e, when I consider the
language as having reached what in the geography of great
rivers is called the loiver course*, and as having become a flow-
ing sea capable of bearing to the ocean of time the mightiest
argosies, a mirror clear enough to reflect the changeful hues of
every sky, and give body and outline to the grandest forms
which the human imagination has ever conceived.
The literature of England, were it to be considered without
reference to the revolutions of its vehicle, might admit and per-
haps require a division into very different eras. Some of these
would commence with prominent and well-marked epochs of
sudden transition, while in others, the periods are separated by
an age of apparent intellectual inactivity, during which the
monuments are too few and too insignificant to enable us easily
to trace the course of those hidden influences, which were secretly
and silently training and costuming the dramatis persona? for
a new and more triumphant entry upon the stage of literature.
But we propose to consider the language and its literary pro-
ductivity as co-ordinate powers, reciprocally stimulating and in-
tensifying each other, and hence, so far as their history is not
concurrent, we must distinguish their respective chronological

* In German, Unterlauf, or with some writers, Strom, is that lowest and

usually navigable part of the course of a river, where its motion is due less to the
inclination of its bed than to the momentum acquired by previous rapidity of flow,
and to the hydrostatic pressure of the swifter currents from higher parts of its

valley.
Lect. IV. ORIGIN OP NATIONAL LITERATURE 145

eras. I have already stated that the English language attained

to a recognizable existence as a distinct individuality about the
middle of the thirteenth century. We must now fix a period
which is to be regarded as the birth-day of English literature.
When then can England be said to have first possessed a na-
tive and peculiar literature ? The mere existence of numerous
manuscripts, in the popular dialect, belonging to any given pe-
riod, does not prove the existence of a national literature at that
epoch. A national literature commences only when the genius
of the people expresses itself, through native authors, upon to-
pics of permanent interest, in the grammatical and rhetorical
forms best suited to the essential character of the vernacular,
and of those who speak it. It is under such circumstances only
that prose or poetry exerts a visible influence upon the speech,
the tastes or the opinions of a nation, only by concurrent action
and re-action that literature and associate life begin to stimulate
and modify each other. In order that such effects may be pro-
duced in a mixed people, the races which enter into the compo-
sition of the nation, and the dialects of those races, must have,
to a considerable extent, been harmonized and melted into one,
and the people and the speech, though ethnologically and histo-
rically derived from different and unallied sources, must have
become so far amalgamated as to excite a feeling of conscious
individuality of nature and community of interest in the popu-
lation, and of oneness of substance and structure in the tongue.
In a composite nation, such a union of races and of tongues
strange to each other, such a neutralization and, finally, assimi-
lation of antagonist elements, can only be the effect of a gradual
interfusion and a long commingling, or of some vis ab extra
which forces the reciprocally repellent particles into that near
contiguity when, as in the case of magnetic bodies, repulsion
ceases and attraction begins.
The English political and other occasional ballads and songs

of the thirteenth, the beginning of the fourteenth and probably

earlier centuries, do not constitute a literature, nor would they
L
146 FUSION OP NATIONS AND OF DIALECTS Lect. IV.

do so, were they ten times more numerous, because neither the
public to which they were addressed, nor the speech in which
they were penned, yet possessed any oneness of spirit or of
dialectic form,and because they were founded on events too
circumscribed in their action, and on interests too temporary in
their nature, to appeal to the sympathies of more than a single
class or province or generation.
These compositions were sometimes in Latin, sometimes in
Norman-French, and sometimes in dialects of Saxon-English,
which had lost all the power of poetic expression that character-
ized the ancient Anglican tongue, without having yet acquired
anything of the graces of diction and adaptation to versified
composition already developed in the neighbouring Eomance
languages; and lastly, they were sometimes macaronic. They,
cannot, therefore, be regarded as the expression of anything
which deserves to be called the national mind, though, indeed,
we trace in them, here and there, the germs which were soon to
be quickened to a strong and genial growth.
,
The welding heat, which finally brought the constituents of
English nationality into a consistent and coherent mass, was
generated by the Continental wars of Edward III. The con-
nection between those constituents had been hitherto a political
aggregation, not a social union ; they had formed a group of
provinces and of races, not an entire and organized common-
wealth. Up to this period, the Latin as the official language of
the clergy, the Norman-French as that of the court, the nobility,
and the multitude of associates, retainers, dependents, and trades-
men whom the Norman Conquest had brought over to the
island,and the native English as the speech of the people of
Saxon descent, had co-existed without much clashing interfer-
ence, and without any powerfully active influence upon each
other and those who habitually spoke them, though apparently
;

not violently hostile races, were, nevertheless, in their associa-

tions and their interests, almost as distinct and unrelated as the
languages themselves.
 ;

Lect. IV. ORIGIN OF LITERATURE 147

There was, then, neither a national speech nor a national

spirit,and of course there was and could be no national litera-
ture, until the latter half of the fourteenth century. True, the
Ormulum, and the chronicles of Robert of Gloucester, and
Robert of Brunne, voluminous works to be noticed hereafter,
as well as many minor productions in the native language,
existed earlier; but they were in no sense organic products of
English genius, or stamped with any of the peculiarities which
we now recognise as characteristic of the literature of England.
We have no proof that any of these writings exerted much general
influence in the formation of the English character or the
English tongue, but they are important as evidences of the nature
and amount of changes which political, social, and commercial
causes, rather than higher intellectual impulses, had produced
in the language and the people.
In one aspect, then, the general subject of our course pro-
perly begins with the age of Langlancle and Wycliffe and Gower
ancT Chaucer but we propose to make a special study of the
;

language, not merely as a passive medium of literary effort,

but as an informing element in the character of that effort and ;

hence we must preface our more formal literary discussions

with something more than a hasty glance at an era of blind
and obscure influences —
a stage of that organic, involuntary,
and, so to speak, vegetal action by which the materials of our
maternal tongue were assimilated, and its members fashioned,
just as in animal physiology the powers of nature form the
body and its organs before the breath of conscious life is breathed
into them.
In investigating the origin of a literature and the relations
between it and the tongue which is its vehicle, it is a matter of
much interest to ascertain the causeswhich have determined
the character of the language in individualised form
its earliest

and we can, not unfrequently, detect the more general influences

and their mode of operation, as certainly in the speech itself as in
historical monuments. When, for example, we find, in follow-
L 2
148 CHARACTER OF EARLY ENGLISH Lect. IV.

ing the history of a given tongue, an infusion of new words or

idioms of a particular linguistic character, we can generally
recognize the source from which they proceeded, with little

danger of mistake ; and the class of words and combinations

so borrowed will often furnish very satisfactory evidence as to
the historical or ethnological character of the influences which
have been operative in their introduction. If, for example, the
vocabulary of trade, and especially of navigation, be foreign in
its origin, there is a strong presumption that the people was not
originally a commercial one, but that it possessed or elaborated
natural products suited to the wants or the tastes of other
nations, who were more addicted to traffic and foreign inter-
course by sea or land — and that strangers have bestowed a
mercantile nomenclature upon those to whom they resorted for
purchase or exchange. If the dialect of war be of alien
parentage, it is nearly certain that the people has, at some
period of its existence, been reduced by conquest and subjected
to the sway of another race, or at least that it has learned, by
often repulsing foreign invasion, effectually to resist it. If the
phraseology of law and of religion be not of native growth, we
may be sure that the jurisprudence and the creed of the land
have been imposed upon it by immigrant legislators and
teachers.
In early Anglican linguistic and literary history, however, we
are not left to infer the nature of the causes of change from
their visible effects. The contemporaneous political and histo-
rical records and monuments — or rather the materials for the

construction of such — are so numerous and so full, that though

we are left much in the dark with reference to the social and
domestic life of the Norman, and more especially the Saxon
population, and to many grammatical changes, yet the general
relations between the Anglo-Saxon people, the Eomish mis-
sionaries who converted them to Christianity, the Northmen
who plundered and for a brief period ruled over them, and the
Norman-French who finally subdued them and gradually amal-
Lect. IV. CAUSES WHICH INFLUENCED EARLY ENGLISH 149

gamated with them, are well understood and we can accord-

;

ingly see in what way, though not always to what precise extent,
each of these disturbing influences may have affected the speech
of England.
The difficulty of measuring and apportioning the relative
amount of effect produced by these different causes arises from
the fact, that although they may sometimes have neutralized
each other, they are frequently concurrent in their action, or
fall in with already existing tendencies inherent, as some hold,
in the Anglo-Saxon language, but more probably impressed
upon it by circumstances common to all the nations which have
participated in the influences of modern European civilization.
There are many cases in which it is quite impracticable to de-
termine to which of several possible causes a given effect is to
be ascribed. With respect to these, we must content ourselves
with a balance of probabilities ; and as to those numerous phi-
lological data which can be historically connected with no known
older fact, a simple statement of the phenomena is, for the
present, better than the shrewdest guess at the rationale of them.
I shall have occasion to illustrate the Dark Age of English
philological history, the thirteenth century, by more or less full
references to many of its most important relics, but the attention
of the student should be specially directed to the four most
conspicuous monuments which serve to mark the progress of
change from the Anglo-Saxon to the English. These are
La} amon's Chronicle of Brutus, the Ancren Eiwle, the Ormulum,
T

and Eobert of Gloucester's Chronicle. The dialect of the first

three of theseis generally called Semi-Saxon that of the last
;

Early-English, or simply, English. Excepting the Ancren

Eiwle, they are, unfortunately, all in verse. I say unfortunately,
because in tracing the history of the fluctuations of language,
prose writings are generally much more to be depended on than
poetry. The dialect of poetry is, for rhetorical reasons, always
more or less removed from the common speech, and the fetters
of rhythm, metre, alliteration, and rhyme inevitably affect both
 ;

150 POETIC DICTION Lect. IV.

the choice of words and the employment of inflected forms.*

The conventional canons of verse, and the habitual studies and
training of poetical writers, tend to beget in them a deference
to the authority of older models and an attachment to archaic
modes of expression. Hence it follows that the vocabulary of
poetry is usually in an earlier stage of development than that of
contemporaneous prose, and especially of contemporaneous ver-
nacular speech, and it is consequently rather behind than in

advance of the language of common life, and of ordinary written

communication. We cannot, therefore, suppose that either of
the works to which I refer presents a true picture of the language
in which Englishmen spoke and corresponded upon the moral
and material events and interests of their time, at the several
periods when they were written.
On the other hand, the diction of poetry is less subject to
accidental and temporary disturbances than that of prose ; its

vocabulary and syntax usually conform more truly to the essen-

tial genius of the speech, and radical and abiding characteristics
of language are more faithfully exhibited by it than by the dia-
—
* Van Maerlant, a. d. 1235 1300, in his Leven van Franciscas, quoted by
Bosworth, says;
Ende, omdat ic Vlaminc ben,
Met goeder herte biddic hen,
Die dit Dietsche sullen lesen,
Dat si myns genadich wesen;
Ende lesen sire in somich woort,
Dat in her land es ongehoort,
Men moet om de rime souken
Misselike tonghe in bouken.

As translated by Bcnvring, Batav. Ant hoi. p. 25.

For I am Flemysh, I you beseche

Of youre courtesye, al and eche,
That shal thys Doche chaunce peruse;
Unto me nut youre grace refuse
And yf ye fynden any \rorde
In youre countrey that ys unherde,
Thynketh that clerkys for her ryme
Taken an estrange worde sometyme.
Bosworth, Origin of the Germ, and Soand. Lang. p. 101. See First
Series, Lecture VIII., p. 175, and XVII., p. 372.
 ;

Lfxt. IV. TWELFTH AND THIRTEENTH CENTURIES 151

lect of other forms of composition, which are more affected by

the caprices or peculiarities of the individual, or by other con-
tingent causes.
We shall, then, not widely err if we consider these works as
examples, not indeed of the daily speech of their own times,
but as following, at a considerable interval, the general move-
ment of the English tongue, and, in the main, faithfully record-
in <x its greater mutations.
But, as has been before observed, there is reason to believe
that the confusion of dialects was such during almost the whole
of the three centuries next following the Norman Conquest,
that no one could fairly lay claim to be considered as the stand-
ard of the national tongue. We have not the means of knowing
how far either of the writings in question corresponded with

some local modification of the common speech, or how far, on

the contrary, it stands as a representative of the more general
language of the land. Critical writers speak of particular works
as marked by Northern, or Southern, or Western, or Northum-
brian, or Anglian peculiarities ; but these terms are, from our
ignorance of the local extent of such peculiarities, necessarily
used in a vague and loose application, and it would be very
hazardous to suppose that they have any precise geographical or
ethnological accuracy.
Of prose English compositions of the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, w e have not enough in
T
print to enable us to compare
the poetic and prose dialects of those periods, and our knowledge
of actual speech in the vernacular of those centuries is extremely
limited, our conclusions basedupon uncertain premises. The
Saxon Chronicle comes down to about the year 1150. The dia-
lect of the latter portion of it approximates to English syntax,
but it is generally considered as unequivocally Anglo-Saxon
and there are many fragments, in both prose and verse, of later
periods, inwhich that language was still employed, others so
confused in syntax, that it is very difficult to determine whether
they are most closely related to the old language or to the new.
152 SAXON CHEONICLE Lect. IV.

The following extract from the Saxon Chronicle will serve to

show sufficiently the grammatical character of Anglo-Saxon at a
period soon after the Conquest ; for though it is not certain at
what precise date it was written, it is evidently older than the
chapters which contain the annals of the twelfth century.

Millesimo LXXXIII. On pisum geare aras seo ungepwaarnes on

Glaestihgabyrig betwyx fam abbode Durstane & his munecan. iErest
hit com of paas abbotes unwisdome.
f he misbead his munecan on fela
pingan. & pa munecas hit mamdon lufelice to him. & beadon hine f
he-sceolde healdan hi rihtlice. & lufian hi. & hi woldon him beon
holde & gehyrsume. Ac se abbot nolde paas naht. ac dyde heom yfele.
& beheot heom wyrs. Anes daages pe abbot eode into capitulan. &
sprsec uppon pa munecas. & wolde hi mistukian. & sende aafter laawede
mannum. & hi comon into capitulan on uppon pa munecas full gewe-
pnede. And pa waaron pa munecas swiSe aferede of heom. nj^ston
lrwet heom to donne waare. ac toscuton. sume urnon into cyrcan & be-
lucan pa duran into heom. & hi ferdon aafter heom into pam mynstre.
& woldon hig lit dragan. pa pa hig ne dorsten na ut gan. Ac reowlic
ping paar gelamp on daag. f pa Frencisce men braacen pone chor. &
torfeclon towserd pam weofode. paar pa munecas waaron. & sume of
pam cnihtan ferdon uppon pone uppflore. & scotedon adunweard mid
arewan toweard pam haligdome. swa f on paare rode, pe stod bufon
pam weofode. sticodon on maanige arewan. & pa wreccan munecas
lagon onbuton ]'am weofode. & sume crupon under. & gyrne cleopedon
to Gode. his miltse biddende. pa pa hi ne mihton nane miltse set man-
num begytan. Hwaet magon we secgean. buton f hi scotedon swi<5e.
& pa o'Sre pa dura braacon paar adune. & eodon inn. & ofslogon sume
pa munecas to deaSe. & rnamige gewundedon paarinne. swa "f pet blod
com of pam weofode uppon pam gradan. & of pam gradan on pa flore.
Oreo paar waeron ofslagene to deabe. & eahtateone gewundade.

By Thorpe's nearly literal translation of this passage, it will

be seen that the construction of the period was rapidly ap-

proaching to the modern English arrangement. Keeping this
in mind, the student will be able to compare the text and the
translation by the aid of these observations.

Ungepwaarnesis from the adjective gepwaar, or pwaar, agreeing,

consonant, pleasant, beyond which I can trace no radical, nor do I re-
 —

LECT. IV. SAXON CHRONICLE 153

member any probably cognate word in the Gothic languages. It is

quite obsolete in English; — misbead is from misbeodan, comp. of

the particle mis- and beodan, to bid, command or govern; — lufelice
is an adverb from lufian, to love, meaning here, kindly, affectionately,
— hold, faithful, gentle, now but extant in the sister-tongues;
obsolete,
— beheot is from behatan, to promise; —
mistukian is a compound
of mis- and tucian, to punish or discipline, obsolete in English,
but still found in all the Gothic languages; afered of heom, —
afraid of them; afered is a participle from afseran, to put in
fear ;afraid is a corruption of it; —
of is not a sign of the possessive,
but means by; —
toscuton is from sceotan, to shoot, rush, flee;
union, from yrnan, a transpositive form of rennan, to run;
— belucan, from beliican, to shut or lock, whence the English
loch; —
gelanip from gelimpan or limpian, to happen, now obso-
lete; —
torfedon, from torfian, to throw or shoot, obsolete; weo- —
fod, altar, said to be from wig, an idol, and bed, a resting-place, now
obsolete; —
rode from rod, cross, gallows, extant in rood-loft, Holy-
rood, &c. —
;
gyrne, allied to the modern yearn; miltsefrom mild, —
merciful, mild; —
begytan, extant in get, beget; —
eodon, imp. asso-
ciate with gan, to go, obsolete in modern English, though still used in
the fourteenth century; —
sume ]?a munecas, some the monks. The
modern form, some of the monks, is a foreign idiom; gradan, from
grad, a step, Lat. gradus. I have no doubt that gree, gris, a step,
—
which occurs in so many forms in early English, and which some refer
to a Celtic origin, is the same word, and that the Celts also took their
term from the Latin.
Thorpe's translation is as follows : —
An. MLXXXIII. In this year arose the discord at Glastonbury, be-
twixt the abbot Thurstan and his monks. It came first from the abbot's
lack of wisdom, so that he misruled his monks in many things, and the
monks meant it kindly to him, and prayed him that he would entreat
them rightly, and love them, and they would be faithful to him, and
obedient. But the abbot would naught of this, but did them evil, and
threatened them worse. One day the abbot went into the chapter-
house, and spake against the monks, and would misuse them, and sent
after laymen, and they came into the chapter-house upon the monks
full-armed. And then the monks were greatly afraid of them, knew
not what they were to do, but fled in all directions some ran into the :

church and locked the doors after them and they went after them
;

into the monastery, and would drag them out, as they durst not go out.
But a rueful thing happened there on that day. The Frenchman broke
 ;'

154 LAYAMON Lect. IV.

and hurled towards the altar where the monks were

into the quire,
and some of the young ones went up on the upper floor, and kept
shooting downward with arrows towards the sanctuary, so that in the
rood that stood above the altar there stuck many arrows. And the
wretched monks lay about the altar, and some crept under, and earn-
estly cried to God, imploring his mercy, seeing that they might not ob-
tain any mercy from men. What can we say, but that they shot
cruelly, and the others brake down the doors there, and went in, and
slew some of the monks to death, and wounded many therein, so that
the blood came from the altar upon the steps, and from the steps on the
floor. Three were there slain to death, and eighteen wounded.

Although this extract shows an approximation to the modern

syntactical construction, which, as I have endeavoured to show
in a former lecture, is in a considerable degree borrowed from
the French, yet thus far the Saxon vocabulary had received very
few contributions from that source. There is not a single
French word in the whole passage, while Thorpe's translation
contains fourteen, and eight of the Anglo-Saxon words of the
original, with numerous compounds and derivatives from the
same roots, have become entirely obsolete.
The work of Layamon, or perhaps Lagamon for we do not—
know the sound of the 5 in this name —
is a versified chronicle

of the early fabulous history of Britain and its ancient royal

dynasty. It commences with the destruction of Troy and the
flight of iEneas, from whom descended Brutus, the founder of
the British monarchy, and extends to the reign of Athelstan.
The which Layamon founds his narrative, as he
authorities on
himself states, are c
the English book that St. Beda made
(meaning probably King Alfred's Anglo-Saxon translation of
Beda's Ecclesiastical History, from which however, he seems to
have borrowed little), two writers, Albinus and Austin, who are
—
not known to have produced any historical works, though Bede
acknowledges his obligations to the former for materials furnished
him for the composition of his Ecclesiastical History of England;
and lastly and chiefly, a third f book, that a French clerk hight
Wace made.' This latter work is the romance of Brut, trans-
Lect. IV. LAYAMON 155

latedby Wace or G-asse, into Norman-French, from Geoffrey of

Monmouth's Latin History of the Britons, and completed, as
appears by the concluding couplet of the poem, in the year
1155.
Layamon has enlarged upon his original, for the version
of Wace contains but 15,300 lines, while Layamon's work
extends to more than 32,000, though, as the lines in the
latter are shorter than the octo-syllabic verse of Wace, the
quantity of matter is not twice as great. Some unimportant
passages of Wace are omitted, and much is added. The addi-
tions by Layamon are the finest parts of the work, almost the
only part, in fact, which can be held to possess any poetical
merit. We have not the means of ascertaining how far these
are of Layamon's own invention, for he occasionally refers, in
a vague way, to other ' books ' as authorities for his narratives,
and it is probable that many of the incidents were borrowed
from older and now forgotten legends. In general, however,
the w ork has more the air of an original than of a translation.
T

It seldom conforms closely to the text of Wace, and it has a

comparative elevation of diction, of thought, and of imagery,
which entitles it to a higher rank than that work, and stamps it
as a production of some literary merit.
The versification is irregular, sometimes unrhymed and allite-
rative, like that of the Anglo-Saxons, and sometimes rhymed
like that of Wace sometimes merely rhythmical, sometimes
;

in lines composed of regular feet, thus showing, in the structure

of the verse as well as in the syntax, evidences of Norman influ-
ence. The two systems of versification are intermixed, both
occurring sometimes iu a single couplet, and the employment of
neither rests on any discoverable principle, except that of mere
convenience to the writer. The rhymed lines bear but a small
proportion to the alliterative, and in general the rhythm follows
that of Anglo-Saxon models. It is remarkable that asso-
nance, or correspondence of vowels while the consonants differ,

elsewhere hardly known in English verse, is much used.

156 LATAMON Lect. IV.

These remarkable discrepancies in versification suggest a

doubt whether the chronicle of Layamon is to be regarded as an
entire work, and not rather as the production of several different
hands, whose labours have been collected and fashioned into a
whole by later editors and copyists. But the plan has too much
unity to render this supposition probable, and the lapse of time
between the completion of Wace's poem and the date of the
oldest manuscript of Layamon is too short to allow of a succes-
sion of independent translators. It is, however, by no means
unlikely that Layamon availed himself of versions by earlier
writers, who translated directly from Geoffrey of Monmouth,
and this may serve in some degree to explain the want of uni-
formity in his verse.
There is neither internal nor external evidence by which the
date of the poem can be fixed with exact precision, but there
are allusions to events which occurred late in the twelfth
century ; and, on the other hand, the character of the diction
and grammar justify us in saying that it could scarcely have
been written after the commencement of the thirteenth.
It appears from the prologue, that Layamon resided at Ernley
in North Worcestershire, and it is hence argued that the dialect
in which he wrote was characteristic of that region. This is too
slight evidence to establish a probability that he confined him-
self to the dialect of a shire, of which he may not have been a
native and where his residence may have been short, and the
external proof upon this point is not entitled to much con-
sideration.
There exists a manuscript of Layamon, which appears to have
been written about the beginning of the thirteenth century, and
was therefore nearly contemporaneous with the author. In the
want of evidence to the contrary, we are authorised to presume
that this manuscript gives us the work substantially as Layamon
wrote it. There is also extant a manuscript supposed to be
only half a century, or thereabouts, younger. This exhibits
differences too great to be explained upon the supposition of a
Lect. IV. LAYAMON 157

general change in the syntax of the language in so brief a

period, and which moreover are not easily reconciled with any
theory of the characteristics of local dialects. We must con-
clude, either that this manuscript belongs to a later period than
that assigned to it by the critics, that the dialect of the older
manuscript was much behind its time, or that there were two
nearly contemporaneous dialects in more widely different states
of progress, than we should infer from any other evidence.
The and syntactical character of Layamon I shall
inflectional
discuss in remarks upon the passages I cite by way of illustra-
tion, and I will here barely notice what is perhaps the most
remarkable, though not the most important, peculiarity in the
grammar of Layamon — the use of the possessive pronoun his
as a sign of the possessive case, as when, in more modern
English, was not unusual to write John his booh, instead of
it

John's booh As I have somewhat fully examined this point in

my former series of Lectures on the English Language, I will
not now again enter upon it.*
^
Although the Chronicle of Layamon still retains a large
proportion of the Anglo-Saxon inflectional forms, yet it approx-
imates so closely to modern English in structure of period, that
no previous grammatical study is required to read it. The glos-
sarial index of the admirable edition published by Sir Frederic
Madden in 1857, contains all the stem-forms and all the inflec-
tions, with references to the passages where they occur so that, ;

with this help and that of the notes, not to speak of the trans-
lation which accompanies the text, any person of ordinary
intelligence may peruse it with entire ease and satisfaction.
The specimens I Layamon's dic-
select for illustration of
tionand grammar are among Wace. The
his additions to
first consists of what Sir Frederic Madden calls c
The amusing :

and dramatic passages relative to the Irish, and their conflict

with the Britons.' The second and third are characterized by

* See First Series, Lecture XVIII., p. 401, and note at the end of the lecture.
 '

158 LAYAMON Lect. IV.

c
the same editor as the highly curious passage [s] regarding
:

the fairy elves at Arthur's birth, and his transportation by them

after death in a boat to Avalon, the abode of Argante, their
queen.' They will not give the reader so
high an opinion of
Layamon's genius as some of his critics have entertained, and in
fact his merits as a translator seem to be greater than his power
as an original writer.
In the following examples, the first column exhibits the oldest
known be of Layamon's own time, or very near
text, believed to
it ; the second, as has been observed, is thought to have been
written about half a century later. The points are prosodical,
not marks of punctuation.

per ifah Gillomar i po i-feh Gillomar i

Whar him com Vther. war hi com Vther.
& haelide hif cnilites i and hehte his cnihtes l
.

to wepne forcS rihtes. wepni heom forprihtef.

& heo to-biliue '
And hii to-bliue
& gripen heore cniues. neomen hire cniues,
& of mid here breches l .

feolcuo weoren heore leclief.

& igripen on heore hond 5 and gripen on hire honde f

heore fperen longe. hire speres longe.

hengen an heore aexle i

mucle wi-Eexe.
pa faside Gillomar J>e king i po faide Gillomar pe king
a fwi'Se feollic ping. a fwi]>e fellich ping.
Her cumeS V5er i Her come}) Vther i

Aurilies broder. Aurelie his broker,

he wide bidden mi grift i he wole bidde, min grip i

& nolit fehten me wio\ and noht fihte me wip.

j>a formefte beoft hif fweines i

fare we heom to-jeines.

ne purfe 50 nauere rehchen t
pah 50 flam pa wrecchen.
For ^if Vther Coftantinef fune i And gef Vther Conflantines fone i

wulle her mi mon bicume. wole her mi man bi-come.

& Paflente ajeuen i

hif fader riche.

Lect. IV. LAYAMON 159

'
icli hine wullen griSien i ich hine wolle gripie
& latten hine liuien. and lete hine libbe.
& inne foire beden i and in faire bendes i

mine londe.
laxlen hine to him lede to mine londe.
pe king wordede pus '
pe klg wordede pus '

pa while him a-lomp wurf. pe wile hit bi-fulle worf.

Weoren Vtheres cnihtes i Weren Vther his chnihtes i

at pan time for'5 rihtes. in pan toune forprihtes.

leidcn fur a pene tun i and fetten fur oueral
& fehten biliue. in bour and in hal.
mid fweorden heom to rakeclen
l
. and fafte to jam rakede *

and pa Irifce weoren nakede. and hii were alle nakede.

pa ifegen Irifce me i po i-fehge Yrifle men i

pat Brutten wes an eorneft.

feondliche heo fuht i

and neoSeles heo feollen. pat hii pufTe fullen.

heo cleopede on heore king S hii gradde to hire king f

Wliar aert pu nixing. War hart pou niping.

whi nult pu hider wcndeni wi nelt pou hider wende i

]m lezft uf her fcenden. pou Ieteft vs alle afende.

and PafTent pin irere '

ifihus fallen here.

l
cumeo" us to halpe .

mid halrjere ftrengtSe.

pif ihcrde Gillomar i pis ihorde Gillomar i

per foren wes hif heorte for. par vore his heort was for.

mid hif Irifce cnihten i mid his YrefTe cnihtes i

he com to pan fihte. he com to pan fihte.

and PafTend voro" mid him i and Pafcent forp mid him f
beien heo weoren ua?ie. beine hii weren veie.
pa V5er
ifeh I po ifeh Vther i

pat icumen wes per Gillomar. pat icome was Gillomar.

to him he gon riden to him he gan ride
'
i

and fmat hine i pere fide. and fmot hi in pan fide.

pat pat fpere purh rade i pat pe fpere porh-rod i

& pa heorte to-glad. and pe heorte to-glod.

Hijendliche he hine biwet I Hijenliche he hine bi-went i

& of-toc PafTent. of-tock he fone Pafcent.

and pas word seeide I and peos word faide i

Vther pe fele. Vther pe fole.

PafTent pu fcalt abiden f Pafcent wi nelt abide i
 1 '

160 LAYAMON Lect. IV.

her cumecS Vther riden. her comep Vther ride.

He fmat hine uuenen pat hceued i He fmot hine ouenon pat heued i

pat lie adun halde. pat he ful to pan grunde.

and pat fweord putte in his muS and pat fweord put in his mup l
.

swulc mete him wes uncuo\ foch mete him was oncoup.
'
pat pe ord of pan sworde pat pe ord of pe fweord i

wod in pere eorSe. wond in pan eorpe.

pa fceide Vther i po faide Vther £

Paflent K3 nu per. Pafcent ly nou par.

nu pu haueft Brutlond f nou pou haueft Brutlond £

al bi-tald to pire bond. al awonne to pin hond.

Swa pe if nu irsed i

per on pu a?rt ded.

wikien £e fcullen here i woniep nou here i
pu and Gillomar pin ifere. pou an Gillomare.
& brakeS wel Brutlod I and broukep wel Brutlond *

for nu ic hit bitseche inc an hond. for nou je hit habbep an hond.
majen to-jere
pat jit i

mid uf wunien here.

ne purue £e nauere adrede ! ne perh he noht drede
wha eou fcullen feden. pat 30U fal feode.
puffeide Vderf
and seoo*5e he amde per.
and drof Irifce men i

jeond wateres and geond fenes.

and floh al pa uerde i

pe mid Paflent commen to serde.

Summe to pere sa3 iwiten S

& leoppen in heore fcipen.

mid wederen & mid wateren I

peerheo forferden.
puf heo ifpaedden her i pus i-fped here f

Paflent and Gillomar. Pafcent and Gillomare.

Layamon, II. pp. 332 — 336.
The next specimen is from vol. ii. pp. 384, 385.

pe time co pe wes icoren i pe tyme com pat was icore I

pa wes Arour iboren. po was Arpur ibore.

Sone fwa he com an eorSe I Sone fo he to worle com i

allien hine iuengen. aluene him onderfen^e.

Lect. IV. LAYAMON 161

heo bigolen Jiat child i

mid galdere fwiSe ftronge.

heo geue him mihte i and jeuen him mihte l
.

to beon bezlt aire cnihten. to beon beft aire cnihte.

heo geuen him an ocSer ping i hii geuen him an oper ping i

fat he fcolde beon riche king. pat he folde beo riche king,
heo jiuen hi pat pridde i hii jeuen him pat pridde i

pat he scolde longe libben. pat he folde lange libbe.

heo gifen him ]>at kine-bern i hii jeuen pane beorn i

cuften fwiSe gode. geftes fmpe gode.

pat he wes mete-cufti i pat he wes mete-cufti i

of alle quikemonnen. of alle cwike manne.

pis pe alue him gef i pis pe alfe him geaf I

and al fwa pat child ipam. and al fo pat child i-peh.

The following passage is from vol. iii. pp. 142 — 146.

per wes Modred of-slaje i par was Modred of-fla^e i

and idon of lif-daje. and idon of lif-dage.

* # # # i
and alle his cnihtes I

in pan iihte. iilage in pan fihte.

'
per weoren of-flaje par weren of-flaje i

alle pa fnelle. alle pe fnelle.

Arduref hered-men t Arthures hiredmen i

hese. hehge and lowe.

and pa Bruttef alle i and pe Bruttes alle i

of Ar'Suref borde. of Arthur his borde.

and alle hif fofterllges '.
and alle hi. fofterlin..s i

of feole kinerichef. of ne riche.

And ArSur forwunded i And him seolf for-w
mid wal-fpere brade. mid one fpere brode.
fiftene he hafde i . . . tene he hadde i

feondliche wunden. feond .. che wond..

mon mihte i pare laften '
man mihte in pan leafte i

twa glouen iprafte. two gloues preafte.

pa naf per na mare i po naf par na more I

i pan fehte to laue. ileued in pan fihte.

of twa hundred pusend monnen i of two hundred pousend manne
pa per leien to-hauwe. pat par lay to-hewe.
buten ArSur pe king ane '
bote Arthur pe king i

& of hifcnihtef tweien. and twei of hif cnihtes.

M
 LATAMON Lect. IV.
162

Arthur was for-wonded i

Arbur wes for-wunded i

wonderliche fwif e.
wunder ane fwiSe.
cnaue far com a £ong cnaue i

•per to him com a

i

cunne. fat was of his cunne.

fe wes of hif
he was Cador his fone i
he wef Cadoref Tune i

]ie eorlef of Corwaile.

eorl of Com wale.
cnaue Conftantin he hehte i

Conftantin hehte ]>e I

feking hine louede.

he wef fan hinge deore.
pe king to him bi-heold i
Arcur him lokede on i

per he lai on folden.

and f eos word faide.
and fas word feide i

mid sorhfulle heorte.

wilcume Constantin f ou hart wilcome i

CoftEetin f u art i

weore Cadoref fone. fou were Cador.. s f.ne.

Jra
ich f e bi-take here i

ich f e bitache here i

mine kineriche.
mine kineriche.
and wite mine Bruttus I
and wite mine Bruttett
wel bi fine Hue.
a to fineflifef
and hald heom alle fa lajen
i

pa habbeoo iftonden a
mine dajen.
and alle fa lagen gode S

dajen ftode.
fa bi Voeref wende Auelun
And ich wolle to t

And ich wulle uaren to Aualu i

to uaireft aire
maidene.
to Argant fare cweane.
to Argante fere queue i

aluen fwiSe fceone.

mine wunden and jeo fal mine wondes i

& heo flal

i

makien alle ifimde.

ma al ifunde.

al ie'.
al hal me makien i

mid halewei
mid halewehe drechen. '

feobe ich cumen wulle i .ndfuffeich S en

And
to mine
tomine kineriche.
and wunien mid Bratten
\

mid muchelere wunne.

Eafhe fan ....
iEfne fan worden '.

..r com of fee wende.

per com of fe wenden.
bat liSen i a lu... fort bot
fat wes an sceort
wandri mid f .. beres.
fceouen mid vSen.
and two wimm me c
.

and twa wimme f er inne

J

idihte.
wonderliche igynned.
wunderliche
..men Arthur anon'.
and heo nomen ArSur ana
i ... ...
Lect. IV LAYAMON 163

and aneoufte hine uereden. an. ..pan bote bere.

and fofte lime adun leiden i and hine foht. .dun leyde
& for?) gunnen hine lioen. and for]) ...gan wende.
pa wef hit iwurSen i po was onde i

]>at M'lin feide whilen. pat Merlyn faide wile.

pat weore unimete care i fat folde beon mochel care
of Ar'Suref forS-fare. after Arthures for]) -fare.
Bruttef ileneS £ete I Brutt.. ileuep jete I

pat he bon on Hue. ]?at ha be. on liue.

and wunnien in Analun i and w.nie in Auailun £

mid faireft aire allien. mid efte aire cwene.

and lokietS euere Buttefjete
whan Arfrur cume li5e.
Nif nauer pe mon ibore '
Nas neuere pe man ibore i

of nauer nane burde icoren. ne of womman icore.

pe cunne of pan fo5e • pat conne of pan fope i

of Aroure fugen mare. of Arthur fegge more.

Bute while wef an witeje i Bote wile was a witti i

Mserlin ihate. Merlin ihote.

he bodede mid worde '
he faide mid wordes i

hif quidef weorcn fo'Se. his fajef were fope.

pat an ArSur fculde gete i pat Arthur folde gite J

cum Anglen to fulfte. come Bruttef . . . for to healpe.

In the nouns, the earlier text shows a gradual, not an abrupt,

departure from the Anglo-Saxon inflectional system, the later
copy a much wider divergence, and a confusion of forms which
is more embarrassing to the syntax than the dropping of the
case-endings altogether would have been. The most obvious
changes in the inflections and construction of nouns are that in
both texts the plural in s is very freely used, and that, in the
later,the preposition of is employed with the genitive, or, with
a stem-form of the noun, as a sign of the genitive.
In the adjective, the distinction between the definite and in-
definite forms is generally observed, though not unfrequently
neglected.
The personal pronouns are, in the main, substantially the
same as in Anglo-Saxon, but the dual form of none of them
occurs in the later text.
 :

164 LAYAMON Lect. IV.

The conjugation of the verb in most points resembles the in-

flection of the same part of speech in Anglo-Saxon, but the
infinitive, which in the later text drops the characteristic n,
commonly takes the and the gerund is, not
preposition to,

unfrequently, confounded with the infinitive on one side, and

the active participle in -nde on the other. The plural verb in-
dicative present has generally the ending -e$, except when the
pronoun of the first or second person follows its verb, in which
case it ends in -e, or sometimes in -en.
Some instances of the confounding of the active participle
with the verbal noun in -inge are met with, but these are rare,
and in fact the participle is not of frequent occurrence in either
text. But perhaps the most important novelty in Layamon's
construction of the verb is the regular employment of will and

shall as technical auxiliaries. In both texts, as will be seen by

the extracts, they are used almost precisely as in modern
English, and indeed with a closer conformity to the present
practice than is found in many works of even as late a date as
the fourteenth century.
These are the general characteristics of Layamon's syntax,
but there are certain specific points in the diction and grammar
of the passages above quoted which merit more particular
notice.
In the first extract

to-biliue, quickly, in a lively manner, common in old English, but

now obsolete; — seolcuft, sel-couth, seldom known, strange, obsolete;
— wi-sexe, battle-axe, from wig, war, obsolete; —
swifte, very, ob-
solete; — seollic, obsolete, at least in this sense, though probably allied
to A.-S. gessslig, prosperous, and to the modern silly; —
gri(5,
peace, obsolete; —
formeste, foremost. This word is often used in the
sense of first, and is, probably, etymologically identical with it; —
Jmr-
fen, obsolete, but perhaps allied to dare. The two words coincide in
some of the Gothic languages; —
rich en, realm, obsolete, though allied
to rich; — griftien, make peace with, obsolete;
to spare, pardon, —
wordede, This verb does not occur in Anglo-Saxon, nor is it
imp.
found in the Ancren Riwle, in the Ormulum, or in Coleridge's Glossa-
 : :

Lect. IV. LAYAMON 165

rial Index. seems to be a coinage of Layamon's which failed to ob-

It
tain circulation, though it has been revived in later ages as a participial
adjective, and even as a verb; —
a-Iomp, imp. from a- limp i an, to
happen, obsolete; —
to-rakeden, from raken, to rush, obsolete; —
feondliche, with fury or hate, from feond, an enemy, whence
fiend, obsolete; —
nifting, Icel. niSingr, craven, obsolete; seen den,—
to disgrace, to destroy, obsolete; — ifere, companion, obsolete; — uasie,
fated, Sc. fey, obsolete. Fatatus
used in mediaeval Latin, andfsege
is

is Historically, uasie as well as

found, though rarely, in Anglo-Saxon. ,

A.-S. fasge, doubtless comes from Icel. feigr, fated, which does not
seem to be in any way allied to fatum; —
sele, good, obsolete; —
riden, her cumeS Vther riden, ridden, ridingly. Riden is here
not the active, but the passive participle, in analogy with the German,
er kommt geritten. See Lecture II., Illustration II; halde, imp. —
from ha? Id en, halden, to sink or fall, obsolete, except, perhaps, in
the nautical term to heel; —
uncud, unknown, extant in uncouth, in a
different, but derivative sense; —
ord, point, obsolete; wod, went, —
obsolete; —
bi-tald, from bi-tellen, to win or prove, obsolete, unless
we suppose it to be the modern verb tell, so that bi-tald would mean
told-off, counted, and hence, delivered; —
iraed, happened, obsolete; —
—
wikien, to dwell, obsolete; brukej?, from bruken, to use, obsolete;
— inc, dual, you two, obsolete; —
arnde, imp. from urn en, trans-
positive form of A.-S. rennan, to run. In the Glossarial Notes, how-
ever, Sir F. Madden expresses the opinion that arnde is from sernan,
a causative form of urnen, signifying to ride; —
uerde, ferde, host,
army, obsolete; —
i wit en, from i- wit en, to flee, perish, obsolete; —
In the second extract
icoren, chosen, obsolete; —
iuengen, part, from fengen, to take,
obsolete; —
bigolen, enchanted, obsolete; — galdere, magic, obsolete;
— kine-bern, child, obsolete; —
custen, gifts, conditions, obsolete,
but perhaps allied to choose; — mete-custi, liberal, or rather hospit-
able. Sir F. Madden ascribes no special force to mete in this com-
pound, but, as in the corresponding Icelandic matarmildr, matar-
goSr, matgoSr, it means meat, and the signification is, generous of
food, hospitable. It is obsolete; — i-J>seh, imp. from ipeon, to thrive,
obsolete ;
—
In the third extract
snelle, active, brave, obsolete, —
her ed -men, attendants, courtiers,
retainers, from A.-S. hired, hyred, a family, a royal court. The
166 LAYAMON Lect. IV.

compound hired-man, so common in America, though more probably a

new word from the verb to hire and man, may, possibly, have come
down from the A.-S. hired-man, Icel. hir'S-maSr. The word is
otherwise obsolete; —
feole, Icel. feil, many, obsolete; wal-spere, —
from wal, wcel, carnage, death, a dead body, and spere, spear.
Wal, in Icel. valr, is the first element in valkyria, chooser of
the slain."Wal is — cnihtes, Ger. knecht,
obsolete; knights,
— cnaue, Ger. knabe, boy,
soldiers; knave; — cunne,
servant, dat.
of cun, kin; — fold en, ground, unless obsolete,extant possibly
infallow; — bitache, commit, Take has
deliver. often this sense
in oldEnglish; — wite, govern, — of
rule, obsolete; slal, error scribe
forseal; — hale-weige, balsam. Madden thinks word from this is

heel, healing, and hwaag, whey. — drench en, a cau-

It is obsolete;
sative from drinchen, At least this is quite as probable as
to drink.
that it means to bathe. The noun drench is still used in an analogous
sense. SeoSe, si then, since; —
wunien, to dwell, Ger. wohnen,
obsolete in this sense, but extant in icont, ivonted; — wunne, bliss,

Ger. Wonne, obsolete; — voen, waves, obsolete; — nomen, imp.

from —
nimen, to take; aneouste, quickly, from A.-S. neah, near,
obsolete; —
gunnen, from gon, gan, old Engl, gan, often used
auxiliary to form the past tense; — liSen,
as an
go or come, obsolete;
to —
iwurSen, Ger. ge word en, come to pass, used in old English, but
—
now obsolete; unimete, immeasurable, extant in unmeet; ileue'5, —
believe;— burde, woman, extant in bride;— witeje, A.-S. witega,
prophet, from witan,
sage, know, to obsolete;— bodede, from bodien,
to say; — quizes, words, allied to quoth; — fulste, fulsten, aid,
obsolete.
In the orthography, the remarkable change from hw, initial, to zvh
occurs. There are a few examples of this transposition in earlier ma-
nuscripts, but I believe it was not regularly used by any writer before
the time of Lay anion.

In the above extracts no word of Latin or French et3^mology

occurs, unless we adopt the improbable supposition that care,
A.-S. cam, cearu,
is from the Latin cura. Madden's trans-
lation contains twenty Latin and French words, exclusive of
repetitions. At least fifty of the words employed by Layamon
in these few verses are wholly obsolete.
Sir F. Madden's translation of these passages is subjoined.
Words and phrases included in quotation-marks are in the
 : !

Lect. IV. LAYAMON 167

earlier, but not in the later text ; words in brackets are the
variations of the later text.
First extract

There [Then] saw Gillomar where Uther came to him, and com-
manded his knights to weapon [them] forth-right. And they very
speedily grasped [took] their knives, 'and off with their breeches —
strange were their looks,' —
and grasped in their hands their long spears,
'
and hung on their shoulders great battle-axes.' Then said Gillomar
the king a thing very strange: —
"Here cometh Uther, Aurelies [Aure-
lie his] brother he will ask my peace, and not fight with me.
; The '

foremost are his swains march me against them ye need never reck,
;
;

though ye slay the wretches For [And] if Uther, Constantines son,

!
'

will here become my man, and give to Pascent his fathers realm,' I
'

will him grant peace, and let him live, and in fair bonds lead him to
my land." The king spake thus, the while worse him [it] befell
Uthers [Uther his] knights were in the town forth-right, [and] laid
[set] fire in the town, and fought sharply with swords [over all, in ;

bower and in hall, and fast] rushed towards them and the Irish [they] ;

were [all] naked. "When the Irish men saw, that the Britons were in '

conflict, they fought fiercely, and' nevertheless [thus] they fell; they
called on [to] their king: "Where art thou, nithing why wilt thou
—
!

not come hither ? thou lettest us here [all] be destroyed and ; '

Pascent, thy comrade, saw us fall here; —

come ye to us to help, with
great strength " Gillomar heard this therefore his heart was sore
!
'
;
;

with his Irish knights he came to the fight, and Pascent forth with him
— both they were fated "When Uther saw, that Gillomar was 'there'
!

come, to him he gan ride, and smote him in the side, so that the spear
through pierced, and glided to the heart. Hastily he passed by him,
and [he soon] overtook Pascent and said these words Uther the good:
;

" Pascent, thou shalt [why wilt thou not] abide here cometh Uther ;

riding "
!
He smote him upon the head, so that he fell down [to the
ground], and the sword put in his mouth such meat to him was —
strange, —
so that the point of the sword went in the earth. Then said
Uther: "Pascent, lie now there; now thou hast Britain all won to thy
hand So is now hap to the therein thou art dead
;
!
'
; dwell ye shall '

[now] here, thou, and Gillomar 'thy companion,' and possess well
Britain For now I deliver it to you [ye it have] in hand, so that ye
!
'

may presently dwell with us here ye need not ever dread who you;
'
'
'

shall feed! " Thus said Uther, and afterwards he there ran, and dro^e
'

the Irish men over waters and over fens, and slew all the host that wit
 : : '

168 LATAMON Lect. IV.

Pascent came to laud. Some to the sea fled, and leapt into their ships;
with weather and with water there they perished Thus they * sped !
'

here, Pascent and Gillomar.

Second extract
The time came that was chosen, then was Arthur born. So soon as
he came on earth [in the world], elves took [received] him 'they en- ;

chanted the child with magic most strong,' they [and] gave him might
to be the best of all knights they gave him another thing, that he
;

should be a rich king they gave him the third, that he should live
;

long; they gave to him the prince [the child] virtues [gifts] most good,
so that he was most generous of all men alive. This the elves gave
him, and thus the child thrived.

Third extract
There were slain all the brave, Arthurs warriors, high and low, and
all the Britons of Arthurs [Arthur his] board, and all his dependants,
of many kingdoms [a kingdom]. And Arthur
wounded with [himself]
[a] broad slaughter-'spear fifteen dreadful wounds he had in the
'
; ;

least one might thrust two gloves Then was there no more remained
!

in the fight, of two hundred thousand men that there lay hewed in
pieces, except Arthur the king alone,' and two of his knights. Arthur
'

5
was wounded wondrously much. There came 'to him a [young] lad,
who was of his kindred; he was Cadors [Cador his] son 'the' earl ot
Cornwall; Constantine the lad [he] hight, he was dear to the king [the
king him loved]. Arthur looked on [The king beheld] him, where '

he lay on the ground,' and said these words, 'with sorrowful heart':
" Constantine, thou art welcome thou wert Cadors [Cador his] son.
;

I give thee here my kingdom, and defend thou my Britons ever in

[well by] thy life, and maintain them all the laws that have stood in
'

my days, and all the good laws that in Uthers days stood.' And I will
fare to Avalun, to the fairest of all maidens,' to Argante the queen,
'

'
an elf most fair,' and she shall make my wounds all sound make me ;

all whole with healing draughts. And afterwards I will come [again]
to my kingdom, and dwell with the Britons with mickle joy'." Even
'

with the words there approached from the sea 'that was' a [little] short
boat, floating with the waves; and two women therein, wondrously
formed and they took Arthur anon, and bare him quickly [to the
;

boat], and laid him softly down, and forth they gan depart. Then was
it accomplished that Merlin whilom said, that mickle care (sorrow)

should be of [after] Arthurs departure. The Britons believe yet that

Lect. IV. THE ANCREN RIWLE 169

he is alive, and dwelleth in Avalnn with the fairest of all elves [queens]
'
and the Britons ever yet expect when Arthur shall return.' Was
never the man born, [nor] of ever any lady [woman] chosen, that
knoweth of the sooth, to say more of Arthur. But whilom was a sage
hight Merlin; he said with words, —
his sayings were sooth, that 'an' —
Arthur should yet come [here for] to help the English [Britons].

Another monument of little literary interest, but of not in-

ferior philological, or, more accurately, lexical and
to speak
grammatical importance, is the Ancren Eiwle, a code of monastic
precepts drawn up in prose by an unknown author, for the
guidance of a small nunnery, or rather religious society of
ladies. This work was probably composed if not in the latter
part of the twelfth, at latest very early in the thirteenth century,
and is therefore nearly contemporaneous with the chronicle of
Layamon, to the earlier text of which it bears much resemblance.
The learned editor of the only printed edition, that published
by the Camden Society in 1853, says nothing of the probable
age of his manuscript, but Wright, Eel. Ant. i. 65, states it to
be of the middle of the thirteenth century. There are at least
three other manuscripts, besides a Latin translation, and one of
the English copies is described as older than that from which
the Camden Society's edition is printed. They differ from each
other considerably in orthography, and these differences — some
of which no doubt, were due to successive changes in the current
modes of spelling — and the multiplication of copies of a work
intended for the private use of three ladies, not members of any
religious order, prove that it must have been written a consider-
able length of time before the execution of the latest manu-
script. I believe, therefore, that it may be considered as
belonging to the literature of the twelfth, quite as appropriately
as to that of the thirteenth century.
About one third of the Ancren Eiwle is occupied with in-
structions for ceremonial observances, the residue with moral
and religious teachings. Like so many other ascetic treatises of
the Middle Ages, whether intended for the edification of the
 s

170 THE ANCREN MWLE Lect. IV.

professed recluse or of the layman, it contains little of dogmatic

theology, and few of those broader views of Christian duty

which belong to the contemplation of man as what Grod made
him —a social being. Hence it has neither the philosophical
reach of thought which characterizes the works of Wycliffe and
Pecock, and which is a natural result of free theological inquiry,
nor the enlightened philanthropy and comprehensive charity,
which breathe from the writings of divines emancipated from
the narrow corporate interests and exclusive duties of cloistered
life.

In a literary point of view, it has no such value as to entitle

it to critical notice, and, bearing no stamp of English birth-right
but its dialect, it is only for the value of its vocabulary and its

syntax that I embrace it in my view of English philological

history. Details on these points will be given in connection
with the specimen selected as an illustration, and I shall at
present confine my observations to the stock of words which
compose its The most obvious difference in this
vocabulary.
respect between Layamon and the Ancren Kiwle is the much
larger proportion of Latin and Norman words in the latter.
Sir Frederick Madden finds less than one hundred such in the
57,000 verses of the two texts of Layamon.* The quantity of
matter in the Ancren Eiwle, exclusive of Latin quotations, is

less than half of that in Layamon, but the glossary to the

former contains twice as many French words as Layamon, and
yet omits a large number because they were thought too familiar
to need explanation. Much of this difference in vocabulary is

* If we number words derived from the French (even including some that may
have come directly from the Latin), we do not find in the earlier text of Layamon'
poem so many as fifty, several of which were in usage, as appears by the Saxon
Chronicle, previous to the middle of the twelfth century. Of this number the
later text retains about thirty, and adds to them rather more than forty, which are
not found in the earlier version so that if we reckon ninety words of French
;

origin in both texts, containing together more than 56,800 lines, we shall be able
to form a tolerably correct estimate how little the English language was really
affected by foreign converse, even as late as the middle of the thirteenth century.
Sir F. Madden, Pref. to Layamon, vol. i. p. xxiii.
Lect. IV. THE ANCREN RIWLE 171

doubtless to be ascribed to the fact that the Ancren Eiwle,

treating of religious subjects, naturally adopted the dialect of
the Eomish which was in great part of Latin
ascetic discipline,
derivation ; butAncren Eiwle was written in English,
still, as the
while Layamon's work was translated from French and Latin,
we should have expected a larger relative share of the foreign
element in the latter production than a comparison of the two
exhibits. The Latin and French words of the Ancren Eiwle,
however, are by no means all due to its religious character, and
we find in it many Norman terms belonging to the common
dialect of secular life. Compound words of Saxon etymology
are less frequent in Layamon than in the latter work, which has
some remarkable agglutinations, such, for example, as stude-
stapeluestnesse, meaning nearly what N. P. Willis some-
where calls stay-at-home-it iveness, the oifcovpia of the Greeks.
This greater frequency of Norman words might be thought to
prove that the prose work is of later date than the poetical, but
it is by no means conclusive evidence, because, as I have already

remarked, the diction of poetry is always archaic, and Layamon

probably confined himself to the conventionally established
vocabulary of his art. The orthography appears to point to the
opposite conclusion, though this is a very doubtful question.
In the Ancren Eiwle, the Anglo-Saxon 03 has almost disappeared
and the combination eo is less frequent, but, on the other hand,
it retains the ivj, as rhvle, rule, and, oddly enough, Giivs,
Giiverie, Jews, Jewry, while in Layamon this combination is
often replaced by eiv or eoiv. The Ancren Eiwle preserves the
hiv, but Layamon, except in one or two instances, has always
wh* The arrangement of words, however, the periodic con-
struction, w hich
7
is less likely to be a dialectic peculiarity than

* Most orthoepists consider hw as a true phonographic representation of the

sound supposed to be indicated by it, which is that of the modern wh in whale,
but Klipstein's Anglo-Saxon Grammar, p. 47, note, says this combination of
:
'

sound is, indeed, one.' I know no criterion by which we can determine whether
a sound be one, but the experimental test of capacity of prolongation. A sound
(if the singular article can be applied to an articulation composed of successive
172 THE ANCREN EIWLE Lect, IV.

a result of the general movement of speech, is almost modern

in the Ancren Kiwle — so much so, sometimes, as to lead one to
question the authenticity of the manuscripts —but this I think
is to be ascribed to the colloquial style of the work; for the
diction of common speech among educated men at that period
must have been much influenced by the dialect of the court and
the Norman nobility.
The following extract is from Part IV. on Temptations.
Camden Society edition, pp. 210 216 — :
—
Summe iuglurs beoft pet ne kunnen seruen of non oSer gleo, buten
maiden cheres & wrench en mis hore muS, & schulen mid hore eien.
Of J?is mestere seraeS ]?eo uniselie ontfule iSe deofles kurt, to bringen o
leihtre hore ontfule louerd. Uor jif ei seiS wel oto deS wel, nonesweis
ne muwen heo loken J>iderward mid riht eie of gode heorte auh :

winckeS oSere half, & biholdeS o luft & asquint: & jif per is out to
eadwiten, oSer lodlich, Jriderward heo schuleS mid emer eien & hwon i

heo iheretJ }>et god, heo sleate"5 adun boa two hore earen auh ]?et lust i

agean ]?et vuel is ever wid open, peonne heo wrenched hore muS mis,
hwon heo turned god to vuel & gif hit is sumdel vuel, J?uruh more
'

lastunge heo wrenched hit to wurse. peos beo5 hore owune prophetes
forcwiddares. peos bodied biuoren hwu J?e ateliche deouel schal get
agesten ham mid his grimme grennunge, & hu heo schulen ham sulf
grennen & niuelen, & makien sur semblaunt uor ]?e muchele angoise,
i(5e pine of helle. Auh for Jmi heo beo5 J»e lesse te menen, ]?et heo
biuorenhond leorneS hore meister to makien grimme chere.
pe wreoTulle biuoren J?e ueonde skirmeo mid kniues, & he is his
1

knif-worpare, & mid sweordes, & bereS ham bi ]?e scherpe orde
pleieS
uppen his tunge. Sweord & knif eiSer beoS scherpe & keoruinde
wordes ]?et he worpeS frommard him, & skirmeS touward oSre. Auh

elements), which requires either two emissions of breath or two different positions
of the organs of speech, cannot be prolonged, though the separate elements of it
often may be. The combination hw, wh, is not only incapable of prolongation, but

cannot be uttered at all without the aid of a third element, namely, a vowel
following.
There are, however, a few sounds which may be indefinitely prolonged, and yet
seem to be composed of two still more elementary articulations. I refer to those
into which the y consonant appears to enter as a subordinate component. The
English ch, sk, are very nearly t + y and s + y, and in some orthographies, the
Swedish, for example, in which j corresponds to our y consonant, they are ex-
pressed accordingly, as tjader, in English spelling, chader, sjal, shale, &c. &c.
Lect. IV. THE ANCREN RIWLE 173

heo bodied kwu pe deoflen scliulen pleien mid ham, mid hore scherpe
aules, & skirmen mid ham abuten, & dvsten ase enne pilcheclut, euchon
touward o5er, & mid helle sweordes alsnesien ham puruhut, pet beo5
kene & keoruinde, & ateliche pinen.
pe slowe licS & slepecS roe deofles berme, ase his deore deorling & te '

deouel leieS his tutel adun to his earen, & tutele'S him al pet he euer
wule. Uor, so hit is sikerliche to hwamso is idel of god pe ueond '

mao'ele'S jeorne, & te idele underuoS luueliche his lore, pe pet is idel
& gemeleas, he is pes deofles bermes slep auh he schal a domesdei :

grimliche abreiden mid te dredful dreame of pe englene bemen & ine i

helle wondrede ateliche awakien. ' Surgite, mortui, qui jacetis in se-
pulchris : surgite, et venite ad judicium Saluatoris.'
pe jiscare is pes feondes askebaoie, lift euer iSen asken, & fareS &
abuten asken & bisiliche stureS him uorte rukelen muchele & monie
ruken togedere, & bloweS perinne, & ablent him sulf paSereS & makeS i

perinne figures of angrim, ase peos rikenares do<5 "p habbeS muchel uorto
rikenen. pis is al pes canges blisse, & te ueond bihalt al pis gomen, &
lauhweS pet he to bersted. Wei
understond euerich wis mon pis pet f

gold & seoluer bo5e, & euerich eorolich eihte, nis buten eorSe & asken,
pet ablent euerichne mon pet bloawecS in ham
is, pet boluwe5 him i pet
ine ham i puruh ham ine heorte prude i &
he rukeleS & gedereS
al pet
togedere, & ethalt of eni pinge pet nis buten asken, more pen hit beo
neod, al schal ine helle iwurfien to him tadden & neddren, & boSe, ase
Isaie seiS, schulen beon of wurmes his kurtel & his kuuertur, pet nolde
her pe neodfule ueden ne schruden. Subter te sternetur tinea, et ope- '

rimentum taum vermis.'

pe jiure glutun is pes fondes manciple. Uor he stikeS euer i<5e
eel ere, ofter i$e kuchene. His heorte is iSe disches his pouht is al iSe '

neppe his lif i5e tunne his soule i(5e crocke. Kume<5 forcS biuoren
i '.

his Louerde bismitted & bismeoruwed, a dischs ine his one hond, & a
scoale in his ofter mafieled mid wordes, & wigele5 ase uordrunken mon
i

pet haueft imunt to uallen bihalt his greate wombe, & te ueond lauh-
l
.

weS pet he to bersteS. God preateS peos pus puruh Isaie. Servi mei '

comedent, et vos esurietis,' &c. Mine men,' he sei(5, schulen eten, &
i ' '

ou schal euer hungren & £e schulen beon ueondes fode, world a buten
i

ende.' Quantum glorificavit se et in deliciis fuit, tantum date ei luctum

'

et tormentum.' In Apocalipsi Contra unum poculum quod miscuit,

:
'

miscete ei duo.' Gif pe gulchecuppe weallinde bres to drincken, & jeot

in his wide prote pet he aswelte wiSinnen. Ajean one, pf him two.
Lo swuch is Godes dom agean pe jiure, & ajean pe drinckares iSe
!

Apocalipse.
174 THE ANCREN EIWLE Lect. IV.

The following words require explanation, or merit notice, c he res,

wry faces, grimaces. No satisfactory etymology has been suggested
faces,
for this word, which occurs in the Low Latin of the seventh century.
See Diez in voc. ;
—
uniselie, unhappy, from A.-S. saslig, happy, ob-
solete ;
—
ontfule, malignant, from Icel. vondr, Dan. ond, evil,
wicked. I believe this root occurs in A.-S. only in compounds. It is
obsolete ; —
hurt. This and the numerous allied words are, according
to Diez, from Lat. chors,(cohors)cortis. See Ducange, s. v., where
the earliest definition is: atrium rusticum stabulis et aliis
sedificiis circumdatum; —
auh, but, A.-S. a c, obsolete, if not extant
in certain uses of the interjection ah; —o luft, A.-S. lyft, air, sky, ex-
tant in a— loft; — out, aught; — eadwiten, to blame, A.-S., extant in
to twit; —
lodlich, loathsome, A.-S. laftlic. This root seems to have
passed from the Gothic into the Romance languages, as in Fr. laid; —
sleatecS is defined by Morton: sleeteth, aims at, hangs down his ears,
'

like a dog in pursuit of game.' If this is correct, the root would be

slot' (Icel. sloSr, a path), a track; —
lastunge, slander, Ger. Laster-
ung, obsolete; —
forcwiddares, foretellers, from ewe en, to say, (5

obsolete; —
ateliche, hateful; —
agesten, to frighten, either the A.-S.
egesian, or from the same root as aghast; niuelen. Morton sug- —
gests to beat with the fists, in analogy with Sc. to nevel, to strike, as
the meaning. I think, however, the A.-S. neowel, prostrate, furnishes
a better etymology, and if this is the root, niuelen means to throw
themselves to the ground;— sur, sour; — men en, moan, bemoan, to
lament; — skirmeo, from skirmen,
fenceth, scrim er, Fr. e allied to

Ger. chirm en, not found

s A.-S., and extant English only
in in in
skirmish; — knif-worpare, knife-thrower, knif and w or pen or
weorpen, A.-S. weorpan, throw, — ord,to obsolete; point, edge,
— pilch-clout: pilch supposed be pelliceus,
obsolete; is to Lat.
of and
fur, have acquired the meaning of
to — alsnesien, flannel;
A.-S. asnassan, run to — berme, bosom,
against, to strike, obsolete;
— tut mouth,
obsolete; el, tut from tutelen,
lips, el e (5, to speak.
The etymology of words not obvious,
these we is them unless refer to
A.-S. ]?eotan, which is — maimitative:from ma- obsolete; (Select,

<5elen, — jeorne,
to talk, obsolete; extant only verb willingly, in the
toyearn — u n d ; from u n d
e r fo (5 , u ng n
receives, — er o e , obsolete ;

jemeleas, from g erne,

heedless, heed, — abreiden,
care, obsolete;
toawake suddenly, be to — bemen, trumpets, obso-
startled, obsolete;
— scare, covetous man, from A.— gytsian,
lete; gi S. to desire, to

covet, — askebaSie,
obsolete; — rukelen,
ash-gatherer, obsolete;
toheap up, A.-S. hreac, a heap, — pa'Sere'5, poketh, the
obsolete;
Lect. IV. THE ANCREN EIWLE 175

modern pother, potter ; —

an grim, algorism, algorithm, arithmetic; —
cang, a fool. This word does not appear to be A.-S. Obsolete; eihte, —
possession, obsolete; —
boluwcS, disturbs himself, A.-S. bolgan,
obsolete; —
ethalt, from eth olden, to retain, obsolete except in
—
hold, and its derivatives and compounds; iwurtSen, to become, ob-
solete ;
—
schru den —
to clothe, obsolete
, 5 i u r e greedy, obsolete
;

— neppe,
, ;

nappe, extant
table-cloth, Fr. diminutive form, napkin; in
— scoale, bowl, Dan. Skaal, — imunt, with mind.
obsolete; allied
haue'5 imunt, has mind inhence, about to,— a but an ende,
is to;
a,always, obsolete; — but an, without; — gulch ecuppe, gulch en,
to swallow, cognate with gula; — weallinde,
Lat. welling, boiling,
molten; — jeot, pour, A.-S. geotan, — aswelte, obsolete; perish,
extant in swelter.

In this extract there are about twenty words, excluding repe-

titions, of Latin and French origin. This is more than three
per cent, of the whole number, and if we exclude the repeti-
tions of native words also, that proportion would be greatly
increased. More than thirty words used in" these passages have
become obsolete, and of these, many, as will be seen by the
above notes, are important. I add Morton's translation :

There are some jesters who know of no other means of exciting mirth
but to make wry faces, and distort their mouth, and scowl with their
eyes. This art the unhappy, envious man practiseth in the devil's
court, to excite to laughter their envious Lord. For, if any one saith
or doeth well, they cannot, by any means, look that way with the direct
eye of a good heart but wink in another direction, and look on the
;

left hand, and obliquely and if there is anything to blame or dislike,

:

there they scowl with both eyes and when they hear of any good, they
;

hang down both their ears but their desire of evil is ever wide open.
;

Then they distort their mouth, when they turn good to evil and if ;

there is somewhat of evil, they distort it, and make it worse by de-
traction. These are their own prophets —
foretelling their own end.
They shew beforehand how the hateful fiend shall strike terror into
them with his hideous grinning and how they shall themselves gnash
;

their teeth, and beat their breasts, with rueful looks for the great an-
guish of the pains of hell. But they are the less to be pitied, because
they have learned beforehand their trade of making grim cheer.
The wrathful man fenceth before the devil with knives, and he is his
176 THE ANCKEN RIWLE Lect. IV.

knife-thrower, and playeth with swords, and beareth them upon his
tongue by the sharp point. Sword and knife both are sharp and cutt-
ing words which he casteth forth, and therewith attacks others. And
it forebodes how the devils shall play with them with their sharp awls,

and skirmish about with them, and toss them like a pilch-clout every
one towards another, and strike them through with hell-swords, which
are keen, cutting, and horrible pains.
The sluggard lieth and sleepeth in the devil's bosom, as his dear
darling ;and the devil applieth his mouth to his ears, and tells him
whatever he will. For, this is certainly the case with every one who
is not occupied in any thing good the devil assiduously talks, and the
:

idle lovingly receive his lessons. He that is idle and careless is the
devil's bosom-sleeper but he shall on Doomsday be fearfully startled
:

with the dreadful sound of the angels' trumpets, and shall awaken in
terrible amazement in hell. Arise, ye dead, who lie in graves arise,
'
:

and come to the Savior's judgment.'

The covetous man is the devil's ash-gatherer, and lieth always in the
ashes, and busily bestirs himself to heap up much, and to rake many
together, and bloweth therein, and blindeth himself, poketh, and maketh
therein figures of arithmetic, as those accountants do who have much
to reckon up. This is all the joy of this fool, and the devil seeth all
this game, and laugheth so that he bursteth. Every wise man well
understandeth this that both gold and silver, and all earthly goods,
;

are nothing but earth and ashes, which blind every man that bloweth
upon them that is, disquieteth himself for them is proud in heart
; ;

through them and all that he heapeth up and gathereth together, and
;

possesses of any thing more than is necessary, is nothing but ashes, and
in hell it shall all become toads and adders to him and both his kirtel ;

and his covering, as Isaiah saith, shall be of worms, who would not
feed nor clothe the needy, The worm is spread under thee, and the
'

worms cover thee.'

The greedy glutton is the devil's purveyor; for he always haunts the
cellar or the kitchen. His heart is in the dishes; all his thought is of

the table-cloth ; his life is in the tun, his soul in the pitcher. He
cometh into the presence of his Lord besmutted and besmeared, with a
dish in one hand and a bowl in the other. He talks much incoherently,
and staggereth like a drunken man who seemeth about to fall, looks at
his great belly, and the devil laughs so that he bursteth. God thus
threateneth such persons by Isaiah, Servi mei comedent, et vos esu-
'

rietis,' &c. :My servants shall eat, but ye shall always hunger and
'
;
'

ye shall be food for devils, world without end How much she hath! *
Lect. IV. THE ORMULUM 177

glorified herself,and hath lived deliciously, so much torment and sor-

row give her.' Contra unum poculum quod miscuit, miscete ei duo.'
'

Give the tosspot molten brass to drink, and pour it into his wide throat,
that he may die inwardly. Lo such is the judgment of God against
!

the glutton, and against drunkards, in the Apocalypse.

The Ormulum, of which I have spoken as one of the most

important philological monuments of the period under consi-
deration, has excited, and, in some respects, merits more atten-
tion than the Ancren Kiwle.*
The Ormulum consists of a paraphrase of scripture with a
homiletic commentary, and is constructed much on the plan of
Otfrid's Krist. The extant fragments, which fortunately contain
the dedication and commencement, amount to twenty thousand
verses, but are apparently only an inconsiderable portion of the
entire poem. The author was Ormin, or Orm, an English
monk of the order of St. Augustine, and he named the poem
Ormulum after himself, saying, at the opening : —
piss boc iss nemmnedd Orrmulum
Forr]u J>att Orrm itt wrohhte.

The bestowal of his own name upon the work may be con-
sidered an indication of personal vanity on the part of the
author, and it is evident that he was ambitious to distinguish
himself as a reformer, both in English philology, or at least
orthography, and in religion. His system of spelling, — not new
in principle, and to a certain extent common to all the Gothic
languages — though cumbersome in practice, is carried out by
Ormin with a consistency and uniformity that show a very
careful attention to English phonology, and give it something
of the merit of an original method. He evidently attached
much value to this system, and expected a considerable circu-
lation of his book, for he earnestly enjoins upon all who copy it,

* See, on the vocabulary and the prosody of the Ormulum, First Series,
Lectures V., pp. 110, 111 ; VI., p. 123 ; XIX., p. 424 ; XXIV., pp. 520—522.
N
178 THE ORMULUM Lect. IV.

to follow scrupulously the spelling employed by himself. Either

for want of poetical merit, or for the great freedom with
which
he censured the corruptions of the Church, or because readers
were repelled by the uncouth appearance of his orthography, or
for some other unknown reason, the book failed to secure the
popularity its author hoped for, and it does not seem to have
ever been copied at all. The only existing manuscript is pro-
bably the original of the author himself, and thereno reason is

to believe that his spelling was ever adopted by any other

writer. The principal peculiarity of Ormin's orthography is
that the consonant is doubled after short vowels, except in a few
cases where, probably for want of room in the manuscript for
two consonants, a semicircular mark is put over a vowel to indi-
cate its quantity. There are also marks of contraction, and
some other signs the force of which is not always apparent.
It is obvious that if the spelling of the Ormulum were
proved truly to represent the general contemporaneous pronun-
ciation of English at the time it was written, this orthography
would be a very important aid in acquiring a knowledge of that
pronunciation, because the temporal quantity of all the vowels
is indicated in every combination in which they can possibly
occur. The author evidently designed to make it a phono-
graphic expression of the normal English articulation, for he
expressly declares that English — a term which he would hardly
have applied to a local dialect - - can be properly written in no
other way. Besides this, it may be observed that, with respect
to the temporal length of the vowels, the notation of Orm, in
most with what is, and is supposed to have
cases, corresponds

long been, the habitual pronunciation of English, though in

many cases, the essential quality of vowels and the accentuation
of syllables has certainly been changed.
On the other hand, the number of Scandinavian words and
idioms in the vocabulary and syntax has led many critics to
regard the work of Orm as a specimen of a North-eastern patois,
deriving a special character from the Danish colonists in that
Lect. IV. THE ORMULUM 179

quarter of England.* The weight of this evidence has perhaps

been exaggerated, and I do not attach much importance to the
coincidences between the Danish orthography and that of the
Ormulum. English pronunciation agrees with the Danish in
many points in which both differ from the German, and I am
much disposed to believe that the spelling of the Ormulum
constitutes as faithful a representation of the oral English of its

time as any one work could be, at a period of great confusion of

speech.f
The from the Anglo-Saxon models in
versification differs
wanting and in possessing a regular metrical-flow
alliteration,

from the Norman French in wanting rhyme and, allowing for ;

the difference between accent and classical quantity, it closely

resembles that of some Latin poems of the Middle Ages, from
which it w as probably imitated.
r

The vocabulary contains a few words borrowed from sacred or

ecclesiastical Latin, but scarcely any trace of Norman influence.
The syntax of Orm, as will be seen by an examination of the
passages I select for illustration, does not differ much from that
of modern English, and if the work were reduced to the present
orthography, it would present very few difficulties to a reader at
all familiar with old English literature. The most remarkable
general characteristic of the syntax is its regularity, which, in
spite of the temptations to licence, common to all modes of
versification, is greater than is to be found in any other English

* Perhaps the most important Scandinavianism in the Ormulum is the use of

aren, the origin of the modern are, as the third person plural indicative present
of the verb beon, ben, beo, to be. Aren occurs, for the first time in English so
far as I have observed, on pp. 157 and 237 of the first volume of the Ormulum,
though sinndenn, which in Layamon is represented by beon, beo, beo<5, biS,
&c. is the more common form of this plural.
f The orthography of the Ormulum, if it does not disprove the doctrine of the
diphthongal pronunciation of the long vowels, certainly lends no countenance to it.
Had this been a very marked characteristic of the English articulation of his time,
it could hardly have escaped so acute an ear as that of Orm and, on the other
;

hand, if the vowels had been divided into distinct shades, as in modern Danish,
he would have found himself under the necessity of inventing characters to repre-
sent these varieties of sound.
N2
180 THE ORMIJLUSI Lect. IV.

composition, except those of modern date. This implies not

only a closer attention to the subject than had been bestowed
upon it by other authors, but a general stability of grammatical
forms, evidence of which is not to be found elsewhere. The
departures from the author's own system are, with very few
exceptions, as might be expected, sacrifices to the canons of
metre.
Considered as a poem, the Ormulum has no merit but that of
smooth, fluent, and regular versification, and it exhibits none of
the characteristic traits of English genius. With the exception,
therefore, of its remarkable prosody, its claims to the attention
of the student are of the same character as those of the Ancren
Riwle, and it is not a fit subject for literary criticism.
I have embraced this poem in the same class with Layamon
and the Ancren Eiwle in deference to the opinion of English
philologists, who generally incline to treat its dialect as semi-
Saxon, rather than as distinctively English. It appears to me
to belong to a later date than either of those writings, or than
some productions which I shall have occasion to consider here-
after but its total want of all trace of nationality of thought
;

and character induces me to accede the more readily to its

separation from the literature which forms the subject of the
next lecture, and which, in some cases at least, shows a faint
glimmering of the spark that was soon to be kindled to a radiant
flame.
Affterr patt tatt te Laferrd Crist
After that that the Lord Christ

Wass cumenn off Egyppte

was come from Egypt

Inntill pe land off Galileo,

into the land of Galilee,

Till Nazaraepess chesstre,

to Nazareth's town,

paeraffterr scj^]) ])e Goddspellboc

thereafter saith the Gospelbook
Lect. IV. THE OEMULUM 181

Bikef he ])£er well lannge

remained lie there well long

Wi])]> hisc frend tatt hafFdenn himm

with his friends that had him
To gemenn & to gastenn,
to keep and to protect,

Marge ]?att hiss moderr wass

Wi]>]>
with Mary that his mother was

& majjdenn pwerrt ut clene,

and maiden throughout clean,

& wi]?]> Josrep ]>att wass himm sett

and with Joseph that was him set

To fedenn & to fosstrenn.

to feed and to foster.

& Lenntenn forenn ]>e%£

illke
and every Lent fared they

Till 5 errsalaemess chesstre

to Jerusalem's city

Aj5 att te Passkemessedajg,

aye at the Passoverday,

Swa summ ]?e boc hemm tahhte,

so as the book them taught,

To frellsenn ]>mv J?att heghe tid

to keep there that holyday
O J?att Judisskenn wise,
in the Jewish wise,

Fori* patt te^s wasrenn gode menn,

for that they were good men,
& Godess laghess heldenn.
and God's laws held.

And sijjpenn o Jmtt jer J?att Crist

And afterwards in the year that Christ

Wass of! twellf winnterr elde

was of twelve winters age
 ; ;;

182 THE ORMULUM Lect. IV.

pegs comenn inntill 5errsalaem

they come into Jerusalem

Att tej^re Passkemesse,

at their Passover,

& helclerm ]>a3r J?att halljhe tid

and held there that holy time

O Jmtt Judisskenn wise.

in the Jewish wise.

& Jesu Crist wass J?ser wi]>]? hemm,

and Jesus Christ was there with them,
Swa summ ]>e Goddspell kij?e]?]?.

so as the Gospel saith.

& affterr ]>att wass gan

te tid
and after that the time was gone
pejg wenndenn fra ]?e temmple,
they wended from the temple,
& ferrdenn towarrd NazarseJ?
and fared towards Nazareth

An dajjess gang till efenn,

a day's journey till evening,

& wenndenn ]>att te Laferrd Crist

and weened that the Lord Christ

~VVi]>]> hemm ]?att gate come

with them that way came

& he wass ])a behinndenn hemm

and he was then behind them
Bilefedd att te temmple;
remaining at the temple

& tatt ne wisste nohht hiss kinn

and that not wist not his kin

Ace wennde J?att he come,

but weened that he came,

& gedenn heore wejje forr]>

and went their way forth.

 ;

Lect. IV. THE ORMULUM 183

till that it came to evening,

& ta pegj misstenn pejgre child,

and tlien they missed their child,

& itt hemm ofFerr]mhhte,

and it them grieved,

& gedenn till, & sohhtenn himm

and (thcj') went, and sought him
Bitwenenn sibbe & cufe,
among relations and acquaintances,

& tejj ne fundenn nohht ofFhimm,

and they not found nought of him,
Forr he wass att te temmple.
for he was at the temple.

& tejj ))a wenndenn efFt onnjam

and they then turned back again

]?att dere child to sekenn,

that dear child to seek,

& comenn efFt till 5 errsakeni,

and came again to Jerusalem,

To sekenn himm peer binnenn.

to seek him there within.

& tejj himm o ]>e ]>ridde dajj

and they him on the third day

J)aer fundenn i ]?e temmple

there found in the temple

Bitwenenn Judisskenn ilocc

J) att

among the Jewish flock

patt lairedd wass o boke;

that learned was in book
& tasre he satt to fra^gnenn hemm
and there lie sat to ask them
Off J'ejjre bokess lare,
of their book's lore.
184 THE OKMULUM I ect. IV.

& alle patt himm herrdenn peer,

and all that him heard there,

Hernm Jmhhte mikell wunnderr

them thought much wonder
Off ]?att he wass full jasp & wis
of that he was full shrewd and wise

To swarenn & to frajgnenn.

to answer and to ask.

& Sannte Marje comm till himm

and Saint Mary came to him
& sejjde himm puss wij>p worde,
and said (to) him thus with word,
Whi didesst tu, lef sune, ]mss
Why didst thou, dear son, thus

Wi]?]? uss, forr uss to swennkenn ?

with us, for us to trouble?

Witt hafenn sohht te widewhar

we-two have sought thee widewhere
Ice & ti faderr ba^e
I and thy father both

Wi}>J? serrhfull herrte & sarig mod,

with sorrowful heart and sorry mood,

Whi didesst tu Juss dede ?

why didst thou this deed ?

& tanne seggde Jesu Crist

and then said Jesus Christ

Till ba]?e ]>uss wi}>]> worde,

to both thus with word,

Whatt wass juw swa to sekenn me,

what was (there tc) you so to seek me,

Whatt wass guw swa to serrjhenn ?

what was (there to) you so to sorrow ?

Ne wisste je nohlit tatt me birr])

not wist ye not that me becomes
 ;

Lect. IV. THE ORMULUM 185

Min faderr wille forpenn?

my father's will (to) do ?

Ne J>att me birr]) beon ho^hefull

nor that me becomes (to) be careful

Abutenn hise Jnngess ?

about his things ?

& tejj ne mihhtenn nohht tatt word

and they not might not that word

g§t ta wel unnderrstanndenn

yet then wel understand;

& he ]?a gede forj> wi]?J> hemm

and he then went forth with them

& dide hemm heore wille,

and did them there will,

& comni wi])p hemm till Nazareep,

and came with them to Nazareth,

Swa summ ]>e Goddspell kij?ej?]),

so as the Gospel saith,

& till hemm ba]?e he lutte & bam

and to them both he obeyed and bowed
purrh sopfasst heiTsummnesse,
through soothfast obedience,

& wass wi]>]? hemm till J>att he wass

and was with them till that he was
Off prittij winnterr elde.
of thirty winters' age.

& ure laffclig Mar^e toe

and our lady Mary took
All patt 3I10 sahh & herrde
all that she saw and heard
Off hire sune Jesu Crist,
of her son Jesus Christ,

& off hiss Goddcunndnesss,

and of his Divinity,
 ;;

186 THE ORMULTJM Lect. IV.

& all £hot held inn hire ]?ohht,

and all she-it held in her thought,

Swa sumni ]?e Goddspell kij?e}>]?,

so as the Gospel saith,

& le33.de itt all tosamenn ajj

and laid it all together aye

Inn hire pohhtess arrke.

in her thought's ark.

& hire sune wex & J?raf

And her son waxed and throve

I wissdom & inn elde,

in wisdom and in age,

& he wass Godd & gode menu

and he was (to) God and good men
Well swipe lef & dere
well very pleasing and dear

& tatt wass rihht, forr he wass Godd,

and that was right, for he was God,
& god onn alle wise,
and good in all ways.

Her ende]?J> nu J?iss Goddspell ]>uss

Here endeth now this Gospel thus

& uss birrj? itt jmrrhsekenn,

and us (it) becomes it to through-search,

To lokenn whatt itt lajrepj? uss

to observe what it teacheth us

OIF ure sawle nede.

of our soul's need.

Notes. — I have already stated the general principle of Orm's ortho-

graphy. There are apparent deviations from his own rules, but these,
when not mere accidents, are doubtless explicable as special cases,
though we cannot always reconcile them to his usual practice. It will
be seen that in words beginning with )>, and now pronounced with the
th sound, t is often substituted, but this is always done in conformity with
 —

Lect. IV. THE CEMULUM 187

what was doubtless an ortlioepical rule. After words ending in d, t,

and sometimes ss, ]> becomes t, as in the first line of the above extract.
There are some exceptions to this rule, but they are not important
enough to be noticed, frend, the sign of the plural is here omitted;
—
wass bilefedd. This corresponds with the German war geblie-
ben; —
witt, we-two, dual form; —
whatt wass guw, what was to
you, what had you, what ailed you; —
me birr]), the verb is here an
impersonal, as ought sometimes was at a later period; — faderr wille,
the omission of the possessive sign after words indicative of family re-
lation was very common for at least two centuries after the time of
Orm ;
— ghot, contraction for gho itt.
 LECTUEE V.

ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE OF THE FIRST PERIOD :

FROM THE MIDDLE OF THE THIRTEENTH TO THE MIDDLE

OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.

As I haveremarked in a former lecture, the change from

Anglo-Saxon and Semi-Saxon to English was so gradual, that
the history of the revolution can be divided only by arbitrary
epochs and I have given some reasons for thinking that what-
;

ever date we may assign to the formation of the English

speech, English literature cannot be regarded as having had a
beginning until the tongue was employed in the
English '

expression of the conceptions of a distinctively national genius.

This, as we have seen, cannot be said to have taken place until
after the middle of the fourteenth century; but the incipient
chemical union of Saxon and French was attended with an
effervescence which threw off some spirited products, though it
must be confessed that most of what is called the English
literature of the thirteenth centuiy, when compared with the
contemporaneous poetry of Continental Europe, and especially
of France, resembles dregs and lees rather than anything more
ethereal.
To the grammarian and the etymologist, the history of the
transition period, or the larva and chrysalis states, is of in-
terest and importance as necessary to a clear view of the phy-
siology of the English speech ; but, both because I aim to exhibit
the literary adaptations of the language rather than its genesis

•
 ;

Lect. V. THIRTEENTH CENTURY 189

or its linguistic affinities, and because of the extreme difficulty

of intelligibly presenting niceties of grammatical form to the

ear alone, I attempt nothing beyond a very general statement
of the leading facts of this period of English philological
history.
We shall have time and space to criticise only the more con-
spicuous writers and their dialect, and even among these writers
I must confine myself to those who were something more than
merely products of their age and country. I can notice only
two classes, namely, such as are emphatically important witnesses
to the state of English philology in their time, and such as con-
tributed — by the popularity of their writings and their sym-
pathy with the tendencies of the yet but half-developed nation-
ality which was struggling into existence — to give form and
direction to contemporaneous and succeeding literary effort, and
are consequently to be regarded, not as examples, results,
simply, but as creative influences in English letters.
Of the former class, the most celebrated is the short procla-
mation issued in the year 1258, in the reign of Henry III.,

which many English philologists regard as the first specimen of

English as contradistinguished from Semi-Saxon.* There is
no very good grammatical reason for treating this proclamation
as belonging to an essentially different phase of English philo-
logy from many earlier writings of the same century; for
though it is, in particular points, apparently more modern than

* I suppose the editors of the great English Dictionary now in course of pre-
paration under the auspices of the London Philological Society, consider this
state-paper as not English, but Semi-Saxon ; for it is not among the monuments
enumerated as examined for Coleridge's Glossarial Index to the English literature
of the thirteenth century. Short as it is, it contains, besides some variant forms
not noticed by Coleridge, these words not found in the Glossarial Index a, al- :

ways, aye aforesaid (toforcniseide)

; besigte, provision, ordinance
; frame, profit, ;

good fultume, help moge, nobles [?] oursclf (ussclveri) redesman, councillor
; ; ; ;

setness {isetness), law, decree; sign (iscined), verb; worsen (iwersed) worthless?, ;

honour. We may hence infer that the still unpublished relics of the literature of
the thirteenth century will furnish a considerable number of words not yet in-
corporated into English vocabularies.
 —

190 PROCLAMATION OF HENRY III. Lect. V.

some of them — the Ancren Eiwle for instance — it is, in other

respects, quite as decidedly of an older structure. im-
Its real
portance arises chiefly from the fact, that it is one of the
very few specimens of the English of that century, the
date of which isknown*, that of the older text of
positively
Layamon being rather doubtful, those of the later text and of
the Ormulum, as well as of the Ancren Eiwle, and of most
other manuscripts ascribed to the thirteenth century, altogether
uncertain.
Another circumstance which adds much to its value is, that
it was issued on an important political occasion the establish- —
ment of a governmental council or commission, in derogation of
the royal authority, and invested with almost absolute powers
and that, as appears from the document itself, copies of it were
sent, for public promulgation, to every shire in England. The
probability therefore is strong, that this translation — for the
proclamation appears to have been drawn up in French — was
not written in the peculiar local dialect of any one district, but in
the form which most truly corresponded to the general features
of the popular speech, in order that it might be everywhere
intelligible. Itmust then be considered the best evidence
existing of the condition of English at any fixed period in the
thirteenth century.
It has been objected against this view of the philological
importance of this document, that, being an official paper, 6 it is
made up, in great part, of established phrases of form, many of
which had probably become obsolete in ordinary speech and
writing,' f and hence is to be regarded as no true representative
of the current English of its time, but as an assemblage of
archaic forms which had lost their vitality, and, of course, as

* I perhaps in error in treating the period to which this monument belongs,

am
as altogether certain. There is no doubt as to the date of the original composi-
tion, but are we sure that this particular English copy is contemporaneous with
the original ?

f Craik, Outlines of the History of the English Language.

Lect. V. PROCLAMATION OF HENRY III. 191

belonging philologically to an earlier period. This objection is

founded on what I think an erroneous view of the facts of the

case. After the Conquest, the Anglo-Saxon was superseded by-

French and Latin as the mediums of official communication,

and there is reason to believe that, except in grants to indi-
viduals and other matters of private concern, Semi-Saxon and
Early English were little, if at all, used by the government, this
proclamation being, I believe, the only public document known
to have been promulgated in the native tongue during the whole
of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It was probably em-
ployed on this occasion, because the political movement which
extorted from the crown the establishment of the commission
was, as far as in that age any political movement could be, of a
popular character, and it was thought a prudent measure to
publish this concession to the demands of the people in a dialect
intelligible to all.
(
There were, then, at that time, no established phrases of
form ' in the political dialect of the English language. The
government could not have used a stereotyped phraseology, for
the reason that none such existed and accordingly this procla-
;

mation must be viewed as an authentic monument of the popular

speech of England in the middle of the thirteenth century, so
far as that speech had yet acquired a consistent and uniform
character.
It is very short, containing, besides proper names, only about
three hundred words in all, and only between one hundred and

thirty and one hundred and forty different words, even counting
as such all the different inflections of the same stem. Of course,
it exemplifies but a small proportion of either the grammatical

forms or the vocabulaiy. In this latter respect it shows no

trace of Norman influence, all the words being English, except
the proper names, a couple of official titles, duke and marshal,
and one or two words which the Anglo-Saxon had, in earlier
ages received from the Latin; but in the grammar, the break-
ing down of the Anglo-Saxon inflectional system is plainly per-
192 PROCLAMATION OF HENRY III. Lfct. V.

ceptible. I give the text as I find it in Haupt's Zeitschrift,

xi. 298, 299, after Pauli.*

Henr', tliurg Godes fultume King on Engleneloande, lhoaverd on Ir-

loand, duk' on Norm', on Aquitain', and eorl on Aniow, send igretinge
to all hise halde ilaerde and ilaewede on Huntendon' schir'.
Thaet witen ge wel alle, tliaet we willen and unnen, thaet thaet ure
raedesmen alle other the moare dael of heom, thaet beoth ichosen thnrg
us and thurg thaet loandes folk on ure kuneriche, habbeth idon and
schullen don in the worthnesse of Gode and on ure treowthe for the
freme of the loande thurg the besigte of than toforeniseide redesrnen,
beo stedefaest and ilestinde in alle thinge a buten aende, and we hoaten
alle ure treowe in the treowthe, that heo us ogen, thaet heo stedefaest-
liche healden and swerien to healden and to werien the isetnesses, thaet
beon imakede and beon to maiden thurg than toforeniseide raedesmen
other thurg the moare dael of heom alswo alse hit is biforen iseid, and
thaet aehc other helpe thaet for to done bi than ilche othe agenes alle
men, rigt for to done and to foangen, and noan ne nime of loande ne
of egte, wherethurg this besigte muge beon ilet other hversed on onie
wise and gif oni other onie cumen her ongenes, we willen and hoaten,
thaet alle ure treowe heom healden deadliche ifoan, and for thaet we
willen, thaet this beo stedefaest and lestinde, we senden gew this writ
open iseined with ure seel to halden amanges gew ine hord.
Witnesse usselven aet Lunden' thane egtetenthe day on the monthe
of Octobr' in the two and fowertigthe geare of ure cruninge,
And this wes idon aetforen ure isworene redesmen :

[here follow the signatures of several redesmen or councillors]

and aetforen othre moge.
And al on tho ilche worden is isend in to aeurihce othre shcire ouer
al thaere kuneriche on Engleneloande and ek in tel Irelonde.

In modern English thus :

Henry, by the grace of God king in (of) England, lord in (of) Ire-
land, duke in (of) Normandy, in (of) Aquitaine, and earl in (of) Anjou,
sends greeting to all his lieges, clerk and lay, in Huntingdonshire.
This know ye well all, that we will and grant that what our council-

* I regret that I am unable to furnish a literal copy of this interesting docu-

ment. Pauli, from whom the text in Haupt is printed, has thought fit to reject
the g of the original, and I suppose also the p and £, one or both of which it
probably employed. "Whether other changes have been made, I do not know, but
even these are as unjustifiable as it would be to substitute g for % or ch for x
in printing a unique Greek manuscript.
Lect. V. PROCLAMATION OF HENRY III. 193

lors, all or the major part of them, who are chosen by us and by the
land's people in our kingdom, have done and shall do, to the honour of
God and in allegiance to us, for the good of the land, by the ordinance
of the aforesaid councillors, be stedfast and permanent in all things,
time without end, and we command all our lieges by the faith that they
owe us, that they stedfastly hold, and swear to hold and defend the re-
gulations that are made and to be made by the aforesaid councillors, or
by the major part of them, as is before said, and that each help others
this to do, by the same oath, against all men, right to do and to receive,
and that none take of land or goods, whereby this ordinance may be
let or impaired in any wise, and if any [sing.] or any [plural] trans-
gress here against, we will and command that all our lieges them hold
as deadly foes, and because we will that this be stedfast and permanent,
we send you these letters patent sealed with our seal, to keep among
you in custody.
Witness ourself at London the eighteenth day in the month of Octo-
ber in the two and fortieth year of our coronation.
And this was done before our sworn councillors
[Signatures]
and before other nobles [?].
And all in the same words is sent into every other shire over all the
kingdom in (of) England and also into Ireland.
The first thing which strikes us in the aspect of this proclamation is
a structure of period so nearly corresponding with present usage, that,
as the above translation shows, it is easy to make a modern English
version, conforming to the original in verbal arrangement and syntax,
and yet departing very little from the idiom of our own time. The
positional syntax had become established, and the inflectional endings
had no longer a real value. True, from the force of habit, they con-
tinued long in use, just as in spelling we retain letters which have
ceased to be pronounced but when it was once distinctly felt that the
;

syntactical relations of words had come to depend on precedence and

sequence, the cases and other now useless grammatical signs were
neglected, confounded, and finally dropped, as were the original symbols
of the larger numbers in the Arabic notation, when it was discovered
that position alone might be made to indicate the value of the factors
of which the digits were the exponents.*
The principle, that the grammatical categories of the words in a

* See an explanation of the origin of the decimal notation in a note to

Humboldt's Kosmos.
194 PROCLAMATION OF HENRY III. Lect. V.

period are determined by their relative positions, is the true character-

istic of English as distinguished from Saxon, and if we could fix the
epoch at which this principle became the controlling law of construction,
Ave could assign a date to the origin of the English language as a new
linguistic individual.
Kegel considers the orthography of this proclamation so important
that, inan article in the second number of the eleventh volume of
Haupt, he devotes no less than eight and twenty closely printed octavo
pages to an examination of it. Were I convinced of the soundness of
these speculations, the present would not be a fit place for the exhibition
of the results arrived at by this writer ; but, however ingenious may
be his views, it appears to me that, in the excessive irregularity of all
orthography at that period, we may find sufficient reason for doubting
whether we are yet in possession of sufficient data to justify any posi-
tive conclusions on the relations between the spoken and the written
tongue of England in the middle of the thirteenth century.*

* We can never determine, by internal evidence, whether changes in orthography

are contemporaneous "with changes in pronunciation, and it is only in a very few
recent cases that we have any external evidence on the subject. The presumption
is always that the spelling remained unaltered long after the spoken word had

become very different in articulation.

If we compare the orthography of our time with that of Shakspeare's age, we
find very considerable changes, and we know that English pronunciation has been
much modified since that period. (See the evidence on this subject in First Series,
Lecture XXII.) But the changes in spelling have not, in general, been made for
the purpose of bringing the written into closer accordance with the spoken tongue,
but for etymological reasons, for convenience of the printer, for uniformity, and
in some cases from caprice nor have we any reason to believe that our present
;

orthography is more truly phonographic than it was two hundred years ago, except,
perhaps, so far as it has been made so by dropping the mute e in many words.
The Spanish Academy has succeeded in bringing about a revolution in the ortho-
graphy of the Castilian language, and in this instance, the modern spelling more truly
represents the articulation than the old orthography did. The change was not made
because the orthoepy had been recently modified, but to make the orthography
a more uniform and convenient expression of what had been for a long time the
normal pronunciation. This we know historically, but if the discussions on the
subject should be lost, posterity might as justly infer, from the internal evidence
in the case, that the articulation of the Spanish underwent a sudden change in the
first half of the nineteenth century, as we can that the pronunciation of Saxon words

in English, in the time of Henry III., differed materially from that employed in
the same words at the epoch of the Conquest. And in the same way, leaving the
external evidence out of the question, a stranger to Anglo-American usage, ob-
serving the general employment of Webster's unhappy cacography in New York
newspapers and school books, could come to no other conclusion than that the
Lect. V. PROCLAMATION OF HENRY III. 195

The following words seem to require special notice :

Verbs, send, 3 per. indie, sing, is without inflectional ending or

other sign of conjugation; —
witen, imperative, ends in n instead of e,
which latter was the A.-S. form when the nominative pronoun followed
the verb; — will en, with n final instead of ]> or 8, but beoth and
habbeth with the latter sound; —
schullen with n, as in A.-S. ;
—
ho at en with n instead of ]> or o; —
he aid en and swerien, sub-
junctive, with n as in A.-S.; —
to healden and to werien, infini-
tives with to, contrary to A.-S. ; —
beon with n instead of A.-S. <5 to ;

makien, gerunclial according to A.-S. construction, but without the

characteristic — helpe,
-ne ;
with A.-S.; — to
subjunctive, e as in
done, gerundial with ending — to foangen, gerundial
characteristic ;

without ending; — nime,

characteristic with A.-S.; — subj. e as in
nnige, with
subj. A.-S. ;— cumen, probably
e as in with n subj., as in
A.-S.; — healden, with n
subj. A.-S.; — senden, with n
as in for o;
— to h aid en, gerund, without characteristic.
Nouns. Igre tinge is not a participle, but a noun, greeting, Lat.
salutem. The i, an augment of the participle and past
originally
tense of the verb, is isetnesses and
prefixed also to two other nouns,
ifoan, and to ilaswede, which is probably to be considered as an ad-
jective, though not, like ilserde, a participial; besigte is allied to
sight, and therefore etymologically corresponds to provision.
Adjectives, mo are. It is worth noticing, as an instance of the

approximation of languages which have long diverged, that the A.-S.

meera and the Latin major, are, in consequence of orthoepic changes,
represented in modern English and in Portuguese, respectively, by the
same word, more, Eng., mor, Port. In the same way in pursuance —
of more remarkable laws of change, by which, in the Cimbric of the
Sette and the Tredici Comuni, the Ger. w becomes b, the diphthong ei
is sounded o, and the palatal ch is changed into g the German adjective —
weich is, in Cimbric, spelled and pronounced bog, which agrees in
form, and in at least one meaning, with the Celtic bog. See a note on
Buck, in the American edition of Wedgwood's Diet, of Eng. Etym.
Oni other onie, Kegel supposes the e final in the latter example to
be the sign of the plural others have treated it as a feminine singular
;

ending. The question cannot be determined by the syntax, for the

plural might have been used after an alternative, but the distinction of

people of the American commercial metropolis had lately become so lamentably

depraved in speech as to talk of travellers, of dissolute reve-lers, and of libc-ling
smuggled goods.
O 2
196 ROMANCE OF ALEXANDER Lect. V.

grammatical gender was now so little regarded that the e is, most pro-
bably, a plural sign. The orginal French of the proclamation, which,
unfortunately, my authority does not give, would decide this question.
Particles. O f had not yet become well recognised as a sign of the
genitive or possessive, and the document presents several instances of a
confusion between this particle and on, in. On, in the address, must
have rejjresented the French de, while, in the body of the proclamation,
the same preposition is translated by of; —
a but en aende, Pauli
had printed abuten aende, treating abutenasa single word. Kegel,
upon the authority of numerous passages in Semi-Saxon MSS., rightly
separates them, a is an adverb, the modern aye, forever.

One of the most famous among the fictions of the Middle

Ages, which were made familiar to the English people of the
thirteenth century by a vernacular translation, was the story of
Alexander the Great. The remarkable exploits of this famous
captain filled the world with his renown, in his own short life-
time ; but the splendour of his victories was for a time eclipsed
by the perhaps greater achievements, and the certainly more
permanent conquests, of Eoman generals, and, during a period
of some centuries, his fame passed quite out of the popular
memory After the downfall of the Eoman Empire,
of Europe.
his forgotten glory was revived on the Levantine shores of the
Mediterranean, and then in Western Europe, not in consequence
of the increasing study of classical authors, but by an echo from
the literature of far-off countries, where Rome had won but
and doubtful triumphs. The name and exploits of
transient
Secunder Dhulkarnein % or the two-horned Alexander, seem

* May not this Oriental epithet be the origin of the word dulcarnon, which has
proved too hard a problem for Chancer' s commentators to solve ? Alexander was
known to the Middle Ages as the great hero of the heathen world, the paynim
par excellence, and it is not at all probable that the signification of Dhnlkarnein
was familiar to them. The meaning heathen would precisely suit the word in the
passage in Stanihurst's Ireland, referred to by Halliwell as suggesting an ex-
planation of Chaucer's dulcarnon. Stanihurst, in Holinshed, vol. vi. p. 36,
reprint of 1808, speaking of the conversion of the people of Ulster by St. Patrick,
says " S. Patrike, considering that these sealie soules were (as all didcarnancs
:

for the more part are) more to be terrified from infidelitie through the paines of
hell, than allured to Christianitie by the ioies of heauen," &c. &c.
 : :

Lect. V. ROMANCE OF ALEXANDER 197

never to have been obscured in the East, and, in the Middle

Ages, translations of Oriental romances founded on his life, and
imitations of them, constituted an important feature in the
literature of every European people possessing a written
speech.
The most celebrated and popular, though not the earliest, of

these poems, was the Alexandreis of Philip Gautier, of Lille, or

Chatillon, which was composed, as appears from internal
evidence, between the years 1170 — 1201. This is modelled

mainly after Curtius, and is written in Latin hexameters. It

served as the prototype of numerous versions and paraphrases
in many languages, and was even translated into Old-Northern
or Icelandic prose, bycommand of Magnus Hakonsson, a Nor-
wegian king, about the middle of the thirteenth century.
Several of the translations or imitations of Grautier's work
were written in verses of twelve syllables, or six iambic feet,
which were probably thought the nearest approximation to the
classic hexameter practicable in modern poetry * and it is said ;

Dulcamon occurs twice in Troilus and Creseide, iiiv. 914, 916. Creseide
says
And, erne, ywis, faine would I don the best,
If that I grace had for to do so,
But whether that ye dwell, or for him go,
I am, till God me better minde send,
At dulcamon, right at my wittes end.

Pandarus replies
Ye, nece, wol ye here,
Dulcamon is called fleming of wretches,
It semeth herd, for wretches wol nought lere,
For very slouth, or other wilful tetches,
This is said by hem that be not worth two fetches,
But ye ben and that ye han on hond,
wise,
W is neither harde, ne skilfull to withstand.

Here the sense of dullness or stupidity, so commonly ascribed to the heathen, is

plainly implied, thoughit must be admitted that the precise sense of the phrases

in which the word occurs is not easily made out.

* The earliest attempt at imitation of the classical hexameter which I have
met with in English is a rhymed couplet translated from Virgil in Purvey's
 :

198 ROMANCE OF ALEXANDER Lect. V.

that alexandrine, as a designation of a particular metre, took

its name from its employment in these popular and widely cir-
culated poems. Chaucer, though he does not himself write
in this verse, speaks of it, under the name of exametron, as a
common heroic measure.

Tregedis is to sayn a certeyn storie,

As olde bookes maken us memorie,
Of hem that stood in gret prosperity,
And is yfallen out of heigh degre

In to miserie, and endith wrecchedly.

And thay ben versifyed comunly
Of six feet, which men clepe exametron.
Monkes I'ale, Prologue.

The old English poem of Kyng Alisaunder is, however, not

in the same metre as most of the Eomance poems on the same
subject, but in a very irregular rhymed verse of seven or eight,
and sometimes more syllables. It is not a translation of the
work of Gautier, but of some French poem now unknown, so
that we have not the means of determining how far it is merely
a faithful version, or how far it was modified by the translator.
The story, as narrated in Kyng Alisaunder, does not rest upon
classical authority, but is, much more probably, made up from
the spurious Alexander of Callisthenes and other medieval trans-
lations from Oriental romances, and from confused Eastern
traditions brought home by pilgrims and crusaders.* That it is

version of Jerome's prologue to his Latin Bible. Wycliffite Versions, I. 67,

where it is printed as prose

Now maide turneth a^e, Saturnus turneth his rewmes ;

Now newe kyn cometh fre, from an hij, fro heuenli lewmes.
* The work which, in the Middle Ages, passed under the name of Callisthenes,
is known to have been translated from the Persian into Greek about the year
1070, by Simon Seth, an officer of the court of Constantinople in the reign of
Michael Ducas. See Weber's Metrical Komances, vol. i., Introduction, p. xx.
The Western Europe and the Levant, which became so
intercourse between
frequent soon after this date, introduced this romance to the Latin nations, and,
by means of translations, it was soon generally diffused among a public in which
the wars for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre had excited a new interest in the
history and the geography of the East. The wide popularity which this feeling
Lect. V. ROMANCE OF ALEXANDER 199

an imitation, and not an

substantially a translation, or at least
original English composition, appears from a
satisfactorily
variety of passages, and among others from this :

This batail destuted is,

In the French, wel y-wis,
Therefore Y have, hit to colour,
Borowed of the Latyn autour.
2199—2202.
To what Latin author reference is here made, does not appear,
but it is not probable that it was Grautier, for if the translator had
been familiar with that author, he would hardly have failed to
introduce into his work some notice of the death of Thomas a
Becket, who was England in the thirteenth
so popular a saint in
century, and whose martyrdom, as some of his admirers both
ancient and modern choose to call it, is mentioned by Grautier.
The author professes to enumerate his sources at the com-
mencement of chap. i. of Part II., but it is quite evident that
he knew little or nothing of the real works of the writers he
specifies, or of the authorship of the manuscripts he used, and
(
the testimony of all Latin books ' was, in his eyes, of equal
weight.
The list of authorities, in which the form of the names shows
it to be a translation from the French, is as follows * :
—
Thoo Alisaunder went thorough desert,
Many wondres he seigh apert,
Whiche he dude wel descryue
By good clerkes in her lyue
By Aristotle his maister that was
Better clerk sithen non nas.

secured to the story served to stimulate still further the curiosity and the enthu-
siasm of Europe, and many a warrior of the cross dreamed of victories as
brilliant, and conquests as extensive, as those of Alexander. But this and other
romances did another and better service, by turning the attention of scholars
to the more authentic sources of historical information respecting the life of
Alexander, -which were to be found in Curtius and other Latin authors, and thus
contributed, in some degree, to the revival of a taste for classic literature.
* Weber, Metrical Komances, I. pp. 199, 200.
 : ; ; ; ; ;

200 ROMANCE OF ALEXANDER Lect. V.

He was with hym, and seigh, and wroot

Alle thise wondres, (God it woot !
),

Salomon, that all the werlde thorough yede,

In sooth witnesse helde hym myde.
Ysidre also, that was so wys,
In his bokes telleth this.
Maister Eustroge bereth hym witnesse
Of the wondres more and lesse.

Seint Jerome, yee shullen y-wyte,

Hem hath also in book y-wryte
And Magestene, the gode clerk,
Hath made therof mychel werk.
Denys, that was of gode memorie,
Itsheweth al in his book of storie
And also Pompie, of Rome lorde,
Dude it writen every worde^.
Beheldeth me therof no fynder
Her bokes ben my shewer,
And the lyf of Alysaunder,
Of whom fleigh so riche sklaunder.

The 'Lyf of Alysaunder' here referred to is very probably the

work falsely ascribed to Callisthenes, who is not mentioned by
name among the writers from whom the author drew.
The most interesting and really poetical features of this ro-
mance are the few couplets of descriptive and sentimental verse,
introduced at the commencement of the divisions of the story.
These have, in general, no connection with the narrative, and,
as far as we can judge by internal evidence, are interpolations
by the translator, and therefore probably original English com-
positions. Thus Part I. chap. ii.

Averil is meory, and longith the day

Ladies loven solas, and play ;

Swaynes, justes knyghtis, turnay

;
;

Syngith the nyghtyngale, gredeth theo jay

The hote sunne chongeth l the clay,
As ye well y-seen may.
1
chongeth is probably an error of the pen or press for clongeth or clingeth,
makes to crack by drying and shrinkage. It is not in Coleridge.
 ! ; ; !; ; ; ; ;

Lect. V. ROMANCE OF ALEXANDER 201

Chapter IV.
When corn ripeth in every steode,
Mmy hit is in feld and hyde ;
l

Synne hit is and schame to chide

Knyghtis wollith on hnntyng ride
The deor galopith by wodis side.
He that can his time abyde,
Al his wille him shal bytyde.

Chapter V.
Mmy time is the weod to sere ;
2

The corn ripnth in the ere :

The lady is rody in the chere

And maide bryght in the lere ;
3

The knighttes hunteth after dere,

On fote and on destrere.

Chapter VI.
Clere and faire the somerys day spryng,
And makith mony departyng
Bytweone knyght and his swetyng.
Theo sunne ariseth, and fallith the dewyng
Theo nesche clay hit makitk clyng.
Mony is jolif in the mornyng,
And tholeth deth or the evenyng
N' is in this world so siker thyng
So is deth, to olde and yyng
The tyme is nygh of heore wendyng.
Chapter VII.
Ofte springeth the bryghte morwe
Mony to bhsse, and mony to sorwe
Qued hit is nmche to borwe :

And worse hit is ever in sorwe.

Tho that can nought beon in pes,
Ofte they maken heom evel at ese.

Chapter X.
In tyme of May hot is in bonre
Divers, in medewe, spryngith fioure

1
hyde is a measure of land, a field. Perhaps here it is heath.
2 the weod to sere ; to dry and burn the weeds or stubble.
3
lere, countenance, A.-S. hie or.
 : ;; : ; ; ; ;

202 ROMANCE OF ALEXANDER Lect. V.

The ladies, knyghtis honourith

Treowe love in lieorte durith,
Ac nede coward byhynde kourith ;

Theo large geveth the nythyng lourith

;

Gentil man his leman honourith,

In burgh, in cite, in castel, in toure.

Chapter XII.
Mury hit is in sonne-risyng ?
The rose openith and unspryng;
Weyes fairith, the clayes clyng
The maideues ilourith, the foulis syng
Damosele makith mornyng,
Whan hire leof makith pertyng.

These passages, it will be observed, as well as the others of

similar characterwhich occur in the poem, nearly all refer to a
time or season of the day or year, but they are introduced
without any regard to the period of the occurrences the narra-
which they introduce. They have much the air of having
tive of
been composed as poetical embellishments of a calendar or
almanack, and I suspect them to have been taken from some
such work — perhaps a previous production of the translator
himself — instead of having been written expressly for intro-
duction into his version of the Eomance of Alexander.
The geography and the and military, of this
history, natural
poem, are of about equal value, as will appear from the following
extracts

There is another ydle hatt Gangerides

There ben jnne castels and of poeple pres
Hy beeth also mychel and bolde,
As childe of seven yeres elde,
Hy ne ben no more verreyment
Ac hy ben of body faire and gent
Hy ben natheles faire and wighth,
And gode and engyneful to fighth,
And have horses auenaunt,
To hem stalworthe and asperaunt.
 ; ; ; ; ;

Lect. V. ROMANCE OF ALEXANDER 203

Clerkes hy ben with the best

Of alle men hy ben queyntest
And evermore hy betli werrende
And upon other conquerrende ;

By the mone and by the sterren,

Hy connen jugge all werren.
Hy ben the altherbest
That ben from est into west
For hy connen shete the gripes fleigheyng
And the dragons that ben brennyng.
Verses 4862—4881.

Michel is the wonder that is vnder Crist Jesus.

There byonden is an hyll is cleped Malleus.
Listneth now to me I praie for my loue !

This hyll is so heie that nothing cometh aboue

The on the north-half in thester stede hy beth,
folk
For no sunne hy ne seeth.
in al the yer
Hy on the south-half ne seen sonne non
Bot in on moneth, atte fest of Seint John;
Thoo that woneth in the est partie,
The sonne and the hote skye
Al the day hem shyneth on
That hy ben black so pycches som.
Verses 4902—4913.

Ac thoo hem aroos a vyle meschaunce

Kyng Alisaunder to gret greuaunce.
Ypotamos comen flyngynge,
Out of roches, loude nayinge,
Grete bestes and griselich,
More than olifaunz sikerliche.
Into the water hy shoten onon
And freten l
the knighttes every chon.
Verses 5164—5170.

The gode clerk, men cleped Solim,

Hath y-writen in his latin,
That ypotame a wonder beest is

More than an olifaunt, I wis

1
freten, devour.
 ;

204 ROMANCE OP ALEXANDER Lect. V.

Toppe, and rugge, 1 and croupe, and cors,

Is semblabel to an hors.
A short beek, and a croked tayl
He hath, and bores tussh, saunz fayle ;
Blak is his heued as pycche.
It is a beeste ferliche ;

It wil al fruyt ete,

Applen, noten, reisyns, and whete.
Ac mannes flesshe, and rnannes bon
It loneth best of everychon.
Verses 5182—5195.

Theo delfyns woneth hire byside ;

A strong best of gret pryde.

They haveth schuldren on the rygge,
Eche as scharpe as sweordis egge.
Whan the delfyn the cokadrill seoth,
Anon togedre wroth the buth,
And smyteth togedre anon ryght,
And makith thenne a steorne fyght,
Ac the delfyn is more queynter,
And halt him in the water dormer ;

And whan theo kocadrill him over swymmeth,

He rerith up his brustelis grymnie,
And his wombe al to-rent
Thus is the cokadrill y-schent,
And y-slawe of theo delfyn.
God geve ows god fyn !

Verses 6610—6625.

The syntactical construction and inflections of this poem would in-

dicate a higher antiquity than its vocabulary, the latter of which
abounds in French words, while the syntax seems to belong to a period
when English had as yet borrowed little from the Norman tongue.
Thus I find that in the eighth chapter of the first part more than six per
cent, of the words, exclusive of proper names, are French. Several
Scandinavian words also make their first appearance in English in this
romance, though the syntax shows no trace of Old-Northern influence.
Thus haiune is the Icelandic hamr, a disguise, generally the form of an
animal, assumed by magic power ;
—
onde, breath, is Icel. andi; or- —
1
rugge, back.
Lect. V. THE OWL AND THE NIGHTINGALE 205

peel, valiant, is thought to be the Icel. participle orpinn, from verpa,

to throw, but as orpinn is not used in this sense in Icelandic, the
etymology is at least doubtful ; — punge, purse, is the Icel. pungr.

An important work, sometimes ascribed to a more ancient

date, but I believe pretty certainly belonging to this century, is
The Owl and Nightingale, a rhyming poem of about eighteen
hundred verses, in octosyllabic iambic metre. This has not been
traced to any foreign source, and is probably of native inven-
tion, —a circumstance which invests it with some interest, as
the earliest known narrative poem, of a wholly imaginative
character, conceived in the native tongue after the Saxon
period.
It is a dispute between an owl and a nightingale concerning
their respective powers of song. The smoothness of the versifi-
cation shows a practised ear, and of course a familiarity with
foreign models, for English verse had hardly been yet cultivated
extensively enough to furnish the requisite training. The
vocabulary contains few Norman words, but many of Scandi-
navian origin, while its dialectic peculiarities, such as the sub-
do not indicate that the poem
stitution of v for the initial /,
was composed in a northern or north-eastern district. The
dialogue, though neither elegant nor refined, is not wanting in
spirit, and the general tone of the composition is in advance of

that of the period to which other evidence, internal and external,

assigns it.

The commencement is as follows :

—
Ich was in one sumere dale,
In one suthe dijele hale, 1

I-herde ich holde grete tale

An hule and one nijtingale.
That plait was stif and stare and strong,
Sum wile softe, and lud among

1
Suthe diyile hale, very retired or secret hollow.
206 THE OWL AND THE NIGHTINGALE Lect. V.

An aither agen other sval, 1

And let that wole 2 mod ut al.

And either seide of otheres custe 3

That alre-worste that hi wuste
And hure and hure of othere sunge
He holde plaiding suthe stronge.
The nijtingale bi-gon the speche,
In one hurne 4 of one breche 5 ;

And upone vaire boje,

sat
Thar were abute blosme i-noje,
In ore 6 waste thicke hegge,
I-meind 7 mid spire and grene segge,
Ho was the gladur vor the rise, 8
And song a vele cunne wise :
9

Het thujte the dreim 10 that he were

Of harpe and pipe, thau he nere,
Bet thugte that he were i-shote
Of harpe and pipe than of throte.
Tho stod on old stoc thar bi-side,
Thar tho ule song hire tide,
And was mid ivi al bi-growe,
Hit was thare hule earding-stowe. 11

The nijtingale hi i-seg,

And hi bi-hold and over-seg,
An thujte wel wl 12 of thare hnle.
For me 13 hihalt lodlich 14 and fule :

" Unwijt," ho sede, " awey thu no !

Me is the wrs lf'

that ich the so ;

16
I-wis for thine wle lete
Wel oft ich mine song for-lete
Min horte at-flith, and fait mi tonge,
Thonne thu art to me i-thrunge.
*o
17 v

2 3
1
sval, swelled with indignation. wole, evil. custe, Icel. kostr, habits,
4 5
character, conditions. hurne, corner. Coleridge suggests beech,
breche,
6 7 8
here beech-grove. ore, one, a. i-meind, mingled. rise, branches.
9
song a vele cunm wise, probably, sung many kinds of notes wise, Ger. e i s e. I0 Het ; W
thiqte the dreim, it seemed the tone; Bet tkutfe, it seemed rather. » earding-
stowe, dwelling-place. " wl, ill. 13
me, men, Fr. on. " lodlich, loathsome.
16 17
15
wrs, worse. lete, voice. i-thrimgc, pressed near.
 ; : ; :

Lect. V. TIIE OWL AND THE NIGHTINGALE 207

Me lust bet 1 speten, thane singe

2
Of thine fule jojelinge."
Thos was eve,
liule abocl fort hit
Ho ne mi x,te no leng bileve,
c

Vor hire horte was so gret,

That wel nej hire fnast 3 at-schet
And warp a word thar after longe
" IIu thincthe nu bi mine songe ?
West thu that ich ne cunne singe,
Thej ich ne cunne of writelinge ?
I-lome 4 thu dest me grame, 5
And seist me bothe tone 6 and schame ;

gif ich the holde on mine note, 7

So hit bi-tide that ich mote !

And thu were ut of thine rise,

Thu sholdest singe an other wse.' 8

After much reciprocal abuse, the nightingale bursts into

song.

Thos word ajaf the nigtingale,

And after thare longe tale
He song so lude and so scharpe,
Rigt so me grulde schille harpe, 9
Thos liule luste thider-ward,
And hold here ege nother-ward,
And sat to-svolle and i-bolye, 10
Also ho hadde one frogge i-svolge.

The birds then agree, upon the proposal of the nightingale

to refer the question of superiority to 'Maister Nichole of
Guldeforde,' who
is wis and war of worde
He is of dome suthe gleu, 11
And him is loth evrich untheu

2 3
1
me lust bet, I would rather. lofrclinge, chattering. fnast, breath.
4 5 6 7
i-lomc, grame, offence.
often. tone, pain, wrong, injury. note,
8 9
power, possession. vjse, wise, manner. ri\t so me grulde schille harpe,
10
as if one were touching a shrill harp. i-bolye, swollen. " gleu, skilfull.
 ; :; ; ;

208 THE OWL AND THE NIGHTINGALE Lect. V.

He wot insist in eche songe,

Wo wo singet wronge
singet wel,
And he can schede vrom the rijte
l

That woge, 2 that thuster 3 from the lrgte.

Before repairing to the arbiter, however, they recommence

their dialogue, and the poem is almost entirely taken up with
their abuse of each other, the nightingale beginning the dis-
pute.
* Hule,' ho sede, l
seie me soth,
Wi dostu that un-wijtis doth ?

Thu singist a nijt, and nojt a dai,

And al thi song is wailawai ;

Thu mijt mid thine songe afere

Alle that i-hereth thine i-bere 4
;

Thu schirchest and gollest to thine fere 5

That hit is grislich to i-here,
Hit thin chest bothe wise and snepe 6
Nogt that thu singe, ac that thu wepe.
Thu flijst a nigt and nogt a dai
Tharof ich wndri, and wel mai
Vor evrich thing that schuniet rijt,

Hit luveth truster and hatiet lijt.'

The owl replies much in the same strain, and, as will be

seen by the following extracts, the two birds continue to abuse
each other, in good set terms, to the end of the poem. The
owl: —
Thu wenist that ech song bo 7 grislich
That thine pipinge nis i-lich :

Mi stefne 8 is bold and nojt un-orne, 9

Ho is i-lich
one grete home,
And thin is i-lich one pipe
Of one smale wode un-ripe.
Ich singe bet than thu dest
Thu chaterest so doth on Irish preost

1 2 wo%e, wrong. 3 4
schede, distinguish. thuster, darkness. i-bere,
5 e 7 8
voice. fere, mate. snepe, foolish. bo, be. stefne, voice.
9
un-orne, rude.
 ;

List. V. the owl and the nightingale 209

Ich singe an ere a rijt time,

And soththe won hit is bed-time,
The thridde sithe ad middel nijte,
And so ich mine song adijte
Wone ich i-so arise vorre 1

Other dai-iim 2 other dai-sterre,

Ich do god mid mine throte,
And warne men to hore note. 3
Ac thu singest alle-longe nrjt,
From eve fort hit is dai-lijt,

And evre seist thin o song

So longe so the nigt is long,
And evre croweth thi wrecche crei
That he ne swiketh night ne dai ;

Mid thine pipinge thu adunest 4

Thas monnes earen thar thu wunest,
And makest thine song so un-wrth
That me ne telth of thar nojt wrth.
Everich murgthe mai so longe i-leste,
That ho shal like wel un-wreste 5 ;

Vor harpe and pipe and flrgeles songe

]\iisliketh, gif hit is to long,

Ne bo the song never so murie,

That he shal thinche wel un-murie,
Zef he i-lesteth over un-wille. 6

The nightingale :
—
1
Hule,' ho seide, l
wi dostu so ?
Thu singest a winter wolawo ;

Thu singest so doth hen a snowe, 7

Al that ho singeth hit is for wo we
Hit is for thine fule nithe, 8
That thu ne migt mid us bo blithe,
For thu forbernest 9 wel neg for onde 10

Than ure blisse cumeth to-londe.

1 2 dai-ri)n, day-break, dawn. 3

good, benefit, labour.
i-so, see. note,
5 6
4
adunest, stunnest, dinnest. xm-wreste, worthless. over un-wille, beyond
7 8
•what is desirable. so doth hen a snowe, like a hen in the snow. nithe,
9 I0
envy. forbernest, burnest. onde, mahce.

P
 ; ; ; ;

210 TIIE OWL AND TIIE NIGHTINGALE Lect. V.

Tim farest so doth the ille,

Evrich blisse him is un-wille
Grucching and luring him both l rade, 2
Eif he i-soth that men both glade
He wolde that he i-seje
Teres in evrich monnes e^e :

Ne rojte he thej flockes were

I-meind bi toppes and bi here. 3
Al so thu dost on thire side ;

Vor wanne snou lith thicke and wide

An all wi^tes habbeth sor^e,
Thu singest from eve fort a morge.
Ac ich alle blisse mid me bringe
Ech wijt is glad for mine thinge,
And wanne ich cume,
blisseth hit
And mine cume.
hijteth agen
The blostme ginneth springe and sprede
Both in tro and eke on mede ;

The lilie mid hire faire wlite 4

Wolcumeth me, that thu hit wte,
Bid me mid hire faire bio 5
That ich shulle to hire flo ;
6

The rose also mid hire rude,

That cumeth ut of the thorne wode,
Bit me that ich shulle singe
Vor hire luve one skentinge. 7

The owl :
—
Wi nultu singe an oder theode, 8
War hit is muchele more neode ?
Thu neaver ne singst in Irlonde,
Ne thu ne cumest nojt in Scotlonde :

Wi nultu fare to Noreweie ?

And singin men of Galeweie ?

Thar beodh men that lutel kunne

Of songe that is bincodhe the sunne

3
1
both, bccth, is.
2 radc, ready, present, flockes * * i-meind bi toppes
4
and by here, companies * * quarrelling and pulling hair. wlite, colour.
5 bio, bleo, blee, colour.
6
Jio flee.
t
7
skentinge, a merry song. 8
theode,

place, people.
Lect. V. THE GESTE OF KYNG HORN 211

Wi nultu thare preoste singe,

An teclie of tliire writelinge ?
And wisi l
liom mid tliire stevene,
The engeles sinffeth ine lieovene ?

Tim an ydel wel,

farest so dodli
That springeth bi burne thar is snel, 2
An let for-drue 3 the dune, 4
And noli on idel thar a-dune.

The disputants become irritated, and are about to proceed to

violence, when the wren, who
for heo cuthe singe,
War com in thare moregeiing,
To helpe thare nigtegale,

interferes, reminds the parties of their agreement to refer their

differences to an arbiter, and sends them to abide his judgment.
The poem concludes :
—
Mid thisse worde forth hi ferden,
Al bute here and bute verde, 5
To Portersham that heo bi-come
Ah lm heo spedde of heore dome
Ne chan ich eu namore telle ;

Her nis namore of this spelle.

The Geste of Kyng Horn, a romantic poem of about sixteen

hundred verses, belongs to the thirteenth century, and has not
been traced to a foreign original but the existence of nearly ;

contemporaneous versions of the same story, in French and

other languages, renders it highly probable that the first con-
ception of the poem was of a much earlier date.
The following is a condensed outline of the plan. King
Murray, the father of Horn, the hero of the tale, is defeated
and slain by heathen, or,, as the poet calls them, Saracen,

1 3 4
wist, show, teach. - sncl, swift. for-drue, dry-up. dune, the
5
heath. Al bute here and bute verde, without army and troops, that is without
followers or retinue.

P 2
 ;

212 THE GESTE OF KYNG HORN Lect. V.

vikings, from Denmark, who seize Horn, and put to death all
his countrymen, except such as consent to renounce Christianity.
Horn is compelled to put to sea in a small boat, with several
companions, and lands in Westernesse, where he is hospitably
received by King Aylmer, is carefully educated in all the
accomplishments of a page, and excites a strong passion in the
breast of Eimenhild, the only daughter of the King.
After being dubbed knight, he departs in quest of adventures,
and, aided by a magic ring given him by the princess, he defeats
a party of Saracen vikings, and carries the head of the chief to
King Aylmer, but is exiled by that prince, who is not disposed
to favour his love for Eimenhild. On taking leave of his mis-
tress, he begs her to wait seven years for his return, and gives
her liberty to accept the hand of another suitor unless she has
a satisfactory account of him within that period. During his
absence, he meets with a variety of adventures, but is finally

sent by Eimenhild, and arrives in time to rescue her

for
from King Modi, who is pressing for her hand, and Horn and
Eimenhild are married. After the marriage, he goes with a
troop of Irish soldiery to Suddene, his native land, which he
recovers from the infidels. He finds his mother, who had con-
cealed herself in a cave at the time of his capture, still alive,

and returns to Westernesse. During his absence, his false

friend Fykenild, occasioned his former banishment,

who had
had got possession of Eimenhild, and was trying to compel her
to consent to a marriage with him. Horn enters Fykenild's
castle in the disguise of a harper, kills the traitor, and recovers
his wife. The poem commences thus :
—
Alle beon he bli])e,

pat to my song lype :

A sang ihc schal jou singe

Of Hurry ]?e kinge.
King he was hi weste
So longe so hit laste.
Godhild het his quen
Faire ne mijte non ben.
 ; ; ;; ; ;

LECT. V. THE GESTE OF KYNG HORN 213

He hadde a sone, fat het Horn

Fairer ne mijte non beo born,
Ne no rein upon birine,
Ne sunne upon biscliine
Fairer nis non fane lie was,
He was so brigt so f e glas
He was whit so ]>e ilivr,
Rose red was his colur.
He was feyr and eke bold,
Ant of fiftene wynter old,
In none kinge ricke
Nas non his ilicke.
Twelf feren lie hadde
pat alle with hem ladde
Alle riche mannes sones,
And alle hi were faire gomes;
Wif kim for to pleie :

And mest he luvede tweie,

pat on kim ket Haf ulf ckild,
And fat of er Fykenild.
Af ulf was f e beste,
And Fikenylde f e werste.
When Horn lands from the boat into which he had been driven
to embark by the heathen pirates, he takes leave of it with this
benediction :
—
Schup, bi f e se flode
Daies have f u gode
Bi f e se brinke
No water f e nadrinke.
5ef ]m cunie to Suddene,
Gret f u wel of myne kenne ;

Gret f u wel my moder,

Godkild quen f e gode ;

And seie f e paene kyng,

Jesu Cristes wif ering,
pat ike am hoi and fer,
On this lond arived her
And seie fat hei schal fonde
pe dent of myne honde.
 — ; ; ; ;

214 THE GESTE OF ETNG HORN Lect. V.

King Aylmer meets Horn and his companions soon after they
land, and, after hearing their story, conducts them to the
palace, and gives them into the charge of his steward A]?elbrus,
with these instructions :

Stiward, tak nu here

Mi fundlyng, for to lere
Of June mestere,
Of mide and of rivere
And tech him to harpe
WiJ? his nayles scharpe
Bivore me to kerve,
And of ]?e cupe serve
pu tech him of alle ]?e liste

pot ]m evre of wiste;

In his feiren ]?ou wise
Into o]?ere servise.
Horn ]ra undervonge,
And tech him of harpe and songe.
At his parting from Kimenhild, she gives him a ring, with these
words : — 1
Knijt,' qua]? heo, '
trewe,
Ihc mene ihc mei }>e leue. 1
Tak nu her ]us gold ring,
God him is ]>e dubbing. 2
per upon J?e ringe
is

I-grave Kymenhild ]>e gonge

per nis non betere an onder sunne,
pat eni mon of telle cunne.
For mi luve Jju hit were,
And on ]?i finger pu him bere.
pe stones beo]? of such grace,
pet pu ne schalt in none place
Of none duntes 3 beon of drad,
Ne on bataille beon amad, 4
Ef ]m loke pev an,
And ]?enke upon ]>i lemman.
2
1
leue, leve, believe. dubbing, finishing, or setting, or perhaps it refers to

the device engraved upon the stone, or the magic powers conferred upon it.
3 4
duntes, dints, blows. amad, dismayed.
Lect. V. THE GESTE OF KYNG HORN 215

The Geste of Kyng Horn has very little merit as a poem, and it is

far from possessing the philological importance which has sometimes

been ascribed to it. There are, however, besides the words explained
in the preceding notes, a few vocables and combinations which deserve
notice, because, if I am not mistaken, they are not found in any earlier
English work. Thus, alone occurs in its primitive form in verse 62G :
—
po gunne ]?e hundes gone
Abute Horn al one. 1

But 861 and 1055 it is written, as at present, alone; and

in verses
in verse 539 we find the more ancient simple one, used without the
all:—
Nolde he nogt go one,
Ajmlf was his mone.
At one, the probable origin of the modern verb to atone, which is
supposed to be not older than the sixteenth century, appears in the
verse 953 :
—
At on he was wi]? ]>e king
Of pat ilke wedding.
There is, in couplet 545, 54G, a singular compound rhyme, which I
have not observed in any other poem of the thirteenth century, and
which, though a departure from the laws of harmonious consonance,
seems to have been a favourite with old English poets, for it is several
times employed by Chaucer, Gower, and Occleve :
—
Knijt, nu is Ju time
For to sitte hi me.

The French words, counting repetitions, constitute about two per

cent, of the vocabulary, and they are principally from the secular litera-
ture of the Continent. The Scandinavian words are few. The meaning
and Northern origin of one of them, fer, v. 155, appear to have escaped
the glossarists. It is evidently the Danish for, Icel. fcerr, which the
Scandinavian etymologists refer to the verb at far a, the primitive mean-
ing being able to walk, active. The more modern sense is strong, well,
and in the passage cited, hoi and fer evidently signifies safe and sound.
Boy, a word for which no satisfactory etymology has been suggested,
occurs in verse 1107, but as it is applied to the porter of a castle, it is

used rather in the Irish, than in the modern English sense.*

1
See on the word alone, Fir^t Series, Appendix, p. 696, also Lecture XL, post.
* I regret to say that, with every possible effort, I have been unable to procure
a copy of Havelok the Dane, and I prefer rather to omit all notice of it than to
216 THE SURTEES PSALTER Lect. V.

Another interesting production of the period under consider-

ation is the metrical version of the psalms, published by the
Surtees Society. The date of this translation is unknown, but
it can hardly be later than the first half of the thirteenth century,
though I believe no manuscript copy older than the middle of
the reign of Edward II. is known to exist. Its diction resembles
in many respects the dialect of the Owl and the Nightingale,
but an important grammatical distinction is that it generally
uses the Danish plural ere instead of ben, beth or beoth, and
another is that for the Anglo-Saxon ending of the verb in -th, in
the indicative present, third person singular, and all persons of
the plural, as also in the imperative, it substitutes s. Chaucer
employs this form in the Eeeves Tale, as a peculiarity of the
speech of two persons from the North of England :
—
Of o toun were they born that highte Strothir,
Fer in the North,

and it has sometimes been said to characterise the dialects of

districts where the Scandinavian element is most perceptible.
But highly improbable that this change is due to Danish
it is

influence for the Danes did not make the corresponding inflec-
;

tions of their own verb in s, and, though what is absurdly called

the hard sound of th (as in think) is extinct in the normal pro-
nunciation of Danish, yet there no reason to believe that it
is

became so until long after the last Danish invasion of England.

The origin of the new form is obscure, and at present not
historically demonstrable, but it is perhaps to be found in the
difficulty of the pronunciation of the th. The substantive verb

to be,which occurs more frequently than any other verb, had

always the third person singular, indicative present and past, in
s, for is and wees were used in Anglo-Saxon just as they are
now. The Normans could not pronounce th, and in attempting

borrow an account of it at second hand. The extracts I have seen do not lead
me to concur in the opinions which have been sometimes expressed concerning
the high philological importance of this work.
Lkct. V. THE SURTEES PSALTER 217

it, a Frenchman gives it the s or rather z sound which s most

usually has as a verbal ending. It seems to me, therefore, not
improbable, that this Norman-French error in articulation,
combined with the fact that the most important of all verbs, the
verb to be, already employed s as the ending of the third per-
son singular, occasioned its general adoption as the characteristic
of that inflection.*
I select as a specimen of this translation, Psalm CII. (CM.
of the standard English version), and, for the purpose of com-
parisons which I leave the student to make for himself, I
accompany this text, numbered 3, with 1, the Anglo-Saxon
metrical version ; 2, the older Wycliffite, or Hereford's, prose
translation ; 4, the Latin, from the Surtees Psalter ; and 5, a
French prose translation, of the twelfth century, published by
F. Michel in 1860.
I.

1. Bletsa, mine sawle, bliSe drihten;

2. Blesse thou, my soule, to the Lord;
3. Blisse, my
saule, to Laverd ai isse
4. Beneclic, anima mea, Dominum
5. Beneis, la meie aneme, a nostre Segnor;

1. and eall min inneran his ]?aene ecean naman !

2. and all thingus that withinne me ben, to his holi name !

3. And alle pat with in me ere, to hali name hisse !

4. et omnia interiora mea nomen sanctum ejus !

5. e tres-tutes les coses qui dedenz mei sunt, al saint num de lui

II.

1. Bletsige, mine sawle, bealde dryhten !

2. Blesse thou, my soule, to the Lord

3. Blisse, mi saul, to Laverd, of alle thinges!
4. Benedic, anima mea, Dominum !

5. Beneis, la meie aneme, a nostre Segnor

1. ne wylt ]?u ofergeottul asfre weorSan.

2. and wile thou not forjete alle the jeldingus of him.
3. And nil for-gete alle his for-yheldinges.
4. et noli oblivisci omnes retributiones ejus.
5. e ne voilles oblier tutes les gueredunances de lui.

• See note at the end of this Lecture.

 ; ;; ; ; ; ;

218 TIIE SURTEES PSALTER Lr.CT. V.

ILL
1. He Junum mandaedum miltsade eallum ;

2. That hath mercy to alle tin wickidnessis ;

3. pat winsomes to alle ]?ine wickenesses ;

4. Qui propitius fit omnibus iniquitatibus tuis ;

5. Chi at merci de tutes les tues iniquitez ;

1. and June adle ealle gehselde.

2. that helith alle thin infirmytees.

3. pat heles alle June sekenesses.

4. qui sanat omnes languores tuos.
5. chi sained trestutes les tues enfermetez.

IV.

1. He alysde ]?in lif leof of forwyrde

2. That ageen bieth fro deth thi lif;

3. J>at bies fra sterving ]u life derli

4. Qui redemit de interitu vitam tuam

5. Chi racated de mort la tue vie ;

1. fylde Junne willan fsegere mid gode.

2. that crouneth thee in mercy and mercy doingis.
3. fat crounes J?e with rewpes and with merci.
4. qui coronat te in miseratione et misericordia.
5. chi coruned tei en misericorde e miseraciuns.

V.
1. He ]?e gesigefasste soore miltse
and ]?e mildheorte mode getrymede
2. That fulfilleth in goode thingus thi diseyr
3. )>at filles in godes ]?i yherninges al
4. Qui satiat in bonis desiderium tuum ;

5. Chi raemplist en bones coses le tuen desiderie

1. eart ]?u eadnowe earne gelicast

on geoguSe nu gleawe geworden.
2. shal be renewid as of an egle thij outhe.
3. Als erne ]>i yhouthe be newed sal.
4. renovabitur sic ut aquila3 juventus tua.
5. sera renovee sicume d'aigie la tue juvente.
 ;

Lect. V. THE SURTEES PSALTER 219

VI.
1. Hafast ]>u milcle mod, milita strange
drihten,
2. Doende mercies the Lord,
3. Doand mercies Laverd in land,
4. Faciens misericordias Dominus,
5. Faisanz misericordes nostre Sire,

1. domas eallum pe deope her

and ful treaflice teonan ]?olian.
2. and dom to alle men suffrende wrong.
3. And dome til alle un-right tholand.
4. et judicium omnibus injuriam patientibus.
5. e jugement a tuz torceunerie sufFranz.

VII.
1. He wegas dyde wise and cuSe
his
Moyse J>am mseran on msenige tid ;

2. Knowen he made his weies to Moises; >

3. Konthe made he to Moises his waies wele ;

4. Notas fecit vias suas Moysi

5. Cuneudes fist les sues veies a Moysen ;

1. swylce his willan eac werum Israhela.

2. and to the sones of Irael his willis.
3. His willes til sones of Irael.
4. filiis Israhel voluntates suas.
5. as fils Israel ses voluntez.

VIII.
1. Mildheort Jm eart and mihtig, mode ge])yldig,
ece dryhten, swa J>u a wsere,
2. Reewere and merciful the Lord,
3. Eew-ful and milde-herted Laverd gode,
4. Misericors et miserator Dominus,
5. Merciere e merciable nostre Sire,

1. is pin milde mod mannum cyfted.

2. long abidende and myche merciful.
3. And milde-herted and lang-mode.
4. patiens et multum misericors.
5. pacient e mult merciable.
220 THE SUETEES PSALTER Lect. V.

IX.
1. Nelle ]>u oS ende yrre habban,
2. In to euermore he shal not wrathen,

8. Noglite wreth he sal in evermore,

4. Non in flnem irascitur,
5. Neient en parmanableted iraistra,

1.ne on ecnesse J?e awa belgan.

2.ne in to withoute ende he shal threte.
3. Ne in ai sal he threte par-fore.
4. neque in seternum indignabitur.
5. ne en pardurableted ne manacera.

X.
1. Na pu be gewyrhtum, wealdend, urum
womrnmn wyrhtum woldest us don,
2. Aftir oure synnes he dide not to vs,
£|. Noght after our sinnes dide he til us,
4. Non secundum peccata nostra fecit nobis,
5. Neient sulunc les noz pecchez fist a nus,

1. ne Eefter urum unryhte awhaer gyldan.

2. ne aftir oure wickidnessis he jelde to us.
8. Ne after our wickenes for-yheld us pus.
4.. neque secundum iniquitates nostras retribuit nobis.
5. ne sulunc les noz iniquitez ne regueredunad a nus.

XI.

1. Forpon Jm Eefter heahweorce heofenes pines

mildheortnysse mihtig drihten,
2. For after the heijte of heuene fro erthe,

3. For after heghnes of heven fra land,

4. Quia secundum altitudinem cceli a terra.
5. Kar sulunc la haltece del ciel de la terre,

1.lustum cySdest ]?am ]>e lufedon pe.

2.he strengthide his mercy vpon men dredende hym.
3. Strenghped he his merci over him dredand.
4. confirmavit Dominus misericordiam suam super timentes eum.
5. esforcad la sue misericorde sur les cremanz sei.
 ; ; ; ;

Lect. V. THE SURTEES PSALTER 221

xn.
1. Swa ]>as foldan fasdnie bewindet),
pes eastrodor and asfter west,
2. Hou
nryche the rising stant fro the going doun,
3. How mikle est del stand west del fra,
4. Quantum distat oriens ab occasu,
5. Cumbien desestait li naissemenz del dechedement,

1. He betweonan pam teonan and unrilit

us fram afyrde seghwaer symble,
2. aferr lie made fro vs oure wickidnessis,
3. Fer made he fra us oure wickenes swa.
4. elongavit a nobis iniquitates nostras.
5. luinz fist de nus les noz felunies.

XIII.

1. Swa faeder penceS fa^gere his bearnum

milde weordan,
2. What maner wise the fader hath mercy of the sonua,
3. Als rewed es fadre of sones,
4. Sic ut miseretur pater filiis,
5. Cum faitement at merci li pere des filz,

1. swa us mihtig god

pam
pe hine lufiaS, lifte weorSetS.
2. the Lord dide mercy to men dredende hym
3. Rewed es Laverd, pare he wones,
4. Ita misertus est Dominus
5. merci ad li Sire

3. Of ]?a }mt him dredand be

4. timentibus se
5. des cremanz sei

XIV.
he calle can ure "pearfe.
1. for]?an
he knew oure britil making.
2. for
3. Fore our schaft wele knawes he.
4. Quia ipse scit figmentum nostrum.
5. kar il conut la nostre faiture.
222 THE SURTEES PSALTER Lect. V,

1. Genuine, mill tig god, fast we synt nioldan and dust,

2. He recordide for pouder wee be,
3. Mined es he wele in thoght
4. Memento Domine
5. Eecorda
3. pat dust ere we and worth noght,
4. quod pulvis sumus,
5. qui nus sumes puldre ;

XV.
1. beoS mannes dagas maweniun hege
seghwer anlice,
2. a man as hey his dages,
3. Man his daies ere als hai,
4. homo sic ut famum dies ejus,
5. huem sicume fain li jurz de lui,
1. eorSan blostman
swa his lifdages lame syndan.
2. as the flour of the feld so he shal floure out,
3. Als blome of felde sal he welyen awa.
4. et sic ut flos agri, ita floriet.
5. ensement cume la flur del camp, issi flurira.

XVI.
1. ponne he gast ofgifeS,
2. For the spirit shal thurg passen in hym,
3. For gaste thurgh-fare in him it sal,
4. Quia spiritus pertransiit ab eo,
5. Kar li espiriz trespassera en lui

1. sySSan hine gasrsbedd sceal

wunian wide-fyrh(5,
2. and he shal not stonde stille

3. And noght undre-stand he sal with-al.

4. et non erit.
5. e ne parmaindra.

1. ne him man sySoan wset

seghwer elles omige stowe.
2. and he no more knowen his
shal place.
3. And knawe na-mare sal he
4. et non cognoscit amplius
5. e ne cunuistra ampleis
Lect. V. THE SURTEES PSALTER 223

3. His stede, where pat it sal be.

4. locum suum.
5. sun liu.

XVII.
1. pin mildheortnes, mihtig drihten,
purli ealra worulda woruld wislic standee,
2. The mercy forsothe of the Lord fro withoute ende,
3. And Laverdes merci evre dwelland,
4. Misericordia autem Domini a saaculo est,
5. Mais la misericorde nostre Segnur de parmanableted,

1. deorust and gedefust ofer ealle pa pe ondraadaS him,

2. and vnto withoute ende, vpon men dredende hym.
3. And til ai our him dredand.

4. et usque in sa?culum sasculi super timentes eum.

5. e desque en parmanableted sur les cremanz lui.

1. Swa his sooTacstnyss swylce standcS

ofer para bearna beam,
2. And the rigtwisnesse of hym in to the sones of sones,
3. And in sones of sones his rightwisenes.
4. et justitia ejus super filios filiorum,
5. e la justise de lui es filz des iilz,

XVIII.
1. pe his bebodu healda'5 ;

2. to hem that kepen his testament.

3. To pas pat y hemes wite-word his ;

4. custodientibus testamentum ejus ;

5. a icels chi guardent le testament de lui

1. and pass gemynde mycle habba'5

2. And myndeful thei ben
3. And mined sal pai be, night and dai,
4. et memoria retinentibus
5. e remembreur sunt

1. pat heo his "wisfoest word wynnum efnaru

2. of his maundemens, to do them.
3. Of his bodes to do pam hi.

4. mandata ejus ut faciant ea.

5. des cumandemenz de lui medesme, a faire les.
 ; ;

224 THE SURTEES PSALTER. Lect. V.

XIX.
1. On lieofonhame halig driliten
his heahsetl liror timbrade^
2. The Lord in henene made redi his sete,
3. Laverd in heven grained sete his,
4. Dominus in coelo paravit sedem suam,
5. Li Sire el ciel aprestad sun siege,

1. ])anon he eororicum eallum wealdeS.

2. and his reume to alle shal lordshipen.
3. And his rike til alle sal Laverd in blis.

4. et regnum ejus omnium dominabitur.

5. e le regne de lui-medesme a tutes choses segnurerad.

XX.
1. Ealle his englas ecne drihten
bletsian bealde,
2. Blisse gee to the Lord, alle his aungelis,
3. Blisses to Laverd with alle your might,
4. Benedicite Dominum,
5. Beneiseiz le Segnor,

3. Alle his aungels )?at ere bright

4. omnes angeli ejus ;

5. tuit li angele de lui

1. heora blione frean

msegyn and mihta ]>a his mEere word,
habbao" and healdao' and hyge freinmao',
2. migti bi vertue doende the woord of hym,
3. Mightand of thew, doand his worcle swa,
4. potentes virtute, qui facitis verbum ejus,

5. poanz par vertud, faisanz la parole de lui,

1. [wanting in Anglo-Saxon text]

2. to ben herd the vois of his sermounes.
3. To here Steven oi ma sagas ma.
4. ad audiendum vocem sermon am ejus.
5. a oir la voiz de ses sermon**-
 !

Lect. V. THE SURTEES PSALTER 225

XXI.
1. Bletsian drihten eal his bearna msegen,
2. Lord all gee his vertues,
Blessith to the
8. Blisses to Laverd, alle mightes his,
4. Benedicite Dominum, omnes virtutes ejus,
5. Beneisseiz al Segnor, tutes les vertuz de lui,

1. and his pegna ]>reat, ]>e post pence nu,

fset hi his willan wyrcean georne.
2. gee his seruauns that don his wil.
3. His hine ]>at does ]>at his wille is.

4. Ministri ejus qui voluntatem ejus.

facitis

5. li suen ministre, chi faites la voluntad de lui.

XXII.
1. Eall his agen geweorc ecne drihten
on his agenum stede eac bletsige,
2. Blessith to the Lord, alle gee his werkis.
3. Blisses Laverd, with wille and thoght,
4. Benedicite Dominum,
5. Beneisseiz le Segnur,
3. Alle J>e werkes ]?at lie wroght.
4. omnia opera ejus.
5. trestutes les ovres de lui,

1. ]>a3r him his egsa anweald stande'S.

2. in alle place jee his domynaciouns.
3. In alle stedes of his laverdshipe ma,
4. in omni loco dominationis ejus.
5. en chescun liu de la sue dominaciun.

1. Bletsige min sawl bliSe drihten !

2. blesse thou, my Lord

soule, to the
3. Blisse, mi saule, ai Laverd swa !

4. benedic, anima mea, Dominum !

5. beneis, la meie aneme, al Segnor !

The only remark I think it necessary to make on the grammar of

this psalm is that the phrase, man his daies, in verse xv., where his

Q
226 EICnARD COEUR DE LION Lect. V.

serves as a possessive sign, is evidently a literal translation from the

Latin homo * * dies ejus. The origin of this anomalous form in
Layamon may perhaps be traced to a similar source. It should be
added that the translators have often followed different texts of their
original.

A circumstance which shows the continued poverty of English

intellect in the thirteenth century, its w ant
T
of nationality, and
its incapacity for original composition, is that, while it produced
numerous translations of French authors, and revived old-world
fables of domestic growth, it gave birth to no considerable work
connected with the real history of England, except the chronicle
of Robert of Gloucester. We can hardly imagine a finer subject
in itself, which appealed more powerfully to the sympa-
or one
thies and prejudices of the time, and especially to the national
pride of Englishmen, if any such were felt, than the crusades of
Richard Cceur de Lion and it would infallibly have inspired
;

poetry, if, in an age when tales of wild adventure were so

popular, any poetical genius had existed in the people. I can-
not find, however, that, at that period, the exploits of Richard
had been made the subject of any original English poem, and
the only early workwe have on the subject, in an English dress,
belongs to the following century, and is avowedly translated
from the French.
It appears, however, that Joseph of Exeter, a contemporary
and companion of Richard, celebrated his exploits in a Latin
poem called Antiocheis, of which only a few verses are extant,
and that a pilgrim called Gulielmus Peregrinus wrote in Latin
verse on the same subject, but these do not seem to have ever
found English translators.
The following extract will serve as a specimen of the diction
and poem on the exploits of
poetical character of the principal
this king,which were made known to English readers in the
fourteenth century by a translation from the French of an
unknown writer.
 , ; ! !; : ;

Lect. V. RICHARD C(EUR DE LION 227

Lord Jesus kyng of glorye

Suche grace and vyctorye
Thou sente to Kyng Rychard,
That neuer was found coward
It is ful god to here in jeste
Off his prowesse and hys conqueste.
Fele romanses men make newe,
Of good knyghtes, strong and trewe,
Off hey dedys men rede romance,
Bothe in Engeland and in France
Off Rowelond, and of Olyver,
And of every doseper ;

Of Alisander, and Charlemain,

Off kyng Arthor, and off Gawayn,
How they wer knyghtes good and curteys;
Off Turpyn, and of Ocier Daneys;
Off Troye men rede in ryme,
What werre ther was in olde tynie
Off Ector, and of Achy lies,
What folk they slowe in that pres.
In Frensshe bookys this rym is wrought,
Lewede menne knowe it nought
Lewede menne cunne French non;
Among an hondryd unnethis on ;

And nevertheles, with glad chere,

Fele off hem that wolde here,
Noble justis, I undyrstonde,
Of doughty knyghtes off Yngelonde.
Par foie, now I woll yow rede,
Off a kyng, doughty in dede ;

Kyng Rychard, the werryor best,

That men fynde in ony jeste.
Now alle that hereth this talkyng,
God geve hem alle good endyng
Lordynges, herkens beforne,
How Kyng Rychard was borne.
Hys fadyr hyghte Kyng Henry.
In hys tyme, sykyrly,
Als I fynde in my sawe,
Seynt Thomas was i-slawe
Q 2
228 RICHARD CCEUR DE LION Lect. V.

At Cantyrbury at the awter-ston,

Wher many myraclys are i-don.
When he was twenty wynter olde,
He was a kyng swythe bolde,
He wolde no wyff, I undyrstonde,
With grete tresore though he her fonde.
Nevyrtheles hys barons hym sedde,
That he graunted a wyff to wedde.
Hastely he sente hys sondes,
Into manye dy verse londes,
The feyreste wyman that wore on liff

Men wolde bringe hym to wyff.

Messangeres were redy dyght
To schippe they wente that ylke nyght.
Anon the sayl up thay drowgh,
The wynd hem servyd wel inowgh.
Whenne they come on mydde the sea,
(No wynd onethe hadden hee;
Therfore hem was swythe woo.)
Another schip they countryd thoo,
Swylk on ne seygh they never non
All it was whyt of huel-bon,
And every nayl with gold begrave
Off pure gold was the stave ;

Her mast was y vory

Off samyte the sayl wytterly.
Her ropes wer off tuely sylk,
Al so whyt as ony my Ik.
That noble schyp was al withoute,
With clothys of golde spred aboute,
And her loof and her wyndas,
Off asure forsothe it was.
In that schyp ther wes i-dyght
Knyghts and ladyys of mekyll myght;
And a lady therinne was,
Bryght as the sunne thorugh the glas.
Her men aborde gunne to stande,
And sesyd that other with her honde,
And prayde hem for to dwelle,
And her counsayl for to telle
 ; : ; ; :; ;

Leot. V. RICIIAED C(EUIt DE LION 229

And they graunted with all skylle

For her wylle
to telle al at
'Swoo wyde landes we have went,
For Kyng Henry ns has sent,
For to seke hym a qwene,
The iayreste that myghte fonde bene.'
Upros a kyng off a chayer,
With that word they spoke ther.
The chayer was charbocle ston,
Swylk on ne sawgh they never non
And two dukes hym besyde,
Noble men and mekyl off pryde,
And welcomed the messangers ylkone.
Into that schyp they gunne gone.
Thrytty knyghtes, withouten lye,
Forsothe was in that companye.
Into that riche schyp they went,
As messangers that weren i-sent
Knyghtes and ladyes com hem ayene
Sevene score, and moo I wene,
Welcomyd hem alle at on worde.
They sette tresteles, and layde a borde;
Cloth of sylk theron was sprad,
And the kyng hymselve bad,
That his doughter wer forth fette,
And in a chayer before him sette.
Trumpes begonne for to blowe
Sche was sette forth in a throwe,
With twenty knyghtes her aboute,
And moo off ladyes that wer stoute
All they gunne knele her twoo,
And aske her what she wolde have doo.
They eeten and drank and made hem glade,
And the kyng hymself hem bade.
Whenne they hadde nygh i-eete,
Adventures to speke they nought forgeete.
The kyng ham tolde, in hys resoun,
It com hym thorugh a vysyoun,
In his land that he cam froo,
Into Yngelond for to goo
 ;: :

230 RICHARD CCEUR DE LION Lect. V.

And was so dere,

his doughtyr that
For wende bothe in fere.
to
*
In this manere Ave have us dyght,
Into that lond to wende ryght.'
Thenne aunsweryd a messanger,
Hys name was callyd Bernager,
' Forther wole we seke nought,
To my lord she schal be brought
When he her with eyen schal sen,
Fol wel payed woll he ben.'
The wynd was out off the northeste,
And servede hern atte the beste.
At the Tour they gunne arryve.
To London the knyghtes wente belyve.
The messangers the kyng have told
Of that lady fayr and bold,
Ther he lay, in the Tour,
Off that lady whyt so flour.
Kyng Henry gan hym son dyght,
With erls, barons, and many a knyght,
Agayn the lady for to wende
For he was eurteys and hende.
The damysele on lond was led,
And clothis off gold before her spred,
And her fadyr her beforn,
With a coron off gold i-corn
The messangers by ylk a syde,
And menstralles with mekyl pryde.
Weber's Metrical Romances, vol. ii.

The early English ,rhymers and annalists observe a similar

mysterious silence with regard to King Alfred, the memory of
whom, as a Saxon King, one would suppose, could hardly ever
have perished among the direct descendants of his subjects,
fellow-soldiers, and citizens. But the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,
which devotes about ten octavo pages to a dry detail of some of
the principal military and political events of his reign, does not
notice a single trait of his moral or intellectual character, a
single interesting incident of his private life, or a single
fact from which it is possible to form even the most general
 Lect. V. ROBERT OF GLOUCESTER 231

estimate of his merits as a ruler, or his personality as a man.

Early English vernacular literature is equally barren of infor-
mation respecting this remarkable prince, and popular tradition
retained no remembrance of him, except as his name was
connected with several collections of proverbs which were
ascribed to him.
The poems — for such we must call them if all rhymed com-
positions are poetry — of Eobert of Gloucester, who flourished
about the year 1300, are of considerable philological importance,
and of some value as contributions to our knowledge of the
history of England, though their literary merit is of a humble
order.
The principal work of this author is a chronicle of England,
and there is a collection of lives of the English saints, which is

now ascribed, upon satisfactory evidence, to the same writer.

The subject of this latter production would naturally tend, in
that age, to give to it a wider circulation than could be acquired
by a voluminous chronicle in great part relating to remote
secular events and accordingly we find that the manuscripts of
;

the lives are much more numerous than those of the history.
The chronicle deserves notice, not only for its contributions of
otherwise unknown facts, but because it is the most ancient
professed history in the English language. It extends from the
siege of Troy to the death of Henry III. in 1272. The earlier
part is founded on Greoffrey of Monmouth, the latter generally
on more trustworthy sources, and it conveys some information
of value upon both the physical and the social condition of
England in the thirteenth century. The following lines are
favourable specimens of the author's manner : —
Engelond ys a wel god lond, ich wene of eche lond best,
Y set in ]>e ende of ]?e world, as al in ])e West.
]?e see go]> hym al a boute, he stont as an yle.

Here fon 1 heo 2 durre 3 ]>e lasse doute, but hit be J?orw gyle
Of fol 4 of pe selue lond, as me 5 ha]> y seye wyle.
1 2 3
fon, pi. foes. heo, pers. pron. referring to England. durre, needs, Grer. darf.
probably error fovfolc. 5
fol. me, men.
 :

232 ROBERT OF GLOUCESTER Lf.ct. V.

From Sou]? to Nor]) lie ys long ei^te hondred myle

And foure hondred myle brod from Est to West to wende,
A mydde ]>o lond as yt be, and nogt as by ]>e on ende.
Plente me may in Engelond of alle gode y se,
Bute folc yt for gulte o])er geres ])e worse be.
For Engelond } s ful ynow of frnyt and of tren,
t

Of wodes and of parkes, )>at ioye yt ys to sen.

Of foules and of bestes of wylde and tame al so.
Of salt fysch and eclie fresch, and fayre ryueres ])er to.
Of welles swete and colde ynow, of lesen l and of mede.
Of seluer or and of gold, of tyn and of lede.
Of stel, of yrn and of bras, of god corn gret won.
Of whyte and of wolle god, betere ne may be non.
Wa teres he ha]) eke gode y now, ac 2 at be fore alle o])er J? re
Out of the lond in to ])e see, armes as ])ei be.
Ware by J)e schippes in owe come fro ])e se and wende,
And brynge on lond god y now, a boute in eche ende.
In contre of Canterbury mest plente of fysch ys.
])e

And mest chase a boute Salesburi of wylde bestes y wys.

At London schippes mest, & wyn at Wyncestre.
At Herford schep & orf 3 & fruyt at Wircestre.
,

Sope a boute Couyntre, yrn at Gloucestre.

Metel, as led & tyn, in J>e contre of Excestre.
Euerwik of fairest wode, Lyncolne of fayrest men,
Grantebrugge and Hontyndone mest plente of dup fen.
Ely of fairest place, of fairest sijte Eoucestre.
Euene ajeyn Fraunce stonde ])e contre of Chichestre,
Norwiche ajeyn Denemarc, Chestre ajeyn Yrlond,
Duram ajeyn Norwei, as ich vnderstonde.
]>ve wondres ]>er be]) in Engolond, none more y not.

pat water of Ba]?e ys pat on, pat euer ys yliche hot.

And fersch & euere springe, ne be chele 4 no so gret.
Suche baj^es ];er be]) fele in ])e clos & in the stret.
Upon ])e pleyn of Salesbury ])at o])er wonder ys,

]>at Stonhyngel ys y clepud, no more wonder nys.

]>e stones stonde]) ])er so grete, no more ne mowe be,
Euene vp ryjt & swy]>e hye, ])at wonder it is to se :

1
Icscn, pastures. 2
ac, but. The punctuation is regulated rather by the
metre than by the syntax. s
orf, cattle, here, and generally, black cattle,
4
wrongly explained by Coleridge as sheep. chclc, cold, modern chill.
Lect. V. ROBERT OF GLOUCESTER 233

And oper liggep hye aboue, J?at a mon may be of a ferd,

pat vche mon wondre may how hco were first a rered.
For noper gyn, ny monne's strcngpc, yt pynkep, ne myjte yt do.
Telle me schal here afturward of pis wondres bope two,
And how heo were first y mad. pe priddc wonder ys
Up pe 1ml of pe pek. Nor]) wynd pere y wys
Out of pe erpe ofte comej), of holes as yt were,
And blowep vp of pi Ike holes, so pat yt wolde a rere
And bere vp grete elopes, jef heo were per ney,
And blowe hem here and pere vpon pe lofte on hey.
Fayre weyes monyon per bep in Engolonde,
Ac foure mest of alle per bep ich vnderstonde,
pet pe old kynges mad, were poru me may wende
From pe on ende of Engelond uorp to pe oper ende.
From pe Soup tillep in to pe Norp Eningestret;
l

And from pe Est in to pe West Ikenildestrete.

From Douere in to Chestre tillep Watlingestrete,
From Soup Est in to Norp West, and pat ys som del grete.
pe ferpe is mest of alle, pat tillep from Tottenais,
From pe on ende Cornewayle anon to Catenays,
Fro pe Norp Est in to Soup West in to Engelonde's ende :

Fosse me clepup pike wey, pat by mony god toun dop wende,
So clene lond ys Engolond, and so pur with outen ore, 2
pat pe fairest men of pe world per inne bep y bore.
So clene, and fair, & purwyt 3 among oper men heo bep,
,

pat me knowep hem in eche lond by syjte, where me hem sep.

So clene al so is pat lond, and monne's blod so pur,
pat pe gret vnel 4 comep not per, pat me clepup po holy fur,
pat for fretep monnes lymes, ryjt as heo were brende.
Ac men of France in pilke vnel me syp sone a mende,
jef heo ben broujt in to Engolond : war porw me may wyte,
pat Engelond ys lond best, as yt is y write.

The Lives and Legends of the Saints, by the same author, do

not differ grammatically from the Chronicle, but they are more
popular in tone, and in general more interesting, because they
are,no doubt, very faithful reflections of the opinions and senti-

1 3
tillep, leads. - ore, here dross, as of metal, elsewhere, mercy. purwyt,
pure-white, fair-complexioned. * vnel, sickness, plague.
 —

234 ROBERT OF GLOUCESTER Lect. V.

ments, as well as of the habits and manners of the English

people, at a period concerning which our sources of information
are scanty.
The Life of St. Brandan, published by the Percy Society, is
of the same fabulous character as a large proportion of the
monkish legends of the Middle Ages, but the martyrdom of
Becket, also published by the same Society, has very much
higher pretensions to literary merit than most parts of the
Chronicle can boast, and is by no means wanting in dramatic
life and spirit. The most curious part of the Lives of the
Saints is a cosmographical, astronomical, and physiological
fragment printed in Wright's Popular Treaties on Science. Of
course, scientific accuracy is not to be looked for in a work of
that period, but the treatise in question, in its views of the laws
of nature, —
and of great cosmical facts such as the relative mag-
nitudes and distances of the sun and moon, the phases of the
latter, which are illustrated by comparing her to a ball shone

upon by a candle, and the moon's influence on the tides is much —

less absurd than most popular works of the age, and therefore,

with all its errors, it may be looked upon as containing truth

enough to make it an instructive essay. The sun is stated to
be one hundred and sixty-five times, the earth nine times, as
large as the moon, and as to the distance of the heaven or firma-
ment from the earth, we are told that,

Moche is bituene hevene and tirtlie, for the man that mi£te go
Eche dai evene fonrti myle nprijt and eke mo,
He ne scholde to the liexte hevene, that al day ge i-seoth,
Come in eijte thousend jer, ther as the sterren beotli;
And the3 Adam oure furste fader hadde bi-gonne anon,
Tho he was fnrst y-maked, toward hevene gon,
And hadde ech dai fonrti myle evene uprijt i-go.
He nadde nop gut to hevene i-come bi a thousend jer and mo.

The proportion of Eomance words in the general diction of

Eobert of Gloucester does not exceed four or five per cent., but
the number of vocables of this class, which make their first
Lect. V. ROBERT OF BRUNNE 235

appearance in his works, is considerable, and his additions to

the current vocabulary of English are important, though other-
wise he cannot be said to have done much for the elevation of
the native literature.
The rhymed history usually known as the Chronicle of Robert
Manning, or Eobert of Brunne, is the most voluminous work in
the English of the early part of the fourteenth century, and it
is the last conspicuous production belonging to what most phi-

lologists consider as the first period of the English language,

which, as before remarked, extends from about 1250 to about
1350. The first part of this chronicle is a translation from
the Brut of Wace. It comes down to the death of Cadwalader,
and has never been printed. The second, a translation from
the Anglo-Norman of Peter de Langtoft, but with many
enlargements and corrections, brings down the history of
England to the death of Edward I. This was published by
Hearne in 1725, under the name of Langtoft's Chronicle, and
was reprinted in 1810. The style of de Brunne is superior to
that of Robert of Gloucester in ease, though we can hardly say,
grace of expression. His literary merits are slender, and his
diction, which is formed upon that of Robert of Gloucester,
though belonging to a rather more advanced period of philo-
logical development, is distinguished from that of his master
by some important characteristics. The vocabulary is consi-
derably enlarged by new Romance words, but the principal
difference between Robert of Gloucester and Robert of Brunne
is, that while the former makes the third person singular indi-

cative present of the verb in tJi, and generally, though indeed

not uniformly, uses the Saxon form of the personal pronoun,
the latter regularly employs the verbal ending s, and has scJio
for the nominative singular feminine, and e i in the nomina-
J?

tive,\ e r in the genitive or possessive plural of the personal

pronoun.
The prologue to the unpublished part of the work, which is

de Brunne's own, is remarkable for its bearing on certain

 ;

236 ROBERT OF BRUNNE Lect. V.

questions of old English versification. I introduce it as a favour-

able specimen of his style, and it is proper to remark that the
translator, in both divisions of his work, followed the versifica-
tion of his original ; the metre in the first part being octosyllabic,
while the lines in the latter vary from eight syllables to the
Alexandrine, or exametron of six feet, which was the heroic
measure of that age. It will be found in Hearne's edition,
Appendix to Preface, p. xcvi.

Lordynges, that be now here,

If ge wille listene & lere
All pe story of Inglande,
Als Robert Mannyng wryten it fand,
& on Inglysch has it schewed,
Not for pe lerid bot for pe lewed,
For po pat in J)is land wonn,
pat pe Latyn no Frankys conn,
For to haf solace & gameii
In felawschip when
sitt samen.
pai
And it is wisdom wytten
forto

J»e state of pe land, and haf it wryten:

What manere of folk first it wan,

& of what kynde it first began.
And gude it is for many thynges,
For to here pe dedis of kynges,
Whilk were foles & whilk were wyse.
& whilk of pam couth mast quantyse
And whilk did wrong & whilk ryght,
& whilk mayntend pes & fyght.
Of ))are dedes salle be my sawe,
In what tyme & of Avhat la^ve,
I salle 30w sch ewe fro gre to gre,
Sen ]>e tyme of sir Noe,
Fro Noe vnto Eneas,
& what betwix fam was,
And fro Eneas tille Brutus tyme,
]?at kynde he telles in pis ryme.

Fro Brutus tille Cadwaladres,

]?e last Bryton pat pis lande lee%
 ;

Lect. V. ROBERT OF BRUNNE 237

Alle pat kynde & alle the frute,

pat come of Brutus pat is pe Brute;
And pe r^ght Brute is told nomore,
fan the Brytons tyme wore.
After pe Bretons pe Inglis camen,
pe lordschip of pis lande )>ai namen
South & North, West & Est,
pat calle men now pe Inglis gest.
When pai first amang pe Bretons,
pat now ere Inglis pan were Saxons,
Saxons Inglis hight alle oliche.
pat aryued vp at Sandwyche,
In pe kynge's tyme Vortogerne,
pat pe lande walde pam not werne.
pat were maysters of alle pe topire,
Hengist he hight & Hors his bropire.
pes were hede, als we fynde,
Where of is com en oure Inglis kynde.
A hundrethe & fifty jere pai com,
Or pat receyued Cristendom.
So lang woned pai J?is lande in,
Or pa herde out of Saynt Austyn,
Amang pe Bretons with mykelle wo,
In sclaundire, in threte & in thro.
pes Inglis dedes ge may here,
As Pers telles alle pe manere.
One mayster Wace ])e Frankes telles,

pe Brute alle pat pe Latyn spelles,

Fro Eneas tille Cadwaladre,
]>is mayster Wace per leues he.
And ryght as mayster Wace says,
I telle myn same ways.
Inglis pe
For mayster Wace pe Latyn alle rymes, g
]>atPers ouerhippis many tymes.
Mayster Wace pe Brute alle redes,
& Pers tellis alle pe Inglis dedes.
per mayster Wace of pe Brute left,
Eyght begynnes Pers eft,
And tellis forth pe Inglis story,
and as he says, pan say I.
238 ROBERT OF BRUNNE Lect. V.

Als ]>ai haf wryteii & sayd,

Haf I alle in myn Inglis layd,
In symple speclie as I couthe,
pat is lightest in manne's mouthe.

I mad noglit for no disours,

Ne for no seggers no harpours,
Bot for J>e luf of symple men,
pat strange Inglis caii not kefi.
For many it ere pat strange Inglis
In ryme wate neuer what it is,

And bot pai wist what it mente,

Ellis me thoght it were alle schente.
I made it not forto be praysed,
Bot at pe lewed mefi were aysed.
If it were made in ryme couwee,
Or in strangere or enterlace,
pat rede Inglis it ere inowe,
pat couthe not haf coppled a kowe,
pat outhere in couwee or in baston
Som suld haf ben fordon,
So pat fele men pat it herde,
Suld not witte howe pat it ferde.
I see in song in sedgeyng tale
Of Erceldoun & of Kendale,
Non ]>am says as pai fam wroght,
& in per sayng it semes noght.
pat may ]>ou here in Sir Tristrem,
Ouer gestes ithas J)e steem,
Ouer all ]>&t is or was,
If men it sayd as made Thomas,
Bot I here it no man so say,
pat of som copple som
is away.

So pare fayre saying here beforne,

Is pare trauayle nere forlorne.
pai sayd it for pride & nobleye,
pat non were suylk as pei,
And alle pat pai wild ouerwhere,
Alle pat ilk wille now forfare,
pai sayd in so quainte Inglis,
pat manyone wate not what it is,
LECT. V. ROBERT OF BRUNNE 239

perforeheuyed wele \m more

In strange ryme to trauayle sore,
And my witte was oure thynne,
So strange speclie to trauayle in,
And forsoth I couth noght
So strange Inglis as ]>ai wroght,
And men besoght me many a tyme,
To turne it bot in light ryme.
\>ai sayd, if I in strange it turne,
To here it manyon suld skurne.
For it ere names fulle selcouthe,
pat ere not vsed now in mouthe.
And perfore for ]>e comonalte,
]mt blythely wild listen to me,
On light lange I it began,
For luf of ]>e lewed man,
To telle pam ]>e chaunces bolde,
]>at here before was don & tolde.
For ]us makyng I wille no mede,
Bot gude prayere, when ge it rede.
])erfore, je lordes lewed,
For wham I haf ]us Inglis schewed,
Prayes to God he gyf me grace,
I trauayled for jour solace.
Of Brunne I am, if any me blame,
Robert Mannyng is my name.
Blissed be he of God of heuene,
]?at me Robert with gude wille neuene.

In ])e thrid Edwarde's tyme was I,

When I wrote alle ]us story.
In ]>e hous of Sixille I was a throwe,
Danz Robert of INIaltone ]?at je know
Did it wryte for felawes sake,
When pai wild solace make.

The some interesting and curious

thirteenth century produced
didactic poems. Those which are translated or imitated from
French or Latin models have, as might be expected, greater
smoothness of versification, but less originality of thought than
those which seem to be of native invention. One of the best
 — ;

240 THE BODY AND THE SOUL Lect. V.

specimens of the former class is the dialogue between the body

and the soul, printed in the Appendix to the Camden Society's
edition of the Latin poems ascribed to Walter Mapes.
This poem is believed by the editor to be of the thirteenth
century, and there are manuscripts of the English version, as
well as of corresponding French and Latin texts, which cannot
be of a much later date. I cannot, however, resist the con-
viction that the manuscript from which this text is printed is

more grammatically more modern than

recent, for its dialect is

that of almost any English writer before the time of Chaucer.

The English poem is a translation, but there is reason to think
that the Latin original is a native English composition.
It has
merit both of thought and of expression, and the interesting
glimpses it gives of the life and manners of its time invest it

with some historical value for though it extends to but two

;

hundred and fifty lines, it contains no inconsiderable amount of

real information on these subjects.*
The commencement of the poem is as follows:

Als I lay in a Avinteris nyt, in a droukening 1

bifor the day,
Vor sothe I saiig a selly 2 syt, a
body on a here lay,
That havde ben a mody 3 knygt, and Intel served God to payg;
Loren he haved the lives lyjt the gost was oute, and scholde away.
;

Wan the gost it scholde go, yt bi-wente 4 and with-stod,

Bi-helod the body there it cam fro, so serfulli with dredli mod
It seide, 'weile and walawo! wo worth e tin fleys, thi foule blod !

Wreche bodi, wjy listoug so, that jwilene were so wilde and wod?

* There are many points of resemblance between this poem and an Anglo-Saxon
dialogue on the same subject, published from a MS. of the twelfth century, by
Sir T. Phillips. The mutilated condition of the latter renders the comparison
difficult, but the list of luxuries in the old English work seems to be much more
copious than that in the Anglo-Saxon, and of course to indicate an advance in
the comforts and refinements of life. Although the copy published by Sir T.
Phillips is of the twelfth century, the dialect belongs to an earlier date, and the
poem was, in all probability, written before the Norman Conquest had introduced
the elegancies, which soon followed the transfer of the English crown to the head
of a French prince.
2 3 4
1
droukening, slumber. sclly, strange. mody, proud, brave. hi-

wente, turned back.

Lect. V. THE BODY AND SOUL 241

Tliow that were woned to ride heyre on horse in and ont,

So koweynte knit i-kud 2 so wide, as a lyun fers and proud,
1
,

jwere is al thi michele pride, and thi lede 3 that was so loud?
jwi listou there so bare side, i-pricked 4 in that pore schroud?
gwere beon thi castles and thi toures ? thi chaumbres and thi riche
halles ?

I-peynted with so riche floures? and thi riche robes alle?

Thine cowltes 5 and thi covertoures? thi cendels and thi riche palles?
"Wrechede, it is now thi bour, to nioruwe thoug schalt ther inne falle.
gwere ben thi murdli 6 wedes? thisomers 7 with thi riche beddes?
,

Thi proude palefreys and thi stedes, that thoivj haddest in dester
leddes? 8

Thi faucouns that were nougt to grede ? and thine houndes that thou
ledde?
Me thinketh God is the to guede 9 , that alle thine trend beon fro the
rleoVle.

gwere ben thine cokes snelle, that scholden gon greithe thi mete,
"With spetes 10 swete for to smelle? that thoug nevere werere
, fol of
frete, 11

To do that foule fleys to suwelle 12 that foule wormes scholden ete? ,

And thouj havest the pine of helle with glotonye me bi-gete,

For God schop the aftir his schap, and gaf the bothe wyt and skil;
In thi loking 13 was i-laft, to wisse aftir thin ovme wil.'
'Ne toe I nevere wyche-craft, ne wyst I gwat was guod nor il,
Bote as a wretche dumb and mad, bote as toirg taujtest ther til.

Set to serven the to queme 14 bothe

even and a moruen, , at
Sithin I was the bi-taujt 15 to geme 16
fro the time that thoug was born; ,

Thouj that dedes couthest deme, scholdest habbe be war bi-forn

Of mi folye, as it semet now with thi selve thouj art for-lorn.
;

The minor poems of the first age of English literature may

be divided into ballads, political songs and devotional verse.
Many of these, including some of the most curious and im-
portant, are in Latin. These of course have not much philo-
1 2 3
koweynte knit, quaintly, cunningly framed. i-kud, known. lede, voice.
4 5 G
i-pricked, wrapped or decked. cowltes, quilts. murdli, mirthful, gay.
7 8
somers, bedsteads. in dester leddes, led on the right hand ; the plural form of
9 10
the participle is curious. guede, should be gnede, niggardly, severe. spetes,
this would regularly be spits, but I suspect it is here spices. u frete, eating.
12 ,a 14
suivellc, meat, relish to bread. loking, care, custody, power. to qiceme,
15 16
to please. bi-tau^t, committed. to %eme, to keep.
R
242 POLITICAL SONGS Lect. V.

logical relation to our present subject, and I cannot notice them

further than to state their existence, and to invite attention to
them as well worthy of perusal.
The variety of metres in these productions is great, and
though we do not find all the modern forms of the stanza in
early English verse, yet there are few poetic measures examples
of which may not be produced from that period. The narrative
poems in general have little to mark them as English, except
the language in which they are written. Poems of this character
would circulate mainly among the comparatively uneducated
classes, and the copyists, by whom they were transcribed, would

generally be persons of less accurate scholastic training and

habits than those engaged in the multiplication of works de-
signed for readers of higher culture. Hence the manuscripts
containing them would be more negligently executed, and, con-
sequently, are less to be relied on, as evidences of the gram-
matical character of the language, than works of higher aims
and greater literary merit.
These poems are generally anonymous, a circumstance which
has been thought to show that they were translations but of
;

this we have often better proof in internal evidence, or in the

existence of the French originals, in manuscripts of more
ancient date. In fact, it was only when the national spirit
was awakened to distinct consciousness, by the internal struggle
called the Barons' wars, that sufficient literary ambition was
roused to prompt to original composition; and it has been justly
remarked that the general want of literary taste is shown by
the fact that the best, most natural, and most graceful pro-
ductions of French poets were neglected, while far inferior
works were translated in considerable numbers.
The political songs and satires of the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries are an interesting feature of early English literature,
not as possessing merit of conception or of execution, but
because they are the first symptoms of a new life, the first
evidences of nascent nationality in modern England. They
have some resemblance to the popular political poetry of recent
Lect. V. USE OF FRENCH IN EUROPE 243

times, at least they have its grossness, but they are wanting in
the humour which characterises later English verse of the
same class. Most of the extant political poems of the period
we are discussing are in Anglo-Norman, or in Latin, for the
reason, among others, that in the thirteenth century, at least,
written English was not much employed for any purpose ; and
as there was at that epoch no people, in the modern social sense
of that word, there existed no native public interested in
political affairs, which could be addressed in the native tongue.
At French ranked first among the literary
this time, the
languages of Europe, for it had reached a much more advanced
stage of grammatical and rhetorical culture than any other,
and was, therefore, better suited, not only for poetical compo-
sition, but for every branch of higher intellectual effort. Its
superiority for literary purposes was felt and admitted, even in
states where the influence of France in political matters was
far from great and French acquired, in the thirteenth century,
;

that widely diffused currency, as a generally known and there-

fore convenient common medium of communication, which it
has ever since maintained throughout Continental Europe.
Martino de Canale, a Venetian annalist of the thirteenth
century, composed his chronicle in French, because, to use his
own words :
c
the French tongue is current throughout the
world, and is more delectable to read and to hear than any
other.' * Brunetto Latini, the teacher of Dante, wrote his most
important work in the same language, and he thus apologizes
for using it instead of Italian If any shall ask why this book
:
'

is written in Eomance, according to the patois of France, I

being born Italian, I will say it is for divers reasons. The one
is that I am now in France, the other is, that French is the
most delightsome of tongues, and partaketh most of the com-
mon nature of all other languages.'!
The employment of French by native English authors is by
* Ystoire de li Normanz. Introduction, xciv.
f Et se aucuns demandoit por coi cest liures est escrit en romas selonc le pacoys
B 2
 ;;

244 USE OF FRENCH IN ENGLAND Lect. V.

no means to be ascribed wholly to the predominance of Norman

influence in England, but, in a considerable degree, to the fact
that, for the time, it occupied much the same position which
had hitherto been awarded to the Latin, as the common dialect
of learned Christendom. This fact has been too generally over-
looked by literary historians, and consequently too much weight
hasbeen ascribed to political and social causes, in accounting for the
frequent use of French by English writers, when, in truth, its em-
ployment was very much owing to purely literary considerations.
Many of the poems on English political affairs were the work
of native Norman, not English writers, though English subjects,
and some were written even in Provencal.
As has been already observed, a great variety of metres are
employed in these poems but most of the English, though
;

rhymed, and resembling Eomance poetry in structure, retain

the ancient national characteristic of alliteration, and thus
combine the two systems, as they do the vocabularies, of both
languages. Others again are partly in English, partly in French,
thus showing that those for whom they were written were
equally familiar with both languages. Thus a poem of the year
1311, upon the violation of the provisions of Magna Charta, so
often confirmed and so often broken by English kings, com-
mences with a stanza in the two languages.
L'en puet fere et defere,
Ceo fait-il trop sovent
It nis nouther wel ne faire
Therfore Engelond is shent.

de france, puis que nos comesames ytalliens ie diroie que ce est por diuerses
raisons. Tune q nos somes en france et l'autre por ce q la parleure est plus
delitable et plus comune a tous lengages.
Manuscript of the Library of the University of Turin, Cod. L, II. 18.
The form pacoys, generally written patois, is remarkable, but I know not how
far it is justified by other ancient authorities. Diez supposes patois to be
an imitative word, and cites the Hennegau provincial pati-pata, geschnatter,
chattering, as analogous.
Although we cannot be certain as to the precise definition which Brunetto
Latini woidd have given to pacoys, he apparently uses it in the sense of dialect,
and regards the Eomance as a general speech, of which French was a local form.
Lect. V. ENGLISH POLITICAL POE3IS 245

Nostre prince de Engletere,

Par le consail de sa gent,
At Westminster after the feire
Made a gret parlement.
La chartre fet de eyre,
Jeo l'enteink et bien le crey,
It was
liolde to neih the fire,
And is molten al awey.
Ore ne say mes qne dire,
Tout i va a Tripolay,
Hundred, chapitle, court, and shire,
Al hit goth a devel way.
Des plusages de la tere
Ore escotez un sarmoun,
Of iiij. wise-men that ther were,
Whi Engelond is brouht adoun.

The I understonde
ferste seide, '

Ne may no king wel ben in londe,

Under God Almihte,
But he cunne himself rede,
Hou he shal in londe lede
Everi man wid rihte.
For might is riht,

Liht is night,
And fiht is flint.

For miht is riht, the lond is laweles

For niht is liht, the lond is loreles
For fiht is fliht, the lond is nameles.'
That other seide a word ful god,
1
Whoso roweth a3ein the nod,
Off sorwe he shal drinke
Also hit fareth bi the unsele,
A man shal have litel hele
Ther agein to swinke.
Nu on is two,
Another is wo,
And frend is fo.

For on is two, that lond is streintheles

For wel is wo, the lond is reutheles
For frend is fo, the lond is loveles.'
 ; ; ; ; ; ;

246 ENGLISH POLITICAL POEMS Lect. V.

That thridde seide, It is no wonder

'

Off thise eyres that goth under,

Whan theih comen to londe
Proude and stoute, and ginneth gelpe,
Ac of thing that sholde helpe
Have theih noht on honde.
Nu lust haveth leve,
Thef is reve,
And pride hath sieve.
For lust hath leve, the lond is theweles
For thef is reve, the lond is penyles
For pride hath sieve, the lond is almusles.'

The ferthe seide, that he is wod

That dwelleth to muchel in the flod,
For gold or for auhte
For gold or silver, or any wele,
Hunger or thurst, hete or chele,
Al shal gon to nohte.
Nu wille is red,
Wit is qued,
And god is ded.
For wille is red, the lond is wrecful
For wit is qued, the lond is wrongful
For god is ded, the lond is sinful.

Wid wordes as we han pleid,

Sum wisdom we han seid
Off olde men and junge
Off many a thinge that is in londe,
Whoso coude it understonde,
So have I told wid tongue.

Eiche and pore, bonde and fre,

That love is god, je mai se
Love clepeth ech man brother;
For it that he to blame be,
For^if hit him par charite,
Al theih he do other.

Love we God, and he us alle,

That was born in an oxe stalle,

 ; ; ; ;
: ; ;

Lect. V. ENGLISH POLITICAL POEMS 247

And for us don on rode.

His swete herte-blod he let
For us, and us faire het
That we sholde be gode.

Be we nu gode and stedefast,

So that we muwen at the last
Haven hevene blisse.
To God Almihti I preie
Lat us never in sinne deie,
That joye for to misse.
Ac lene us alle so don here,
And leve in love and god manere,
The devel for to shende
That we moten alle i-fere
Sen him that us bouhte dere,
In joye withoute ende. Amen.

The authors of some of these songs might even boast with

Dante : Locutus sum in lingua trina ; for occasionally French,
Latin and English are intermixed, as in the following poem, of
the early part of the reign of Edward II., also contained in the
Political Songs published by the Camden Society.

Quant honme deit parleir, videat quse verba loquatur

Sen covent aver, ne stultior inveniatur.
Quando quis loquitur, bote resoun reste therynne,
Derisum patitur, ant Intel so shal he wynne.
En seynt eglise sunt multi sa?pe priores
Summe beoth wyse, multi sunt inferiores.
When mon may mest do, tunc velle suum manifestat,
In donis also, si vult tibi prsemia pra3stat.
Ingrato benefac, post h^ec a peyne te verra
Pur bon vin tibi lac non dat, nee rem tibi rendra.
Sensum custodi, quasi mieu valt sen qe ta mesoun
Thah thou be mody, robur nichil est sine resoun.
Lex lyth doun over al, fahax fraus fallit ubique
Ant love nys bote smal, quia gens se gestat inique.
Wo walketh wyde, quoniam movet ira potentes
Kyht con nout ryde, quia vadit ad insipientes.
 ' ;! ; ; ! ; ! ;;

248 ENGLISH POLITICAL POEMS Lect. V.

Dummodo fraus superest, lex mil nout lonen y londe

Et quia sic res est, ryth may
nout radlyche stonde.
Fals mon freynt covenaunt, quamvis tibi dicat, habebis.' '

Vix dabit un veu gaunt, lene les mon postea flebis.

Myn ant thyn duo sunt, qui frangunt plebis amorem ;

Ce deus pur nus sunt facienda saepe dolorem.

Tresoun dampnificat, et paucis est data resoun
Eesoun certificat, confundit et omnia tresoun.
Pees may nout wel be, dum stat per nomina bina
Lord Crist, that thou se, per te sit in hiis medicina
Infirmus rnoritur, thah lechcraft ligge bysyde
Yivus decipitur, nis non that her shal abyde
Tels plusours troverez, qui de te plurima prendrount
Au dreyn bien verrez, quod nullam rem tibi rendrount.
Esto pacificus, so myh thou welde thy wylle
Also veridicus, ant stond pro tempore stille.
Pees seit en tere, per te, Deus, alma potestas
Defendez guere, ne nos invadat egestas.
God Lord Almyhty, da pacem, Christe benigne
Thou const al dyhty, fac ne pereamus in igne !

This confusion of tongues led very naturally to the corruption

of them and consequently none of them were written or
all,

spoken as correctly as at the period when they were kept distinct.

In short, the grammar of both English and Anglo-Norman
became more and more irregular, as French and Latin became
more familiar to the English people. The Anglo-Norman, as
it was observed in the last lecture, departed from the Norman-

French inflections, and Anglo-Latin became almost as macaronic

as the works of Folengo, or as the Daco-Latin of "Wallachia,
where the traveller Walsh says, that he was waked before dawn,
by the tapster of a humble inn, who was standing over him
with brandy-bottle and glass, and offering him a morning
draught, with the classic salutation Visne schnapps, :
'

Domine ?

In fact, a macaronic stage seems very often to mark the

decline of an old literature and language, in countries exposed
Lect. V. MIXTURE OF LANGUAGES 249

to powerful foreign influences. We find examples of Latinisms

in Byzantine Greek, and of Hellenisms in the decay of classic
Latin. Ausonius — not the last lawyer who has exchanged the
bar for the chair — introduces Greek vocables into his verses,
and, in his twelfth epistle, after saying, in hybrid words, that he
has wasted time enough in arguing causes in the Common Pleas
and in Bank, and in delivering lectures on rhetoric :

Jam satis, J tytXe YIaii\e f irovtov a.7re7reipridrjiJL£V,

Ev Ti. fopw causcuc re nai ingratat<rt KaQiSpaiQ)
"PrjropiKolg luSot<n, &C. &C.

he invites his friend Paulus to visit him and share with him a

bottle of veritable Chateau Margaux, which he calls

vEKrap vinoto bonoto.

The English political poem oldest in subject, if not in date,

contained in the Camden Society's volume, is a satire upon the
Emperor, or King of Almaigne. It is as follows :

SONG AGAINST THE KING OF ALMAIGNE.

[MS. Harl. No. 2253, Fol. 58to, of the reign of Edward II.]

Sittetli alle stille ant herkneth to me

The Kyn of Alemaigne, bi mi leaute,
Thritti thousent pound askede he
For te make the pees in the countre,
ant so he dude more.
Richard, thah thou be ever trichard,

******
trichen shalt thou never more.

Kichard of Alemaigne, whil that he wes kyng,

Haveth he nout of Walingford o ferlyng :—

Let him habbe, ase he brew, bale to dryng,
maugre Wyndesore.
Richard, thah thou be ever, etc.

The Kyng of Alemaigne wende do ful wel,

He saisede the mulne for a castel,
 ; :

250 POLITICAL SONGS Lect. V.

With hare sharpe swerdes he grounde the stel,

He wende that the sayles were mangonel

to helpe Wyndesore.
Richard, etc.

The Kyng of Alemaigne gederede ys host,

Makede him a castel of a mulne post,
Wende with is prude ant is mnchele bost,
Brohte from Alernayne mony sori gost
to store Wyndesore.
Eichard, etc.

By God, that is aboven ous, he dude muche synne,

That lette passen over see the Erl of Warynne
He hath robbed Engelond, the mores, ant th[e] fenne,
The gold, ant the selver, ant y-boren henne,
for love of Wyndesore.
Eichard, etc.

SireSimond de Mountfort hath swore bi ys chyn,

Hevede he nou here the Erl of Waryn,
Shulde he never more come to is yn,
Ne with sheld, ne with spere, ne with other gyn,
to help of Wyndesore.
Eichard, etc.

SireSimond de Montfort hath suore bi ys cop,

Hevede he nou here Sire Hue de Bigot,
Al he shulde quite here twelfmoneth scot,
Shulde he never more with his fot pot
to helpe Wyndesore.
Eichard, etc.

Be the luef, be the loht, sire Edward,

Thou shalt ride sporeles o thy lyard
Al the ryhte way to Dovere ward
Shalt thou never more breke fore -ward,
ant that reweth sore :

Edward, thou dudest ase a shreward,

forsoke thyn ernes lore.
Eichard, etc.

Early English satirists by no means confined themselves to

censuring political abuses, and in their complaints of the cor-
Lect. V. POLITICAL SONGS 251

ruption of the Church they show a boldness worthy of the

martyr age of the Reformation. The Latin poems of this class
are particularly severe, and they are often written in a tone of
mournful seriousness, which is not likely to have been employed
except by ecclesiastics who deeply felt the degradation to which
their profession was reduced, by the depravity of the higher
classes of the clergy. Some of the English songs on this
subject are full of curious information both on the relations
between the clergy and the laity, and on the habitual modes of
life of the middling and lower classes of the people. The
following is the commencement of a long poem, contained in
the volume I have so often referred to.

Whii werre and wrake in londe and manslauht is i-come,

Whii hungger and derthe on eorthe the pore hath undernome,
Whii bestes ben thus storve, whii corn hath ben so dere,
ge that wolen abide, listneth and ge muwen here
the skile.
I nelle lijen for no man, herkne who so wile.

God greteth wel the clergie, and seith theih don amis,
And doth hem to understonde that litel treuthe ther is

For at the court of Rome, ther treuthe sliolde biginne,

Him is forboden the paleis, dar he noht com therinne
for doute
And thouh the pope clepe him in, git shal he stonde theroute.

Alle the popes clerkes han taken hem to red,

If treuthecome amonges hem, that he shal be ded.
There dar he noht shewen him for doute to be slain,
Among none of the cardinaus dar he noht be sein,
for feerd,
If Symonie may mete wid him he wole shaken his berd.

Voiz of clerk is sielde i-herd at the court of Rome

Ne were he nevere swich a clerk, silverles if he come,
Thouh he were the wiseste that evere was i-born,
But if he swete ar he go, al his weye is lorn
i-souht,
Or he shal singe si dedero, or al geineth him noht.
 ; ;

252 POLITICAL SONGS Lect. V.

For if there be in countre an horeling, a shrewe,

Lat him come to the court hise nedes for to shewe,
And bringe wid him silver and non other wed,
Be he nevere so much el a wrecche, hise nedes sholen be spede
ful stille,
For Coveytise and Symonie han the world to wille.

And erchebishop and bishop, that ouhte for to enquere

Off ale men of holi churche of what lif theih were,
Summe beth foles hemself, and leden a sory lif,
Therfore doren hii noht speke for rising of strif
thurw clerkes,
And that everich biwreied other of here wrecchede werkes.

But muchel i-brouht ther doune,

certes holi churche is
Siththen Seint Thomas was
slain and smiten of his croune.
He was a piler ariht to holden up holi churche,
Thise othere ben to slouwe, and feinteliche kunnen worche,
i-wis
Therfore in holi churche hit fareth the more amis.

But everi man may wel i-wite, who so take ^eme,

That no man may wel serve tweie lordes to queme.
Summe beth in ofice wid the king, and gaderen tresor to hepe,
And the fraunchise of holi churche hii laten ligge slepe
ful stille
Al to manye ther beth swiche, if hit were Godes wille.

The feeling of conscious national life, which had been

awakened by the Barons' Wars, seems to have been much less

freely manifested in the early part of the fourteenth century,

and in fact to have become almost dormant, for a considerable
time before the French wars of Edward III. roused it again to
a long and vigorous activity. The volumes of political poems
of the reign of Edward III., which form a part of the series
of Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland, do
not contain a single English song older than those of Lawrence
Minot, which were written after the year 1350.
The various collections of poetry belonging to the first age
of English literature, which the philological zeal of scholars
Lect. V. LTRIC POETrvT 253

has lately given to the world, contain many descriptive, amator}r

,

and no inconsiderable merit. I select the

religions songs of
following from the Specimens of Lyric Poetry composed in
England in the reign of Edward L, published by the Percy
Society. -/3^~
Aw ^ .

With longyng y am lad,

On molde y waxe mad,
a maide marreth me;
Y grede, y grone, un-glad,
For selden y am sad
that semly forte se;
levedi, thou rewe me,
To routhe thou havest me rad
Be bote of that y bad,
My lyf is long on the.

Levedy, of alle londe

Les me out of bonde,
broht icham in wo,
Have resting on honcle,
Ant sent thou me tlii sonde,
sone, or thou me slo
my reste is with the ro
Thah men to me han onde,
To love nuly noht wonde,
ne lete for non of tho.

Levedi, with al my miht

My love is on the liht,

to menske when y may

Thou rew ant red me ryht,
To dethe thou havest me diht,
y dege longe er my day
thou leve upon mi lay.
Treuthe ichave the plyht,
To don that ich have hyht,
whil mi lif leste may.

Lylie-whyt hue is,

Hire rode so rose on rys,
that reveth me mi rest.
 ; ; ; ; ;

254 LYRIC POETRY Lect. V.

Wymmon war ant wys,

Of prude hue bereth the pris,
burde on of the best
this wommon woneth by west,
Brihtest under bys,
Hevene y tolde al his
That o nyht were hire gest.

Lenten ys come with love to toune,

With blosmen ant with briddes roune,
that al this blisse bryngeth;
Dayes-eges in this dales,
Notes suete of nyhtegales,
uch foul song singeth.
The threstelcoc him threteth oo,
A- way is huere wynter wo,
when woderove springeth
This foules singeth ferly fele,
Ant wlyteth on huere wynter wele,
that al the wode ryngeth.
The rose rayleth hire rode,
The leves on the lythe wode
waxen al with wille
The mone mandeth hire bleo,
The lilie is lossom to seo,
the fenyl ant the fille;

Wowes this wilde drakes,

Miles murgeth huere makes,
ase strem that striketh stille;
Mody meneth, so doh mo,
Ichot ycham on of tho,
for love that likes ille.

The mone mandeth hire lyht,

So doth the semly sonne bryht,
when briddes singeth breme
Deowes donketh the dounes,
Deores with huere derne rounes,
domes forte deme
Wormes woweth under cloude,
Wymmen waxeth wounder proude,
Lect. V. LYRIC POETRY 255

wol liein seme,

so well hit
gef me wonte wille of on,
shal
This wunne weole y wole for-gon,
ant wyht in wode be Heme.

Wynter wakeneth al my care,

Nou this leves waxeth bare,
Ofle y sike ant mourne sare,
When hit cometh in my thoht
Of this worldes joie, hou hit goth al to noht.

Now hit is, ant now hit nys,

Also hit ner nere y-wys,
That moni mon seith soth his ys,
Al goth bote Godes wille.
Alle we shule deye, thath us like ylle.

Al that gren me graueth grene,

Non hit faleweth al by-dene;
Jhesu, help that hit be sene,
And shild us from helle,
For y not winder y shal, ne hou longe her duelle.

Jesu, for thi muchele mint,

thou jef us of thi grace,
That we mowe dai ant nyht
thenken o thi face.
Inmyn herte hit doth me god,
When y thenke on Jesu blod,
that ran doun bi ys syde,
From his herte doun to his fot,
For ous he spradde is herte blod,
his wondes were so wyde.

When j thenke on Jhesu ded,

min herte over-werpes,
Mi soule is won so is the led
for my fole werkes.
Ful wo is that ilke mon,
That Jhesu ded ne thenkes on,
 ;; ;

256 LYRIC POETRY Lect. T.

what he soffrede so sore I

For my synnes y wil wete,
Ant alle y wyle hem for-lete
nou ant evermore.

Mon that is in joie ant blis,

ant litli shame ant synne,
in
He is more then un-wis
that ther-of mil nout blynne.
Al world hit geth a- way,
this
Me thynketh hit nejyth domesday,
nou man gos to grounde
Jhesu Crist that tholede ded,
He may oure sonles to hevene led,
withinne a lutel stounde.

Thah thon have al thi wille,

thenk on Godes wondes,
For that we ne shulcle spille,
he tholede harcle stoundes
Al for mon he tholede ded,
gyf he wyle leve on is red,
ant leve his folie,

"We shule have joie ant blis,

More than we conne seien y-wys
in Jesu compagnie.

Jhesu, that wes milde ant fre,

wes with spere y-stonge

He was nailed to the tre,
with scourges y-swongen.
Al for mon he tholede shame,
Withouten gult, withouten blame,
bothe day ant other.
Mon, ful muchel he lovede the,
When he wolde make the fre,
ant bieome thi brother.
 —

Lect. V. INFLECTIONAL CHANGES 257

NOTE ON INFLECTIONAL AND GRAMMATICAL CHANGES.

The origin of changes in inflection can very seldom be traced, because

they originate in popular speech, and arc not adopted by the written
tongue until the mode and occasion of their introduction is forgotten ;

but in cases where the native has been brought into contact with a
foreign language, we can often see Iioav a new tendency might have
been created, or an existing one strengthened, towards a revolution in
a particular direction. Let us take the case of the old verbal plural in
-en. The Anglo-Saxon plural indicative present, as we have already
seen, ended in th, so that instead of we love, or we loxen, the Saxons
said we lufiath, with the same consonantal ending as in the singular,
he luf-ath. The past tense of the indicative, as we Ixif-odon, ice
loved, and of both tenses of the subjunctive, as we luf-ion, that ive
may love, we \uf-odon, that ice might love, always ended in -on.
But though the present indicative plural of all regular verbs ended in
th, all the semi-auxiliaries, except willan, to will, made the plural in
on, and the Anglo-Saxons said we yvillath, ice will, but, at the
same time, we scealo?i, we magon, we cunncm, we moton, for
we we may, ice can, ice must.
shall,
The Norman-French, like modern French, made the first person
plural, in all cases, in ons —
the s being probably silent as it now is
and said nous aim ons, ice love.. This termination, though a nasal,
bore a considerable resemblance to the Saxon plural in on. There was,
then, a common point in which the two languages concurred. The
Frenchman could not pronounce the th, and as the tAvo nations had
agreed to adopt s, the nearest approximation a Norman could make to
the sound of th, as the sign of the third person singular of the verb,
it was very natural that they should employ the sign on, which was
common to both, as the sign of the plural.
The Saxon ending on was not accented, and the vowel was pro-
bably somewhat obscurely articulated, like the e, in the modern termi-
nation en, in the verb harden and others of that ending. These cir-
cumstances tend to explain why we find the plural of the indicative
present in the Ormulum with the ending in en instead of th. This
soon became the regular form in English, and this was the first step of
progress to the modern dialect, in which we have dropped the plural
ending altogether, giving it, in all the persons, the same form as the
first person singular. Thus we say, I love, and we love, you love, they
258 INFLECTIONAL CHANGES Lect. V.

love, while early English writers said : I love, but we loven, you loven,
they loven.
In modern French, and there is every reason to believe in Old
Norman-French also, the three persons of the singular and the third
person of the plural of the verb, though the latter has an additional
syllable in writing, are pronounced alike, the terminal syllable being-
silent in speech; for the plural aim en t is pronounced aime, just
like the singular, aime. Of the six persons, singular and plural, the
French pronounce four alike, rejecting the plural ending ent alto-
gether, and this fact probably contributed to facilitate the dropping
of the new English plural ending in en, which did not long remain in
use.
Another new form of expression first exemplified, so far as I know,
in the thirteenth century, is the use of the plural pronoun instead of
the singular, in addressing a single person. I do not observe this use
of the pronoun in contemporaneous French, nor in any of the Northern
Gothic languages, but it was already common in Dutch, and it is pos-
sible that the English borrowed it from that source. Not many English
words or forms are derived from the Dutch, but Chaucer quotes a
Flemish proverb, and one of the words occurring in it, quad or quecl,
bad, evil, is found in the Owl and Nightingale, the Surtees Psalter, as
well as in other early English writers. Bicline, too, common in old
ballads, occurs in the Surtees Psalter.* These words are not Anglo-
Saxon, and as they were probably taken from the Dutch, other words
and forms may have been received from the same language.
But though the plural pronoun was thus early applied to single per-
sons, the complete separation of the two, and the confinement of the
singular thou to the religious dialect, are very much later. They seem
to have been employed indiscriminately for several centuries, and in
the Morte d' Arthur, printed in 1485, thou and you, thy and your are
constantly occurring in the same sentence, and addressed to one and
the same person.

* Huydecoper, in his Breedere aantelceningen op Melis Stoke, I., 227, examines

the etymology of bide en at considerable length. a compound of the

It is
particle by and the demonstrative pronoun: by dien, the primitive meaning
being, thereby, thereupon, and hence, immediately.
 LECTUEE VI.

COMMENCEMENT OF SECOND PERIOD FROM 1350 TO THE :

TLAIE OF THE AUTHOR OF PIERS PLOUGHMAN.

We are now to enter on a new philological and literary era, an

era in which English genius first acquired a self-conscious in-
dividuality, and the English language and its literature dis-
entangled themselves from the confusion in which the conflict-
ing authority of Saxon precedent and French example had
involved them. In this second period, the speech of England
became, no longer an ill-assorted mixture of discordant in-
gredients, but an organic combination of well assimilated, though
heterogeneous elements, animated by a law of life, and endowed
with a vigour of constitution which has given it a luxuriant
youth and a healthful manhood, and still promises it a length
of days as great, an expansion as wide, as have fallen to the
lot of any of the tongues of man.
Considering English, then, as primarily and radically a Grothic
speech, invested with a new aspect, and inspired with a new
lifeby Romance influences —
just as animals are so modified,
in habits, instincts, size and specific characteristics, by changes
of nutriment, climate, and other outward circumstances, that
the unscientific observer hesitates to recognise them as still
belonging to the primitive stock — let us inquire for a moment
into the nature of the action by which external forces could
produce such important revolutions.
There are two principal modes in which foreign conquest
and foreign influence affect language. The first and most
8 2
260 VOCABULARY OF OLD ENGLISH Lect. VI.

obvious by the introduction of foreign words, idioms, and

is,

grammatical forms, which may be carried far without any very

appreciable effect upon the radical character of the language,
or upon the spirit of the people who use it. The other is
the more slowly and obscurely manifested action of new insti-
tutions, laws, and opinions upon the intellectual constitution
and habits of thought of the people, and, indirectly, upon the
logical structure of the language as the vehicle of the expres-
sion of the national mind and character.
We should suppose, a priori, that the first influence of a
cultivated language, employed by a conquering people, upon
the less advanced speech of a ruder subject race, would be to
denationalize its vocabulary by the introduction of a large
number of foreign words, and that syntactical changes would
be slower in rinding their way into the grammar ; but the
history of the modern languages known in literature seems to
show that this is not universally the case.
I have already mentioned the curious inversion of periodic
arrangement which the Turkish has produced in the modern
Armenian , without much affecting the vocabulary and I have
;

given reasons for believing that both Mceso-Gothic and Anglo-

Saxon were influenced, in certain points of their grammar, by
Greek and Latin syntax. The Gothic languages, which seem
to have modified the structure of the Komance dialects, have not
bestowed upon them any very large proportion of Northern
words and though the syntax of the native speech of England
;

underwent important changes between the Norman Conquest and

the close of the period we have just dismissed, yet the number of
Eomance words which had been naturalized in England was, thus
far, by no means considerable. As has been before observed, the
whole number of Greek, Latin, and French words found in the
printed English authors of the thirteenth century, even in-
cluding those which Anglo-Saxon had borrowed from the
nomenclature of theology and ethics, scarcely exceeds one
Lect. VI. NEW NATIONALITY 261

thousand, or one eighth part of the total vocabulary of that

era; and in the actual diction of any one English writer of
the period in question, not above one word in twenty or twenty-
five is of Latin or Eomance derivation.
But while these influences were so slow and so gradual in
their operationon the lexical character of English, moral causes
were at work, which, at the critical moment, gave new energy to
the assimilative power of the English tongue, and when the
craving for a more generous intellectual diet was distinctly felt,

and larger facilities were demanded, English suddenly enriched

itself by a great accession of Latin and Eomance words. It is a
remarkable fact, as we shall see more fully hereafter, that at the
very moment when it was naturalizing this foreign element with
the greatest rapidity, it asserted most energetically its gram-
matical independence, and manifested a tendency to the
revival of Anglo-Saxon syntactical forms which had become
well-nigh obsolete.
Hitherto, change had been principally in the way of disor-
ganization, decomposition, but when the inhabitants of England
no longer consisted of a corporation of foreign lords and a herd
of aboriginal serfs, when a community of interest had grown up
between the native and the stranger, and mutual sympathies
were born, then a new, heroic and genial nationality sprang into
being, revived the sparks that yet slumbered in the ashes of
departed Saxondom, and fed them with a fuel borrowed alike
from the half-forgotten stores of native growth and from the
more abundant products of sunny and luxuriant France.
Eomance words and forms had been imposed by foreign
authority upon a reluctant and unreceptive speech, the sufficient
medium of communication for a people too rude and unculti-
vated to feel its own debasement, and to know the extent of its
own intellectual deficiencies but when revived, or rather new-
;

born, England awakened to a consciousness of the wants which

make themselves so imperiously felt, whenever a new national
262 POPULAR LITERATURE Lect. VI.

life is developed, it proceeded to supply those wants by the sum-

mariest methods, from all accessible sources.

Thenceforward, to use the comparison of St. Jerome, it seized

and appropriated foreign words as a conqueror, —

no longer un-
willingly received and bore than as a badge of servitude to an
alien yoke.
English, as distinguished from Anglo-Saxon, thus far can
hardly be said to have gained other than a negative existence,
for it had lost the formal characteristics of the old speech, and
had not yet acquired the shape or spirit of the new. The
spoken and written dialect was but a corrupted and denaturalized
jargon, or rather congeries of jargons, for every district had its
local patois which was broadly distinguished from the speech of
other shires. The necessities of social and political life, indeed,
compelled the occasional employment of these native dialects in
written communication, by persons whose scholastic training
was Latin or French; but until the close of the thirteenth
century, there was no indigenous public which possessed a
written vernacular, to any such extent as to be accessible to
literary influences. For all the purposes of common national
culture, therefore, English may be regarded as still un-
written.
I have before remarked that the popular ballads, which ex-
isted in local dialects, did not constitute a literature, and that
England had no peculiar literature of her own till after the
middle of the fourteenth century. The mass of those who
spoke the native tongue, of those who listened to, and even
those who composed, the popular ballads, were, in all proba-
bility, wholly ignorant of letters, them English existed
and for
only as a spoken language. The and the legends,
traditions
the ballads and the war-songs, which float from mouth to
mouth, in any unwritten speech, cannot constitute a literature,
for they cannot exist in fixed and permanent forms. In the
retentive memory of the humblest class of bards and narrators,
Lect. VI. POPULAR LITERATURE 263

they may dwell and be repeated for years with little change of
form or substance. But most of the poetical reciters and saga-
men are themselves creators, and if memory chance to fail, or
if a finer ear or a more imaginative temperament suggest
improvements in the ballad or the story they recite, they will
not scruple to make verbal or inventive changes. Hence every
bard is continually moulding and remoulding his lays into
accordance with his habitual tastes- and sentiments, or with the
changeful temper which the humour of the moment may
inspire. The leading facts, the raw material, may remain the
same, but the poem or the saga, so long as it is unrecorded, will
continually appear and reappear in a new dress, a new phraseo-
logy, and often in a new predominant strain of imagery, of
thought or of sentiment.
Now, constant peculiarities of verbal combination, of prevalent
tone, and especially of the aspect in which the relations between
man and man, and man and nature, are viewed, constitute the
characteristic and essence of every primitive national literature,
and difference the imaginative creations of one nascent people
from those of another. They are at once the flesh that clothes,
and the organic principle that animates and individualises the
intellectual products of all uncultivated races. In partially civi-
lized nations, livingunder similar climatic and other physical
conditions, the subjects will be alike, the leading facts of life
nearly identical but it is the point of view from which facts
;

are regarded, the embellishments of fancy with which they

are decorated, that characterize and distinguish the national
treatment of them, or, in other words, the national literature,
in ruder periods of associate life.

The poems and tales of primitive ages turn mainly on the

material interests of men, though the events which act upon
those interests may be occasioned by moral affections, passions,
or emotions. The moral judgment on facts, and even the
exhibition of their moral results, the discussion of their bearing
 ;

264 ENLARGEMENT OF VOCABULARY Lect. VI.

on the interests of society, belong to later ages, and to an

entirely different phase of literature.*
Until the intellectual productions of rude eras are recorded,
and preserved in permanent memorials, so as to afford oppor-
tunities for study^ comparison, imitation, they will be individual
in the moral and the imaginative element that enters into them
and while they bear the general likeness which belongs to all
the productions of uncultivated races, differenced only by the
special character of each writer, they will not be marked by the
finer analogies, the subtler contrasts, and the nicer shades of
colour, which are the result of artificial culture, and which be-
come, when made in a certain degree uniform and permanent,
the characteristics of national genius.
The birth or revival of a truly national and peculiar literature
is generally contemporaneous with an enlargement of the voca-
bulary, by foreign importation, or by the resuscitation of obsolete
words of native growth. It is not always easy to say whether
this extension of the means of expression is the cause or the
consequence of the conception and familiarization of new ideas ;

but, in any event, new thoughts and new words are necessarily
connected, if not twin-born. Hence the awakening of a new
spirit of nationality —
which was a result of the French and
Scotch wars of Edward III. —
the enlargement of the English
vocabulary, and the impulse to the creation of an original
English literature, were nearly simultaneous. English scholars,
though trained as all educated Englishmen thus far had been,

* In the Icelandic sagas, it is rare to find any condemnation of the acts of

cruel violence inwhich those narratives abound, and a blood}' murder is generally
spoken of as astorvirki, a great act. Thus in Njiila, when Flosi was preparing
to attack the sons of Njall with fire and sword, he concealed his purpose from his
father-in-law Hallr, because he thought Hallr would letia allra storvirkia,
prevent all murder. Morgum J?6tti f>at storvirki, morgum J>6tti hann
harm - dau<5i, it seemed to many a great act, to many his seemed a death to be
regretted, are the strongest expressions of disapprobation commonly used on
such occasions.
It is worth noticing that, in the last example, harm-dauSi is an adjective
agreeing with the subject of the phrase.
Lect. VI. ENLARGEMENT OF VOCABULARY 265

in schools where only French and Latin were grammatically

taught, had already become weary of reading even the master-
pieces of Continental genius in a foreign garb, and the trans-
lation of French poems into the native speech of England,
their naturalization as English possessions, was the first move-
ment in the manifestation of a new literary life.
The want of a sufficient nomenclature and the convenience
of rhyme and metre, as is very clearly seen in all the older
English versions, naturally led to the employment of many
French words in the translations and in an age when Latin
;

and French, or at least the latter, were quite as familiar to

every educated man as English, a considerable proportion of
French words might, in Englishing French poems, be intro-
duced almost unconsciously to the translator, and without
exciting much notice on the part of a reader. The circulation
of translated works was no longer confined to the higher classes,
who hitherto had alone enjoyed any opportunities for literary
culture. About the middle of the fourteenth century, schools
were established in which English was both taught as itself
an object of study, and employed as a vehicle of instruction
in other languages and disciplines. Whatever existed in the
English tongue, whether by translation or by original compo-
sition, now became a part of the general patrimony of the

English people, and there, as everywhere else, the learning, the

poetry, the philosophy, which had been slowly gathered on the
summits of social life, and had been the peculiar nutriment of
favoured classes, now flowed down to a lower level, and re-
freshed, as with the waters of a fountain of youth, the humbler
ranks of the English people. Native poets, composing original
works in their own tongue, would naturally use the poetic
diction in which the productions of French literature had been
clothed in assuming an English dress for these were their only
;

vernacular models. But English rhymers were still generally

acquainted with French, and that language, as we have seen,
had already attained a culture which eminently fitted it for
266 ENLARGEMENT OF VOCABULARY Lect. VI.

literary purposes, and made it, as the Latin has always been, a
storehouse of poetic wealth in words as well as in thought, and
a convenient resource to versifiers who were in vain struggling
to find adequate expression in the vocabulary of Saxon-English.
The English middle classes, who were now, for the first time,
admitted to the enjoyment of literary pleasures, accepted, as a
consecrated speech, the dialect employed by their authors and
translators, without inquiry into the etymology of its consti-
tuents, and thus, in the course of one generation, a greater
number of French words were introduced into English verse,
and initiated as lawful members of the poetical guild, than in
the nearly three centuries which had elapsed since the Norman
Conquest. The became thoroughly assimilated
foreign matter
nutriment to the speech, the mind and the heart of the frag-
mentary peoples who had now combined in an entire organized
commonwealth, and though the newly adopted Eomance words
were not indigenous, yet they were acknowledged and felt to be
as genuine English, as those whose descent from the Grothic
stock was most unequivocal.
Epictetus observes, that the sheep, though it eats grass, pro-
duces not hay but wool. So English writers of the fourteenth
century, though they derived their chief intellectual food from
the fields of Eomance literature, conceived, nevertheless, original
thoughts, imposed new shades and distinctions of meaning on
the words they borrowed, coloured with new hues the images
drawn from nature and the reflections prompted by the special
forms and conditions of English life, and thus created a new
literary substance, which soon became a distinct and indepen-
dent individuality in the world of letters.

It is a great,but very widely spread error, to suppose that

the influx of French words in the fourteenth century was due
alone to poetry and other branches of pure literature. The
law, which now first became organized into a science, introduced
very many terms borrowed from the nomenclature of Latin and
French j urisprudence the glass-worker, the enameller, the archi-
;
Lect. VI. VOCABULARY OF PROSE 267

tect, the brass-founder, the Flemish clothier, and the other handi-
craftsmen, whom Norman taste and luxury invited, or domestic
oppression expelled from the Continent, brought with them the
vocabularies of their respective arts ; and Mediterranean com-
merce — which was stimulated by the demand for English wool,
then the Europe — imported, from the
finest in harbours of a
sea where French was the predominant language, both new
articles of merchandize and the French designations of them.
The sciences too, medicine, physics, geography, alchemy,
which became known to England chiefly through
astrology, all of
French channels, added numerous specific terms to the existing
vocabulary, and very many of the words, first employed in
English writings as a part of the technical phraseology of these
various arts and knowledges, soon passed into the domain of
common life, in modified or unteclmical senses, and thus
became incorporated into the general tongue of society and
of books.
The poets, so far from corrupting English by a too large
infusion of French words, were in truth reserved in the em-
ployment of such, and, when not constrained by the necessities
of rhyme, evidently preferred, if not a strictly Anglo-Saxon
diction, at least a dialect composed of words which use had
already familiarized to the English people.
The truth of this position, which has been overlooked in the
great mass of uncritical animadversion on the English language
of the fourteenth century, will be at once made apparent by
an examination of the dialect of the prose writers of that era,
and of those poems which are addressed to the least refined
classes, and employ the least ornate and most simple and intel-
ligible diction.
As this is an unfamiliar view of the subject, and as it is a
point of interest and importance in the history of English
philology, it may be worth while to devote a little time and
space to the special consideration of it. Sir John Mandeville
is generally considered the earliest prose writer of the second
268 SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE LECr. VI.

period of English literature and philology. Mandeville left Eng-

land in the year 1322, and spent many years in travel, principally
in Oriental countries. After his return to his native land, he
drew up, in the year 1356, an account of his observations, in
Latin, and, to use his own words, (
boke out of Latyn
put this
into Frensche, and translated it agen out of Frensche into
Englyssche, that every man of my Nacioun may under-
*
stande it.'

The manuscripts of Mandeville, in the three languages in

which his travels appeared, are so numerous that Halliwell
says: ( I will undertake to say that, of no book, with the excep-
tion of the Scriptures, can more manuscripts be found, of the
end of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth centuries,'
and there are no less than nineteen copies in the British
Museum alone. Six of these are in English, and there are few
great public or private libraries in England which do not con-
tain one or more manuscripts of this author, in the vernacular
tongue. This fact proves a very wide circulation of the book,
and of course that its dialect was readily intelligible to the great
mass of English-speaking people. Although the style and
grammatical structure of Mandeville are idiomatic, yet the pro-
portion of words of Latin and French origin employed by him,
in his straightforward, unpoetical, and unadorned narrative, is

* Careless readers of Mandeville have often understood him as representing

that he spent the interval between 1322 and 1356 abroad. But this he does not
say. After stating, p. 315 of the reprint of 1839, that he departed from oure
'

Contrees and passed the See, the Zeer of Grace 1322,' he adds, now I am
'

comen horn (mawrgree my self) to reste for Gowtes, Artetykes, that me distrey-
;

nen, tho diffynen the ende of my labour, azenst my wille (God knowethe). And
thus takyng'*. Solace in my wrecched reste, recordynge the tyme passed, I have
fulfilled theise thinges and putte hem wTyten in this boke, as it wolde come in to
my mynde, the Zeer of Grace 1356 in the 34 Zeer that I departede from oure
Contrees.'
If Mandeville had not spent a considerable time in England after his return,
and before writing his travels, it is quite impossible that his English should have
been so idiomatic. An absence of thirty-four years, at a period when the English
language was in so unstable a state, would have left him far behind the actual
condition of the speech at his return.
Lect. VI. SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE 269

greater than that found in the works of Langlande, Chaucer,

Grower, or any other English poet of that century. In the
Prologue, which, besides proper names and Latin quotations,
contains something less than twelve hundred words, more than
one hundred and thirty, or eleven per cent., are of Latin or
French and of these, the following thirty are new to
origin,
English, or at least not found in the printed literature
of the preceding century: —
assembly, because, comprehend,
conquer, certain, environ, excellent, former (noun), frailty,

glorious, glory, inflame, inumber (inumbrate), moisten, nation,

people, philosopher, plainly, proclaim, promise, pronounce,
province, publish, reconcile, redress, subject, temporal, translate,
trespasser, visit. The neiv words are relatively more numerous
in the Prologue than in the rest of the work, but the Latin and
Eomance are not in larger proportion than in the narrative
generally. I find, however, in chapters L, ii., iii., xxi., xxii.,

the following words of that character, which are not in

Coleridge's (xlossarial Index : — abstain, abundant, ambassador,
anoint, apparel, appear, appraize, array, attendance, benefice,
benignly, bestial, calculation, cause, chaplet, cherish, circum-
cision, claim, clarte (light), command (verb), comparison, con-
tinually, contrarious, contrary, convenient, convert, corner,
cover (in the present sense), cruelty, cubit, curiously, date,
defend (forbid), degree, deny, deprive, desert (waste), devoutly,
diaper, discordant, discover, disfigured, dispend, dissever, diver-
sity, duchy, enemy, enforce, engender, estate, estimation, ex-
amine, faithfully, fertre (a litter, Lat. feretrum), fiercely,
fornication, foundation, generation, governance, gum, idol,
immortal, imprint, incline, inspiration, join, joncs (rushes),
letters (alphabetic characters), lineage, marquis, menace,
minstrelsy, money, monster, mortal, multitude, necessary,
obedient, obeissant, obstacle, officer, opinion, ordinance, ordi-
nately, orient, ostrich, outrageously, paper, pasture, pearl, perch
(a pole), perfectly, profitable, promise (noun), proper (own),
province, purple, quantity, rebellion, receive, region, relation,
270 SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE Lect. VI.

religious, return, reverend, royally, royalty, rudely, sacrament,

science, search, scripture, servitor, signification, simony, soldier,
solemn, specialty, spiritual, stranger, subjection, superscription,
table, temporal, testament, throne (verb), tissue, title (in-
scription), title (right), unction, usury, value, vary, vaulted,
vessel, vicar,, victory, vulture ; one hundred and forty-four in all.

We find, and these five chapters, which

then, in the Prologue
make about an eighth of the volume, one hundred and seventy-
four Latin and Eomance words, not met with in the printed
literature of the thirteenth century. Tf we suppose the re-
mainder of the book to contain as many in proportion, we
should have, in a single work of one writer, an addition of
about fourteen hundred words of the Latin stock to the voca-
bulary of the previous century. It is indeed probable that the
unexamined chapters of Mandeville might yield fewer new
words, but as other authors of the first half of the fourteenth
century contain many vocables not found in that writer, we
are certainly safe in saying that between 1300 and 1350 as
many Latin and French words were introduced into the English
language as in the whole period of more than two centuries
which had elapsed between the Conquest and the beginning of
the fourteenth century.
It was, then, the common necessities of the people, the
essential deficiencies of theremnant of Anglo-Saxon, which
now constituted the vernacular of England —
and which, in its
debased estate, had lost its character of a flexible, an expressive
and a multifarious speech — that occasioned the incorporation of
so many Eomance words into the English language ; and poetry
is guiltless of the charge of having corrupted the simplicity and
purity of the native tongue.
The English of Mandeville, with few exceptions, belongs to a
more advanced stage of progress than that of Eobert of Glou-
cester, and the proportion of Eomance words in the English
vocabulary seems to have been suddenly increased in our
author's time, and in all probability more by the popularity of
Lect. VI. SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE 271

his works, than by the influence of any other writer of that

century.
Although the dialect of Mandeville exhibits the language,
upon the whole,in a more developed phase than the works of any
preceding author, there is otherwise nothing in his volume
which marks him as an Englishman. It is purely a record of
observations, and a detail of information gathered from other
sources. It possesses no national tone of colouring, and the
Latin and French texts might equally well have been written
by a subject of the French or of the English crown. The
immense popularity of Mandeville, and the influence his
writings probably produced upon the language, justify me in
giving fuller extracts from his travels than can be afforded for
authors whose philological importance is less, though their
literary merits may be greater.

THE PROLOGUE.'

For als moche as the Lond bezonde the See, that is to seye, the
Holy Lond, that Men callen the Lond of Promyssioun, or of Beheste,
passynge alle othere Londes, is the most worthi Lond, most excellent,
and Lady and Sovereyn of alle othere Londes, and is blessed and hal-
ewed of the precyous Body and Blood of oure Lord Jesu Crist in the ;

whiche Lond it lykede him to take Flesche and Blood of the Virgyne
Marie, to envyrone that holy Lond with his blessede Feet and there
;

he wolde of his blessednesse enonmbre him in the seyd blessed and

gloriouse Virgine Marie, and become Man, and worche many Myracles,
and preche and teche the Feythe and the Lawe of Cristene Men unto
his Children ; and there it lykede him to suffre many Eeprevinges and
Scornes for us and he that was Kyng of Hevene, of Eyr, of Erthe, of
;

See and of alle thinges that ben conteyned in hem, wolde alle only ben
cleped Kyng of that Lond, whan he seyde, Rex sum Judeorum, that is
to seyne, / am Kyng of Jeives ; and that Lond he chees before alle other
Londes, as the beste and most worthi Lond, and the most vertuouse
Lond of alle the World For it is the Herte and the myddes of all the
:

"World wytnessynge the Philosophere, that scythe thus

; ;Virtus remm
in medio consistit: That is to seye, The Vertue of thinges is in the myd-
des ; and in that Lond he wolde lede his Lyf, and suffice Passioun and
 ;

272 SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE Lect. VI.

Dethe, of Jewes, for us for to bye and to delyvere us from Peynes of

;

Helle, and from Dethe withouten encle the whiche was ordeyned for
•

us, for the Synne of oure formere Fader Adam, and for oure owne
Synnes also: For as for himself, he hadde non evylle deserved: For he
thoughte nevere evylle ne dyd evylle And he that was Kyng of Glorie
:

and of Joye, myghten best in that Place suffre Dethe because he ches;

in that Lond, rathere than in ony othere, there to suffre his Passioun
and his Dethe For he that wil pupplische ony thing to make it openly
:

knowen, he wil make it to ben cryed and pronounced in the myddel

place of a Town so that the thing that is proclamed and pronounced,
;

may evenly strecche to alle Parties Righte so, he that was formyour
:

of alle the World, wolde suffre for us at Jerusalem that is the myddes
;

of the World to that ende and entent, that his Passioun and his Dethe,
;

that was pupplischt there, myghte ben knowen evenly to alle the Parties
of the World. See now how dere he boughte Man, that he made after
his owne Ymage, and how dere he azen boghte us, for the grete Love
that he hadde to us, and we nevere deserved it to him. For more pre-
cyous Catelle ne gretter Ransoum, ne myghte he put for us, than his
blessede Body, his precyous Blood, and his holy Lyf, that he thralled
for us and alle he offred for us, that nevere did Synne. A dere God,
;

what Love hadde he to us his Subjettes, whan he that nevere trespaced,

wolde for Trespassours suffre Dethe Righte wel oughte us for to love
!

and worschipe, to drede and serven suche a Lord and to worschipe;

and preyse suche an holy Lond, that broughte forthe suche Fruyt,
thorghe the whiche every Man is saved, but it be his owne defaute.
Wel may that Lond be called dely table and a fructuous Lond, that was
bebledd and moysted with the precyouse Blode of oure Lord Jesu Crist
the whiche is the same Lond, that oure Lord behighten us in Heritage.
And in that Lond he wolde dye, as seised, for to leve it to us his Child-
ren. Wherfore every gode Cristene Man, that is of Powere, and hathe
whereof, scholde peynen him with all his Strengthe for to conquere
oure righte Heritage, and chacen out alle .the mysbeleevynge Men. For
wee ben clept Cristene Men, aftre Crist our Fadre. And zif wee ben
we oughte for to chalenge the Heritage, that
righte Children of Crist,
oure Fadre lafte us, and do it out of hethene Mennes hondes. But
nowe Pryde, Covetyse and Envye han so enflawmed the Hertes of
Lordes of the World, that thei are more besy for to disherite here
Neyghbores, more than for to chalenge or to conquere here righte He-
ritage before seyd. And the comoun Peple, that wolde putte here
Bodyes and here Catelle, for to conquere oure Heritage, thei may not
don it withouten the Lordes. Far a semblee of Peple withouten a
 ;

Lect. VI. SIR JOIIN MANDEVILLE 273

Cheventeyn, or a chief Lord, is as a Flock of Sclieep withouten a Sehep-

perde ; the which departeth and desparpleth, and wyten never whidre
to go. But wolde God, that the temporel Lordes and alle worldly
Lordes weren at gode accord, and with the comen Peple woulden taken
this holy Viage over the See. Thanne I trowe wel, that within a lityl
tyme, oure righte Heritage before seyd scholde be reconsyled and put
in the Hondes of the righte Heires of Jesu Crist.
And for als nioche as it is longe tyme passed, that ther was no gene-
ralle Passage ne Vyage over the See and many Men desiren for to
;

here speke of the holy Lond, and han thereof gret Solace and Comfort;
I John Maundevylle, Knyght, alle be it I be not worthi, that was born
in Englond, in the Town of Seynt Albones, passed the See, in the Zeer
of our Lord Jesu Crist MCCCXXII, in the Day of Seynt Michelle
and hidre to have ben longe time over the See, and have seyn and gon
thorghe manye dyverse Londes, and many Provynces and Kyngdomes
and lies, and have passed thorghe Tartarye, Percye, Ermonye the lit'
ylle and the grete; thorghe Lybye, Caldee and a gret partie of Ethiope;
thorghe Amazoyne, Inde the lasse and the more, a gret partie and ;

thorghe out many othere lies, that ben abouten Inde where dwellen ;

many dyverse Folkes, and of dyverse Marieres and Lawes, and of dyverse
Schappes of Men. Of whiche Londes and lies, I schalle speke more
pleynly hereaftre. And I schalle devise zou sum partie of thinges that
there ben, whan time schalle ben, aftre it may best come to my mynde;
and specyally for hem, that wylle and are in purpos for to visite the
Holy Citee of Jerusalem, and the holy Places that are thereaboute.
And I schalle telle the Weye, that thei schulle holden thidre. For I
have often tymes passed and ryden the way, with gode Companye of
many Lordes God be thonked.
:

And zee schulle undirstonde, that I have put this Boke out of Latyn
into Frensche, and translated it azen out of Frensche into Englyssche,
that every Man of my Nacioun may undirstonde it. But Lordes and
Knyghtes and othere noble and worthi Men, that conne Latyn but
litylle, and han ben bezonde the See, knowen and undirstonden, zif I

erre in devisynge, for forzetynge, or elles ; that thei mowe redresse it

and amende it. For thinges passed out of longe tyme from a Mannes
mynde or from his syght, turnen sone into forzetynge Because that :

Mynde of Man ne may not ben comprehended ne witheholden, for the

Freeltee of Mankynde.
From pp. 137-139.
And therfore I schalle telle zou, what the Soudan tolde me upon a
day, in his Chambre. He leet voyden out of his Chambre alle maner
T
274 SIR JOHN MANDEYILLE Lect. VI.

of men, Lordes and othere: for lie wolde speke with me in Conseille.
And there he askede me, how the Cristene men governed hem in oure
Contree. And I seyde him, Eighte wel : thonked be God. And he
seyde me, Treulyche, nay for zee Cristene men ne recthen righte
:

noghte how untrewly to serve God. Ze scholde zeven ensample to the

lewed peple, for to do wel; and zee zeven hem ensample to don evylle.
For the Comownes, upon festyfulle dayes, whan thei scholden gon to
Chirche to serve God, than gon thei to Tavemes, and ben there in glo-
tony, alle the day and alle nyghte, and eten and drynken, as Bestes
that have no resoun, and wite not whan thei have y now. And also
the Cristene men enforcen hem, in alle maneres that thei mowen, for to
fighte, and for to desceyven that on that other. And there with alle
thei ben so proude, that thei knowen not how to ben clothed; now
long, now schort, now streyt, now large, now swerded, now daggered,
and in alle manere gyses. Thei scholden ben symple, meke and trewe,
and fulle of Almes dede, as Jhesu was, in whom thei trowe but thei :

ben alle the contrarie, and evere enclyned to the Evylle, and to don
evylle. And thei ben so coveytous, that for a lytylle Sylver, thei sel-
len here Doughtres, here Sustres and here owne Wyfes, to putten hem
to Leccherie. And on with drawethe the Wif of another and non of :

hem holdethe Feythe to another but thei defoulen here Lawe, that
:

Jhesu Crist betook hem to kepe, for here Salvacioun. And thus for
here Synnes, han thei lost alle this Lond, that wee holden. For, for
hire Synnes here God hathe taken hem in to oure Hondes, noghte only
be Strengthe of our self, but for here Synnes. For wee knowen wel in
verry sothe, that whan zee serve God, God wil helpe zou and whan :

he is with zou, no man may be azenst you. And that knowe we wel,
be oure Prophecyes, that Cristene men schulle wynnen azen this Lond
out of oure Hondes, whan thei serven God more devoutly. But als
longe als thei ben of foule and of unclene Lyvynge, (as thei ben now)
wee have no drede of hem, in no kynde for here God wil not helpen
:

hem in no wise. And than I asked him, how he knew the State of
Cristene men. And he answerde me, that he knew alle the state of the
Comounes also, be his Messangeres, that he sente to alle Londes, in
manere as thei weren Marchauntes of precyous Stones, of Clothes of
Gold and of othere thinges; for to knowen the manere of every Contree
amonges Cristene men. And than he leet clepe in alle the Lordes, that
he made voyden first out of his Chambre and there he schewed me 4,
;

that weren grete Lordes in the Contree, that tolden me of my Contree,

and of many othere Cristene Contrees, als wel as thei had ben of the
same Contree and thei spak Frensche righte wel and the Sowdan
: ;
Lect. VI. POLITICAL CONDITION OF ENGLAND 275

also,where of I had gret Marvaylle. Alias that it is gret sclaundre to

!

oure Feythe and to oure Lawe, whan folk that ben with outen Lawe,
schulle repreven us and undememen us of oure Synnes. And thei that
scholden ben converted to Crist and to the Lawe of Jhesu, be oure gode
Ensamples and be oure acceptable Lif to God, and so converted to the
Lawe of Jhesu Crist, ben thorghe oure Wykkednesse and evylle ly vynge,
fer fro us and Straungeres fro the holy and verry Beleeve, schulle thus
appelen us and holden us for wykkede Lyveres and cursed. And treuly
thei sey sothe. For the Sarazines ben gode and feythfulle. For thei
kepen entierly the Comaundement of the Holy Book Alkaron, that God
sente hem be his Messager Machomet to the whiche, as thei seyne,
;

seynt Gabrielle the Aungel often tyme tolde the wille of God.

Although the diction of Mandeville shows that the English

lano'uage had made a rapid advance within a few years, and had
acquired great compass and flexibility of expression, the hour
for a truly national literature had not yet struck. But it was
nigh at hand, and the blind struggles of the yet unconscious
English intellect, and the material and social wants of the
English people, were preparing a fitter medium to embody it,
whenever English genius should be ready to incarnate itself in
a new and original form. The slow and hard-won concessions,
which now the nobles, now the burgesses or civic populations,
and now, to some extent, the rustic classes, had extorted from a
succession of despotic kings, and the gradual amalgamation of
the indigenous and the foreign element, had at length created a
people, by which term is meant, in modern political language,
an independent body of freemen, born, every man, to the en-
joyment of life, personal liberty, the ownership of self, and the
use, control, and disposal of the fruits of his own labour.* The

* I am aware that serfdom or villenage existed in England to a considerably-

later period than the fourteenth century ;but the villeins apparently did not form
a great proportion of the population. The nation was not divided, as in some
European states, into nobles, burgesses, and serfs, but there was a very numerous
class of rural tillers of the soil, and even of gentry, who were, to all intents and
purposes, personally as free as the commonalty of England is at this day. The
rural commoners and the burgesses far outnumbered all other ranks, and con-
stituted the real people of England.

T 2
276 OLD POETICAL FORMS Lect. VI.

union of such a people with the governing dynasty or class,

whether hereditary or elective, constitutes a nation; and any
aggregation of masters and serfs, any political society without a
general community of rights and interests, under whatever form
of governmental organization, composes a horde of brutal lords
and brutified thralls, not a civilized commonwealth, a people or
a nation.
To this condition of political and social progress England had
now arrived. It was a new society, with a new language, a new
character, new wants, tastes and sentiments, and was, therefore,
just in the position to receive and to inspire a new literature, as
the expression of a new and vigorous national life.
But although, from this moment, the productions of native
genius are marked by peculiarities never before manifested on
English soil, and which have since continued to characterize ail

succeeding English literature, yet the old forms of composition,

the conventional laws and restraints under which alone poetry
had hitherto were not at once (some of them never have
existed,
been) discarded. The vocabulary, indeed, had become strongly
tinged with an infusion of Eomance words, but, though the
process of appropriation and assimilation of this foreign material
was still going on, there were symptoms of a reaction in fa-
vour of obsolete or at least obsolescent Saxon philological and
poetical canons. Early English poetry divided itself into two
schools, both employing the same vocabulary but in different
forms of composition. The one followed Continental models in
literature, the other sought to recommend itself to the taste
and character of the more numerous part of the population, by
reviving the laws of Saxon verse, some remains of which still
lingered in the memory of the common people.
The Saxon and rhythmical verse was especially
alliterative

suited to a language abounding in monosyllables, with few

prefixes, and with a principal accent on the first syllable, which
was also usually the radical. Ehyme and metre are adapted
to tongues with longer words, and with an accentual system
Lect. VI. LAWRENCE MINOT 277

which throws the stress of voice towards the end, rather than
the beginning, of the word. The system of versification, be-
longing to the language which furnished the words expressive
of the new ideas and new conditions that formed the dis-
tinguishing element of the new nationality, could not but finally
prevail; and, after a short struggle, Anglo-Saxon versification
yielded to the superior fitness of Komance metres for the pre-
sent tendencies of English genius, just as the character and
Anglo-Saxon people had yielded to the more
institutions of the
energetic and higher culture of the Norman.
life

The poems of Laurence Minot, which date a little after the

middle of the fourteenth century, are interesting as an attempt
to unite the Saxon characteristic of alliteration, not merely
with rhyme, but with poetic measures both of verse and stanza
w hich properly belonged
T
to Komance literature. It was, in-
deed, not the first experiment of the kind, but in almost all

previous essays the versification was so imperfect, that even

when they imitate the longer French verses, and, of course,
contain more syllables in the measure than was usual with the
Anglo-Saxon poets, they are rather rhythmical than metrical.
The works of Minot exist only in a single manuscript, of a
date somewhat later than his own, written in a strongly marked
border dialect which may almost be called Scotch and, there- ;

fore, they are not to be relied upon as evidence of the gram-

matical progress of the English language. They have much
the air of a literary exercitation ; poems of
for the eleven short
which the collection consists exhibit specimens of ten different
metres and stanzas. These poems are of interest on account
of their versification,and especially because they are the earliest
political verses known to have been composed in this period
of English literature, or, indeed, after the accession of Ed-
ward III. to the throne. The following two will suffice to give
an idea of Minot's diction and merits as a poet : —
278 LAWRENCE MINOT Lecl VI.

How Edward the Icing come in Braband,

And toke homage of all the land.

God, that schope both se and sand,

Save Edward king of Ingland,
Both body, saul, and life,
And grante him joy withowten strif
For niani men to him er wroth,
In Fraunce and in Flandres both
For he defendes fast his right,
And tharto Jhesu grante him might,
And so to do both night and day,
That yt may be to Goddes pay.
Oure king was cumen, trely to tell,
Into Brabant for to dwell
The kayser Lowis of Bavere,
That in that land than had no pere,
He, and als his sons two,
And other princes many mo,
Bisschoppes and prelates war thare fele,
That had fnl mekil werldly wele,
Princes and pople, aid and gong,
Al that spac with Duche tung,
All thai come with grete honowre
Sir Edward to save and socoure,
And proferd him, with all thayre rede,
For to hald the kinges stede.
The duke of Braband, first of all,

Swore, for thing that might bifall,

That he suld both day and night
Help sir Edward in his right,
In toun, in feld, in frith and fen.
This swore the duke and all his men,
And al the lordes that with him lend,
And tharto held thai up thaire hend.
Than king Edward toke his rest
At Andwerp, whare him liked best
And thare he made his mone playne,
That no man suld say thare ogayne.
His mone, that was gude and lele,
Left in Braband ful mekill dele ;
Lect. VI. LAWRENCE MINOT 279

And all th&t land, until! this day,

Fars the better for that jornay.
When Philip the Valas herd of this,

Tharat he was ful wroth iwis ;

He gert assemble his barounes,

Princes and lordes of many tounes,
At Pariss toke thai thaire counsaile,
Whilk pointes might tham most availe
And in all wise thai tham bithought
To stroy Ingland and bring to nought.
Schipmen sone war efter sent,
To here the kinges cumandment
And the galaies men also,

That wist both of wele and wo.

He cumand than that men suld fare
Till Ingland, and no thing spare,
for
Bot brin and sla both man and wife,
And childe, that none suld pas with life. %
The galay men held up thaire handes,
And thanked God for thir tithandes.
At Hamton, als I understand,
Come the gaylayes unto land,
And ful fast thai slogh and brend,
Bot noght so makill als sum men wend.
For or thai wened war thai mett
With men that sone thaire laykes lett.

Sum was knokked on the hevyd,

That the body thare bilevid ;

Sum lay stareand on the sternes ;.

And sum lay knoked out their hemes,

Than with tham was non other gle,
Bot ful fain war thai that might fie.
The galay men, the suth to say,
Most nedes turn another way ;

Thai soght the stremis fer and wide,

In Flandres and in Seland syde. '

Than saw thai whare Cristofer stode,

At Armouth, opon the nude.
Than wen[t] thai theder all bidene,
The galayes men, with hertes kene,
Viij. and xl. galay s, and mo,
And with tham als war tarettes two,
 ; ; ; ;

280 LAWRENCE MINOT Lect. VI.

And other many galiotes,

With grete noumber of smale botes
All thai hoved on the fiode
To stele sir Edward mens gode.
Edward oure king than was noght there,
But sone, when it come to his ere,
He sembled all his men full still,
And said to tham what was his will.
Ilk man made him redy then,
So went the king and all his men
Unto thaire schippes ful hastily,
Als men that war in dede doghty.
Thai fand the galay men grete wane,
A hundereth ever ogaynes ane ;

The Inglis men put tham to were

Ful baldly, with bow and spere
Thai slogh thare of the galaies men
9 Ever sexty ogaynes ten
That sum ligges git in that mire
All hevidles, Avithowten hire.
The Inglis men war armed wele,
Both in yren and in stele ;

Thai faght ful fast, both day and night,

Als long as tham lasted might.
Bot galay men war so many,
That Inglis men wex all wery ;

Help thai soght, bot thare come nane,

Than unto God thai made thaire mane.
Bot sen the time that God was born,
]STe a hundreth gere biforn,
Was never men better in fight
Than Ingliss men, whil thai had myght.
Bot sone all maistri gan thai mis
God bring thaire saules untill his blis !

And God assoyl tham of thaire sin,

Eor the gude will that thai Avar in ! Amen.
Listens iioa\t , and leves me,
Who so lifes thai sail se
That it mun be ful dere boght
That thir galay men have wroght.
 ;;;

Lect. VI. LAWRENCE MINOT 281

Thai hoved still opon the flode,

And reved pover men thaire gude
Thai robbed, and did mekill schame,
And aje bare Inglis men the blame.
Now Jhesu save all Ingland,
And blis it with his holy hand Amen. !

How Edward, als the Romance sais,

Held his sege bifor Calais.

Calais men, now may ye care,

And murning mun je have to mede ;

Mirth on mold get ge no mare,

Sir Edward sail ken gow gowre crede.
Whilum war je wight in wede,
To robbing rathly for to ren ;

Men jow sone of gowre misdede,

jowre care es cnmen, will je it ken.

Kend it es how ge war kene

Al Inglis men with dole to dere
Thaire glides toke ge al bidene,
No man born wald ge forbere ;

ge spared noght with swerd ne spere

To stik tham, and thaire gndes to stele.
"With wapin and with ded of were
Thus have ge wonnen werldes wele.
Weleful men war ge iwis ;

Bot fer on fold sail je noght fare.

A bare sai now abate jowre blis,
And wirk jow bale on bankes bare.
He sail £ow hunt, als hund dose hare,
That in no hole sail ge 50 w hide.
For all gowre speche will he noght spare,
Bot bigges him right by gowre side.

Biside £ow here the bare bigins

To big his boure in winter tyde
And all bityme takes he his ines,
With semly se[r]gantes him biside.
 ; ; ; ; ; ;

282 LA WHENCE MINOT Lect. VI.

The word of him walkes ful wide,

him fro mischance
Jesu, save !

In bataill dar he wele habide

Sir Philip and sir John of France.

The Tranche men er fers and fell,

And mase grete dray when thai er dight

Of tham men herd slike tales tell,

With Edward think thai for to fight,

Him for to hald out of his right,
And do him treson with thaire tales.
That was thaire purpos, day and night,
Bi counsail of the cardinales.

Cardinales, with hattes rede,

War fro Calays wele thre myle
Thai toke thaire counsail in that stede
How thai might sir Edward bigile.
Thai lended thare bot litill while,
Til Franche men to grante thaire grace.
Sir Philip was funden a file,
He fled, and faght noght in that place.

In that place the bare was blith,

For all was funden that he soght
Philip the Valas fled ful swith,
With the batail that he had broght.
For tohave Calays had he thoght,
All at his ledeing loud or still
Bot all thaire wiles war for noght,
Edward wan it at his will.

Lystens now, and je may lere,

Als men the suth may understand
The knightes that in Calais were
Come to sir Edward sare wepeand,
In kirtell one, and swerd in hand,
And cried, '
Sir Edward, thine [we] are
Do now, lord, bi law of land,
Thi will with us for evermare.'
 ; ;; ;

Lect. VI. LAWRENCE MINOT 283

The nobill burgase and the best

Come unto him to have thaire hire
The comun puple war fnl prest
Rapes to bring obout thaire swire.
Thai said all, Sir Philip, oure syre,
'

And his sun, sir John of France,

Has left us ligand in the mire,

And broght us till this doleful dance.

' Oure horses, that war faire and fat,

Er etin up ilkone bidene ;

Have we nowther conig ne cat,

That thai ne er etin, and hundes kene.
All er etin up ful clene,
Es nowther levid biche ne whelp ;

That wele on oure sembland sene

es 5

And thai er fled that suld us help.'

A knight that was of grete renowne,

Sir John de Viene was his name,
He was wardaine of the toune,
And had done Ingland mekill schame.
For all thaire boste thai er to blame,
Ful stalworthly thare have thai strevyn.
A bare es cumen to mak tham tame
Kayes of the toun to him er gifen.

The kaies er golden him of the gate,

Lat him now kepe tham if he kun
To Calais cum thai all to late,
Sir Philip and Sir John his sun.
Al war ful ferd that thare ware fun,
Thaire leders may thai barely ban.
All on this wise was Calais won
God save tham that it so gat wan.

The attempts of Minot, and of other later as well as con-

temporaneous rhymers, to reconcile the Grothic and. Eomance
systems of verse — like many suggestions of compromise on
more important subjects — satisfied the partisans of neither
284 ANGLO-SAXON VERSE Lect. VI.

mode of composition, and his example was followed by no great

writer. Langlande and his school adhered strictly to the Saxon
canons. Grower and Chaucer, and the great body of English
poets, preferred Eomance Half-way measures failed
metres.
altogether. Alliteration, was occasionally employed
it is true,
as a casual ornament, but the works of Langlande and his im-
mediate followers were the last, of any merit, which regularly
conformed to the canons of Anglo-Saxon verse, and the struggle
ended with the final triumph of Eomance forms.
The works of the English poets who followed Anglo-Saxon
models, in the latter part of the fourteenth century, are among
the most interesting and important literary productions of that
age ; and hence it becomes necessary to devote a moment to the
metrical or rather rhythmical system of the ancient Anglian
people, which, with one important difference, corresponds to
that of the Scandinavian and some of the Grermanic races.
is founded on temporal quantity, modern
Ancient versification
on accentuation; but modern Romance verse agrees with the
classical metres in requiring a certain number of syllables to
each measure, and the accented syllables are, in number and
same laws of regularity and sequence
position, subject to the
But in
as the temporally long syllables in the classic metres.
the primitive rhythmical poetry of the Scandinavians and the
Anglo-Saxons, the number of unaccented syllables and the
position of the accented ones, were variable, so that nothing
was constant but the number of these latter. In the im-
passioned, emphatic recitative of ruder ages, this numerical
regularity might be a sufficient formal distinction between
poetry and prose but when the lay of the bard was written
;

down, and read, not chanted or declaimed, it was soon per-

ceived that something more was required to enable verse to
produce an agreeable sensuous effect upon the ear. This was
first obtained by the simple expedient of alliteration ; but as the
poetic ear became more cultivated, and, of course, more fas-
tidious and more exacting, other coincidences of sound were
Lect. VI. ANGLO-SAXON VERSE — ASSONANCE 285

introduced. The Scandinavians employed line-rhyme both as

half and as perfect rhyme, that is, syllables which agreed in the
consonants, but differed in the vowels, as land, lend, fear, fire,
and syllables which agreed in all the vocal elements, or ordi-
nary rhymes. In their poetry, these corresponding syllables
occurred not at the ends of the lines, but in pairs in the same
line, though, in the later stages of Icelandic literature, end-
rhyme was employed also. This latter form of consonance was
sometimes used by the Anglo-Saxons, —
probably from an ac-
quaintance with Continental rhymes which the Scandinavians
did not possess, —
but neither half-rhyme nor any form of line-
rhyme seems ever to have been designedly introduced, though

the Danish and Norwegian bards who frequented the courts of

the Saxon kings must have made that form of versification
known in England.
do not find any satisfactory evidence that assonance, or
I
the employment of the same vowel with different consonants,
which characterizes the ballad poetry of Spain, was resorted to
in the classic Anglo-Saxon period ; but in the semi-Saxon of
Layamon, as we have already seen, it is of frequent occurrence,
and I have no doubt it was intentionally introduced. Critics,
however, do not appear to have always recognized this coin-
cidence of sound in Layamon as true assonance, and they have
sometimes endeavoured to explain it by the gratuitous assump-
tion, that syllables spelled with very different consonants were
pronounced alike, so as to make perfect rhymes of pairs of
words which are apparently assonant merely. This resem-
blance of vowel alone proved too monotonous for the Northern
ear, which was trained by its habitual system of strong inflec-
tion to demand contrast as well as coincidence of syllable, and
the innovation of Layamon found no imitators.
During the era of transition from the Anglo-Saxon to the
English nationality and speech, the native bards were imitators
of Norman-French poetry, and the Saxon versification fell into
almost total disuse, while nearly every variety of Eomance verse
286 EARLY ENGLISH YEESE Lect. VI.

was freely employed. But when the English people had under-
gone the last of their metamorphoses, and appeared as a new
estate upon the stage of human affairs, there was naturally a
hesitation, a vacillation, with regard to the forms in which the
nascent literature should clothe itself, and there were still con-
flicting tendencies and partialities to be reconciled.
While, therefore, English poets were as
the first great
thoroughly and unmistakeably national, in matter and in
spirit, as the most marked of their successors, we find in '

Chaucer only Romance forms of composition; but in Langlande,

the author of Piers Ploughman, and his followers, purely
English thoughts, and a well assimilated composite diction, with
the rhythmic and alliterative structure which characterizes
Anglo-Saxon verse. It is remarkable, as I have elsewhere ob-
served, that in this attempt to revive those obsolete measures,
Langlande adhered more closely to the normal forms, and
allowed himself fewer licenses, than did the Anglo-Saxons
themselves; and his poems accordingly exhibit more truly
the essential characteristics of alliterative and rhythmical verse
than any of the works of the masters he copied.
Hence, though highly original, thoroughly genial, and fully
imbued with the spirit of the age and of the commonwealth
of which he was the first-born intellectual son, yet, in his
versification, he was little better than a servile imitator. This
is by no means a singular instance of the constraint which
the employment of ancient instrumentalities imposes upon a
modern author. No scholar of our day, writing in Latin prose,
would think himself safe in joining together any two words,
for the combination of which he could not adduce the authority
of a classic example, nor, in hexameters, or the lyric metres,
would he venture a succession of syllables for which he could
not find a precedent in the Gradus ad Parnassum.
The strife between the Romance and the Saxon forms of
verse was not of long duration. Besides the reasons I have
already given for the triumph of the former, there was the
Lect. VI. ROMANTIC POETRY 287

fact that Anglo-Saxon poetry was obsolete, unintelligible, dead

and forgotten, while Norman-French literature was still a living,
a luxuriant and a fragrant vine. Langlande was the last of
the old school in form, the first of the new in genius and
spirit. The authors of Piers Ploughman and of the Canterbury
Tales are both intensely English but as two sons of the same
;

parentage, while closely resembling each other, often reproduce,

the one, the mother's traits, the other, the lineaments of the
Lauglande most prominently exhibits the Anglo-Saxon,
father, so
Chaucer the Norman-French, complexion and features of the
composite race, which they so well represent and adorn.
There is not much literary matter of special interest or
importance, which can be positively assigned to the period
between Minot and Langlande ; but there are numerous versi-
fied romances, chiefly translations from the French, which
were executed, or at least transcribed, in the course of the
fourteenth century. Most of these, as I have before remarked,
are carelessly copied, and they are often stamped with dialectic
peculiarities which certainly belong to no era of the common
literary dialect of England. They could, therefore, even if
possessed of conspicuous literary merit, not well be employed as
illustrations of sketches which aim to give an outline of the
progress, not of the aberrations, of the English language. But
they are, in general, so worthless in themselves, that they
would not repay an analysis, and I prefer to iimit myself to
productions which,were either efficient causes, or normal results
and exemplifications, of the march of English genius and the
English speech.
The following poem, written on a very important occasion —
the death of Edward III., in 1377 —
is smooth in versification,

and is a not unfavourable specimen of the power of expression

towhich the language had attained at that period : —
 ; ;; ;

288 POEM ON THE DEATH OF EDWARD III. Lect. VI.

ON THE DEATH OF EDWAED III.— 1377.

A ! dere God, what may this be,

That alle thing weres and wasteth away?
Frendschyp is but a vanyte,
Unnethe hit dures al a day.
Thei beo so cliper at assay,
So leof to han, and loth to lete,
And so fikel in heore fay,
That selden iseije is sone forjete.

I sei hit not withouten a cause,

And god hede
therefore takes riht
For ye construwe this clause,
gif
I puit gou holly out of drede,
That puire schame jor hert wold blede.
And ge this matere wysly trete.
He that was ur most spede
Is selden seye and sone forgete.

Sum tyme an Englis schip we had,

Nobel and heih of tour
hit was,
Thorw al Christendam hit was drad,
And stif wold stonde in uch a stour,
And best dorst byde a scharp schour,
And other stormes smale and grete
Nou is that schip, that bar the flour,
Selden seige and sone forgete.

Into that schip ther longeth a roothur,

That steered the schip, and governed hit ,*

In al this world nis such anothur,

As me thenketh in my wit.
Whil schip and rothur togeder was knit,
Thei dredde nother tempest, druyge, nor wefe ;

Nou be thei bothe in synder flit

That selden seige is sone forgete.

Scharpe wawes that schip has sayled,

And sayed all sees at aventur
For wynt ne wederes never hit fayled,
Wil the roothur mint enduir.
 ; ; ;; ; ;

LECT. VI. POEM ON THE DEATH OF EDWAED III. 289

Thouj the see were roug, or elles dimuuir,

Gode havenes that schip wold geete.
Nou is that schip, I am wel suir,
Selde iseye and sone forgete.

This good schip I may remene

To the chivalrye of this londe
Sum tyme thei counted nou;z;t a bene
Beo al Fraunce, ich understonde.
Thei toke and slouj hem with her wonde,
The power of Fraunce, bethe smale and grete
And broujt the kyng hider to byde her bonde
And nou riht sone hit is forgete.

That schip hadde a ful siker mast,

And a sayl strong and large,
That make the gode schip never agast
To undertake a thinge of charge.
And to that schip ther longed a barge,
Of al Fraunce gaf nougt a cleete.
To us hit was a siker targe
And now riht clene hit is forjete,

The rother was nouther ok ne elm,

Hit was Edward the thridde the noble kniht;
The prince his sone bar up his helm,
That never scoumfited was in fiht.
The kyng him rod and rouwed ariht,
The prince dredde nouther stok nor streete.
Nou of hem we lete ful liht
That selden is seije is sone forjete.

The swifte barge was duk Henri,

That noble kniht, and wel assayed ;

And in his leggaunce worthily

He abod mony a bitter brayd.
jif that his enemys ou^t outrayed,
To chasteis hem wolde he not lete.
Nou is that lord ful lowe ileyd
That selde is seije is sone forgete.
u
 ; ;; ; ;

290 POEM ON THE DEATH OF EDWARD III. Lect. VI.

This gode comunes, bi the rode,

I likne hem to the schipes mast
That with heore catel and with heore goode
Mayntened the werre both furst and last.
The wynd that bleuj the schip with blast,
Hit was gode prejeres, I sey hit atrete
Nou is devoutnes out icast,
And mony gode dedes ben clene forgete.

Thus ben this lordes ileid ful lowe

The stok is of the same rote
And ympe biginnes for to growe,
And jit I hope schal ben ur bote,
To wolde his fomen underfote,
And as a lord be set in sete.
Crist, lene that he so mote,
That selden iseige be not forgete.

Weor that impe ffully growe,

That he had sarri, sap, and pith,
I hope he schulde be kud and knowe
For conquerour of moni a kith.
He is ful livelich in lyme and lith
In armes to travayle and to swete.
Crist, live we so fare him with,
That selden seige be never forgete.

And therefore holliche I ou rede,

Til that this ympe beo fulli growe,
That uch a mon up with
the hede,
And mayntene him bothe heije and lowe.
The Frensche men cunne bothe bost and blowe7
And with heore scornes us to-threte
And we beoth bothe unkuynde and slowe,
That selden seije is sone forjete.

And therfore, gode sires, taketh reward

Of gor douhti kyng that deyjede in age,
And to his sone prince Edward
That welle was of alle corage.
Lect. VI. THE BOKE OF CURTASYE 291

Such two lordes of lieije parage

Is not in eorthe whom we sclial gete.

And nou heore los beginneth to swage,

That selde isei^e is sone forjete.

Another poem which is not without some philological im-

portance, and which is it throws on the
of interest for the light
manners of the higher classes of society in the fourteenth cen-
tnrj, and their probable mode of education, is the Boke of
Curtasye, an edition of which has been published by the Camden
Society. This is a species of School of good Manners, for pages
who were themselves of gentle birth. It discloses a coarseness
of habits in the more elevated classes, strangely contrasting
with the material luxury which seems, from other evidence, to
have prevailed at that period in royal and noble circles. The
—
Forme of Cury which is stated to have been e compiled of the
chef Maister Cokes of kyng Richard the Secunde kyng of
Englond after the Conquest,' and which exists in a manuscript
certainly nearly as old as the beginning of the fifteenth century
shows that the kitchens of its time were, in variety and sensual
piquancy, little inferior to those of Lucullus and Apicius. But
English luxury, in the fourteenth century, was confined chiefly
to the gratification of the grosser appetites and costly and ;

diversified indulgence of these by no means implies refinement

and elegance of manners and sentiment, but, on the contrary,
rather supposes a sensuality of constitution, which easily degene-
rates into a clownish disregard of the graceful conventionalities,
and even of the decencies, of civilized life.
The Boke of Curtasye is contained in the same manuscript
with the Liber Cocorum, a cookery-book of the fourteenth cen-
tury, the publication of which, as well as of others of thesame
class,Wright suggests as a desideratum. The vocabulary of
books on these and kindred unfamiliar subjects is rich in terms
rarely elsewhere met with, and they furnish much information
both on the tastes and habits of mediaeval Europe, particularly
U 2
292 THE BOKE OF CURTASYE Lect. VI.

on a topic which, though of profound interest, has engaged the

attention of competent scholars less than almost any other
branch of modern history — the commercial relations between
the different European states and between Europe and the East.
The trade of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was con-
ducted on a larger scale, and a more extensively ramified and

more cunningly organized system, than is usually suspected by

persons not familiar with the chronicles, and more especially
the non-literary records of the Middle Ages. The questions
what were the articles which the great merchants of the Medi-
terranean countries imported from the East, at different periods
between the downfall of Eome and the discovery of the Cape of
Grcod Hope by what mode of exchange and by what routes of
;

transport did they obtain them and, above all, where and by
;

what instrumentalities these articles were distributed have —

been as yet but imperfectly answered. Eesearches in that
direction —which the throwing open of secret archives is so
rapidly facilitating — will furnish elucidations of many obscure
passages in early literature, and, especially, advance our know-
ledge of historical etymology, for which, linguistic conjecture is,

many departments of philology,

in very a very poor substitute.
Much of the Boke of Curtasye is too repulsive for quotation.
The following passage seems to show that pages did not receive
a great amount of literary instruction, but it gives a more
favourable impression of their moral training than the lives of
their lords would authorise us to expect.

Yff that thou be a gong enfatint,

And thenke tho scoles for to haunt,
This lessoun schnlle thy maister the merke,
Cros Crist the spede in alle thi werke ;

Sytthen thy Pater Noster he wille the teche,

As Cristes owne postles con preche ;

After thy Ave Maria and thi Crede,

That shalle the save at dome of drede
Thenne aftur to blesse the with the Trinite,
In nomine Patris teche he wille the ;
Lect. VI. THE BOlvE OF CURTASTE 293

Then with Marke, Mathew, Luke, and Jon,

With the pro cruce and the hegh name ;

To shryve the in general thou shalle lere,

Thy confiteor and misereatur in fere ;

To seche the kyngdam of God, my chylde,

Thereto y rede thou be not wylde.
Therefore worschip God, bothe olde and gong,
To be in body and soule y-liche strong.
When thou comes to the churche dore,
Take the haly water stondand on flore
Rede or synge or byd prayeris
To Crist, for alle thy Crysten ferys
Be curtayse to God, and knele doun
On bothe knees with grete devocioun.
To mon thou shalle knele opon the toun,
The tother to thyself thou halde alone.
When thou ministers at the hegh autere,
With bothe hondes thou serve tho prest in fere,
The ton to stabulle the tother,
Lest thou fayle, my dere brother.
Another curtasye y wylle the teehe,
Thy fadur and modur, with mylde speche,
Thou worschip and serve with alle thy mygt,
That thou dwelle the lengur in erthely lygt.
To another man do no more amys,
Then thou woldys be done of hym and hys,
So Crist thou pleses, and gets the love
Of menne and God that syttes above.
Be not to meke, but in mene the holde,
fFor ellis a fole thou wylle be tolde.
He that to ryjtwysnes wylle enclyne,
As holy wryjt says us wele and fyne,
His sede schalle never go seche nor brede,
Ne suffur of mon no shames dede.
To forgyf thou shalle the hast,
To venjaunce loke thou come on last
Draw the to pese with alle thy strengthe,
ffro stryf and bate draw the on length e.
Yf mon aske the good for Gocldys sake,
And the wont thyng wherof to take,
 ; ; ; ;

294 THE BOKE OF CURTASrE Lect. VI.

Gyf hym bone wordys on fayre manere,

With glad semblaint and pnre good cher.
Also of service thou shalle be ire
To every rnon in hys degre.
Thou schalle never lose for to be kynde,
That on forgets another hase in mynde.
Yf any man have part with the in gyft,
With hym thou make an even skyft
Let hit not henge in honde for glose,
Thou art uncurtayse yf thou hyt dose.
To sayntes yf thou thy gate hase hygt,
Thou schalle fulrylle hit with alle thy mygt,
Lest God the stryk with grete venjaunce,
And pyt the into sore penaunce.
Leve not alle men that speke the fayre,
Whether that hit ben comyns, burges, or mayr
In swete wordis the nedder was closet,
Disseyvaunt ever and mysloset
Therfore thou art of Adams blode,
With wordis be ware, but thou be wode
A short worde is comynly sothe,
That first slydes fro monnes tothe.
Loke lyger never that thou become,
Kepe thys worde for alle and somme.
Lawje not to of [t] for no solace,
ffor no kyn myrth that any man mase ;

Who lawes all that men may se,

A schrew or a fole hym semes to be.

 LECTUEE VII.

THE AUTHOR OF PIERS PLOUGHMAN AND HIS IMITATORS.

The precise date of the poem called the Vision of Piers

Ploughman is unknown, but there is little doubt that it was
given to the world between the years 1360 and 1370. The
authorship of the work is also matter of uncertainty, and the

traditionwhich ascribes it to Langlande, an English monk, is

not supported by conclusive testimony. But a perhaps imaginary
Langlande has long enjoyed the credit of the composition, and
until evidence shall be adduced to invalidate his possessory
claim and establish an adverse title, there can be no danger of
doing injustice to the real author by availing ourselves of that
name as a convenient impersonation of an unknown writer.
The familiarity which the poet displays with ecclesiastical
literature could, in that age, hardly have been attained by any
but a member of the and therefore the pre-
clerical profession,
sumption is His zeal and his
strong that he was a churchman.
conviction did not carry him to such perilous lengths as were
hazarded by Wycliffe and his school, but he was a forerunner in
the same path, and though we know nothing of his subsequent
history, it is not improbable that he ultimately arrived at the
same results.
The author of Piers Ploughman was evidently well acquainted
with the Latin poems ascribed to Walter de Mapes, written
chiefly in the previous century, and of which I have been unable
to take notice in this succinct view of early English literature,
because, having been composed in Latin, they cannot properly
296 PIEES TLOUGHMAN Lect. VII.

be included in a historical sketch of English philology. But

though there are passages in Piers Ploughman, which, if they
stood alone, might be considered as directly borrowed from
Mapes, yet the general treatment of the subject by Langlande
is so peculiar, that the whole work must be pronounced eminently
original, in the sense in which that epithet is usually and pro-
perly applied, in literary criticism, to discursive and imaginative
productions.
Every great popular writer is, in a certain sense, a product of
his country and his age, a reflection of the intellect, the moral
sentiment and the prevailing social opinions of his time. The
author of Piers Ploughman, no doubt, embodied in a poetic
dress just what millions felt, and perhaps hundreds had uttered
in one fragmentary form or another. His poem as truly ex-
pressed the popular sentiment, on the subjects it discussed, as
did the American Declaration of Independence the national
thought and feeling on the relations between the Colonies and
Great Britain. That remarkable document disclosed no pre-
viously unknown facts, advanced no new political opinions, pro-
claimed no sentiment not warranted by previous manifestations
of popular doctrine and the popular will, employed perhaps
even no new combination of words, in incorporating into one
proclamation the general results to which the American head
and heart had arrived. Nevertheless, Jefferson, who drafted it,
is as much entitled to the credit of originality, as he who has

best expressed the passions and emotions of men in the shifting

scenes of the drama or of song.
The Vision of Piers Ploughman thus derives its interest, not
from the absolute novelty of its revelations, but parti}7 from its
literary form, partly from the moral and social bearings of its
subject —the corruptions of the nobility and of the several de-
partments of the government, the vices of the clergy and the
abuses of the church —
in short, from its connection witli the
actual life and opinion of its time, into which it gives us a clearer
insight than many a laboured history. Its dialect, its tone, and
Lect. VII. piers ploughman 297

its poetic dress alike conspired to secure to the Vision a wide

circulation among the commonalty of the realm, and, by formu-
lating — to use a favourite word of the day — sentiments almost
universally though but dimly apprehended, it brought them
felt,

into distinct consciousness,and thus prepared the English people

for the reception of the seed, which the labours of Wycliffe and
his associates were already sowing among them.
The number of early manuscripts of this work which still sur-
vive proves its general diffusion ; and the wide variations which
exist between the copies show that they had excited interest
enough to be thought worthy of careful revision by the original
author, or, as is more probable, of important modification by
the numerous editors and transcribers under whose recension
they subsequently passed. was the custom of the
This, indeed,
time but in most cases, copyists only accommodated the dia-
;

lect of the author to that of their own age or district, or, at

most, added here and there an explanatory gloss, whereas in
some of the later manuscripts of Piers Ploughman, a very dif-
ferent tone of sentiment prevails from that which marks what
is believed to be the original text of the work. It had become
eminently a popular possession, a didactic catechism. This fact
and its anonymous character would be thought to justify licenses
in copyists, whereas the works of Grower and Chaucer came in a
purely literary form, and with an authority derived from the
social position of the writers,which secured them from being
so freely tampered with by later editors and consequently the
;

differences between different manuscripts of those authors are

generally grammatical or orthographical merely.
The querulous tone of Piers Ploughman is another circum-
stance which gave it special favour in the eyes of the populace,
or rather of the middle classes, which had acquired a certain
degree of opulence and culture, but yet not strength enough to
be able to protect themselves effectually against the rapacity of
their spiritual and temporal lords.
The people, under all governments — at least under all those
298 PIERS PLOUGHMAN Lect. VIL

whose subjects enjoy any acknowledged positive rights as against

the sovereign power —
are habitually disposed to complaint.
This is especially true of the English, who, with a government
almost uniformly better, in its internal administration, than
those of any of their Continental neighbours, have always been
a nation of good-natured grumblers. Political satires, com-
plaints with a strong spice of humour and a liberal share of per-
and frequency
sonality, are particularly acceptable to that people,
and freedom of such criticism on governmental action has,
under most reigns, been a characteristic of the public life of
England. The extortion of Magna Charta was a manifestation
of English character, and the spirit of that instrument, which
was broader than its letter, has fostered the inclination, and
secured the right, of the subject to sit in judgment on his ruler.
If we compare the earliest writings which are distinctively
English in. temper and language, including Piers Ploughman as
their best and truest representative, with those of the Anglo-
Saxons, we shall find that certain salient traits which mark the
English are almost wholly wanting in Saxon. The element of
humour, though in a very different sense from that in which the
word is used in the dialect of German criticism *, is, and from
the fourteenth century has been, eminently characteristic of
English literature. This trait does not exist in the extant re-
mains of Anglo-Saxon poetry or prose, nor does it appear to
have formed an ingredient in the character of that people.
The quality of humour is everywhere, in some measure, the
fruit of culture. Not only savages, but all rude races who have
to struggle against an ungenial climate, and a soil which yields
no spontaneous are grave. Wit and humour are products
fruits,

of that stage of civilization, which belongs to such a develop-

* English humour is often at once pathetic and laughter-moving ; German

humour is, not unfrequently, very dreary, without being either. In this censure,
I do not, certainly, include the tales of Musseus, still less the wonderful works of
Jean Paul, the prince of genuine humourists. Some of Tieck's stories are full of
this quality, and I think there are, in modern literature, few more humorous
tales than his autobiography of the tailor-emperor, Tonelli, in the ninth volume
of his collected works.
Lect. VII. WIT AXD HUMOUR 299

ment of the material resources of a country as leaves to its more

prosperous inhabitants some leisure for other occupations than
the serious toils and hazards of war, or the lonely and silent

and weary pursuits of the chase —

for to those who live by wood-

craft, hunting is a solitary labour, not a social recreation.

The degree of artificial culture which is required for the

generation of such products will be very different under different
climates and other natural conditions. In the frozen North,
and on the infertile sands of a tropical desert, where constant
effort is required to supply the physical wants of life, these
sparkling traits of thought will not manifest themselves, except
under the influence of letters. But under more genial skies,
where Earth almost spontaneously feeds her children, the poetic
impulses and aspects of Nature herself supply a culture, which
seems in some degree to render the artificial training of schools
and of books superfluous, and endow the most untaught with
to
a quickness of apprehension, and a keenness of perception of
less obvious analogies, which, in less favoured climes, are almost
always acquired, not self-developed, faculties. Besides this, in

those countries which were the seats of ancient civilization, a

traditional culture has survived the revolutions of many centu-
ries and still pervades the lowest strata of society.* The remains
* The traditions of Italy have kept alive, in the memory of the people, not
only numerous fragments of ancient history, but many of the romantic dreams and
visions of the Middle Ages. The progress of knowledge in the Northern states
among classes, which,
of Italy has, within a few years, diffused a taste for reading
less than a generation never looked upon a printed page. The subjects
since,
selected naturally connect themselves with the traditions I have spoken of, and
at this moment, in Piedmont and Lombardy, the favourite books, among the
least-instructed ranks who read at all, are the old romances of chivalry. Of
these, the Eeali di Fkancia nei quali si contiene la generazione degli Imperatori,
He, Duchi, Principi, Baroni e Paladini di Francia, cominciando da Costantino
Emperatore sino ad Orlando, Conte d' Anglante, and, Guerino detto ie Meschino,
storia delle grandi imprese e vittorie da lui riportate contro i Turchi, are the
most popular. Cheap editions of these are multiplied and sold in great numbers,
and they are read by thousands of persons in conditions of life in which, in
England and America, nothing is ever heard of the dowzepers of him, who
' '

With all his peerage fell

At Fontarabia.
300 WIT A.XD HUMOUR Lect. VII.

of classic art, and the vague memories of by-gone national

power and splendour, contribute also to educate and refine classes
which, in younger races and more recently subdued regions,
fall below the reach of all elevating influences.

Hence while the Grothic tribes, though profound and strong

in intellect, are obtuse till artificially quickened by education,
the Romance nations are rapid and precocious in the operations
of the intellect, sensible to artistic beauty, alive to the charms
of nature, and ever awake to the sense of the ludicrous. The
populace of Europe who laugh the most, and have the most
mirth-inspiring dialect and habits, are the Neapolitan plebeians;
but a Styrian or a Carinthian peasant, \rith the same amount
of positive attainment which the humble Italian possesses, is as
solemn not to say as stupid as the cattle he drives.

The between wit and humour is not very easily

distinction
expressed or is abundantly shown by the
apprehended, as
thousand abortive attempts to discriminate between them and ;

it is as difficult to define either as to describe the smile they

kindle.
Wit has been said to consist in the perception of obscure re-
lations, and this half-truth explains how it is that men of mul-
tifarious reading —
whose knowledge, of course, reveals to them
analogies not obvious to less instructed minds —
are never with-
out wit.
I shall not attempt what none has yet satisfactorily accom-
plished, the description and limitation of wit and humour, nor is

any discussion of the special character of the former essential

to our present purpose ; but we may say, in a general way, that
while true wit is as universal as social culture, humour is local-

ized and national, and the distinctive forms in which different

peoples clothe the ludicrous conceptions peculiar to themselves
and almost inappreciable by strangers, constitute iheir national
humour.
English humour, then, is Anglicized wit. It is a spark thrown
out whenever the positive and negative electricities of the French
Lect. VII. PIERS PLOUGHMAN 301

and Saxon constituents of the English intellect are passing into

equilibrium, and no great English writer J?as ever been able
wholly to suppress it. Piers Ploughman is pervaded with
humour, and this quality undoubtedly contributed, in a great
degree, to its general popularity.
The familiarity of even the labouring classes with this work,
and the strong hold it soon acquired on the popular mind, are
well illustrated in the curious letter addressed to the commons
of Essex by the enlightened, brave, and patriotic John Ball,
who is conspicuous as one of the few clerical advocates of the
rights of man, in the Middle Ages.* In this letter, the
reformer introduces the names of John Schep or Shepherd —
borrowed probably, as Wright suggests, from the opening lines
of the poem
I shoop me into shroudes
As I a sheep weere,

and that of Piers Ploughman, as personages familiar to those

whom he was addressing and in another part of the letter, he
;

quotes, in an emphatic way, the phrases do well and do ' '

6

better,' which are of very frequent occurrence in the Vision as

* I take the text of this letter from the Introduction to Wright's edition of
Piers Ploughman
'John Schep, sometime Seint Mary priest of Yorke, and now of Colchester,
graeteth well John Namelesse, and John the Miller, and John Carter, and bicldeth
them that they beware of guyle in borough, and stand together in Gods name,
and biddeth Piers Tloweman goe to his iverJcc, and chastise well Hob the robber,
and take with you John Trewman, and all his fellows, and no moe John the
Miller hath y-ground smal, small, small. The kings sonne of heaven shall pay for
all. Beware or ye be woe, know your frende fro your foe, have ynough, and
say hoe And do wcl and better, and flee sinne, and seeke peace and holde you
:

therin, and so biddeth John Trewman and all his fellowes.'

The orthography Schep suggests the probability that the form sheep, in the
couplet quoted above, is erroneous, and undoubtedly the word, when used for
shepherd, had a different pronunciation from that given to it when it was simply
thename of the quadruped.
The letter is interesting, not only from its connection with the poem, Pier3
Ploughman, but as a specimen of an eirejot, or conventional dialect for there can ;

be no doubt that such phrases as guyle in borough '

do wel and better,' and
'
'

the like, had some other than their apparent and literal meaning
302 PIERS PLOUGHMAN Lect. VII.

the designations of two of the allegorical dramatis personse of

the poem. It is probable that in this case John Schep and
Piers Ploughman, as well as the other proper names used in
the letter, were appellations assumed as a disguise by real per-
sons,though the people of Essex doubtless well knew who were
meant by them.
But whether we suppose these names to be here used as in-
dicating a class, or as the noms de guerre of individuals, the
fact of their employment for the one purpose, or their assump-
tion for the other, proves that their poeticaland political signi-
ficance, and of course the general scope of the poem, were well
understood by the humblest class of English citizens who were
open to any form of literary influence.
As I have alread}^ remarked, a circumstance which gives im-
portance to Piers Ploughman and its imitations is, the form of
poetical composition in which they are dressed. The verse is
neither metrical nor rhymed but it is characterized by rhythm
;

and alliteration, according to the Anglo-Saxon models of versi-

fication, and, as was observed in the last lecture, it conforms

more closely to the conventional rules of Anglo-Saxon poetical

composition than any of the existing remains of the poetry of
that literature. This fact has been partly explained by the cir-
cumstance that it was an imitation of an extinct poetical form ;

but it is also an evidence that the influence of the Danish in-

vaders —whose bards employed rhythm and alliteration with
greater strictness than the Anglo-Saxons had ever done had —
some weight in reviving the taste for a form of verse which had
become obsolete in the indigenous literature of England. On
the other hand, it suggests the probability that rhythm and re-
gular alliteration, though they had nearly disappeared from
written native poetry, may have been kept alive in popular
ballads, existing in oral tradition to a greater extent than written
records now remaining would authorize us to infer.*
"*
For an account of Anglo-Saxon and old English alliterative measures, see
First Series, Lecture XXV. It has been conjectured that there was, in this
Lect. VII. PIERS PLOUGHMAN 303

The Vision of the Ploughman furnishes abundant evidence of

the familiarity of its author with the Latin Scriptures, the
writings of the fathers, and the commentaries of Romish expo-
sitors, but exhibits very few traces of a knowledge of Romance
literature. Still the proportion of Norman-French words, or at
least of words which, though of Latin origin, are French in
form, is quite as great as in the works of Chaucer. The fami-
liar use of this mixed vocabulary, in a poem evidently intended
for the popular ear, and composed by a writer who gives no
other evidence of an acquaintance with the literature of France,
would, were other proof wanting, tend strongly to confirm the
opinion I have before advanced, that a large infusion of French
words had been, not merely introduced into the literature, but
already incorporated into the common language of England;
and that only a very small proportion of those employed by the
poets were first introduced by them.
The poem, if not altogether original in conception, is abun-
dantly so in treatment. The spirit it breathes, its imagery, the
turn of thought, the style of illustration and argument it em-
ploys, are as remote as possible from the tone of Anglo-Saxon
poetiy, but exhibit the characteristic moral and mental traits
of the Englishman, as clearly and unequivocally as the most
national portions of the works of Chaucer or of any other native
writer.
The Vision has little unity of plan, and indeed — considered
as a satire against many individual and not obviously connected
abuses in church and state — it needed none. But its aim and
purpose are one. It was not an expostulation with temporal

ancient verse, as well as in Greek and Latin classical poetry, some yet undis-
covered metrical element, the proper application of which rendered it more
melodious to the ear than our rugged accentuation makes it. But the Anglo-Saxon
system was evidently identical with the Icelandic, except that it wanted half and
whole rhyme and Snorri Sturluson — whose very full and complete Icelandic Art
—
;

of Poetry, written about the middle of the thirteenth century, is still extant
does not allude to any characteristic of verse but alliteration, whole and half, line
and terminal, rhyme, and accent, though he is very minute in his analysis of all
the constituents of poetic form.
 304 PIEES PLOUGHMAN Lect. VII.

and an attempt to awaken their consciences,

spiritual rulers, not
or excite their sympathies, and thus induce them to repent of
the sins and repair the wrongs they had committed; nor was
it an attack upon the theology of the Church of Rome, or a
revolutionary appeal to the passions of the multitude.It was
a calm, allegorical exposition of the corruptions of the state, of
the church, and of social life, designed, not to rouse the people
to violent resistance or bloody vengeance, but to reveal to them
the true causes of the evils under which they were suffering,
and to secure the reformation of those grievous abuses, by a
united exertion of the moral influence which generally accom-
panies the possession of superior physical strength.
The allegory, and more especially the dream or vision, is, in
the simpler stages of society, and consequently in the early lite-

rature of most nations, a favourite euphemistic form for the

announcement of severe, or otherwise disagreeable truths. Its
capacity of double interpretation might serve as a retreat for
the dreamer in case of apprehended persecution, and when once
ithad become a common mode of censuring social or political
grievances, it would continue to be employed by those who no
longer needed the disguise of equivocal language, merely be-
cause it was the usual form in which the inferior expressed
his dissatisfaction with the administration or the corruptions
of the superior power.
While, therefore, Wycliffe, at a somewhat later day, assumed
a posture of open hostility to the papal church, by attacking
some of the cardinal doctrines on which the supremacy of the
see of Eome is founded, the Vision of Piers Ploughman had not
taken so advanced a position. At the same time, it was ex-
tremely well calculated to suggest opinions which it did not
itself openly profess ; and the readers, who recognized the truth
of the pictures of social and ecclesiastical depravity there pre-
sented, could hardly fail to suspect the necessity of adopting
some more energetic measures of reform than a mere resort to
moral suasion. Hence there is no doubt that the Vision, and,
Lf.ct. VII. PIEES PLOUGHMAN 305

after, the Creed, of Piers Ploughman,

a few years which latter —
is more exclusively directed against the corruptions of the
Romish Church, —
powerfully aided in promoting the reception
of the doctrines of Wycliffe, encouraged the circulation of the
new English versions of the Scriptures, and thus planted, deep
in the English mind, the germ of that religious revolution
which was so auspiciously begun and perfected in the sixteenth
century, as well as of the political reforms which followed, a
hundred years later.

I shall not go much into detail in giving a general view of

the structure of this interesting and remarkable poem. No
branch of criticism is less generally profitable or instructive
than that which discusses the plan of literary compositions,
except in reference to the drama, the special aim of which is the
exhibition of the entire moral character and internal life of in-
dividuals, considered as t}T pes of humanity in its almost infi-

nitely varied phases. The work of

exposition of the plan of a
imagination no more helps us to form a conception of the im-
pression we derive from the production itself, than a description
of a skeleton would aid us in constructing a visual imao-e of the
person of a Washington. It is the muscular form, the circu-
lating fluids, the coloured integuments, that give life and indi-
viduality to organic objects and to the products of the organized
fancy: and the actual perusal of a poem is as essential to an
idea of it as a whole, as the sight of a man to a clear notion of
his personality. Every primitive, incipient literature is spon-
taneous and unconscious, not premeditated and critical. In
this stage of art, or rather of impulsive composition, narrative
and discursive works of imagination are written without a plan.
The poem shapes and organizes itself as it grows; and it may
be remarked that in the majority of cases where authors have
themselves set forth the scheme and purport of their allegories,
it has been found difficult, if not impossible, to recognize the

professed plan in the finished work.

But to return. The dreamer of the Vision, ' weary, for-
306 THE VISION OF PIERS PLOUGHMAN Lect. VII.

wandered,' falls asleep c

on a May morwenynge on Malverne
hilles,' the poet thus happily suggesting, at the commencement
of the poem, the cheerful images belonging to the return of
spring and the beautiful scenery for which that locality is still
famous. He sees the inhabitants of the earth gathered in a fair
meadow before him, and observes their various ranks and occu-
pations, devoting a large part of his description to an account
of the different orders of the monastic and secular clergy, re-
ligious mendicants and pilgrims, and depicting in strong
language their worldliness and depravity.

I fond there freres,

Alle the foure ordres,
Prechynge the peple
For profit of hemselve;
Glosed the gospel,
As hem good liked ;

For coveitise of copes,

Construwed it as thei wolde.

This sketch, with the old fable of belling the cat, occupies the
introduction. In the first section, or Passus, as the writer
styles it, a heavenly messenger, the personification of 'holi
chirche,' appears to the dreamer, and bestows explanations,
warnings and counsels upon him. In the second Passus, he
observes 'on his left half a woman, who is thus described: —
I loked on my left half,

As the lady me tanghte,

And was war of a womman
Worthiliche y-clothed,
Purfiled with pclure
The fyneste upon erthe,
Y-corouned with a coroune
The kyng hath noon bettre
Fetisliche 1
hire fyngres
Were fretted with gold wyr,

1
fetisliche, elegantly, Norman-French, faictissement, from Lat. facere.
Lkct. VII. THE VISION OF PIERS PLOUGHMAN 307

And theron rede rubies

As rede as any gleede, 1

And diamaundes of derrest pris,

And double manere saphires,
Orientals 2
and ewages, 3
Envenymes 4 to destroy e.
Hire robe was ful riclie,
Of reed scarlet engreyned,
With ribanes of reed gold
And of riclie stones.

Hire array me ravysshed,

Swich richesse saugb I nevere
I hadde wonder what she was,
And whos wif she Avere.

This lady, as Holy Chirclie informs him, is Mede, or what the

English Scriptures call lucre, and (
in the popes paleis ' is as
familiar as Holi Chirche herself. His visitor now leaves him,
and in the remainder of the second, as well as in the third and
fourth sections, the dreamer observes how all, nigh and low,
rich and poor, lay and clergy, alike offer their homage to Mede
or Lucre, who contracts a legal marriage with Falsehood. In
the third Passus, Mede is taken into favour at court, and is much
caressed by the friars, though her intrigues are sometimes
thwarted by Conscience, who seems to have greater influence
with the king than with the priesthood. The king proposes a
new matrimonial alliance between Mede and Conscience, to
which proposal the latter replies : —
2 8
1
gleede, burning or glowing coal. oriental, red sapphire. cwagc, defined by
Wright, with a query as to its source, a kind of precious stone,' is the aqua-
'

marine, sea-water or green beryl. Eau, in old French, was spelled in a great
variety of ways, and, among others, eauwe, eawe, eaige, and hence cwage, as
also, notwithstanding its resemblance to the A.-S. huer orhwer, Icel. hverr,
ewer, a water-vessel. * envenymes to destroy e. The ruby, and many other
precious stones, were worn in the Middle Ages as amulets against poison ; and
they were believed by many medical men to exert a physical agency, as remedial
agents, in the healing of wounds, whether from poisoned or unpoisoned weapons.
Eecipes for the application of them may be found of as late date as the seven-
teenth century.
 ;

308 THE VISION OF PIERS PLOUGHMAN Lect. VII.

Crist it me forbede !

Er I wedde swiche a wif,

Wo me bitide !

For she is frele of hire feitk,

Fikel of hire speche,
And maketh men mysdo
Many score tymes
Trust of hire tresor
Bitrayeth fill manye.

He thus proceeds to state his objections to the match, at great

length, bringing out the abuses in Church and State, of which
Mede, or the love of but finally proposes to
lucre, is the cause,
leave the question to the decision of Eeason. Peace now enters
upon the scene as a suitor to parliament for redress for griev-
ances inflicted upon him by Wrong, and Eeason and Conscience
prevail with the king, who announces his determination to
govern his realm according to the advice of Eeason. This
concludes the fourth section and the first vision.

The dreamer waked

' of his wynkyng and attempted
' to pro-
ceed on his pilgrimage, but

wo was withalle
That [he] ne hadde slept sadder,
And y-seighen moore.

Becoming fatigued, he, like many other good Christians before

and since his time,
sat softely a-doun,
And seide his bileve,
And so lie bablede on his bedes,
Thei broughte him a-slepe.

He now has a second vision, in which he again

seigh the feld ful of folk,

and Eeason preaching repentance to different classes of offenders,

each of which is personified by the name of the sin to which it
is addicted. One of the chief sinners is Coveitise, who, after a
 ! ; ; ;

Lect. VII. THE VISION OF PIERS PLOUGHMAN 309

long and curious voluntary confession, is subjected to a cross-

examination by Eepentance.
The following is an extract :
—
I have ben coveitous,' quod
* this caytif,
1
bi-knowe it here,
1 l

For som tyme I served

Symme-atte- Style,
And was his prentice y-plight
His profit to wayte.
1
First I lerned to lye,
A leef outlier tweyne
Wikkedly to weye
TVas my firste lesson ;

To Wy and to Wynchestre
I wente to the feyre,
"Withmany manere marchaundise,
As my maister me highte.
Ne hadde the grace of gyle y-go
Amonges my chafFare,
It hadde ben unsold this seven yer,
So me God helpe
1
Thanne drough I me among drapiers,
My donet 2 tolerne,
To drawe the liser 3 along,
The lenger it semed
Among the riche rayes
I rendred a lesson,
To broche hem with a pak-nedle,
And playte hem togideres,
And putte hem in a presse,
And pyne hem therinne,
Til ten yerdes or twelve
Hadde tolled out thrittene.
' My wif was a webbe,
And wollen cloth made
She spak to spynnesteres

1
bi-7cnowe, confess, Ger. bekennen. 2
donet, a name applied to grammars
from Donatus, the author of a celebrated Latin accidence and syntax, and, after-
wards, to any manual of instruction, or set of rules. 3
User, selvage.
310 THE VISION OF PIEES PLOUGHMAN Lect. ML
To spynnen it oute,
Ac the pound that she paied by
Peised a quatron moore
Than myn owene auncer, 1
Who so weyed truthe.
1 boughte hire barly-malt,
1

She brew it to selle,

Peny ale and pucldyng ale
She poured togideres,
For laborers and for lowe folk
That lay by hymselve.
'
The beste ale lay in my bour,
Or in my bed-chambre ;

And who so bummed therof,

Boughte it therafter,
A galon for a grote,
God woot, no lesse !

And yet it cam in cuppe-mele,

This craft my wif used.
Rose the Eegrater
Was hire righte name;
She hath holden hukkerye
Al hire lif tyme.
Ac I swere now, so thee ik !

That synne wol I lete,

And nevere wikkedly weye,
Ne wikke chaffare use
But wenden to Walsyngham,
And my wif als,
And bidde the Roode of Bromholm
Brynge me out of dette.'
1
Repentedestow evere ? '
quod Repentaunce,
1
Or restitucion madest.'
2
* Yis , ones I was y-herberwed,' quod he,
1
With an heep of chapmen,
I roos whan thei were a-reste
And ritlede hire males.'

1
auncer, here probably the bowl of a steelyard, or of a pair of scales ;
gene-
2 This particle, being an answer to a question framed affirm-
rally, a cup. yis.
atively, is wrongly used for yea. See First Series, Lecture XXVI., pp. 579, oS3.
 ;

Lkct. VII. THE VISION OF PIERS PLOUGHMAN 311

'
That was no restitucion,' quod Eepentaunce,
*
But a robberis thefte ;

Thow haddest be the bettre worthi

Ben hanged therfore,
Than for al that
That thow hast here shewed.'
I wende riflynge were restitucion,' quod he,
'

'For I lerned nevere rede on boke

And I kan no Frensshe, in feith,
But of the fertheste ende of Northfolk.'
Usedestow evere usurie ? quod Eepentaunce,
4 '

c
In al thi lif tyine.'

'Nay sothly,' he seide,

1
Save in my youthe
I lerned among Lumbar des
And Jewes a lesson,
To weye pens with a peis, 1
And pare the hevyeste,
And lene it for love of the cros,
To legge a wed 2 and lese it.

Swiche dedes I dide write,

If he his day breke,
I have mo manoirs thorugh rerages,
Than thorugh miseretur et commodat.
1 have lent lordes
1

And ladies my chaffare,

And ben hire brocour after,
And bought it myselve;
Eschaunges and chevysaunces
With swich chaffare I dele,
And lene folk that lese wole
A lippe at every noble,
And with Lumbardes lettres 3
I ladde gold to Eome,
And took it by tale here,
And tolde hem there lasse.'

1
peis, Fr. poids, weight. 2 3 Lumbardes lettres, bills
wed, pledge.
of exchange. There are some passages in this extract which I do not understand*
I hope my readers may be more fortunate.
 ;

312 TIIE VISION OF PIERS TLOUGIIMAN

1
Lentestow cvere lordes,
For love of hire mayntenaunce ? *
* Ye,
I have lent to lordes,
Loved me nevere after,
And have y-maad many a knyght
Bothe mercer and draper,
That payed nevere for his prentishode
Noght a peire gloves.'
Hastow pite on povere men,
'

'
That mote nedes bonve ?
I liave as muche pite of povere men,
'

As pedlere hath of cattes.

That wolde kille hem, if he cacche hem myghte,
For coveitise of hir skynnes.'
Artow manlich among thi negkebores
I

Of thi mete and drynke ? '

I am holden,' quod he, as hende

I 4

As hound is in kichene,
Amonges my neghebores, namely,
Swiche a name ich have.'

The multitude of repentant hearers set out on a pilgrimage

to Truths under the leadership of a pilgrim who is thus
described :
—
Ac there was wight noon so wys
The wey thider kouthe,
But blustreden forth as beestes
Over bankes and hilies ;

Til latewas and lonsre

That thei a ieode mette, 1

Apparailled as a paynym
In pilgrymes wise.
He bar a burdoun 2 y-bounde
With a brood liste,
In a withwynde wise
Y-wounden aboute
A bolle and a bagge
He bar by his syde,

2 burdoun,
1
leode, man. person. staff.
Llct. VII. • TIIE VISION OF PIERS PLOUGHMAN 313

And hundred of ampulles 1

On his hat seten,

Signes of Synay,
And shelles of Galice,
And many a crouche 2 on his cloke,
And keyes of Eome,
And the vernycle bi-fore,
For men sholde knowe
And se bi hise signes
Whom he sought hadde.

It may be worth remarking, in connection with this descrip-

tion,which would in many particulars apply to the religious
mendicants of the East at the present day, whether Moslem or
Christian, that the different tokens enumerated indicated the
different shrines or other sacred localities which the pilgrim had
visited or professed tohave visited. The ' shelle of Galice,' or
cockle-shell,was the proper cognizance of those who had paid
their vows at the shrine of St. James, at Compostella in Galicia,
on the coast of which province the cockle-shell abounded the ;

palm and the cross were worn by those who had worshipped at
the Holy Sepulchre; the keys of Peter, and the vernycle, or
painting of the handkerchief of St. Veronica, on which the Sa-
viour impressed his likeness, when he wiped the sweat from his
brow with it on his way to Calvary, by those who had been at
Eome.
The pilgrim, notwithstanding his experience as a traveller,
and the sanctity with which his visits to so many sacred localities
had invested him, proved a blind guide, and the wanderers put
themselves under the direction of Piers the Ploughman, who
now, for the first time, appears in the poem. The new guide
employs them in productive labour, but they become seditious,
and are at last reduced by the aid of Hunger, who subdues
Waste, the leader of the revolt, and humbles his followers.

1
ampulles, generally, small phials ; here it seems to mean tokens. a crouche,

cross ; the modern crutch takes its name from its cross-like form.
 —

314 THE YISION OF PIEES PLOUGHMAN Lf.ct: VII.

The poet here alludes to the effects of a recent famine and

plague, and sharply satirizes the luxury and extravagance of the
wealthier classes. The ' or indulgences of the Pope
pardons '

are contemptuously treated, and the pilgrim goes in search of

6
Do-well,' a personification of good works, the true nature of
which is treated as a difficult question. Wit appears to him and
describes the residence of Do-well, Do-better, and Do-best, de-
livering, at the same time, a rambling moral and religious lec-
ture. For this he is reproved by his wife, Studie, evidently a
strong-minded dame,

That lene was of lere,

And of liche bothe, 1

who takes the words out of his mouth, and, after a long dis-
course, during which her husband, Wit,

bicom so confus
He kouthe noght loke,
And as doumb as dethe,
And drough him arere,

she recommends the Ploughman to her cousin Clergie, for further

instruction. Clergie gives his pupil a dissertation, in which
occurs what has been called a prophecy of the dissolution of the
monasteries by Henry VIII. :

And thanne shal the abbot of Abyngdone,

And al his issue for evere,
Have a knok of a kyng,
And incurable the wounde.

When Clergie concludes, the pilgrim exclaims :

—
This is a long lesson,
And litel am I the wiser,

Lene of lere and of liche, meagre in doctrine and in person. This is a

1

sarcasm against scholastic theology, science falsely so called,' as opposed to

'

practical, living Christianity.

Lect. VII. THE VISION OF PIERS PLOUGHMAN 315

proceeds to reply, at great length, and receives a reproof from

Scripture, for his indocile temper. Then follows another vision,
in which the dreamer is exposed to the temptations of fortune
and sensual pleasure, is rescued by Old Age, and falls into a
meditation on the covetousness of the friars, the doctrine of
predestination and other religious topics. Nature now carries
him to a mountain, and shows him how all living creatures, man
alone excepted, are obedient to the dictates of Eeason, after
which follows an exhortation from Imaginative, concerning the
divine punishments, the duties of charity and mercy, and the
greater responsibilities of the learned and the rich.
Several sections of similar general character follow, in which
new personifications of virtues, vices, and moral and intellectual
qualities are introduced. In the eighteenth section, the cha-
racter of Piers Ploughman is identified with that of the Saviour,
and the remainder of this section is principally occupied with
Christ's Passion, his descent into Hell, the rescue of the patri-
archs and prophets, his resurrection and his final triumph over
the infernal spirits. We have then the foundation of the visible
Church, the opposition of worldly men and princes, and an attack
of Antichrist on the Church. Afterwards, the Castle of Unity,
the strong-hold of the Church,is assailed by an army of priests

and monks, and Conscience, the governor of the castle, is driven

out, and goes in quest of the Ploughman, when the dreamer
awakes.
The movement of the poem is, to a considerable extent, dia-
logistic, and in these portions the dialect is evidently colloquial,
though the characters are not sufficiently individualized to give
the performance much of dramatic effect; but it seems ex-
tremely well calculated to influence the class for whose use it

was chiefly intended, and the success it met with sufficiently

proves that, in spite of its Latin quotations, it was, in the main,
well suited to their comprehension.
Although, as I have before remarked, the proportion of words
of foreign origin in the vocabulary of Piers Ploughman is as
 ;

316 THE VISION OF PIERS PLOUGHMAN Lect. VII.

great as in Chaucer, yet the structure of the dialect is more

archaic,and there are many words which are now obsolete, as
well as a considerable number the meaning of which is alto-
gether unknown. But there is no such difference in the stock
of words, or in the syntactical combinations of the two authors,
as to create a marked dialectic distinction between them, and
they are hardly more unlike than the style and diction of two
English writers of the present day, who should treat themes
and address audiences so different as those of Chaucer and
Langlande.
The moods and tenses of the verbhad acquired very nearly
their present force, and the past and future auxiliaries were
used substantially as in modern English. I mention this point
particularly, because it has been said that the curious and intri-
cate distinction we now make between the two auxiliaries,
shall and will, is of recent origin. Cases may indeed be found
in Piers Ploughman, where shall is used in a connection that
would, in modern usage, require will, but these are few, and
some of them doubtful and I have observed no case where
;

will is put for the modern shall.

The verbs are inflected much according to the Anglo-Saxon
fashion, the ending th characterizing not only the third person
singular, present indicative, but all the persons of the plural of
that mood and tense, as well as the imperative. The infinitive
generally ends in en, as does also the plural of the past tense,
and both the weak and strong form of conjugation are employed.
To all these rules there are exceptions, and the poet seems to

have been influenced much by rhythm in the conjugation of his

verbs.
The nouns, with few exceptions, form the plural in s, and the
adjective plural usually terminates in e, but the declension of
this part of speech is irregular.
The return to the Saxon conjugation of the verbs, which, as
we have seen, had been much disturbed, is carious, as an
exemplification of the reactionary tendency I have mentioned
Lect. VII. THE VISION OF PIERS PLOUGHMAN 317

and the influence of Piers Ploughman, or of the spirit by which

thatwork was animated, was strong enough to keep this revived
inflection current until after the time of Chaucer.
There is, in general, much care and precision in the use of
words, which seem often to be employed with an intelligent re-
ference to their derivative history, and, in some instances, they
are explained by a direct statement of their descent. The ety-
mology of the word heathen from heath, as implying the rude
and uncivilized inhabitants of wild and unreclaimed territory, is
curious, and it has appeared as original in more than one later
linguistic work. The whole passage is as follows :
—
'
Clooth that cometh fro the wevyng
Is noght comly to were,
Til it be fulled under foot
Or in fullyng stokkes,
"Wasshen wel with water,
And with taseles cracched,
Y-touked 1 and y-teynted, 2
And under taillours hande ;

Right so it fareth by a barn,

That born is of a wombe,
Til it be cristned in Cristes name,
And confermed of the bisshope,
It is hethene as to hevene-ward,
And help-lees to the soule.
Hethen is to mene after heeth
And untiled erthe,
As in wilde wildernesse,
Wexeth wilde beestes,
Rude and unresonable,
Rennynge withouten cropiers.'

Piers Ploughman, although allegorical in its plan, and di-

dactic in its aims, gives us more minute and intimate views of
the material and social life of that age, than almost any poetical

1
y-touked, dyed. 2
y-teynted, stretched on tenters.
 ! ;

318 THE VISION OF PIEES PLOUGHMAN Lect. VIT.

work in early English literature. We have glimpses at the con-

dition, and even the dress and nutriment, of the labouring
classes, the processes of the arts, the frauds of artisans and
dealers, the corruptions in the administration of justice, the rela-
tions between the clergy and the people, and, in short, at all those
circumstances which made up the actualities of English life in
the fourteenth century; and hence, though it deals with no
questions of chronology, this poem is a contribution of some
value to the domestic history of the English nation.
The following passages are of the character just indicated :
—
/ quod Hunger,
*Hennes ne wole I wende,
Til I have dyned bi this day,
And y-dronke bothe.'
* I have no peny,' quod Piers,
1
Pulettes to bugge, 1
Ne neither gees ne grys, 2
But two grene cheses,
A fewe cruddes and creme,
And an haver 3 cake,
And two loves of benes and bran,
Y-bake for my fauntes; 4
And yet I seye, by my soule !

I have no salt bacon,

Ne no cokeney, ft
by Crist
Coloppes for to maken.
Ac I have percile and porettes,
'

And manye cole plauntes,

And ek a cow and a calf,
And a cart mare
To drawe a-feld my donge,
The while the droghte lasteth
And by tins liflode we mote lyve
Til Lamm esse tyme.
And by that, I hope to have
Hervest in my crofte,

2 3
1
bugge, buy. grys, pigs. haver, oatmeal. * fauntes, servants.
3
coJccncy, Wright thinks, a lean fowl.
 ; '

Lkct. VII. THE VISION OF PIERS PLOUGHMAN 319

And thanne may I dighte thi dyner,

As me deere liketh.'
Al the povere peple tho
Pescoddes fetten,
Benes and baken apples
Tliei broghte in hir lappes,
Chibolles and chervelles,
And ripe chiries manye,
And profrede Piers this present
To plese with Hunger.
Al Hunger eet in haste,
And axed after moore.
Thanne povere folk, for fere,
Fedden Hunger yerne,
With grene porret and pesen
To poisone hym thei thoghte.
By that it neghed neer hervesfc,
And newe corn cam to chepyng ;

Thanne was folk fayn,

And fedde Hunger with the beste,
With goode ale, as Gloton taghte.
And garte Hunger go slepe.
And tho wolde Wastour noght werche,
But wandren aboute,
Ne no beggere ete breed
That benes inne were,
But of coket and cler-matyn, 2
Or ellis of clene whete ;

Ne noon halfpeny ale

In none wise drynke,
But of the beste and of the brunneste 3
That in burghe is to selle.
Laborers that have no land
To lyve on but hire handes.
Deyned noght to dyne a day
Nyght-olde wortes
May no peny ale hem paye,
Ne no pece of bacone,

2
chepyng, market. coJcct and cler-matyn, finer kinds of bread. 9
brun-
neste, brownest, richest with malt.
320 THE TISIOX OF PIEES PLOUGHMAN Lect. VII.

But if it be fresshe ilessh outlier fisshe,

Fryed outlier y-bake,
And that cliaud and plus chaudj
For cliillynge of liir mawe.
Verses 4357—4424.

Nought to fare as a fithelere or a frere,

For to seke festes
Homliche at othere mennes houses,
And hatien hir owene.
Elenge l is the halle
Ech day in the wike,
Ther the lord ne the lady
Liketh noght to sitte.
Now hath ech riche a rule
To eten by hymselve
In a pryvee parlour,
For povere mennes sake,
Or in a chanibre with a chymenee,
And leve the chief halle
That was maad for meles,
Men to eten inne,
And al to spare to spende
That spill e shal another.
Verses 5791—5808.

Thanne Pacience perceyved

Of pointes of this cote,
That were colomy 2 thorugh coveitise
And unkynde desiryng
Moore to good than to God
The gome 3 his love caste,
And }miagynede how
He it myghte have
With false mesures and met, 4
And with fals witnesse
Lened 5 for love of the wed, 6
And looth to do truthe

2
1
elenge, sad, melancholy, modern ailing. colomy, meaning unknown.
8 4 5 c
gome, man. met, measuring. lened, lent. wed. pledge.
Lect. VII. THE VISION OF PIERS PLOUGHMAN 321

And awaited thorugh which

Wey to bigile,
And menged his marchaundise,
l

And made a good moustre 2 ;

1
The worste withinne was,
A greet wit I let it,

And if my neghebore hadde any hyne, 3

Or any beest ellis,
Moore profitable than myn,
Manye sleightes I made
How I myghte have it,
Al my wit I caste.
And but I it hadde by oother wey,
At the laste I stale it
Or priveliche his purs shook,
And unpikede hise lokes ;

Or by nyghte or by daye
Aboute was ich evere,
Thorugh gile to gaderen
The good that ich have.
'
If I yede to the plowgh,
I pynched so narwe,
That a foot lond or a forow
Fecchen I wolde
Of my nexte neghebore,
And nymen of his erthe.
And if I repe, over-reche,
Of yaf hem reed 4 that ropen 5
To seise to me with hir sikel
6
That 1 ne seAv n evere.
*
And who
borwed of me,so
A-boughte the tyme
With presentes prively,
Or paide som certeyn
So he wolde or noght wolde,
Wynnen I wolde,
And bothe to kith and to kyn
Unkynde of that ich hadde.

2
1
rnengcd, mixed, bad with good. moustre, sample, or perhaps show, cun-
3
ning arrangement so as to hide defects. hyne, servant. 4
reed, directions.
5 6
ropcn, reaped. sew, sowed.
 ' !;

322 THE VISION OF PIERS PLOUGHMAN LtCT. VII.

1
And who so cheped my chaffare,
Chiden I wolde,
But lie profrede to paie
A peny or tweyne
Moore than it was worth;
And yet wolde I swere
That it coste me muche moore,
And so swoor manye othes.'
Verses 8737—8795.

Barons and burgeises,

And bonde-men als,

I seigh in this assemblee,

As ye shul here after :

Baksteres and brewesteres,

And bochiers manye
Wollen webb esters,
And weveres of lynnen,
Taillours and tynkers,
And tollers in markettes,
Masons and mynours,
And many othere craftes.
Of kynne lybbyuge laborers
alle
Lopen forth somme,
1

As dikeres and delveres,

That doon hire dedes ille,
That dryveth forth the longe day
With Dieu save dame Emme.
Cokes and hire knaves
Cryden Hote pies, hote
'
!

Goode gees and grys

Gowe, dyne, gowe !

Taverners until hem

Trewely tolden the same,
Whit wyn of Oseye,
And reed wyn of Gascoigne,
Of the Ryn and of the Eochel,
The roost to defie. 2
Verses 430—457.

1 2
lopcn, ran. defie, digest.
 —

Lect. VII. THE VISION OF PIERS PLOUGHMAN 323

Langlande seems to have shared in the popular prejudice

under which the profession of law has always laboured. He
thus satirizes the bar :

Yet hoved } ther an hundred

In howves 2 of selk,
Scrgeantz it bi-semed
That serveden at the barre,
Pleteden for penyes
And poundes the lawe ;

And noght for love of onr Lord

Unlose hire lippes ones.
Thow myghtest bettre meete myst
On Malvern e hilles,
Than gete a mom of hire mouth,
Til moneie be shewed.
Verses 418—429.

In the third passus, Mede's confessor proposes to her to secure

her salvation by giving his church a painted window, to which
she assents :
—
Thanne he assoiled hire soone,
And sithen he seide :

* We have a wyndow in werchynge

Wole sitten us ful hye,
Woldestov/ glaze that gable
And grave therinne thy name,
Syker sholde tin soule be
Hevene to have.'
Verses 1449—1456.

1
Have mercy,' quod Mede,
4
Of men that it haunteth,
And I shal covere youre kirk,
Youre cloistre do maken,
Wowes 3 do whiten,
And wyndowes glazen,

1
hoved, waited. 2 howves, hoods or caps. 3
Wowes, walls.
Y 2
 — —

324 THE VISION OF PIERS PLOUGHMAN Lect. VII.

Do peynten and portraye,

And paie for the makynge,
That every segge 1 shal seye
I am suster of youre house.'

Upon this the Pilgrim observes :

Ac God to alle good folk

Swich gravy nge defendeth,
To writen in wyndowes
Of hir wel dedes.
* * * #
Lat noght thi left half
Late ne rathe
Wite what thow werchest
With thi right syde ;

For thus by the gospel

Goode men doon hir almesse.
Verses 1483—1507.

The author exhibits a liberality towards the Jews rarely met

with in that age :

Sholde no cristene creature

Cryen at the yate,
Ne faille payn ne potage,
And prelates dide as thei sholden.
A Jew wolde noght se a Jew
Go janglyng for defaute,
For alle the mebles on this moolde,
And he amende it myghte.
Alias! that a cristene creature
Shal be unkynde til another ;

Syn Jewes, that we jugge

Judas felawes,
Eyther of hem helpeth oother
Of that that hem nedeth.
Whi nel we cristene
Of Cristes good be as kynde
As Jewes, that ben oure lores-men.
Verses 5318—5337.
 — ;

Lect. VII. THE VISION OF PIERS PLOUGHMAN 325

The following passage on the degeneracy of b<Ali nature and

man is striking:
1
And so it fareth by som folk now,
Thei lian a fair speche,
Crownc and cristendom,
The kynges mark of hevene
Ac the metal, that is mannes soule,
With synne is fonle alayed.
Bothe lettred and lewed
Beth alayed now with synne,
That no lif loveth oother
Ne oure Lord, as it semeth.
For thorugh werre and wikkede werkes,
And wederes unresonable,
Weder-wise shipmen,
And witty clerkes also,
Han no bileve to the lifte, l

Ne to the loore of philosofres.

' Astronomiens al day
In hir art faillen,
That whilom warned bifore
What sholde falle after.
Shipmen and shepherdes,
'

That with ship and sheep wenten,

Wisten by the walkne 2
What sholde bitide,
As of wedres and wyndes
Thei warned men ofte.
1
Tilieris, that tiled the erthe,
Tolden hir maistres,
By the seed that thei sewe,
What thei selle myghte,
And what to lene, and what to lyve by,
The lond was so trewe.
' Now faileth the folk of the flood,
And of the lond bothe,
Shepherdes and shipmen,
And so do thise tilieris,

1
lifte, sky, signs of weather. z walkne, clouds, wellcin.
 ; ;

326 THE VISION OP PIERS PLOUGHMAN Lect. \U.

Neither thei konneth ne knoweth

Oon cours bifore another.
1
Astronomyens also
Aren at hir wittes ende,
Of that was calctiled of the element
The contrarie thei fynde ;

Grammer, the ground of al,

Bigileth now children,
For noon of this newe clerkes,
is

Who so nymeth hede,

Naught oon among an hundred
That an auctour kan construwe,
Ne rede a lettre in any langage
But in Latin or in Englissh.'
Verses 10,326—10,375.
Also the followingo :
—
For Sarzens han somwhat
Semynge to oure bileve
For thei love and bileve
In o persone almyghty ;

And we, lered and lewed,

In oon God almyghty ;

And oon Makometh, a man,

In mysbileve broughte
Sarzens of Surree,
And see in what manere.
1
This Makometh was a cristene
And for he moste noght ben a pope
Into Surrie he soughte,
And thorugh hise sotile wittes
He daunted a dowve,
l

And day and nyght hire fedde,

The com that she croppede
He caste it in his ere
And if he among the peple preched,
Or in places come,
Thanne wolde the colvere 2 come
To the clerkes ere

2 cohere, dove.
daunted, tamed.
Lect. VII. THE YISION OF PIERS PLOUGHMAN 327

Menynge as after mete,

Thus Makometh hire enchauntede
And dide folk thanne falle on knees,
For he swoor in his prechyng
That the colvere that com so,
Com from God of hevene,
As messager to Makometh,
Men for to teche.
And thus thorugh wiles of his wit,
And a whit dowve,
Makometh in mysbileve
Men and wommen broughte ;

That lyved tho there and lyve yit

Leeven on hise lawes.
l

And siththe our Saveour suffred,

'

The Sarzens so bigiled

Thorngh a cristene clerk,
Acorsed in his soule !

For drede of the deeth

I dare noght telle truthe,
How Englisshe clerkes a colvere fede
That coveitise highte,
And ben manered after Makometh,
That no man useth trouthe.'
Verses 10,408—10,453.

I have dwelt the longer upon the Vision of Piers Ploughman,

because I think justice has never been done to its great merits
— which can be appreciated only by careful study — and to its
importance in the literary history of England. Although Wright
has rendered an excellent service by making this poem accessible,
and in the main intelligible, to common readers, much labour
ought still to be bestowed upon it. A scrupulously literal re-
production of the best manuscripts, with various readings from
all the copies, is needed and few old English authors better
;

deserve, or will better repay the careful attention of English

scholarship.
The Creed of Piers Ploughman, which appeared, as is supposed,

1
leeven. believe.
 — ;; ;

328 THE CREED OF PIERS PLOUGHMAN Lfct. VII.

twenty or thirty years after the Vision, may or may not be a

work of the same author. The style and diction are much the
same, but the later work is more exclusively theological, and
graver in tone, and it shows an advance upon the opinions of
the earlier poem, harmonizing more unequivocally with the
views of Wycliffe and the Eeformers of his school, but it does
not seem to have ever obtained the wide currency and influence
of its predecessor.
The general character of this work will sufficiently appear
from these passages :

Than thought I to frayne l the first

Of this foure ordres ;

And presed to the Prechoures,

To proven her wille.
Ich highed to her house,
To herken of more ;

And when I came to that court,

I gaped aboute,
Swich a bild 2 bold
Y-buld upon erthe heights
"Say I nought in certeyn
Syththe a long tyme.
I semed opon that hous,
And yerne theron loked,
Whow the pileres weren y-paint,
And pulchud 3 ful clene,
And queyntly y-corven
With curious knottes
With wyndowes wel y-wrought,
Wyde up a-lofte,
And thanne I entred in,
And even forth wente
And al was walled that wone,
Though it wiid were,
With posternes in privite
To pasen when hem liste
Orcheyardes and erberes

2 s pidchud, polished.
1
frayne, inquire of. bild, building.
Lect. VII. THE CKEED OF PIERS PLOUGHMAN 329

Evesed 1 wel clene,

And a curious cros
Craftly entayled,
With tabernacles y-tight 2
To toten 3 al abouten.
The pris of a plough-lond
Of penies so rounde
To aparaile that pyler
Were pure litel.
Than I munte 4 me forth
The mynstre to knowen,
And awaytede a woon 5
Wonderly wel y-bild,
With arches on everiche half,
And bellyche y-corven,
With crochetes on corneres,
With knottes of gold,
Wyde wyndowes y-wrought,
Y-wryten ful thikke,
Shynen with shapen sheldes,
To shew en aboute,
With merkes of merchauntes
Y-medeled betwene,
Mo than twentie and two
Twyse y-noumbbred.
Ther is non heraud that hath
Half swich a rolle,
Eight as a rageman
Hath rekned hem newe.
Tombes upon tabernacles
Tylde opon lofte,

Housed in homes,
Harde set abouten,
Of armede alabaustre
Clad for the nones,

1
cvcsed, should mean provided with eave-troughs, perhaps, here, sheltered with
arbours, roofs, or awnings. 2
y-tight, furnished. 3
tabernacles .... to-
4
ten; toten is to look, and the phrase means belvederes, look-out towers. munte,
5
from minnen, to be minded, to incline. awaytede a woon, observed a dwelling
or house.
330 THE CREED OP PIERS PLOUGHMAN Lect. VII.

Maad opon marbel

In many manner wyse,
Knyghtes in ther conisante
Clad for the nones ;

Alle it semed seyntes

Y-sacred opon erthe
And lovely ladies y-wrought
Ley en by her sydes
In manye gay garnemens,
That weren gold beten.
Though the tax of ten yere
Were trewely y-gadered,
Nolde it nought maken that hous
Half, as I trowe.
Than cam I to that cloystre,
And gaped abouten,
Whough it was pilered and peynt,
And portreyed wel clene,
Al y-hyled with leed
Lowe to the stones,
And y-paved with poynttyl
Ich point after other ;

With cundites of clene tyn

Closed al aboute,
With lavoures of latun
Loveliche y-greithed.
I trowe the gaynage of the ground
In a gret shyre
Nold aparaile that place
Oo poynt tyl other ende.
Thanne was that chapitre house
Wrought as a greet chirche,
Corven and covered,
And queyntelyche entayled,
With semliche selure l

Y-seet on lofte,
As a parlement-hous
Y-peynted aboute.
Thanne ferd I into fraytoure,

1
selure, ceiling.
Lect. VII. THE CREED OF PIERS PLOUGHMAN 331

And fond there another,

An halle for an hygh kynge
An houshold to holden,
"With brode bordes abouten
Y-benched wel clene,
With wyndowes of glaas
Wrought as a chirche
Than walkede 1 ferrer,
And went al abouten,
And seigh halles full heygh,
And houses ful noble,
Chambres with chymeneys,
And chapeles gaye,
And kychenes for an high kynge
In casteles to holden ;

And her dortoure y-dight

With dores ful stronge ;

Fermerye and fraitur, l

With fele mo houses,

And al strong ston wal
Sterne upon heithe,
With gaye garites 2 and grete,
And iche hole y-glased,
And other houses y-nowe
To herberwe the queene.
And yet thise bilderes wiln beggen
A bagge ful of whete
Of a pure pore man,
That may onethe paye
Half his rent in a yere,
And half ben byhynde.
Than turned I ayen,
Whan I hadde all y-toted,
And fond in a freitoure
A frere on a benche,
A greet chorl and a grym,
Growen as a tonne,
With a face so fat

1
fraitur, refectory. - garites, perhaps garrets, but I think more probably
turrets, or pinnacles.
 332 THE CREED OF PIERS PLOUGHMAN Lect. VII.

As a ful bleddere
Blowen bretful of breth,
And as a bagge honged
On bothen his chekes, and his chyn
With a chol lollede
So greet as a gos ey,
Growen al of grece
That al wagged his fleish
As a quick myre.
His cope, that bi-clypped hym,
Wei clene was it folden,
Of double worstede y-dyght
Doun to the hele.
His kyrtel of clene whiit,
Clenlyche y-sewed,
Hit was good y-now of ground
Greyn for to beren.
I haylsede !
that hirdman,
And hendlich I sayde,
1
Gode sire, for Godes love !

Canstou me graith tellen

To any worthely wiight
That wissen me couthe,
Whow I shulde conne my Crede,
Christ for to folwe,
That levede 2 lelliche 3 hymselfe
And lyvede therafter,
That feynede no falshede,
But fully Christ suwede ?

For sich a certeyn man

Syker wold I trosten,
That he wolde telle me the trewthe,
And turae to non other.
And an Austyn 4 this ender day
Egged me faste
That he wolde techen we wel,
He plyght me his treuthe,
And seyde me certeyn, '

2 8
1
haylsede, saluted. levede, believed. lelliche, loyally, la-svfully.
4
Austyn, Augustine friar.
 ; '

Lf.ct. VII. TIIE CKEED OF PIERS PLOUGHMAN 333

Syghthen Christ deyed

Oure ordre was euelles
And erst y-founde.'
1
First, felawe,' quatli he,
*
Fy on his pilche !
l

He but abortiif,
is

Eked with cloutes,

He holdeth his ordynaunce
With hores and theves,
And purchaseth hem pryvyleges
With penyes so rounde.
It isa pur pardoners craft,
Prove and asay ;

For have they thy money,

A moneth therafter
Certes, theigli thou come agen,
He wil the nought knowen.
But, felawe, oure foundement
Was first of the othere,
And we ben founded fulliche
Withoiiten fayntise,
And we ben clerkes y-cnowen,
Cunnyng in schole,
Proved in processyon
By processe of lawe.
Of oure order ther beth
Bichopes wel manye,
Seyntes on sundri stedes
That suffreden harde
And we ben proved the priis
Of popes at Eome,
And of grettest degre
As godspelles telleth.'
Lines 303—512.

The Pilgrim, who had already consulted a Minorite, visits, in

turn, the two remaining orders : the Austyns or Augustins and
the Carmelites, who abuse the Prechours and the ' Minours
e
'

as heartily as they had been censured by them. He then falls

1
pilche, fur, or long napped cloth, cloak.
 * ; ; ; ; ; ;

334 POEM ON EICHAED II. Lect. VII.

in with Piers Ploughman, who exposes the corruptions of mon-

and dismisses the Pilgrim after having taught him a
astic life,
Creed substantially conforming to that called i the Apostles'.'
Another poem of similar metrical structure, but of exclusively
on the abuses of
political character, is the alliterative allegory
the reign of Eichard II., and his intended deposition. This is
an imitation of the style and manner of Piers Ploughman, and
is not without point and spirit. The dialect remains the same,
substantially, though, while the vocabulary is more modern, the
grammar is, in some respects, more archaic. It is a matter of
some interest to observe that it contains many nautical phrases,
used with a familiarity quite new to English literature, and
which shows that the increasing navigation and foreign com-
merce of England were beginning to exert an appreciable
influence on the dialect of books as well as of ordinary speech.
The passage into which most of these phrases are introduced
is, for the period, almost unique in its character, and as several

of the technical terms employed in it here occur, for the first

time, in English, it may be worth citing, though perhaps not
clearly intelligible to mere landsmen :
—
and somme were so ffers
at the ffrist come,
that they bente on a bonet,
and bare a topte saile
affor the wynde ffresshely,

* In the Glossarlal Eemarks and Emendations, Layamon III. 476, Sir F.

Madden quotes these lines from a manuscript which has never been printed : —
Then he tron on tho trees, and thay her tramme reechen
Cachen vp the crossayl, cables thay casten
Wijt at the wyndas weren her ankres,
Sprude spak to the sprete, the spare bawe-lyne
Gederen to the gyde-ropes, the grete cloth falles
Thay layden in on ladde borde, and the lofe Wynnes
The blythe brethe at her bak, the bosum he fyndes
He swenges me thys swete schip swefte fro the hauen.

Is ladde horde the primitive form of larboard ? If so, it is a step towards the
etymology of that obscure word.
 ;

Lect. VIL TnE COMPLAINT OF THE PLOUGHMAN 335

tomake a good ffare.

Than lay the lordis alee
with laste and with charge,
and bare aboujte the barge,
and blamed the maister,
that knewe not the kynde cours
that to the craft e longid,
and warned him wisely
of the wedir side.
Thanne the maste in the myddis,
at the monthe ende,
bowid ffor brestynge,
and broujte hem to lond
ffor ne had thei striked a strake,
and sterid hem the better,
and abated a bonet,
or the blast come,
they had be throwe overe the borde,
backewarde ichonne.

The volume of Political Poems and Songs from which the

above lines are taken contains an irregularly alliterative poem,
in eight-lined stanzas, called the Complaint of the Ploughman.
This was formerly ascribed to Chaucer, and exists in no earlier
form than in printed editions of the fifteenth century, although
it probably belongs, as originally written, to the reign of
Eichard II. It is a satire on the abuses of Church and State,
but is worthy neither of the name it claims nor of the author
towhom it has been attributed.
I am not acquainted with any poem resembling Piers Plough-
man in poetic form, of later date than the fourteenth century,
which worthy of notice, though there were several attempts
is

at imitation of this rhythm and metre in subsequent ages.

I have already adverted to the remarkable circumstance, that,
though many political songs and satires of the preceding cen-
tury, of a popular cast, were in English, a large proportion of
the most important poems of this class in the reign of Edward
III. were in French or in Latin.
 —

336 POLITICAL POETRY Lect. VII.

This may probably be explained by the fact, that many of

them measures of policy, the connection of
relate to events or
which with the material well-being of the commonalty was not
very obvious, and which therefore did not much excite the
interest of the English-speaking people, but appealed rather to
the passions, the opinions, the principles of the governing
classes, who were generally, no doubt, better instructed in
written French and Latin than in the native tongue.
These classes, indeed, at the period we are now treating of,
certainly spoke English habitually, but they had not cultivated
it as a governmental or official organ of communication, and it
was therefore essentially unfit for the discussion of political
subjects. Such topics found much better vehicles in Latin and
in French, which latter tongue, as we have seen, had gradually
been trained up to a power of expression that had enabled it to
compete with Latin as a learned and universal speech.
Froissart, in describing his presentation of a volume of his
poems to Bichard II., observes, as a noteworthy circumstance,
that the King 6 loked in it and reed yt in many places, for he
coulde speke and rede French very well;' and in the same
paragraph he mentions Henry Castyde, an English squire, as an
6
honest man and a wyse, and coud well speke Frenche.' * But
the same chronicler informs us that the negotiations for the
peace of 1393 were conducted in French, and that the English
commissioners were much embarrassed by their want of a know-
ledge of the niceties and subtleties of that language.

* Than the kynge desyred to se my booke that I had brought for hym so he
' ;

sawe it in his chambre, for I had layde it there redy on his bedde. Whanne the
kynge opened it, it pleased hym well, for it was fayre enlumyned and written, and
couered with crymson Teluet, with ten botons of sjduer and gylte, and roses of
golde in the myddes, wyth two great elapses gylte, rychely wronghte. Than the
kyng demaunded me whereof it treated, and I shewed hym how it treated maters
of loue wherof the kynge was gladde and loked in it, and reed yt in many places,
;

for he coulde speke and rede French very well ;and he tooke yt to a knyght of hys
chambre, named Syr Richarde Creadon, to beare it into hys secrete chambre.'
Lord Berners's Froissart, chap, exeviii. Reprint of 1812, vol. n., chap. ccii.
p. 619.
Lect. VII. USE OF FEENCII IN ENGLAND 337

1
The englysshemen,' says he, had moche payne to here and to
c

vnderstande the frenchemen, who were full of subtyle wordes, and

cloked perswacions and double of vnderstandynge, the which e the
frenchemen wolde tourne as they lyst to their profyte and aduauntage,
whiche englysshemen vse nat in their langage, for their speche and
entent is playue and also the englisshmen were enfourmed that the
;

Frenchemen had nat alwayes vpholden the artycles, promyses and con-
dycyons, ratyfied in the artycles of peace; yet the frenchmen wolde
ever fynde one poynte or other in their writynges, by some subtyle
cloked worde, afFermynge that the englysshemen had broken the peace,
and nat they wherfore whan the englysshemen sawe or herde in the
;

frenchemens writynges any darke or cloked worde, they made it to be

examyned by such as were profoundly lerned in the lawe, and if they
founde it amysse, they caused it to be canselled and amended, to the
entent they wolde leaue nothynge in trouble and the englysshmen, to
;

excuse themselfe, wolde say, that frenchemen lernynge such subtylties

in their youth muste nedes be more subtyle than they.'*

The poems which we have now been considering, and others

of minor importance, though of kindred spirit, contributed their
share to the extension of the English vocabulary, to the flexi-
bility of the syntax, and to the various culture of the English
people, and thus prepared the speech and the nation for the re-
ception of the controversial writings and the scriptural versions
of the Wyclimte school, the influence of which on the languao-e
and literature of England will be examined in the next lec-
ture.

NOTE ON THE ITALIAN DIALECTS.

It is difficult for Englishmen and Anglo-Americans, who habitually

speak much much as they speak, to conceive
as they write, and write
of the co-existence of two dialects in a people, one almost uniformly
employed in conversation, the other almost as exclusively in writing.
Yet such was the state of things in England, from the Conquest at
least to themiddle of the fourteenth century, and such is the case in
a large part of Europe at this day. In Italy, for instance, there is
almost everywhere a popular speech, commonly employed by all classes

* Lord Berners's Froissart, chap, cxcv., reprint of 1812, vol. ii. pp. 599, 600.
See note on Italian dialects at the end of this lecture.
Z
338 ITALIAN DIALECTS Lect. VII.

in familiar oral intercourse, and so far cultivated that it can be, though it
rarely is, same time, the lingua comune d' Ita-
written, while, at the
lia, or, as it is often called, the Tuscan dialect, is known to all, as the
language of books, of journals, and of correspondence, and is also em-
ployed as the medium of religious and scholastic instruction. But this
literary tongue, at least in those parts of Italy where dialects widely
different from it are habitually spoken, always remains to the Italians
themselves essentially a foreign language. This fact Biondelli states in
stronger terms than a prudent stranger would venture
to do upon the
testimony of his own observation. Tanto e vero che, per parlare e
'

scrivere italianamente, dobbiamo imparare questa nostra lingua con

lunghi e laboriosi studj, poco meno che se apprendessimo la latina o la
francese e a malgrado dell' affinita sua coi nostri dialetti e del con-
;

tinuo leggere, scrivere e parlare 1' italiano, ben pochi giungono a trattarlo
come conviensi, e grandi e frequent! sono le difficulta che incontriamo
ogniqualvolta vogliamo esporre con chiarezza e proprieta le nostre idee,
poiche veramente dobbiamo tradurre il nostro dialetto in altra lingua,
vale a dire, rappresentare sotto diversa forma i nostri pensieri.' Bion-
delli, Saggio sui Dialetti Gallo-Italici, x.
There is a similar discrepancy between the written and spoken lan-
guage in many parts of Germany, though the diffusion of literary cul-
ture in that country has made the dialect of books more universally
familiar than in most European nations. The traveller Seetzen, whose
journals have lately been published, sometimes makes entries in them
in the Platt-Deutsch of his native province, and states expressly that
he uses that dialect in order that those passages may not be understood
by strangers intc whose hands his papers might chance to fall.
 LECTUEE VIII.

WYCLIFFE AND HIS SCHOOL.

We come now to a period when far other necessities than those

of imaginative literature, of mechanical or decorative art, or of
any interest of material life, demanded the formation of a new
special nomenclature — a nomenclature and a phraseolog}^ which,
though employed in a limited range of themes and dis-
first

from the intimate relation of those themes to all

cussions, yet,
the higher aspirations of humanity, gradually acquired more
extended significance and more varied applications, and finally
became, in great part, incorporated into the general speech as
a new enlivening and informing element.
I refer to the theological vocabulary of Wycliffe and his dis-
ciples, which, in a considerable proportion indeed, was composed
of words already familiar to the clergy and the better instructed
laity, but which those reformers popularized, and at the same
time enlarged and modified, by new terms coined or borrowed
for use in their translations of the Scriptures,and by imposing
on already known words new, or at least special acceptations.
The Anglo-Saxons possessed a vernacular translation of the
Gospels, and of some other parts of the Bible and several
;

more or less complete versions of the Scriptures existed in

French as early as the twelfth century. But there is no reason
to believe that any considerable portion of the Bible, except the
Psalter, had ever been rendered into English, until the trans-
lation of the whole volume was undertaken,3 at the suggestion
oo
of Wycliffe, and in part by his own efforts, a little before the
Z 2
 — ;

340 ENGLAND INDEPENDENT OF ROME Lect. VIII.

beginning of the last quarter of the fourteenth century. English

preachers^ it is had always freely introduced into their
true,
sermons quotations from the vulgate, translated for the occasion
by themselves, and thus the people had already become somewhat
familiarized with the contents of the Old and New Testament
but these sermons were rarely copied for circulation, or probably
even written down at all, and therefore no opportunity existed
for the study or consultation of the Bible as an English book.*
The English nation, for reasons stated in a former lecture,
had always been practically more independent of the papacy
than the Continental states. The schism in the church, with
the long struggle between the claimants to the chair of Peter
each of whom denounced an anti-pope, and excom-
his rival as
municated his followers as heretics — naturally much
weakened
the authority of both the contending parties. Men were not
only at liberty, but found themselves compelled, to inquire which
was the true head of the church, and they could not investigate
the title of the respective claimants to ecclesiastical supre-
macy, without being very naturally led to doubt whether either

* The translations of the texts cited by Wycliffe himself, in the controversial

works most confidently ascribed to him, by no means agree literally with the
version of the New Testament, and of a part of the Old, which he is believed to
have executed. See Introduction to Madden and Forshall's edition of the
"Wyclifnte Translations. Comparisons of this sort have often been appealed to as a
test of the authenticity of writings attributed to his pen. But they seem to me
to be entitled to very little weight. Wycliffe wrote much before he made his
translation, and his later works must often have been written when he could not
have had that translation with him. The pore caityf,' as he humbly calls himself,
'

certainly did not regard his own version with the reverence with which we view
it; and a good biblical scholar like him, finding a Latin scriptural text in an
author he was refuting, or having occasion to use one which occurred to him,
would, in the fervour of composition, write down the translation which, at the
moment, presented itself, and which the argument in hand suggested as the truest

expression of the meaning.

Few authors are vain enough to be disposed to quote or repeat their own words,
or even, the words of another which they have maJle their own by translation, and
I think a writer of the present day would sooner re-translate a passage from an
ancient author he wished to quote, than unshelf a volume, and copy a citation
which he had translated on a former occasion. A
discrepancy, therefore, between
a text quoted by Wycliffe and his own formal translation of it elsewhere, affords
no presumption against the authenticity of a manuscript attributed to him.
Lect. VIII. POPE AND ANTI-POPE 341

of them was better than a usurper. The decision of the im-

mediate question between the rival pontiffs turned, in the end,
more on political than on canonical grounds*; but while it
was under discussion, the whole doctrine of papal supremacy
underwent a sifting, that revealed to thousands the sandy nature
of the foundation on which it rested. A result more important
than the particular conclusions arrived at, as between the claims
of Urban and Clement, was, that the controversy taught and
habituated thinkiug ecclesiastics, and, by their example, the
laity, to exercise their reason upon topics which had before
been generally considered as points which it was blasphemous
even to debate.
The habit of unquestioning submission to the decrees of a
church which arrogated to itself infallibility of opinion, and
binding authority of judgment, upon religious questions whose
* Capgrave gives us a specimen of the arguments —
rationes regum, or rather,
ad rcgcs —
employed by Pope and Anti-Pope with the sovereigns of their respective
parties.
'Also he notified onto the Kyng [Richard II.], that the Antipope and the Kyng
of Frauns be thus accordid, that the seid Kyng of Frauns, with help of the duke
of Eurgony, and othir, schul set the Antipope in the sete at Rome ; and the same
Antipope schal make the Kyng of Frauns emperoure, and othir dukes he schal
endewe in the lordchippis of Itaile. Also, he enformed the King what perel
schuld falle if the Antipope and the Kyng were thus acorded, and the Kyng of
Frauns emperoure, — he schuld bo that the dominion of Ynglond.
wey chalenge
Therefor the Pope counceleth the King, that he schal make no pes with the
Kyng of Frauns but on this condicion, that the King of Frauns schal favoure the
opinion of the trewe Pope, and suffir non of his puple to fiVte ageyn him.'
Capgrave, a.d. 1390, pp. 255, 256.
It should be added that, on the same occasion, the Pope asked in vain for the
repeal of the famous statutes, Quare impedit and Premuniri facias, so important
to the liberties of England.
The Pope merveyled mech of certeyn statutes which were mad in this lond
'

ageyn the liberte of the cherch and for the Pope supposed that it was not the
;

Kyngis wil, therefor he sent his messagere to stere the Kyng that swech statutes
schuld be abrogat whech be ageyn the liberte of Holy Cherch, specially these
two, " Quare impedit" and " Premunire facias."
'

The moment was ill chosen for asking a concession, which, under almost any
circumstances, would have been too much for the sturdy independence of Eng-
land; and though the request was enforced by the hint above mentioned, the
chronicler informs us that, as for promociones of hem that dwelled at Rome, it
'

wold not be graunted; but, for favoure of the Pope, thei graunted him his pro-
vysiones til the nexte Parle?nent.' — Capgrave, ubi supra.
342 PRINCIPLE OF AUTHORITY Lect. VIII.

comprehension demands the exercise of man's highest faculties,

had naturally begotten a spirit of deference to the dicta of
great names in secular learning also. This deference character-
ized the mass of the original literature of the Continent through
the Middle Ages and in discussions upon questions of natural
;

knowledge, of history, of criticism, the opinions of eminent

writers were commonly cited, not as arguments, or even as the
testimony of competent witnesses to facts of observation, but as
binding conclusions, scarcely less irrefragable or less sacred than
the inspired infallibility of a pontiff. Habitual submission to
the jurisdiction of secular names, as, for example, to the opi-
nions of Aristotle in physics and metaphysics, was politicly
encouraged and inculcated by the church, not merely because
particular metaphysico-theological dogmas of Rome found sup-
port in the Aristotelian philosophy, but because such submission
was a practical recognition of the principle of authority in all
moral and intellectual things. Just so, in the public policy of
our times, the governing classes, in some states liberal in their
own domestic administration, sustain the usurped dominion of
certain dynasties over foreign territory, not because they believe
the right or approve the oppressions of those dynasties, but
because their rule is an embodiment of the aristocratic prin-
ciple in government, and is therefore the representative and ally

of aristocracy everywhere.
The shock given to the dominion of the papal see, by the
schism and the discussions occasioned by that event, did much
to weaken the authority of human names in letters and in
philosophy: and it happened at a very favourable juncture for
English literature, which thus, at its very birth, acquired an
independence, and consequently an originality, that a half-
century earlier or later it would not have attained.
The literature which belongs to the civilization of modern
Europe is essentially Protestant, because it almost uniformly
originated, if not in a formal revolt against the power of physi-
cal coercion exerted by the church, at least in a protest against
the morally binding obligation of her decrees, and its earliest
 '

Lect. VIII. WYCLIFFITE TRANSLATIONS 343

expression was a denunciation of those abuses which had con-

verted her, from a nursing mother of the best and holiest
affections of the heart, into a worldly, ambitious, self-seeking,
rapacious, and oppressive organization. It is only when men
are emancipated from humiliating spiritual servitude, that the
intellect can be set free; and the training, which the unobstructed
investigation and discussion of theological doctrine involves, is

the most powerful of methods of intellectual culture.

all

The Y\Tyclimte translations were made from the Latin of the

vulgate.* There is not much reason to suppose that any of the
persons engaged in this work knew enough of Greek, still less
of Hebrew, to translate directly from those languages; and
consequently the new syntactical combinations they introduced
are all according to the Latin idiom, except in so far as the
dialect of the vulgate itself had been modified by the influence
of the Greek and Hebrew on which it was founded. But
texts
the translators often resorted to commentators for explanation,
and thus sometimes became acquainted with Hebraisms at
second hand; and the latest revision of the version, that of
Purvey, is by no means a slavish copy of the literal sense of the
vulgate, while it weeded out, without scruple, a large proportion
of the Latinisms which the first translators had introduced into
their renderings from an anxious desire for strict conformity to
a text recognized by the church as of equal authority with the
sacred original itself.

I cannot go into a history of these versions on the present

occasion, or examine the evidence on the question how far :

John Wycliffe was personally concerned in the execution of

them. It must suffice to say that in the only entirely trustworthy
edition we possess of any of them —
the liber vere aureus,

* By vulgate, I here mean the Latin translation adopted by the church and
ascribed to Jerome, so far as the manuscripts then in circulation could be identified
with it. But the copies of the Scriptures, as of secular works, were often widely
discrepant,even when professedly transcribed from the same original a cir-—
cumstance which explains how the symple creature,' mentioned in a passage
'

quoted at length in a subsequent part of this lecture, hadde myche trauaile

'

1
to make oo Latyn bible sumdel trewe.'
 ;

344 PROTESTANT LITERATURE Lect. VIII.

the golden book, of Old-English philology — that, namely,

published at Oxford in 1850, in four quarto volumes, under the
editorship of Forshall and Madden, the older text, from Genesis
to Baruch iii. 20, is believed to be the work of Hereford, an
English ecclesiastic;* the remainder of the Old Testament
and Apocrypha is supposed, and the whole of the New Testament
almost certainly known, to have been translated by WyclifTe
while the later text of the entire Bible is ascribed to Purvey.
The precise periods of the beginning and ending of a work,
which must have occupied many years in its execution, have
not been ascertained, but we have reason to think that the older
text was completed about 1380, the revision by Purvey some
eight or ten years later, or a little before 1390.
These translations must, in spite of the great cost of copying
them, have been very widely circulated ; for old manuscripts of
them are still very numerous, although we know that, for a cen-
tury and a half after the work was done, unwearied pains were
taken by the Komish ecclesiastical authorities to secure the de-
struction of every trace of this heretical version.
It is a noteworthy circumstance in the history of the literature
of Protestant countries, that, in every one of them, the creation
or revival of a national literature has commenced with, or at
leastbeen announced by, a translation of the Scriptures into
the vernacular, which has been remarkable both as an accurate
representative of the original text, and as an exhibition of the
best power of expression possessed by the language at that stage
of its Hence, in all those countries, these ver-
development.
sions have had a very great influence, not only upon religious
opinion and moral training, but upon literary effort in other

* Hereford's portion, the original manuscript of which is still extant, ends abruptly
with the second word of the chapter and verse above mentioned The jonge.'
:
'

I make the statement in the text in deference to the authority of the editors of
the Wycliffite translations but I think the internal evidence is against the sup-
;

position that the older version, from Genesis to Baruch, was the work of one man.
There are important grammatical differences between the historical books, down
to Paralipomena inclusive, and the remainder of that version. For instance, in
the former, the active participle generally ends in ynge ; in the latter, it usually
terminates in cnde.
Lect. VIII. PROTESTANT BIBLES 345

and indeed upon the whole philological history of the

fields,

nation. Thus the English translations of the Wycliffite school,

the Danish version of 1550, and the Grerman of Luther, are,
among the very best examples of the
linguistically considered,
most cultivated phase, and most perfected form, of their re-
spective languages at the times when they appeared. The
Grerman and the Danish Bibles have, indeed, exerted a much
more important literary influence than the Wycliffite. But
this is due, not more to superior excellence, than to the fact
that the former translations appeared after the invention
of printing, and were consequently easily and cheaply multi-
plied and distributed; and further that their circulation was
encouraged and promoted by both the temporal and the eccle-
siastical authorities of the countries where they were published.
The Wycliffite versions, on the other hand, existed only in
manuscript during a period of between four and five centuries,

and, for a hundred and fifty years, could be copied and circu-
lated only at great hazard to both transcriber and reader.
The excellence of translation, which was a necessary condition
of the literary influence of all these versions, is to be ascribed
to two principal causes. The first is the obvious one, that the
were in a state of great reli-
translators, as well as the public,
gious sensibility, and by the feeling of intellectual
inspired
exaltation and expansion, which always accompanies the eman-
cipation of the mind and conscience from the galling shackles
of spiritual despotism. The other is the less familiar fact, that
the three languages were then marked by a simplicity of voca-
bulary and of verbal combination, which more nearly agreed
with the phraseology of the original Scriptures than does the
artificial and complicated diction of later ages ; and of course
they exhibit a closer resemblance to the Hebrew and Greek
texts than would be practicable with a more modern style of
expression, and with a greater number of words more specific
in meaning and less capable of varied application.*

* See First Series, Lecture XXVIIL, p. 635.

 !

346 WYCLIFFITE TRANSLATIONS Lect. VIII.

I have already occupied so large a portion of this course in

treating of the earlier forms of the English language and lite-
rature, that I cannot go much into detail with regard to the
peculiarities of the diction of theWyclimte Scriptures but the ;

most important of them will appear from an examination of

Wycliffe's and Purvey's versions of a chapter from the Gospels,
and a comparison of them with other translations.
I select the eighth chapter of Matthew for this purpose, and
for the convenience of comparison I give 1. The Anglo-Saxon :

version, from the Grospel of Matthew printed at the University

Press at Cambridge, in 1858 ;
— 2. a word-for-word English trans-
lation of theAnglo-Saxon text —
3. WyclifTe's translation
; ;
—
4. Purvey's revision; —
and 5. the Latin of the Vulgate, from
Stier and Theile, 1854. I add, by way of further illustration, at
the end of this lecture, the Moeso-Grothic of Ulfilas, and the
original Greek. Tyndale's and Cheke's translations of the same
chapter will be found at the end of Lecture XL
THE EIGHTH CHAPTER OF MATTHEW.

1. pa
Soolice se Hcelend of pam munte nycSer-astah, fa
2. when the Saviour from the mount came-down, there
(For-)sooth
3. Forsothe when Jhesus hadde comen donn fro the hil,
4. But whanne Jhesus was come doun fro the hil,
5. Cum autem descendisset de monte,

1. fyligdon him mycle mamio.

2. folloAved him great multitudes.
3. many cumpanyes folewiden hym.
4. mych puple suede hym.
5. secutse sunt eum turbse multee.

II.

1. Dagenealamte an hreofla to him and hine to him

2. Then nighed a leper to him and him(-self ) to him

3. And loo a leprouse man cnmmynge

! worshipide
4. And loo a leprouse man
! cam and worschipide
5. Et ecce leprosus veniens adorabat
Lect. VIII. WYCLIFFITE TRANSLATIONS 347

1. ge-eaSmedde, and ]ms cwaefc ; Drill ten, gyf J>u

2. humbled, and thus spake ; Lord, if thou

3. hym, sayinge Lord, gif thou

4. hym, and seide Lord, if thou

5. eum, dicens ; Domine, si

1. wylt, ]>u miht me geclsensian.

2. wilt, thou canst me cleanse.
3. wolt, thou maist make me clene.
4. wolt, thou maist make me clene.
5. vis, potes me mundare.
III.

1. Da astrehte se Haelend hys hand, and hrepode hyne

2. Then outstretched the Saviour his hand, and touched him
3, And Jhesus holdynge forthe the hond, touchide hym
4. And Jhesus helde forth the hoond, and touchide hym,
5. Et extendens Jesus manum, tetigit eum
1. and pus cwee'S, Ic wylle ; beo geclasnsod. And hys
2. and thus spake, I will ; be cleansed. And his
3. sayinge, I wole ; be thou maad clene. And anoon
4. and seide, Y wole ; be thou maad cleene. And anoon
5. dicens, Volo mundare, Et confestim
1. hreofla waes hraedlice geclsensod.
2. leprosy was immediately cleansed,
3. the lepre of hym was clensid.
4. the lepre of him was clensid.
5. mundata est lepra ejus.

IV.

1. Da cwse(5 se Haelend to him, Warna ]?e pset ]>u

2. Then said the Saviour to him, See that thou
3. And Jhesus saith to hym See, say thou
4. And Jhesus seide to hym Se, seiethou
5. Et ait illi Jesus; Vide, nemini
1. hyt naanegum men ne secge ac gang, seteowde
2. it (to) no man tell; but go, show
3. to no man but go, shewe
4. to no man; but go, shewe
5. dixeris sed vade, ostende
348 WTCLIFFITE TRANSLATIONS
ONS Lect. VIII.

1. ]m ]?am sacerde, and bring hym ]?a lac pe Moyses

2. thee (to) the priest, and bring him the gift that Moses
3. thee to prestis, and offre that pfte that Moyses
4. thee to the prestis, and offre the Sift that Moyses
5. te sacerdoti, et offer munus quod
1. bebead, on hyra gecySnesse.
2. bad, for their information.
3. comaundide, into witnessing to hem.
4. comaundide, in witnessyng to hem.
5. prsecepit Moyses, in testimonium illis.

V.
1. Soolice J>a se Efelend ineode on Capharnaum,
2. (For-)sooth when the Saviour went-in to Capernaum,
3. Sothely when he hadde entride in to Capharnaum,
4. And whanne he hadde entrid in to Cafarnaum,
5. Cum autem introisset Capharnaum,
1. ]?a genealaehte hym an hundredes ealdor, hyne
2. there nighed (to) him a hundred's captain, him
3. centurio neijide to hym
4. the centurien neigede to him
5. accessit ad eum centurio

1. biddende,
2. praying,
3. preyinge hym,
4. and preiede him,
5. rogans eum,

VI.
1.And ]?us cweSende, Drihten, min cnapa lift on minum
2.And thus saying Lord, my knave lieth in my
3. And said, Lord, my child lyeth in the
4. And seide, Lord, my childe lijth in the
5. et dicens, Domine, puer meus jacet in

1. huse lama, and mid yfle ge]>read.

2. house lame, and with evil afEicted.
3. hous sike on the palsie, and] is yuel tourmentid.
4. hous sijk on the palesie, and is yuel turmentid.
6. domo paralyticus, et male torquetur.
 :

Lect. VTII. TYYCLIFFITE TRANSLATIONS 349

VII.
1. Da cwceft se IMend to him, Ic cume
and hine gehcele.
2. Then said the Saviour to Jiim, and him
I come heal.
3. And Jhesus saith to hym, I shal cume, and shal hele hym.

4. And Jhesus seide to him, Y schal come, and schal heele him.
5. Et ait illi Jesus, Ego veniam, et curabo eum.

VIII.
1. Daandswarode se hundredes ealdor and J>us cwaeb*,
2. Then answered the hundred's captain and thus said,
3. And centurio answerynge saith to hym,
4. And the centurien answeride, and seide to hym,
5. Et respondens centurio ait,

1. Drihten, ne eom ic wyrSe pset ]>u ingange under

2. Lord, not am I worthy that thou in-go under
3. Lord, I am not worthi, that thou entre vndir
4. Lord, Y am not worthi, that thou entre vndur
5. Domine, non sum clignus, ut intres sub
1. mine ]>ecene ; ac cwa?5 J>in an word, and min cnapa
2. my roof; but speak thy one word, and my knave
3. my roof; but oonly say bi word, and my child
4. my roof; but oonli seie thou bi word, and my childe
5. tectum meum; sed tantum die verbo, et

1. bi(5 gehasled.
2. will-be healed.
3. shall be helid.
4. shal be heelid.
5. sanabitur puer meus.

IX.
1. Soolice ic eom man under anwealde gesett, and ic
2. (For-)sooth am (a) man under authority set,
I and I
3. For whi and I am a man ordeynd vnder power,
4. For whi Y am a man ordeyned vndur power,
5. Nam et ego homo sum sub potestate consti tutus,

1. haebbe J>egnas under me; and ic cwoeSe to jvysum, Gang,

2. have soldiers me under ; and I say to this, Go,
3. hauynge vndir me knigtis ; and I say to this, Go,
4. and haue knyjtis vndir me ; and Y seie to this, Go,
5. habens sub me milites ; et dico huic Vade,
 ; : : :: ;

350 WTCLIFFITE TRANSLATIONS Lect. vii r.

1.and he gse(5 and ic cweoe to

; oprum, Cum, and lie cym$ ;

2.and lie goetli; and I say to (an-)other, Come, and he cometh

8. and he goth and to an other, Come thou, and he cometh
;

4. and he goith; and to another, Come, and he cometh

5. et vadit et alii, Veni, et venit

1. to minimi peowe, Wyrc Jus, and he -wyrcS.

2. to my servant, Do this, and he doeth.
3. and to my seruaunt, Do thou this thing, and he doth.
4. and to my seruaunt, Do this and he doith it.
5. et servo meo, Fac hoc, et facit.

1. "Witodlice ]>is gehyrde,

]>a se pa wundrode he,
Hselend
2. Now when
Saviour this heard, then wondered he,
the
3. Sothely Jhesus, heerynge these thingis, wondride,
4. And Jhesus herde these thingis, and wondride,
5. Audiens autem Jesus miratus est,

1.and cwseo* to )>am ]>e him fyligdon SoS ic secge .eow ne

2.and said to them that him followed Sooth I say(to) you not
8. and saide to men suynge hym : Trewly I saye to gou
4. and seide to men that sueden him Treuli I seie to 5011
5. et sequentibus se dixit Amen dico vobis

1. gemette ic swa mycelne geleafan on Israhel.

2. met I so much belief in Israel,
3. I fond nat so grete feith in Yrael.
4. Y foond not so greete feith in Israel,
5. non inveni tantani fidem in Israel.

XI.
1. To soSum ic secge eow, Dcet manige cmnao' fram
2.In sooth I say (to) you, That many (shall) come from
3. Sothely Y say to 5011, that manj^e shulen come fro

4. And Y seie to 5011, that many schulen come fro

5. Dico autem vobis, quod multi ab Oriente et

1. east-daele and west-docle, and wuniao" mid Abrahame

2. (the) east-deal and (the) west-deal, and dwell with Abraham
3. the est and west, and shulen rest Avith Abraham
4. the eest and the west, and schulen reste with Abraham
5. Occidente venient et recumbent cum Abraham
 ; ;;

Lect. VIIL WTCLIFFITE TRANSLATIONS 351

1. and Isaaceand Jacobe, on heofena rice

2. and Isaac and Jacob in heavens' realm ;

3. and Ysaac and Jacob in the kyngdam of heuenes;

4. and Ysaac and Jacob in the kyngdom of heuenes
5. et Isaac et Jacob in regno ccelorum

XII.

1. Witodlice ]>ises rices beam beo'5 aworpene on ]>a yte-

2. Verily this realm's children (shall) be out-cast in (to) the outer-
3. forsothe the sonys of the rewme shulen be cast out into vttre-
4. but the sones of the rewme schulen be cast out in to vtmer
5. filii autem regni ejicientur in tenebras

1. mestan pystro ]>&r biS wop,

: and to]?a gristbitung.

2. most darkness there (shall) be weeping, and (of) teeth grinding.

:

3. mest derknessis; there shal be weepynge, and beetynge togidre of teeth.

4. derknessis there schal be wepyng, and grynting of teeth.
;

5. exteriores ibi erit

; fletus et stridor dentium.

XIII.

1. And se Haslend cwarS to j'am hundrydes ealdre,

2. And the Saviour said to the hundred's elder,

3. And Jhesus saide to centurio,

4. And Jhesus seide to the centurioun,
5. Et dixit Jesus centurioni,

1. Ga ; and gewurSe ]>e swa swa ]ui gelyfdest. And se

2. Go; and be (it) (to) thee so as thou believedst. And the
3. Go ; and as thou hast bileeued be it don to thee. And the
4. Go ; and as thou hast bileuyd be it doon to thee. And the
5. Vade ; et sicut credidisti flat tibi. Et
1. cnapa wees gehceled on paere tide.
2. knave was healed in that hour.
3. child was helid fro that houre.
4. child was heelid fro that hour.
5. sanatus est puer in ilia hora.

XIV.
1. Da se com on Haslend
Petres huse,
2. When the came in(to) Peter's
Saviour house,
3. And when Jhesus hadde comen in to the hous of Symond Petre,
4. And whanne Jhesus was comun in to the hous of Symount Petre,
5. Et cum venisset Jesus in domum Petri,
 : : : : : ::

)2 WYCLIFFITE TRANSLATIONS Lect. VIII,

1. ]?a geseali he hys swegre licgende, and

2. then saw he his mother-in-law lying, and
3. he say his wyues moder liggynge, and
4. he say his wyues modir liggynge, and
5. vidit socrum ejus jacentem et
1. hriSgende.
2. feverish.

3. shakun with feueris.

4. shakun with feueris.

5. febricitantem.

XV.
1.And he asthran hyre hand, and se fefor hig fortlet
2.And he touched her hand, and the fever her left

3. And he touchide hir hond, and the feuer lefte hir

4. And he touchide hir hooncl, and the feuer lefte hir
5. Et tetigit manum ejus, et dimisit earn febris

1. fSa
'

aras heo, and ]?enode him.

2. then arose she, and served them.
3. and she roose, and seruyde hem.
4. and she rocs, and seruede hem.
5. et surrexit, et ministrabat eis.

XVI.
1. SoSlice
]?a hyt agfen wass, hig brohton him
2. when it evening was,
Soothly they brought (to) him
3. Sothely whan the euenyng was maad, thei brou^te to hym
4. And whanne it was euen, thei brougten to hym
5. Vespere autem facto, obtulerunt ei

1. manege deofol-seoce and he ut-adrasde ]?a

2. many devil- sick and he out-drave the

3. many hauynge deuelys and he castide out
4. manye that hadden deuelis : and he castide out
5. multos da3monia habentes et ejiciebat

1. unckenan gastas mid hys worde, and he ealle

2. unclean ghosts with his word, and he all

3. spiritis by word, and helide alle

4. spiritis bi word, and heelide alle
5. spiritus verbo, et omnes
 ; ; ;

Lect. VIII. WYCLIFFITE TR 353

1. gehcelde |>a yfel-ha?bbendan

2. healed the evil-having
3. hauvnge yuel;
4. thatweren yuel at ese ;

5. male habentes curavit

XVII.
1. Da?t wa?re gefylled a?t gecweden is ]mrh Esaiam
]

2. That might-be fulfilled what spoken is through Esaias

8. that it shulcle be fulfillid, that thing that was said by Ysaie,
4. that it were fulfillid, that was seid by Ysaie,
5. ut adimpleretur, quod dictum est per Isaiam

1. pone witegan, 8us cweSende, He onfeng ure tmtram-

2. the prophet, thus saying, He took our infirm-
3. the prophete, , sayinge, He toke oure infirmy-
<%, the profete, seiynge, He took oure infirmy-
5. prophetam, dicentem, Ipse infirmitates nostras

1. nessa, and he abcer ure adla.

2. ities, and he bare our ails.

3. tees, and bere oure sykenessis.

4. tees, and bar oure siknessis.
5. accepit, et segrotationes nostras portavit.

XVIII.
1. Da geseah se Haelend mycle menigeo ymbutan
2. When saw the Saviour much people about
3. Sothely Jhesus 4 seeynge many cumpanyes about
4. And Jhesus say myche puple aboute
5. Videns autem Jesus turbas multas circum
1. hyne, pa het he hig faran ofer pone muSan.
2. him, then bade he them (to) fare over the water.
3. hym, bad his disciplis go oner the water.
4. him, and bade hise disciplis go ouer the watir.
5. se, jussit ire trans fretum.

XIX.
1. Da him
genealamte an bocere, and cwaeS,
2. Then nighed (to) him a scribe, and said,
3. And oo scribe, or a man of lawe, commynge to, saide to hym,
4. And a scribe nei^ede, and seide to hym,
5. Et accedens unus scriba ait illi,

AA
354 WYCLIFFITE TRANSLATIONS Lect. VIII.

1. Lareow, fylige J>e swa hwseder swa pu

2. Teacher, follow thee whither-so-ever thou
3. Maistre, shal sue thee whidir euer thou
4. Maistir, shal sue thee whidir euer thou
5. Magister, sequar te quocumque
1. fserst.

2. far est.

3. shalt go.
4. schalt go.

XX.
1. Da cwseS se Hselend to him, Foxas habbaS
2. Then said the Saviour to him, Foxes have
8. And Jhesus said to '
hym, Foxis han
4. And Jhesus seide to hym, Foxis han
5. Et dicit ei Jesus, Vulpes foveas

1. holu, and heofenan fuglas nest ; soolice mannes sunu

2. holes, and heavens' fowls nests ; soothly man's son
3. dichis, or 5orMw's, and briddis of the eir7;a?2nestis; but mannes sone
4. dennes andbriddisof heuenehan nestis; but mannus sone
5. habent, et volucres cceli nidos iiliusautemhominis ;

1. nsefS hweer he hys heafod ahylde.

2. has-not where he his head may-lay.
8. hath nat wher he reste his heued.
4. hath not where he schal reste his heed,
5. non habet ubi caput reclinet.

XXI.
1. Da cwo3(5 to him o|?er of hys leorning-cnihtum,
2. Then said to him (an)other of his disciples,

3. Sotheli an other of his disciplis saide to hym,

4. Anothir of his disciplis seide to him,
5. Alius autem de discipulis ejus ait illi,

1. Drihten, me
alyfe merest
arrest to farenne and bebyrigean
2. Lord, me letfirst fare and bury
3. Lord, suffre me go first and birye

4. Lord, suffre me to go first and birie

5. Domine, permitte me primum ire et sepelire

Lect. VIII. WrCLIFFITE TRANSLATIONS 355

minne feeder.

my father.
my fadir.

my fader,
patrem meum.
XXII.
1. Da cwaetS se Hselend to Fyl iff me,
him, and last

2. Then said the Saviour to Follow me

him, and let

3. Forsothe Jhesus saide to hym, Sue thou me and late

4. But Jhesus seide to hym, Sue thou me, and lete

5. Jesus autem ait illi, Sequere me et dimitte

1. deade bebyrigan hyra deadan.

2. (the) dead bury their dead,

3, dede men birye her dead men.

4. deed men birie her deede men.
5. mortuos sepelire mortuos suos.

XXIII.
1. And he astah on scyp and hys leorning-cnyhtas
2. And he entered in(to) (a) ship and his disciples

3. And Jhesu steyinge vp in to a litel ship, his disciplis

4. And whanne he was goon vp in to a litil schip, his disciplis

5. Et ascendente eo in naviculam, secuti sunt eum

1. hym fyligdon.
2. him followed.
3. sueden him.
4. sueden hym.
5. discipuli ejus.

xxrv.
1. Da wearS mycei styrung geworden on J>£ere sse, swa i?

2. Then was (a) great stir in the sea, so that

3. And loo ! a grete steryng was made in the see, so that
4. And loo ! a greet stiring was maad in the see, so that
5. Et ecce ! motus magnus factus est in mari, ita ut

1 . "p scyp wearo" ofergoten mid ySum witodlice he slep.

2. the ship was over-poured with waves; verily he slept.

3. the litil ship was hilid with wawis; but he slepte.

4. the schip was hilid with wawes but he slepte.

5. navicula operiretur nuctibus; ipse vero dormiebat.

AA 2
 : :

356 WYCLIFFITE TRANSLATIONS Lect. VIII,

XXV.
1. And hig genealaehton, and hy awehton hyne, ]ms
2. And they nighed, and they awaked him, thus
3. And his disciplis camen nig to hym, and raysiden hym,
4. And hise disciplis camen to hym, and reysiden hym,
5. Et accesserunt ad eum discipuli ejus, et suscitaverunt eum,
1. CAveSende, Drihten, hasle us: we mot on forwurSan.
2. saying, Lord, save us : we must perish.
3. sayinge, Lord, saue vs : we perishen.
4. and seiden, Lord, saue vs : we perischen.
5. dicentes, Domine, salva nos: perimus.

XXVI.
1. Da cwas(5 he to him, To hwi syntge forhte, ge lytles
2. Then said he to them, For why are ye affrighted ye(of)little
3. And Jhesus seith to hem, What ben gee of litil feith agast ?

4. And Jhesus seide to hem, What ben ge of litil feith agaste ?

5. Et dicit eis Jesus, Quid timidi estis, modicse fidei?
1. geleafan. Da aras he and bebead fam winde and ]?aere

2. faith? Then arose he and bade

the wind and the
3. Thanne he rysynge comaundicle to the wyndis and the
4. Thanne he roos and comaundide to the wyndis and the
5. Tunc surgens imperavit ventis et

1. and f>8er wearS geworden

see, my eel smyltness.
'2. sea,and there was (a) great calm.
3. see, and a grete pesiblenesse is maad.
4. see, and a greet pesibilnesse was maad.
5. mari, et facta est tranquillitas magna.

XXVII.
1. Gewisslice pa men wundrodun, and Jms cwa^don: Hwaet
2. Verily then men wondered, and thus spake: What
3. Forsothe men wondreden, sayinge What
4. And men wondriden, and seiden: What
5. Porro homines mirati sunt, dicentes Qualis

1. is J?es f windas and see him hyrsumiaS.

2. is this that winds and sea him obey?
3. manereman is lie this, for the wyndis and the see obeishen to hym.
4. maner man is he this, for the wyndis and the see obeischen to him.
5. est hie, quia venti et mare obediunt ei?
Lect. VIII. WYCLIFFITB TRANSLATIONS 357

XXVIII.
1. Da se Hrclend com oferponemuSan on Geraseniscra
2. When the Saviour came over the water in(to) (the) Gergesenes
3. And whan Jhesus hadde comen ouer the water in to the cuntre
4. And whanne Jhesus was comun ouer the watir in to the cuntre
2. Et cum venisset trans fretum in regionem

1. rice, ]>a urnon twegen ]>ehimhcefdon togenes

2. country there ran towards twain thathim had
3. of men of Genazereth twey men hauynge deuelis rmmen
4. of men of Gerasa twey men metten hym that hadden
5. Gerasenorum, occurrerunt ei duo habentes

1. deofol-seocnesse, of byrgenum utgangende, ]?a wseron

2. devil-sickness, from (the) tombs out-going, that were
3. to hym, goynge out fro birielis,
4. deuelis, and camen out of graues,
5.
'
damionia, de monumentis exeuntes,

1. swi<5e reoe, swa f nan man ne mihte faran

2. very fierce, so that no man might fare
3. ful feerse, or wickid, so that no man mijte passe
4. fulwoode, so that noo man lnyjte go
5. sa2vi minis, ita ut posset transire

1. ]mrh ' ]>one weg.

2. through that way.
3. by that wey.
4. bi that weie.
per viam illam.

XXIX.
1.And hig hrymdon, and cwaadon, La Haslend Godes
2. And they cried, and said, O Saviour God's
3. And loo! thei crieden, sayinge, What to vs and
4. And lo ! thei crieden, and seiden, What to vs and
5. Et ecce ! clamaverunt dicentes, Quid nobis et

1. sunu, hwast ys ]?e and us gemame? come ]?u hider

2. son, what is(to)theeand us common? comestthou hither
3. to thee, Jhesu the sone of God? hast thou comen
4. to thee, Jhesu the sone of God? art thou comun
5. tibi, Jesu, fili Dei ? Venisti hue
 !

358 WYCLIFFITE TRANSLATIONS Lect. VIII.

1. asr tide us to ]?reagenne?

2. ere (the) time us to torment?
3. hidir before the tyme for to tourmente vs ?
4. hidir bifore the tyme to turmente vs ?
5. ante tempus torquere nos?

XXX.
1. Deev wses soblice unfeorr an swyna heord
2. There was verily unfar an (of) swine herd
3. Sothely a floe, or drone, of many hoggis lesewynge
4. And not fer fro hem was a flocke of many swyne
5. Erat autem nc longe ab illis grex multorum porcorum
1. manegra manna, heswiende.
2. (of) many men, feeding,
3. was nat fer from hem.
4. lesewynge.
5. pascens.
XXXI.
1. Da deofla soolice hyne basdon, J>us cweo'ende, Gyf
2. The devils verily him begged, thus saying, If
3. But the deuelis preyeden him, seymge,
4. And the deuelis preyed en hym, and seiden, If
5. Dsemones autem roffabant eum, dicentes, Si

1. J>u us ut-adrifst, asende us on )?as swine heorde.

2. thou us out-drivest, send us in(to) this (of) swine herd.
3. thou castist out vs hennes, sende vs in to the droue of hoggis.
4. thou castist out vs fro hennes, sende vs in to the droue of swyne.
5. ejicis nos hinc, mittenosin gregem porcorum.

XXXII.
1. Da cwa3(5 he to him, FaraS. And hig fa
2. Then said he to them, Fare. And they then
3. And he saith to hem, Go gee. And thei goynge
4. And he seide to hem, Go ge. And thei jeden
5. Et ait illis, Ite. At illi exeuntes

1. utgangende ferdon on J»a swin ;

and pserrihte
2. out-going fared in(to) the swine ;
and forthwith
3. out wente in to the hoggis ;
and loo! in a
4. out and wenten in to the swyne ;
and loo ! in a
5. abierunt in porcos ;
et ecce
 ;

Lect. VIII. WYCLIFFITE TRANSLATIONS 359

1. ferde eall seo heord myclum onraese niwel on pa sal,

2. fared al 1 the herd (with) a great rush down in(to) the sea,
3. greet hire al the droue wente heedlynge in to the see,

4. greet bire al the drone wente heedlyng in to the see,

5. impetu abiit totus grex per praaceps in mare,

1.and hig war don deade on pam wsetere.

2. and they were dead in the water,
3. and thei ben dead in watris.
4. and thei weren deed in the watris.
5. et rnortui sunt aquis.

XXXIII.
1. Da hyrdas and comun
witodlice on parlugon, ,

2. The herdsmen and came

verily in(to) the fled,

3. Forsothe the hirdes nedden awey, and cummynge in to the

4. And the hirdis fledden awey, and camen in to the
5. Pastores autem fugerunt, et venientes in

1. ceastre, and cyddon ealle pas ping; and be fam

2. city, and (made) known all these things; and about them
3. citee, tolden alle these thingis ; and of hem
4. citee and telden alle these thingis; and of hem
5. civitatem nuntiaverunt omnia et de iis

1. pe pa deoful-seocnyssa hsefdon.
2. that the devil-sickness had.
3. that hadden the fendis.

4. that hadden the feendis.

5. qui dasmonia habuerant.

XXXIV.
1. Da eode eall seo ceaster-waru togeanes pam Haelende,
2. Then went all the citizens towards the Saviour,
3. And loo ! al the citee wente ajeinis Jhesu,
4. And lo ! al the citee wente out ajens Jhesu,
5. Et ecce ! tota ci vitas exiit obviam Jesu,

1.and pa pa hig hyne gesawun, <5a baedon hig hyne

2.and when that they him saw, then bade they him
8, metynge hym and hym seen, ; thei preiden hym,
4. and whanne thei hadden seyn hym, thei preieden
5. et viso eo rosabant
360 Hereford's translation Lect. viii.

1. "phe ferde fram heora gemagrum.

2. that he (would) fare from their borders.
3„ that he shulde pass fro her coostis.
4:. that he wolde passe fro her coostis.
5. ut transiret a finibus eorum.

The earlier Wycliffite text of the first part of the Old Testa-
ment, or that ascribed to Hereford, is remarkable both for the
resuscitation of obsolete Anglo-Saxon forms, and for the intro-
duction of Latinisms resulting from an attempt at a literal close-

ness of rendering.*
Both these circumstances give some countenance to the sup-
work is only a recension of an English
position, that Hereford's
prose translation belonging to a considerably earlier philological
period but there is no evidence whatever of the existence of
;

any such, and it is not impossible that Hereford's vocabulary

and accidence were influenced by a familiarity with the Anglo-
Saxon version of the New Testament, and of parts of the Old.
Among the Saxonisms, I may mention the use of the gerun-
dial instead of the passive. The Saxon gerundial ended in
enne, and was used with the prefix to, like our modern infinitive.
Thus, he is to lufigenne signified, both, he is about to love, and,
more frequently, he is to be loved. This form Hereford employs,
substituting the termination inge for enne, as, at that is to wer-
chynge, meaning, all that is to be ivrought ; the hid is to seeth-
inge, the kid is to be sodden, or boiled.
He omits the possessive sign in s, saying dowgtir husbonde,
unldl doivjfir, husbonde fadir, for daughter's husband, uncle's
daughter, husband's father.f
He uses the verb be as a future, as, they ben to seyn, for, they
will say.

* In Lecture V., I accompanied the 102nd Psalm, from the Surtees Psalter, with
Hereford's translation. I add to this lecture, Longer Notes and Illustrations, II.,
Purvey' s translation of the same psalm, for the sake of comparison.
t Examples of this omission of the modern possessive sign are found in -writers
of the early part of the sixteenth century.
Lect. VIII. WYCLIFFE AND PURVEY 361

He employs oure and youre as genitives plural, not as pos-

sessive pronouns, as, oure dreed, the dread of us youre feer, ;

the fear of you.

He uses the Anglo-Saxon feminine ending in ster, as daun-
ster, a female dancer, sleester or slay ster, a murderess, syngster,
a songstress.
But the most remarkable peculiarities of his style are the
Latinisms.
Thus he renders the ablative absolute literally, as, for ex-
ample, the viso somnio of the vulgate, not, as at present,
e
a vision having been seen,' or ( having seen a vision,' but
directly, a seen siveven* The Latin impersonal videbatur, it
seemed, he renders it ivas seen, and he constantly uses the
accusative before the infinitive. Thus, instead of { I dreamed
that iv e were binding sheaves? he has ' I dreamed us to binden
sheaves '
but this, though most probably a mere transference of
a Latin form, is possibly a native idiom, for it is of frequent
occurrence in Icelandic.
In Wycliffe's and Purvey's texts, these un-English expres-
sions disappear, and are superseded by more modern etymolo-
gical and syntactical forms. The feminine ending ster, for
example, is superseded by the French esse; and this ending is

employed much more freely than at present, and is applied

indiscriminately to Saxon and Romance roots. Thus we have
daunseresse, disciplesse, dwelleresse, devouresse, servauntesse,
sleeresse, thrallesse, waileresse, and the like.

The syntax is by no means free

of these latter translators
from either Latin or French constructions, but it is, neverthe-
less, much more idiomatic than that of Hereford. The gram-
matical change, by which the active or present participle in
-ende assumed the form of the verbal noun in -ing, and which
I have discussed in my First Series, Lecture XXIX., became
* This Latinism, it will have been seen, occurs also in Wycliffe, though rarely.
Thus, in the 34th verse of the eighth chapter of Matthew, already given, the e t
viso eo of the vulgate is rendered and hym seen, without any regimen, the phrase
being taken absolutely, as in Latin.
362 WYCLIFFE AND PUKYEY Lect. VIII.

established while these translations were in process of execution.

The distinction between the participle and the noun was kept
up with considerable regularity until towards the end of the
fourteenth century, when it was lost sight of; the participial
termination in -and or -end became obsolete, and both participle
and verbal noun took the common ending -ing. The former
translator of the Apocrypha, the Psalms, Proverbs, and the
Prophets, used the two forms, and, with few exceptions, accu-
rately discriminated between them ; but when Wycliffe took up
the continuation of Hereford's work, the participle in -end had
gone so much out of use that he dropped it altogether, and
employed the termination -ing only, for both participle and
noun. Hence, in Baruch iii. 18, which belongs to Hereford,
we find, ( there is noon ende of the 'purchasing of hem,' pur-
chasing being a verbal noun; but as, in his translation, the
true participle almost always ends in -end or -ende, we have,
Baruch iii. 11, i Thou art set with men goende down to helle.'
On the other hand, in verse 25 of the same chapter, in
Wycliffe's continuation, 'greet and not hauynge eende occurs, '

though hauynge is a true participle and this form is always

;

used afterwards.
Purvey's text of the NewTestament is evidently founded on
Wycliffe's translation, as his Old Testament probably is on that
of Hereford. Purvey had thought much on the general prin-
ciples of translation, and especially on the rules to be adopted
in rendering Latin into a language of so diverse a grammatical
structure as English. The prologue to his recension, which fills

sixty large quarto pages in Madden and Forshall's edition of

the Wycliffite versions, is extremely interesting. I insert; from
the concluding part of it, a couple of extracts which will give
the reader some idea both of his style and of his theory of
translation.

For these resons and othere, with comuiie charite to saue alle
men in oure rewme, whiche God wole haue sanid, a symple creature
hath translatid the bible out of Latyn into English. First, this symple
Lect. VIII. PURVEY ON TRANSLATION 363

creature hadde myche trauaile, with diuerse felawis and helperis, to

gedere manie elde biblis, and othere doctouris, and conrnne glosis, and
to make oo Latyn bible sumdel trewe and thanne to studie it of the
;

newe, the text with the glose, and othere doctouris, as he mijte gete,
and speciali Lire on the elde testament, that helpide ful myche in this
werk the thridde tyme to counseile with elde gramariens, and elde
;

dyuynis, of harde wordis, and harde sentencis, hou tho mijten best be
vndurstonden and translatid the iiij. tyme to translate as cleerli as he
;

coude to the sentence, and to haue manie gode felawis and kunnynge at
the correcting of the translacioun. First it is to knowe, that the best
translating is out of Latyn into English, to translate aftir the sentence,
and not oneli aftir the wordis, so that the sentence be as opin, either
openere, in English as in Latyn, and go not fer fro the lettre and if ;

the lettre mai not be suid in the translating, let the sentence euere be
hool and open, for the wordis owen to seme to the entent and sentence,
and ellis the wordis ben superflu either false. In translating into
English, manie resolucions nioun make the sentence open, as an ablatif
case absolute may be resoluid into these thre wordis with couenable
verbe, the while, for, if, as gramariens seyn as thus, the maistir ;

redincje, I stonde, mai be resoluid thus, while the maistir redith, I

stonde, either if the maistir redith, etc. either for the maistir, etc. ; and
sumtyme it wolde acorde wel with the sentence to be resoluid into
li'hanne, either into aftirward, thus, whanne the maistir red, I stood,
either aftir the maistir red, I stood; and sumtyme mai wel be
it

resoluid into a verbe of the same tens, as othere ben in the same
resoun, and into this word et, that and in English, as
is, thus, arescen-
tibus hominibus prce timore, that is, and men shulen wexe drie for drede.
Also a participle of a present tens, either preterit, of actif vois, eithir
may be resoluid into a verbe of the same tens, and a coniunc-
passif,

cioun copulatif, as thus, dicens, that is, seiynge,mai be resoluid thus,

and seith eithir that seith ; and this wole, in manie placis, make the
sentence open, where to Englisshe it aftir the word, wolde be derk and
douteful. Also a relatif, which mai be resoluid into his antecedent
with a coniunccioun copulatif, as thus, ivliich renneth, and he renneth.
Also whanne oo word is oonis set in a reesoun, it mai be set forth as
ofte as it is vndurstonden, either as ofte as reesoun and nede axen and ;

this word autem, either vero, mai stonde for forsothe, either for but, and
thus I vse comounli ; and sumtyme it mai stonde for and, as elde
gramariens seyn. Also whanne rrjtful construccioun is lettid bi rela-
cion, I resolue it openli, thus, where this reesoun, Dominum formida-
bunt adversarij ejus, shulde be Englisshid thus bi the lettre, the Lord
364 PURVEY ON TRANSLATION Lect. VIII.

hise aduersaries sliulen drede, I Englishe it thus bi resolucioun, the

aduersaries of the Lord shiden drede him ; and so of othere resons that
ben like.

Sithen at the bigynnyng of feith so manie men translatiden into

Latyn, and to greet profyt of Latyn men, lat oo symple creature of God
translate into English, for profyt of English men ; for if worldli clerkis
loken wel here croniclis and bokis, thei shulden fynde, that Bede trans-
latide the bible, and expounide myche in Saxon, that was English,
either comoun langage of this lond, in his tyme and not oneli Bede,
;

but also king Alured, that fbundide Oxenford, translatide in hise laste
daies the bigynning of the Sauter into Saxon, and wolde more if he
hadde lyued lengere. Also Frenshe men, Beemers and Britons han the
bible, and othere bokis of deuocioun and of exposicioun, translatid in
here modir langage; win shulden not English men haue the same in
here modir langage, I can not wite, no but for falsnesse and neegligence
of clerkis, either for oure puple is notworthi to haue so greet grace and
^ifte of God, in peyne of here olcle synnes. God for his merci amende
these euele causis, and make oure puple to haue, and kunne, and kepe
truli holi writ, to lijf and cleth! But in translating of wordis equiuok,
that is, that hath manie significacions vndur oo lettre, mai lijtli be
pereil, for Austyn seith in the ij book of Cristene Teching, that if
.

equiuok wordis be not translatid into the sense, either vndurstonding,

of the autour, it is errour ; as in that place of the Salme, the feet of
hem hen swifte to shede out blood, the Greek word is equiuok to sharp
and swift,and he that translatide sharpe feet, erride, and a book that
hath sharpe feet, is fals, and mut be amendid as that sentence
;

vnhjnde %onge trees shiden not ^eue deep rootis, owith to be thus,
plauntincjis of anoutrie shulen not yiue depe rootis. Austyn seith this
there. Therfore a translatour hath greet nede to studie wel the sentence,
both bifore and aftir, and loke that suche equiuok wordis acorde with
the sentence, and he hath nede to lyue a clene lif, and be ful deuout in
preiers, and haue not his wit ocupied about worldli thingis, that the
Holi Spiryt, autour of wisdom, and kunnyng, and truthe, dresse him
in his werk, and suffre him not for to erre. Also this word ex signifieth
sumtyme of, and sumtyme it signifieth hi, as Jerom seith; and this
word enim comynli forsothe, and, as Jerom seith, it signifieth
signifieth
cause thus, forwhi ; and thisword secundum is taken for aftir, as manie
men seyn, and comynli, but it signifieth wel hi, eithir vp, thus hi ^oure
word, either vp yyure word. Manie such aduerbis, coniuncciouns, and
preposiciouns ben set ofte oon for a nother, and at fre chois of autouris
 !

LtCT. VIII. THE SACRED DIALECT 365

sumtyme and now tho shulen be taken as it acordith best to the sen-
;

tence. Bi this maner, with good lyuyng and greet trauel, men moun
come to trewe and cleer translating, and trewe vndurstonding of holi
writ, seme it neuere so hard at the bigynning. God graunte to us alle
grace to kunne wel, and kepe wel holi writ, and suffre ioiefulli sum
peyne for it at the laste ! Amen.
One of the most important effects produced by the Wycliffite
versions on the English language is, as I have intimated, the
establishment of what is called the sacred or religious dialect,
which was first fixed in those versions, and has, with little

variation, continued to be the language of devotion and of

scriptural translation to the present day.
This most obvious in the verbal forms. Chaucer, and
is

other secular writers contemporary with Wycliffe, very generally

use the Anglo-Saxon th as the ending of the third person
singular present indicative of the verb, and frequently, though
not constantly, in all the persons of the plural and in the im-
perative, and they also very often employ the plural pronoun
you, in addressing a single person. Wycliffe constantly, I
believe, confines the th to the singular verb, and never employs
it for the imperative ; he makes the plural ending in en •
and
never employs ye or you in the singular number.* All this is

modern usage, except that en as the plural sign of the verb has
been dropped. In short, the conjugation of Wycliffe's verbs
corresponds in all points very nearly to our own, with this dif-
ference, that in modern times the strong verbs are constantly
inclining more and more to the weak conjugation.]*
It is curious, that the language of the original works ascribed
to Wycliffe is much less uniform and systematic than that of

* Hereford's general use of the verb and pronoun is the same as Wycliffe's, hut
he makes the imperative plural in th. Thus, in Baruch ii. 21 the last passage —
of Hereford's translation, in which the imperative plural occurs we find Thus — :

seith the Lord, Bowith cloun youre shuldris, where Purvey has Bowe ye youre :

schuldur. In "Wycliffe's continuation, the first imp. pi. is in Baruch iv. 9, and the
th is dropped zee nij coostis of Syon, heerc
:

f See Illustration III., at the end of this lecture.

366 wtcliffe's commentary Lect. vur.

his translation of the New Testament, the grammar of which,

instead of varying and fluctuating according to the confused
usage of most authors of that time, appears to conform to a
standard deliberately adopted and very regularly followed.
There is a good deal of difficulty in identifying any extant
manuscript as, certainly, the work of Wycliffe, hut there are
several which are ascribed to him with every appearance of
probability. The following extracts are taken from the pro-
logue to Luke, in a commentary upon the Gospels, believed to
have been composed by him. I print them from the preface
to Madden and Forshall's edition of the e
Wycliffite Versions,'
p. ix.

Herfore [a pore] caityf, lettid fro prechyng for a tyme for causes
knowun of God, writith the gospel of Luk in Englysh, with a short
exposicioun of olde and holy doctouris, to the pore men of his nacioun
whiche kunnen litil Latyn ether noon, and ben pore of wit and of
worldli catel, and netheles riche of good will to please God. Firste
this pore caitif settith a ful sentence of the text togidre, that it may
wel be knowun fro the exposicioun ; aftirward he settith a sentence of
a doctour declarynge the text and in the ende of the sentence he
;

settith the doctouris name, that men mowen knowe

verili hou fer his
sentence goith. Oneli the text of holi writ, and sentence of olde doc-
touris and appreuyd, ben set in this exposicioun.
If eny lernyd man se this exposicioun and suppose eny errour
therynne, for Goddis loue loke he wel his originals, and sette ynne the
treue sentence of these doctouris for men desiren no thing in this ex-
;

posicioun, no but profitable treuthe for cristen soulis. Y sette shortly

and pleynly, as Y may and kan, the sentence of these doctouris, and
not barely her wordis, in as myche as thei declaren the text, and seyen
treuthe groundid on holi Scripture ether quyk resoun, and accordynge
with the blessid lijf of Crist and his apostlis; desirynge that no man
triste more than thus to her sentence, nether to eny mannys seying, in
what euer staat he be in erthe. Thus with Goddis grace pore cristen
men mown sumdel knowe the text of the Gospel, with the comyn
sentence of olde holy doctouris, and therynne knowe the meke and
pore and charitable lyuyng of Crist and his apostlis, to sue hem in
vertues and blys; and also knowe the proude and coueitouse and
veniable lyuyng of Antecrist and his fautouris, to fie hem and her
Lect. viii. wycliffe's apology 367

cursid dedis, and peynes of helle. For no doute as oure Lord Jhesu
Crist and his apostlis Antecrist and his cursid
profesien pleynli,
disciplis shulen come, and disseyue many men by ypocrisie and
tyranntrie and the beste armeer of cristen men ajens this cursid
;

cheuenteyn with his oost, is the text of holy writ, and namely the
gospel, and veri and opyn ensaumple of Cristis lijf and his apostlis,
and good lyuyng of men for thanne thei shulen knowe wel Antecrist
;

and his meynee bi her opyn dedis contrarie to Cristis tech} ng and T

lyuyng. Crist Jhesu, for thyn endeles power, mercy and charitie,
make till blessid lawe knowun and kept of thi puple, and make knowun
the ypocrisie and tirauntrie and cursidnesse of Antecrist and his
meynee, that thi puple be not disseyued bi hem. Amen, gode Lord
Jhesu.

I add chapters v. and xvi. from the ' Apology for the Lol-
lards,' ascribed, upon probable grounds, to Wycliffe, and pub-
lished by the Camden Society. These chapters are fair spe-

cimens of Wycliffe's argumentation, but by no means of his

declamation, and of his invective, which he carries to lengths
of great severity, exposing with an unsparing hand the eccle-
siastical abuses of his time.

An oper is pis pat is put and askid, pat ilk prest may vse pe key in to
ilk man. To pis, me pinkip, I may wel sey pus, syn al power is of God,
and, as pe gospel seip, per is no power but of God, ne man may do no
Jung, but if he geue him pe mijt ; as Crist seip, ge may wip out me do
no ping, pat onely a man vse his power in to ilk ping, as God werkip bi
him, and lefip him to vse it vnblamfuUy, and no forper, and fro pat may
no man lette him. And pis is pat we sey, pat we may of rigt so, if per
be ani vsing of power, or callid power, pat is not bi Crist, pat is no
power, but fals pride, and presumid, and onli in name, and as to gend
and effect is nowjt. Neuerpeles, a man is seid to haue power, and leue
to vse power, in many wyse, as sum bi lawe and ordre of kynd, sum bi
lawe and ordre of grace, and some bi lawe and ordre made and writun.
And so it is seid bi lawe pat is mad of pe kirk, pat ilk prest hap pe
same power key in to ani man in po poynt of dep, as pe
to vse pe
pope; but not ellis, not but autorite in special be jeuun to him of pe
kirk per to. But if it be askid, if ilk prest mai vse pe key in to ilk
man, pat is to sey, to assoile him, or ellis to bind him fro grace, it semip
opunly pat ilk prest may not asoile ilk to bring him to heuyn for pe ;

gospel seip, pat Crist in a coost of pe Jewis migt not do ani vertu per,
368 WYCLIFFe's APOLOGY Lfct. VIII.

for pe vntrou]>, not but helid a few seek, pe handus leyd vjDon, and he
maruelid for per vntrowp pan, wan Crist, pat is God Almigty, and of
;

his absolut power may al ping, and no ping is vnpossible to him, nor no
ping may ajen stond him, and jet may not of his ordinat power jele pe
folk for per ontrow.p, and vndisposicoun, and vnabilite to reseyne, mich
more ani oper benep may not help, bnt after pe disposiconn of him pat
receynip. Al so it semi]? bi pis, pat pe pope may not bring in to grace,
ne bles, him pat lastip in vntrowp, and in per synnis os it semip bi;

Jewes and Saracenis and oper swilk, os is witnessid, and of feipful

witnes. Also God gaue him no farrer power, not but asoyl hem pat
wil leue per synne, or to bynd hem and curse pat wil dure per inne.
And bi so pe same resoun none oper prest may not excede. And if it
be axicl weper ilk prest hap as mykil power as pe pope, as a nenist God,
it semip tome pat is foly to a ferme in pis case oiper gie or nay, be for
pat itmai be schewid out of Holi Writte. And so it semip al so to me
it is foly ani prest to presume him to haue euyn power wip ilk oper, be

for pat he may ground him in pe feip and foli it were to deme to ani
;

man any power pat God hap geuun to him, or pe vsyng per of; for
certeyn I am, how euer ani man tak power to him, or vse power, it
profip not, but in as myche as God geuip it, and wirkip wip it, and con-
fermip it and certayn I am, pat pe power pat God gaue Petre, he gaue
;

it not to him alone, ne for him alone, but he gaue it to pe kirk, and for

po kirk, and to edifying of al pe kirk os he geuip pe sijt of pe ee, or

;

pe act of ani membre of pe body, for help and edifying of al pe body.

And Sent Jerom seip, Sum tyme pe prest was pat ilk pat pe bischop.
And bi for pat bats were made in religioun bi stinging of pe fend, and
was seid in pe peple, I am of Petre, I of Poule, I of Apollo, I of
Cephas, pe kirkis were gouernid bi pe comyn of prestis counseil. But
after pat ilk man callid him pat he baptrjid his, and not Crists, pan was
in al pe world wordeynid pat on of pe prestis schuld be made cheie,
and pe seedis of scysmis schuld be tan a wey. per as prestis wit hem to
be to per souereynis sogetsbe custum of pis kirk, so knaw bischopis
hem tobe more of custum pan of dispensacoun of Goddis trowp, to per
sogets, pe more per souereyns, and in comyn pei owe to gouern pe kirk.
Lo I sey bischops present, and pat pei stondun nere him, prests mai in
pe autere mak pe sacrament. But for it is writun, Prestis pat prestun

wel bi pei worpi had dowble honor, most pat pei trauel in word and
teching it semip hem to preche, it is profit to bles, it is congrew to
:

sacre, it cordip to hem to jcue comyn, it is neccsari to hem to visit pe

sek, to pray for pe vnmijti, and to fele of pe sacraments of God. per-
for non of pe bischopis, enblawen wip enuy of pe fendis temptacoun,
Lect. VI IT. WYCLIFFe's APOLOGY 369

wrap, if prestis ouerwile exort or monest pe peple, if pei preche in

kirk, if pey blesse pe floe, for I schal sey pus to hym pat wernij? me
peis pings, he pat wil not prestus do ping pat pei are bidun of God, sey
he wat is more pan Crist? or wat may be put beforn his flesch and blode?
And if pe prest sacre Crist wan he blessip pe sacrament of God in pe
auter, awip he not to blessip pe peple, pat dredip not to sacre Crist ? A
je vniust prestis porow jor bidding pe prest of God stintip pe office of
blessing, a bowt lewid men and women he stintip pe wark of tong, he
;

ha]> no tryst of preching, he is dockid on ilk part, he hap only pe name

of prest, but he holdip not pe plente ne pe perfeccoun pat fallip to his
consecracoun. I pray 30W prestis wat honor is pis to gow, pat je bring-

in pe damage of alle pe folke ? for wan worpi diligence is taken a wey fro
prestis bi power, sum smiting of mischef rysip in pe flok and ge geyt ;

liarme of pe Lordis patrimoyn, til je alon wil be potentats in pe kirk.

And for pi seyn oper men pus, if a bischop in conferming pat he appro-
prip to him silf wip out ground of pe Scripter, geuip grace, whi not a
simple prest pat in merit is more at God, of mor merit, gefe mor worpi
sacraments ? Sum tyme was no resoun, wan pe same was bischop and
prest. And bi forn pat presthed was hied, or veriliar filyd cursidly bi

pe world, ilk prest of Crist was callid indifferently prest and bischop,
as it semip be pe wordis of Jerom. [Chap. V.] —
An oper poynt pat is putt is pis, pat per is no pope ne Cristis vicar,
but an holy man. pis may pus be prouid for him be howuip to be ;

halowid wip pe sacrament of baptem, and of presthed, and of dignite.

And oft is bidun to prestis in pe lawe to be holy and halow oper; and
for hoyle of halowing of pe Lord is vp on hem. Also pus prayip Crist
for alle his, Fader, halow hem in trowp, pi word is trowp, as pu hast
send [me] in to pe world, so haue I send hem in pe world, and for hem
I halow myself, pat pei be halowid in trowp. hadde in And pus is

decreis Lo it aperip how pei schal schap pe perel of pe charge, pat pey
;

be polid to minister prestly oper sacraments, for pey are remeuid fro pis
not only for heresy, or oper ilk gretter syn, but also for negligens. In
wilk pingis bysily it is to not, pat pe sacrament of presthed befor oper,
more worpily, and wip cure, is to be geuen and tane for but if it be ;

so geuen and tane, it schal fuyle to be rate or ferme, os it is not perfltly

done. Oper sacramentis are geuen to ilk man for himsilf, and silk pey
are to ilk man as pei are tane wip hart and concience but pis is not ;

only £euen for hem silf but for oper, and perfor is nede it be tane wip
verrey hart and clene concience for him self, and as to oper, not only
wip out ilk synne, but also wip out ilk name of fame, for schunder of
breper, to was profit presthed is jeuen, not only pat men prest, or be
B B
370 wycliffe's influence Lect. viii.

boun, but ]?at ]?ey prophet. ]ns ]?e decre. Lo itsemi]? pat he is not
ligtly nor profijtly Crists pope ne his vicar but ifhe be holi, ellis whi
is he Jerom sei]?, pei ]?at
callid holiest fadir ? ordeyn of ]?er assessory
in to prestis, and putten hem per lif in to sclaundre of pe peple, pei
are gilty of pe vnfeipfulnes of hem pat are sclaundred. For so]? pei are
chosun to pis to be prestis to pe peple, as pei ordeynicl befor to dignite,
so pey haugt to schine be for in holmes, ellis whi are pei preferrid to
oper pat passun in grace of meritis. And perfor seip pe pope Symachus,
He is to be countid most vile, pat is befor in dignite, but if he preceile
in sciens and holmes, pe Lord seip bi pe prophet, for pu hast putt a
wey sciens, I schal put pe a wey pat pu vse not presthed to me. pe
dede of pe bischop houwip to passe a boue pe lif of pe peple, as pe hf
of pe ^erd transcendi]? ]?e lif of ]?e schep, as Gregori sei]?. And Bernard
seij? to pope Eugeni, pi felawis bischops lere ]?ei at ]?e to haue not wi]>

hem childer so curhid, nor £eng men kembid or compert certeyn it ;

semi}? not chapletid men to ren among ]?e mytrid vncorteysly ]?of ~p\\ ;

desire to be prest, or be befor to hem J?at ]?u coueitist not to profijt to,
ouer proudly in coueiting subieccoun of hem, of ]>e wilk ]?u hernist
not }?ere jele. —
[Chap. XVI.]

The uniformity of diction and grammar in WyclifTe's New

Testament gave that work a weight, as a model of devotional
composition and scriptural phraseology, which secured its ge-
neral adoption and not only the special forms I have men-
;

tioned, but many other archaisms of the standard translation,

both in vocabulary and in syntax, were adopted by Purvey and
Tyndale from Wycliffe, and by the revisors of 1611 from
Tyndale, and have thus remained almost without change for
500 years. In fact, so much of the "SVycliffite sacred dialect is

retained in the standard version, that though a modern reader

may by an obsolete word, idiom, or
occasionally be embarrassed
spelling,which occurs in Wycliffe's translation, yet if the great
reformer himself were now to be restored to life, he would
probably be able to read our common Bible from beginning to
end, without having to ask the explanation of a single passage.
The works of Langlande and of Wycliffe, especially the
latter, introduced into English a considerable number of words

directly or indirectly derived from the Latin. They produced

 —

Lect. VIII. LANGLANDE AND WYCLIFFE 371

a still greater effect on the common speech of the land, by

popularizing very many Latin and Romance words, which
there is reason to think, had never before acquired a familiar
currency, but had been confined to the dialect of books, or at
least to the conversation of the regularly educated classes.
The circulation of Piers Ploughman among; these classes was
obstructed by its poetic form, which — though a recommenda-
tion in the eyes of the masses who know poetry only as an oral
chant — was fatal to its success in literary circles; for the de-
liberate opinion and taste of the educated public had con-
demned alliterative and rhythmic verse as a barbarous relic of
an age of inferior culture.
Wycliffe, too, was, in a great measure, excluded from the
same circles, by the combined authority of the State and the
Church, which had denounced the reformer, his opinions, and
his translations, and therefore as treasonable.*
as heretical,
Hence they were circulated and read chiefly by persons whose
humble station enabled them to enjoy a privacy in their studies,
which the conspicuous position of men of higher rank in the
social hierarchy put quite out of their reach. Still, the con-

troversial writings and the translations of the early reformers

very sensibly affected the theological and ethical nomenclatures
of the English language in all succeeding time and many of ;

the very best features of our modern version of the Scriptures

are due to their labours. They
also, no doubt, contributed
and force of literary diction but
indirectly to the copiousness ;

this effect was produced, not because they were regarded as

authorities in language, and studied as models of composition

* 'In this Capgrave, 'the Pope wrote speciali to the Kyng for
5ere,' says
these Lolardis, tretouris to God and to the Kyng. In his letteris he prayed the
Kyng that he schuld be redy to punche al thoo whom the bischoppis declared for
heretikes.' Chronicle, a.d. 1394, p. 261, 262.
"While the Icing was resisting the pope's wishes for the repeal of the obnoxious
statutes, he was willing enough to accept the support of the Lollards ; but, that
question settled, he was as 'redy to punche' them as bloody Queen Mary her-
self a hundred and fifty years later.
b b 2
372 LAKGLAXDE AND WYCLIFFE Lect. VIII.

or as repositories of an enlarged vocabulary, but because they

had enriched the every-day speech of the people, and thus
increased the affluence of that fountain which is the true source
whence all great national poets draw their stock of living and
breathing words.
Although Langlande and the school of Wycliffe are not to be
looked upon as great immediate agencies in the general im-
provement of written English, or as standards of the literary
dialect in their own age, there can be little doubt that they did
exercise a direct influence upon the diction of Chaucer, and,
though him, on the whole literature of the nation.
It is well known that the political party to whose fortunes
Chaucer was attached, and of which he was a conspicuous
member, was inclined to favour and protect Wycliffe and his
followers and it must, of course, have sympathized, so far as a
;

mediaeval aristocracy could do so, with the popular body which

constituted the real public both of the theologian and of Piers
Ploughman. Hence it is not possible that Chaucer should
have been unacquainted with the writings of the poet, or of the
religious reformers; nor could a scholar of his acute philo-
loo'ical sensibility have perused those remarkable works, with-
out at once perceiving that they contained a mine of verbal
wealth, a vast amount of the richest crude material for poetical
elaboration.
Of such resources a genius like Chaucer could not fail to
avail himself, and I have no doubt that the great superiority of
his style over that of his contemporaries, and the more ad-
vanced character of his diction, are to be ascribed in some
degree to his use of these means of improvement, —
means
which the more fastidious taste, or the religious and political

prejudices, of other poets of the age prevented them from re-

sorting to.
Lect. VIII. JKESO-GOTIIIC TEXT 373

NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

MCESO-GOTHIC TEXT OF THE EIGHTH CHAPTER OF MATTHEW.

1. Dalap pan atgaggandin inima af fliirgunja, laistidedun afar imma

iumjons manages.
2. Jali sai, manna prutsfill habands durinnands invait ina qipands
frauja, jabai vileis, magt mik galirainjan.
3. Jah ufrakjands handu attaitok imma qipands: viljau, vairp hrains!
jali suns hrain varp pata prutsfill is.

4. Jah qap imma Iesus : saiw, ei mann

puk silban
ni qipais, ak gagg,
ataugei gudjin jali Moses du veitvodipai im.
atbair giba, poei anabaup
5. Afaruli pan pata imiatgaggandin imma in Kafarnaum, duatiddja
imma hundafaps bidjands ina
6. jali qipands: frauja, piumagus meins ligip in garda uslipa,
liarduba balvips.
7. Jali qap du imma Iesus : ik qimands galiailja ina.
8. Jali andliafiands sa hundafaps qap : frauja, ni im vairps, ei uf
lirot mein inngaggais, ak patainei qip vaurda jali gahailnip sa piuniagus
meins.
9. Jaliauk ik manna im habands uf valdufnja meinamma gadrauhtins,
jali qipa du pamma: gagg, jali gaggip; jali anparamma: qim jali qimip;
jali du skalka meinamma : tavei pata, jali tauji]>.
10. Galiausjands pan Iesus sildaleikida jali qap du paim afarlaistjan-
dam : amen, qij'a izvis, ni in Israela svalauda galaubein bigat.
11. Appan qipa izvis, patei managai fram urrunsa jali saggqa qimand
jali anakumbjand mip Abraliama jali Isaka jab Iakoba in piudangardjai
liimine
12. ip pai sunjus piudangardjos, usvairpanda in riqis pata liindumisto;
jainar vairpip grets jali krusts tunpive.
13. Jali qap Iesus pamma liundafada : gagg jali svasve galaubides,
vairpai pus. Jali gahailnoda sa piumagus is in jainai weilai.
14. Jali qimands Iesus in garda Paitraus jah gasaw svaihron is

ligandein in heiton.
15. Jah attaitok handau izos jah aflailot ija so heito ;
jah urrais jah
andbahtida imma.
 !:

374 M(ESO-GOTHIC TEXT Lect. VIII.

16. At andanalitja pan vaurpanamma, atberun du imma daimonarjans

managans jah usvarp pans ahnians vaurda jah allans pans ubil habandans
gahailida,
gamelido pairh Esai'an praufetu qipandan
17. ei usfullnodedi pata
sa unmahtins unsaros usnam jah sauhtins usbar.
18. Gasai wands pan Iesus managans hiuhmans bi sik, haihait
galeipan siponjans hindar marein.
19. Jali duatgaggands ains bokareis qap du imma: laisari, laistja
puk, piswaduh padei gaggis.
20. Jali qap du imma Iesus: fauhons grobos aigun jah fuglos
himinis sunus mans ni habaip, war haubip sein anahnaivjai.
sitlans, ip

21. Anparuh pan siponje is qap du imma: frauja uslaubei mis

frumist galeipan jah gafilhan attan meinana.
22. Ip Iesus qap du imma : laistei afar mis jah let pans daupans
filhan seinans daupans.
Jah inatgaggandin imma in skip, afariddjedun imma siponjos is.
23.
Jah sai, vegs mikils varp in marein, svasve pata skip gahulip
24.
vairpan fram vegim ip is saislep.
;

25. Jah duatgaggandans siponjos is urraisidedun ina qipandans:

frauja, nasei unsis, fraqistnam.
26. Jah qap du ini Iesus: wa faurhteip, leitil galaubjandans
panuh urreisands gasok vinclam jah marein, jah varp vis mikil.
27. Ip pai mans sildaleikidedun qipandans: wileiks ist sa, ei jah
vindos jah marei ufhausjand imma ?
28. Jah qimandin imma hindar marein in gauja Gairgaisame, gamo-
tidedun imma tvai daimonarjos us hlaivasnom rinnandans, sleidjai filu,
svasve ni mahta manna usleipan pairh pana vig jainana.
Jah sai, hropidedun qipandans: wa uns jah pus, Iesu, sunau
29.
gups ? qamt her faur mel balvjan unsis ?
30. Vasuli pan fairra im hairda sveine managaize haldana.
31. Ip po skohsla bedun ina qipandans: jabai usvairpis uns, uslau-
bei mis galeipan in po hairda sveine,
32. Jah qap du im gaggip Ip eis usgaggandans galipun in hairda
: !

sveine jah sai, run gavaurhtedun sis alia so hairda and driuson in
;

marein jah gadaupnodedun in vatnam.

33. Ip pai haldandans gaplauhun jah galeipandans gataihun in baurg
all bi pans daimonarjans.
34. Jah sai, alia so baurgs usiddja vipra Iesu jah gasai wandans ina
bedun, ei uslipi hindar markos ize.
Lf.ct. VIII. GREEK TEXT 375

GREEK TEXT OF EIGHTH CHAPTER OF MATTHEW.

1
KciTafiavTi c)£ avru) airo tov bpovg rjKoXovQrjtrav avTio b-)(Xoi 7ro\Xoi'
2 Kal idov XETrpbg 7rpoae\6djy irpoaEKvvEL avTui Xiyiov Kvpie, eav OkX^g,
Zvvanal jie Kadapioai. 3 ml EKTEivag t))v X£ a 'l° v4^ aT0 avTOV Xiytov
QiXio, Kadapiodr}TL. 4
Kal fhQiiog EKadapiadr] avroii »*/ Xiirpa. /cat XiyEi
avTio 6 'Ir)(rovg"Opa firjdevl ELTTrjg, aXXh vTraye geovtov de~i£op r« lepel,

Kal TrpoaiveyKOV to hiopov b irpoaeTa^eu Mojucj/C) Elg fuaprvpLoy avro'ig.

5
JLIgeXOovti Se avrw elg Kaoapvaovjj, TrpouTjXdev avTio EKaTovTapyog
irapaKaXCov avTOV 6 Kat Xiyiov Kvpte, 6 naig jjiov (3i(jXr)rai kv rrj oimcl
7TapaXvTtKog^ 7 Xiyei uvtio 'Eyio kXdwv QEpaiTEVGio
6*£Lviog (jaaai'i^ojAEVog.
8 Kvpu, ovk
avTov. Kal curoKpidelg 6 tKarovTapyog i(pr) elfil iKavbg tVa
fiov vtto ti)v Griyrjv eicriXdrig' aAXa fxovov elite Xoyto, Kal ladtjGETat o
9 Kal yip k yio av&pwKOQ vtto k^ovGiav, £\iov vtt
7ra~ig fiov. eI/jll kfxavTov
(rrpaTiwrag, Kal Xiyco tovtio HopEvdrjn, Kai TropEVErai, KalaXXio' Ep^ov, Kal
EpyETaf Kal 10 ciKovaag ^Eo'lrjaovg
Tip ZovXio fiov UolrjGov tovto, Kal ttoiel.
edavfiaffEv Kal eittev Tolg ukoXovOovgiv 'Afirjv Xiyco vfiiv, Trap' ovoevl toguv-
tx\v ttigtiv kv Tip 'I<7pa?)A. Evpov. ll Xiyco <)e vjjuv otl ttoXXol airb ctvaToXiov
Kal hvcTfjLuty ij^ovgiv Kal avaK\idi]GOVTai /jletci 'AfSpaafi Kal 'laaaK Kal
'
'Ia»cw/3 kv Trj jjaatXEicf. tiov ovpavcov 12
ol Be viol Tfjg /SaertAa'ae EKJ3Xr)d{]-

crovTai Elg to GKOTog to k^ioTEpoV eke~i tirrai b KXavQ^ibg Kal 6 j3pvyf.ibg

twv ohovTiov. l3 Kal eittev 6 'Iqcrovg Tip £KaTOVTap\r]"Y7ray£ f ibg ett'igtev-

aag yEvr]di]Tio goi. Kal ladrj 6 Tralg avTov kv tv\ copa ekelvyj.
14
Kat kXdcov 6 'Irjtrovg Eig ti)v ohiav Hhpov elIev tijv 7TEv6£pav avTOV
izvpiaaovoav. 15 ical i}\paro Ti)g yEipbg uvTijg, Kal
jjE/jXrjfXEvrjv Kal atpij-

kev avT))v 6 TrvpETog, Kal fjyipdr), Kal Siijkovei avTio. 1G o^iag $£ y£vo-
fxivrjg irpoa^VEyKav aWto caij.iovt^o/j.ivovg noXXovg, Kal £^e(doXev to.
17 oirtog TrXrj-
TrvEvfxaTa Xoyu), Kal iravTag Tovg KaKwg lyovTag kQEpcnrEvrrEV,
pwdrj to prjdkv Sid Htratov tov 7rpo(pi)Tov XiyovTog Al)Tog Tag aadEvdag ijficov
ls 'I^a;r 3e
EXafisv, Kal Tag voaovg kfiatTTaaEV. 6 'Irjcrovg TroXXovg 6)(Xovg
7T£pl aVTOV EKeXevUEV CLTiEXdEiv £IQ TO* TTEpav. 19 Kai TTpOLTEXdiOV £IQ ypafl-
20
fiaTEvg eittev avrio AidatTKaXE, aKoXovdf)<Tio aoi ottov kdv a-KEpyji. Kal
XiyEi avTco b 'Irjtrovg At aXioirEKEg (ptoXEOvg e^ovglv, kuI Ta tteteivu tov
ohpavov KaTatTKrjvuxTEig, b 3e vlbg tov uvdpioTrov ovk e-^ei ttov tt\v K£cpaX))v
21 ETEpog avTOV
kXivtj. (He tiov fjiaOr)Tiov eittev avrcZ KvpiE, ETTtTpEXpov fxot
TrpCJrov cltteXOeIv Kal Odxpai tov TraTEpa 22 6 'Irjtrovg XiyEi avTco
fiov. <>£

'AkoXovOei pot, Kal acpEg Tovg VEKpovg ddxpai Tovg kavTtov vEKpovg.
23 Kat uvtov.
kfifidi'Ti avTio Elg ttXoIov I'jKoXovdrjaav avTco ol juadrjTal
21 Kal Idov GEiGfibg fxiyag kykvETO kv ty\ QaXdaoY\ y Cjctte to ttXoIov koXv-
TTTEodai vtto tiov Kv^xaTiov' avTog 3e ekclBevZev. 25 KO.I 7TpO(T£XQ6vT£g ol
fiadrjTal ip/Eipav avrbv XkyovTEg KvpiE atotrov, cnToXXvfjt.£da. 26 Kal Xiyu
376 PURVEY's REVISION Lect. VIII.

ctvTolg Tl £ei\oi eote oXiyoTriGTOi ; tote iyepQelg EirETijjir\<T£v tolq avijioig

Kcd QaXaaar), cat iyevero 27 ol ardpiowoi idav-
t?i yaXfar) fieyuKr). <)£

f.iaaav XiyovTEg YIorcnroQ kariv ovtoq, oti kcli ol uvejiol kcu ?y OaXaaaa
viraKovovffiv aurw ;

28 Kcu IXdoi'-i avra) tig to iripav elg Ti]V yuipav tujv TaSaprivwv, vtti)v-

Ti](T(iv avru) £vo daifiovi^ofievoi Etc twv uvi]fieiujy El,ep\6[ievoi, ^ciXettoi

Xiav, layvEiv tlvol irapEXdE~iv lid blov 20 Kai
ojctte fit] rijg itcEivrjg. Iduv
EKpat,av XiyovTEg TV yfxlv teat coi, vIe tov Qeov ; i)Xd£g w^e irpo Kcupov
fiaaaricrai i]/J.ae; 30 j)j/ £e fiaKpdv air avTiZv ayiXr) yo'ipwv ttoXXiZv fto-
31
(TKOfJEvrj' ol Ie (jaipovEg napEKaXovv avrov XiyovTEg Et ek(doXXeic fifing,

cnroGTEiXoi' i]/-idg Eig Ti]V ayiXrjv tCjv ytipwv. 32 kcu. eltvev avrolg 'Y7ra-
y£T£. ol <j£ L^EXBovTEg airrjXdov Elg Trfv a.yiXr}v Tiof ysolpioV kcu ISov
(bp[ir\(yEV Travel // ayiXr) t<Zv yoipiov KaTCi tov Kprjuvov Eig tijv QdXaaaaVy
Kal aniQavov ev toiq vd'arrir. 33 ol 2e fiovKOVTEg £(pvyor, nai aiTEXdovTEg
tig t}jp ttoXlv a~i]yy£tXav TrdvTa, Ka) to. tuJv laifioui^Ofji£yo.H'. 34 koa Idov

Kaaa i] woXig ElifjXd&v Eig <rvvdvTr}(Tiv Taj 'Iijaov' Kai idovTeg avTov napE-
KoXEtxav onujg yuera/3;] uttg tuv opiu)v avTiov.

II.

PSALM en. (cm.) FROM pervey's revision.

Mi Lord
and alle tliingis that ben with ynne
soule, blesse tliou the ;

me, blesse his hooli name. Mi soule, blesse thou the Lord and nyle ;

thou forgete alle the geldyngis -of him. Which doith merci to alle thi
wickidnessis which heelith alle thi sijknessis.
; Which agenbieth thi
lijf fro deth; which corowneth thee in merci and merciful doyngis.

Which fillith thi desijr in goodis; thi gongthe schal be renulid as the
yyngtlie of an egle. The Lord doynge mercies and doom to alle men ;

suffritige wrong. He made hise weies knowun to Moises his willis to ;

the sones of Israel. The Lord is a merciful doer, and merciful in

wille longe abidinge, and myche merciful.
; He schal not be wrooth
with outen ende and he schal not thretne with outen ende. He dide
;

not to vs aftir oure synnes nether he geldide to vs aftir oure wickid-

;

nessis. For bi the hijnesse of heuene fro erthe he made strong his ;

merci on men dredynge hym. As myche as the eest is fer fro the
west he made fer oure wickidnessis fro vs. As a fadir hath merci on
;

sones, the Lord hadde merci on men dredynge him for he knewe oure ;

makyng. He bithoirjte that we ben dust, a man is as hey; his dai

schal flowre out so as a flour of the feeld. For the spirit schal passe in

hym, and schal not abide ; and schal no more knowe his place. But
 ;

Lect. VIII. REGULAR AND IRREGULAR VERBS 377

the merci of the Lord is fro with out bigynnyng, and til in to with
outen ende ; men drcdinge hym. And his rijtfulnessc in to the
on lis

sones of sones; to hem that kepen his testament. And ben myndeful
of hise comaundementis to do tho. The Lord hath maad redi his
;

seete in heuene; and his rewme schal be lord of alle. Atmgels of the
Lord, blesse je the Lord je myjti in vertu, doynge his word, to here
;

the vois of his wordis. Alle vertues of the Lord, blesse ge the Lord
ge mynystris of hym that cloen his wille. Alle werkis of the Lord,
blesse ge the Lord, in ech place of his lordschipe ; my soule, blesse
thou the Lord.

III.

CHANGE OF IRREGULAR INTO REGULAR VERBS.

This is an instance of the same tendency to regularity of form which
was mentioned in a note on the Italian dialects, in a former lecture.
I think it much to be regretted that English grammarians have so
generally adopted the designations weak and strong, instead of the old
terms regular and irregular conjugation. I do not contend for the im-
portance of a descriptive nomenclature in any branch of science, and I
have given my opinions on the subject, at some length, in the ninth
lecture in my First Series. But scientific designations which assume to
be descriptive ought to be truly so, and this the terms regular and
irregular, as applied to the English verb, eminently are, while the
epithets weak and strong are not so in any sense. That is regular
which conforms to the rule or type most generally adopted or, if there ;

be several models or standards, of equal authority, then that is regular

which conforms to any of them. Now the only general rule for the
conjugation of modern English verbs is that the past tense and passive
participle are alike, and that both are formed by the addition of d or ed
to the stem. It is true that among the few English verbs which inflect
by letter-change, instead of by augmentation, small groups may be
formed which agree in their mode of changing the stem and these are ;

often the modern forms of verbs which once were numerous enough to
constitute an entire conjugation, sufficiently regular to be referred to a
fixed type. But, in most cases, so large a proportion of the verbs
composing these conjugations have been lost, and those remaining have
been so much varied in inflection, that the ancient regularity is gone,
and they can no longer be divided into normal classes. Goold Brown,
in his very valuable Grammar of Grammars,' states the number of
'
378 REGULAR AND IRREGULAR VERBS LEcr. VIII.

1
irregular verbs in English at about one hundred and ten
' '
but as, ;
'

though he introduces keep into his list, he omits creep, it is probable

that he has overlooked others, and the real number is, no doubt, con-
siderably larger. Of these strong or irregular verbs, not more than
five agree in any one mode of inflection in most cases but two or
;

three are conjugated alike, and in very many the verb has no parallel
at all. It is further to be observed, that in several instances these
pairs or triplets of verbs, though now conjugated alike, were not so
originally, and therefore they are doubly irregular, as conforming
neither to the most frequent present mode of conjugation, nor to their
own primitive type. For example, creep, keep, and sleep form the past
tense and passive participle alike —
crept, kept, slept : but the Anglo-
Saxon creopan made past creap, plural crupon cepan, cepte; ;

and slapan, slep, participle slapen. Keep, then, is the only one of
the three which conforms to ancient precedent. It should however be
noted that in Matthew viii. 24, the Lindisfarne text has geslepde,
the Eushworth slept e, and both Wycliffe and Purvey slepte, for the
regular Anglo-Saxon slep.
It is objected to the term regular, that the forms it designates are
more modern than the inflections by letter-change, which, it is

insisted, are remains of primitive modes of regular conjugation ; but

this objection has no force, because we may admit a form to be regular,
without insisting that it is primitive ; and what are called the strong
verbs in English are most truly described as irregular, because they do
not agree in conjugation, either with each other, or with the Saxon
verbs from which they are descended. For all the purposes of English
grammar, regular and irregular are the best inflectional designations
that have been proposed and though, in the nomenclature of compara-
;

tive philology, terms are wanted which shall distinguish augmentative

inflections from those by letter- change, it is better to employ, in teach-
ing English, the old phraseology, until some more appropriate, or at
least less misleading, terms than weak and strong, shall be suggested.
 LECTUEE IX.

CHAUCER AND GOWER

Befoee entering upon the special subject of the present lecture

— the literary and philological merits of Chaucer and of Grower
— it will be well to take a retrospective view of the condition of
the English language at the period of Chaucer's birth, to glance
summarily at the causes of the revolution it soon after under-
went, and to consider the mode in which great authors influence
the development of their native tongue in primitive eras of lite-
rature.
The controlling power and wealth of a nobility, French in
parentage or descent, and the consequent adoption of the Anglo-
Norman as the dialect of the court, of parliament, of the judicial
tribunals, and of such of the foreign clergy as resided upon
their ecclesiastical benefices in England, had, at the end of the
thirteenth century, reduced English to little more than a lingua
rustica, which was thought hardly worthy, or even capable, of
literary culture and the slender merits of Eobert of Gloucester
;

and Eobert of Brunne were little calculated to raise the vulgar

patnis in the estimation of educated men.
Had the British crown won the permanent and established
extension of its territorial possessions on the Continent, which
marked the best years of
the splendid series of victories that
the reign ofEdward III. seemed to promise, the relative im-
portance and more advanced refinement and civilization of the
Anglo-French provinces — which embraced the whole extent of
 —

380 ENGLISH OF FOURTEENTH CENTURY Lkct. IX.

the Atlantic coast of France — would have given them a weight

and a predominance in the social and political life of the king-
dom, that could not have failed to be fatal to the national spirit
and the national language of the English people. The reverses
of the latter years of Edward's reign compelled the government
to renounce, for a time, its ambitious dreams of conquest and
annexation, and to strengthen itself in the affections of its
English-born subjects, by thoroughly Anglicizing itself, and
making England not merely the royal residence, but a chief
object of its fostering care, as the real home of the throne, the
domestic hearth of a united people.
But still literary culture and even rudimentary education
were attainable only through the medium of foreign tongues.
English was not taught in the schools, but French only, until
after the accession of Eichard II., or possibly the latter years of
Edward III., and Latin was always studied through the French.
Up to this period, then, as there were no standards of literary
authority, and probably no written collections of established
forms, or other grammatical essays, the language had no fixed-
ness or uniformity, and hardly deserved to be called a written
speech.
There had been some writers, indeed — such, example,
for as
the author of the Ormulum —whose syntax and orthography were
so uniform that a consistent accidence might be constructed for
them ; but the grammatical system of no one would answer for

any other, and the orthography varied so much, not only in

different copies of the same author, but even in copies which
are the work of one scribe, that we cannot doubt that there was
extreme irregularity, both in the modes of spelling and in the
articulation and the inflectional forms of the same words.
I have hence found it impossible to give a detailed view of
the inflectional or syntactical history of this period of English
— an era of confusion and transition, when no recognized
standard of accidence or of grammatical combination existed
and I have only illustrated, in a general way, the few leading
Lect. IX. COEXISTENCE OF ENGLISH AND FRENCH 381

characteristics of form which were common to all, or at least to

most of those who attempted to compose in the vernacular
dialect.
From this Babylonish confusion of speech, the influence and
example of Chaucer did more to rescue his native tongue than
any other single cause and if we compare his dialect with that
:

of any writer of an earlier date, we shall find that in compass,

flexibility, expressiveness, grace, and all the higher qualities of

poetical diction, he gave it at once the utmost perfection which

the materials at his hand would admit of.
The English writers of the fourteenth century had an advan-
tage which was altogether peculiar to their age and country.
At all previous periods, the two languages had co-existed, in a
great degree independently of each other, with little tendency
to intermix ; but in the earlier part of that century, they began
to coalesce, and this process was going on with a rapidity that
threatened a predominance of the French, if not a total ex-
tinction of the Saxon element. The political causes towhich
I have alluded arrested this tendency ; and when the national
spirit was aroused, and impelled to the creation of a national
literature, the poet or prose writer, in selecting his diction, had
almost two whole vocabularies before him. That the syntax
should be English, national feeling demanded ; but French was
so familiar and habitual to all who were able to read, that pro-
bably the scholarship of the day would scarcely have been able
to determine, with respect to a large proportion of the words in
common use, from which of the two great wells of speech' they
had proceeded.
Happily, a great arbiter arose at the critical moment of
severance of the two peoples and dialects, to preside over the
division of the common property, and to determine what share
of the contributions of France should be permanently annexed
to the linguistic inheritance of
Englishmen.
Chaucer did not introduce into the English language words
which it had rejected as aliens before, but out of those wiiich
382 DICTION OF CHAUCER Lect IX.

had been already received, he invested the better portion with,

the rights of citizenship, and stampedthem with the mint-mark
of English coinage. In this way, he formed a vocabulary,
which, with few exceptions, the taste and opinion of succeeding
generations has approved and a literary diction was thus esta-
;

blished, which, in all the qualities required for the poetic art,
had at that time no superior in the languages of modern
Europe.
The soundness of Chaucer's judgment, the nicety of his philo-
logical appreciation, and the delicacy of his sense of adaptation
to the actual wants of the English people, are sufficiently proved
by the fact that, of the Eomance words found in his writings,
not much above one hundred have been suffered to become ob-
solete, while a much larger number of Anglo-Saxon words em-
ployed by him have passed altogether out of use.*
Itis an error to suppose that those writers who do most for

the improvement of their own language, effect this by coining

and importing new words, or by introducing new syntactical
forms. The great improvers of language in all literatures have
been eclectic. They do not invent new inflections, forge new
terms, or establish new syntactical relations ; but from existing
words, discordant accidences, conflicting modes of grammatical
aggregation, they cull the vocabulary, the mode of conjugation
and declension, and the general syntax, best calculated to
harmonize the diversities of dialects, and to give a unity and
consistence to the general speech.
If the first great writer be a poet, his selection will, of course,

* In this number of obsolete words I include terms of general application only,

and not the technicalities of alchemy, astrology, and the like, which have been
forgotten with the arts to which they belonged, nor those words peculiar to the
religious observances of the Romish Church, which are not now understood or
freely employed in England, because the English people is no longer familiar
with the ritual of that religion. I should further remark that many Romance as
well as Saxon words used by Chaucer are now so changed in form and orthography
that they are not readily identified with their originals by persons not familiar with
etymological deduction.
Lect. IX. DICTION OF GREAT WRITERS 383

be in some degree controlled by the material conditions of his

art; but as the poetic form embodies the highest expression of
the human intellect, his diction will be in general of an elevated
character, and, for aesthetic reasons, the most melodious and
graceful words will be chosen, while the necessities of metre
will compel the adoption of a variety of inflectional forms, when-
ever the accidence of the language admits of different modes
of declension and conjugation.
The real benefit which great authors in general confer on
their native tongue, consists, first, in the selection and autho-
rization of truly idiomatic, forcible, and expressive terms and
phrases from the existing stock; and, secondly, in the embodying
of universal, and of distinctively national, ideas and sentiments,
in new and happy combinations of words themselves already
individually familiar. Hence it will often happen that the first

great writers any language employ, not a strange or an

in
extensive vocabulary, but, on the contrary, a common and
a restricted one and the merit of their style will be found to
;

depend, not upon the number of the words they use, but upon
a peculiar force of expression derived from an accurate percep-
tion of the laws by which words enlarge, limit, or modify the
meaning of each other, and a consequent felicity in the mutual
adaptation of the elements of discourse, and their arrangement
in periods.
In connection with
this point, I may, without departing too
farfrom our subject, notice a widely diffused error which it
may be hoped the lexicographical criticism of the present day
may dispel. I refer to the opinion that words, individually, and
and of phraseological com-
irrespectively of syntactical relations
bination, have one ormore inherent, fixed, and limited meanino-s
which are capable of logical definition, and of expression in
other descriptive terms of the same language. This may be
true of artificial words — that is, words invented for, or conven-
tionally appropriated to, the expression of arbitrary distinctions
and technical notions in science or its practical applications
384 SIGNIFICANCE OF WORDS Lkct. IX.

and also of the names of material objects and of the sensuous

qualities of things ; but of the vocabulary of the passions and
the affections, which grows up and is informed with living
meaning by the natural, involuntary processes to which all

language but that of art owes its being, it is wholly untrue.

Such words live and breathe only in mutual combination and
interdependence with other words. They change their force with
every new relation into which they enter and consequently ;

their meanings are as various and as exhaustless as the permu-

tations and combinations of the digits of the arithmetical
notation. To teach, therefore, the meaning of a great propor-
tion of the words which compose the vocabulary of every living
speech, by formal definition, is as impossible as to convey by
description a notion of the shifting hues of the pigeon's neck.
This may be readily seen by the examination of any respect-
able work on synonyms. The authors of these treatises, it is

true, usually attempt discriminating description of the senses of

the words they compare and distinguish ; but their definitions
have almost always reference to the exemplifications they intro-
duce of the actual use of the words discussed and it is from ;

the context of the passages cited, not from the formal defini-
tions, student learns the true analogies and true
that the
differencesbetween words thus brought together. In short,
without the exemplifications, the definitions would be unintel-
ligible, while with them they are almost superfluous.*
The power of selecting and combining words in such a way
that each shall not only help, but compel, its fellow to give out
the best meaning it is capable of expressing, is that which con-
stitutes excellence in style, command of language, or, in other
words, the art of best saying what we have to say. No such
merit is possible in the early stages of any language. The
words are too few, the recorded combinations not sufficiently
multifarious, to have tested and brought out the various mean-

* See Illustration I. at the end of this lecture.

Lect. IX. VOCABULARY OF FOURTEENTH CENTURY 385

ings and applications of which words are susceptible and ;

culture is not yet far enough advanced for the existence and

conscious recognition of a range and variety of ideas, images,

and sentiments, wide enough to have demanded any great
multiplicity of expression.
But in the period of English literature upon which we
have now entered, these necessary conditions were approxi-
mately satisfied. A sufficient variety of subjects had been dis-
cussed to create a necessity for an extensive vocabulary, and
to require a great range of syntactical and logical combination.
The want of words had been supplied from Latin or Eomance
sources, and flexibility of structure had been acquired by the
translation and accommodation of foreign phraseological com-
binations, by the resuscitation of obsolete Anglo-Saxon con-
structions, and by hazarding new verbal alliances. Nothing was
now wanting but the presence of a great genius to avail himself
of these new-born facilities of utterance, or some special occasion
which should prompt talent of a less original cast to employ them.
In all great conjunctures, political or literary, the hour and
the man come together. When the harvest is prepared, Provi-
dence sends forth the reapers to gather it. Langlande and other
less important labourers, including, doubtless, many now for-
gotten, had striven to cull, out of the chaos of Saxon, French,
and Latin words which confusedly buzzed around them, a
vocabulary suited to the expression of English ideas, images,
sentiments; and they had somewhat blindly groped after the
fittest association of these words in phraseological combinations.
At this crisis there appeared one of the greatest masters of
speech that have illustrated the literature of modern Europe —
a genius gifted with the keenest sensibility to those latent
affinities between particular words, upon which their most

felicitous combinations depend, with the soundest judgment in

the appreciation of the power of individual terms, and with the
most exquisite taste in the selection and arrangement of them.
The stock of words, the raw material which had already been
c c
386 OBSOLETE SAXON WORDS Lect. IX.

accumulated for literary construction, was, as we have seen

already, large —
so large, in fact, that no great additions were
required in order to furnish a complete supply for all the
demands of the poetic art. But there were still some defi-
ciencies in the vocabulary : a want of words suited to the
first,

exigencies of the Eomance canons of verse, which not Chaucer

alone, but the taste and judgment of the English people, had
decided to adopt as the laws of poetical composition; and,
secondly, a great imperfection in the dialect of morals and of
philosophy.
After what I have observed, in a former lecture, upon the
great expressiveness of Anglo-Saxon in matters of ethical and
intellectual concern, and the richness of its vocabulary in the
nomenclature of the passions and the affections, it may seem
almost a contradiction to affirm that this is the very point in
which early Saxon-English was most deficient. But the fact is
so, and it was precisely words which had, in
this class of native
the largest proportion, become obsolete. The Anglo-Saxons
had their own translations of the Grospels, the Psalms, and
some other portions of Scripture. They had a theological and
an ethical literature, and there is good reason to believe that,
in spite of the influence of a Eomanized priesthood, the native
language was more habitually employed for ecclesiastical and
religious purposes than any of the Romance dialects ever had
been. The obvious reason for this is found in the fact that
Anglo-Saxon and Latin were not cognate languages, while the
Romance tongues were, if not descended from the Latin, at least
nearly related dialects, and still retained a great resemblance to
it. Hence, while a French or an Italian ecclesiastic could easily
acquire a competent knowledge of the language with which his
own vernacular was most nearly allied, and while some tradi-
tional familiarity with its written forms was, and in fact still is,
preserved among even the unlettered populace of Italy and
France, the speech of Rome, the consecrated dialect of the
Church, was wholly strange to the Anglo-Saxon people. The
Lect. IX. ANGLO-SAXON MORAL DIALECT 387

native clergy could acquire it only by long years of painful

labour, and even its technical phrases could only with great
difficulty be made familiar to the mind and ear, or articulated

by the tongue, of the Anglo-Saxon. There was, therefore, an

absolute necessity for the employment of the native speech in
religious and moral discussion and so long as England was
;

independent of the Continent, there existed a full religious and

ethical nomenclature. But early in the eleventh century, in
consequence of matrimonial and political alliances with French
princes, Norman influence began to make itself felt in England,
and the Conquest, in the year 1066, gave the finishing stroke
to Anglo-Saxon nationality, and introduced not only a new
royal dynasty, but an army of foreign priests and teachers, who
naturally insisted on employing the language of Eome in all
matters pertaining to the discharge of their functions. Anglo-
Saxon, consequently, went very soon, at least partially, out of
use as a medium of religious instruction, oral or written, and
of moral discussion. When sermons and homilies were less
frequently delivered in Anglo-Saxon, when that language was
no longer employed by the learned in the treatment of themes
connected with ethics, philosophy, and the social duties, it was
very natural that the words belonging to those departments of
thought should be forgotten, though the nomenclature of the
various branches of material life still remained familiar and
vernacular. We find, accordingly, that in the three centuries

which elapsed between the Conquest and the noon-tide of

Chaucer's life, a large proportion of the Anglo-Saxon dialect of
religion, of moral and intellectual discourse, and of taste, had
become utterly obsolete and unknown.*
The place of the lost words had been partly supplied by the
importation of Continental terms but the new words came
;

without the organic power of composition and derivation which

belonged to those they had supplanted. Consequently, they
* See longer Notes and Illustrations II. at the end of this lecture. See also
Lecture III., Illustration IV.

C C 2
388 DICTION OF CHAUCEK Lect. IX.

were incapable of those modifications of form and extensions of

meaning which the Anglo-Saxon roots could so easily assume,
and which fitted them for the expression of the new shades of
thought and of sentiment born of every hour in a mind and an
age like those of Chaucer.
The poet, therefore, must sometimes have found himself in
want of language suited to the largeness and brilliancy of the
new conceptions, the hitherto unfelt sentiments and unrevealed
images, the strange thick-coming fancies,' which were crowd-
'

ing upon him and struggling for utterance. "Where should he find
words for the expression of this world of thought ? where metal
to be stamped with this new coinage of the brain ? Should he
resort to the sepulchre of the Saxon race, and seek to reanimate
a nomenclature which had died with the last of the native kings ?
Or should he turn to the living speech of a cultivated nation,
whose blood was already so largely infused into the veins of the
English people, and whose tongue was almost as familiar to
them as the indigenous words of their own ? Had Chaucer,
under such circumstances, attempted the revival of the forgotten
moral phraseology of Saxondom —
which could now be found
only in the mouldering parchments of obscure conventual
libraries, and was probably intelligible to scarcely a living
Englishman —he would have failed to restore the departed
nomenclature to its original significance, and would have only
insured the swift oblivion of the writings which served as a
medium for the experiment. On the contrary, by employing
the few unfamiliar French words he needed, he fell in with the
tendencies of his time, and availed himself of a vocabulary
every word of which, if not at first sight intelligible to the
English reader, found a ready interpreter in the person of
every man of liberal culture.
Langlande was the Pipin, Chaucer the Charlemagne, of the
new intellectual dynasty of England. The one established the
independence and the sovereignty of his house the other, by
;

a wise policy and by extended conquests, carried its dominion

Lect. IX. FRENCH WORDS IN CHAUCER 389

to a pitch of unprecedented prosperity and splendour. Chaucer

was a prince whose fitness for the sceptre gave him a right to
wield it, and the golden words he impressed with his own image,
and scattered among his countrymen, were the medals of his
coronation.
Of the two causes which conspired to favour the introduction
of French words into English verse — the poverty of the native
vocabulary and the necessities of rhyme and metre — the
latter is much the most easily detected and traced; and we
observe that a very large proportion of the French words
employed by Chaucer and Grower are those which contain the
rhyming syllables at the end of the lines.*
I have before alluded to the necessary connection between
the Eomance system of versification and a stock of words ac-
cented according to the French orthoepy. This, in Chaucer's
time, tended, as can easily be shown, in a more marked way
than at present, to throw the stress of voice upon the final
syllable t? contrary to the Saxon articulation, which, like that
of the other Grothic languages, inclined to accent the initial
syllable. In comparing Chaucer's versions with the originals,
as, for example, in the Eomaunt of the Eose, we not unfre-
quently find that he has transferred, not translated, the rhymes;
but it will be seen that a very large share of the French words
so employed by him were such as, from their moral uses and
significance, were inseparably connected with Christian doctrine
and ethical teaching, and had therefore become already known,
through the medium of ecclesiastical Latin, to even those of
the English people who were not familiar with the courtly and
cultivated French.
Notwithstanding the necessity thus imposed upon Chaucer,
as the translator of highly imaginative poems into a tongue
hitherto without literary culture, and possessed of no special

* See First Series, Lect. XXIY. p. 538, note.

t See First Series, Lect. XXIV. pp. 527, 528.
390 FRENCH WORDS IN CHAUCER Lect. IX.

vocabulary conventionally dedicated to poetical use, he was very

sparing in the employment of French words not belonging to
the class which I have just referred to and he shows exquisite
;

tasteand judgment in his selection from the vocabulary of both

languages, whenever the constraint of metre and rhyme left
him free to choose. Hence, though the Eomaunt of the Eose,
and his other works of similar character, are admirably faithful
as translations, their diction, which is an anthology of the best
words and forms of both languages, is more truly poetical than
that of the originals. In the hands of Chaucer, the English
language advanced, at one bound, to that superiority over the
French which it has ever since maintained, as a medium of the
expression of poetical imagery and thought.
The actual number of Eomance words introduced by Chaucer
is very much less than has been usually supposed. His rare
felicity of selection is not less apparent in his choice of native
than of foreign terms. English he employed from principle
and predilection, French from necessity, and his departures
from the genuine idiom of the now common speech of England
are few.
The general truth of these observations will be made ap-
parent by a few numerical facts. The translation of the first
part of the Eoman de la Eose, or that which belongs to
Guillaume de Lorris, including the few original interpolations
by Chaucer, contains something more than forty-four hundred
lines, or twenty-two hundred pairs of rhymes. Of these pairs,
between one hundred and twenty and one hundred and thirty, or
rather less than six per cent., are transferred, with little change
of form, from the French text, instead of being represented by
equivalent words of Anglo-Saxon origin. The convenience of
employing rhymes ready matched to his hands was, no doubt,
one reason why the poet availed himself of them, or, to express
the same thought in another way, why he introduced into
his verses the two hundred and fifty French words of which
these rhymes consist.
Lect. IX. FRENCH WORDS IN CHAUCER 391

The translation of the first part of theEoman de la Rose

contains about and consequently the
thirty thousand words,
number of French words employed in the transferred rhymes
is considerably less than one in a hundred of the whole number

which make up the poem. Now, when we consider the com-

parative poverty of native English, stripped, as we have seen
it had been, of almost its whole Anglo-Saxon moral and in-

tellectual nomenclature, as well as of its inflectional rhyming

endings, when we rememberthat French was the only medium
and was almost as well known as English to
of literary culture,
those for whom Chaucer wrote, it would seem that such a pro-
portion of French words —
less than one per cent. was not —
extravagantly large to employ in rhyming a translation of a
French poem, even supposing that they were now used for the
time in an English book. But, in point of fact, they were
first

by no means all now first introduced to the English public for ;

if we compare these words with the vocabularies of earlier and

contemporaneous English authors, we shall find that very many

of them had been already long in use, and were as well known
to Englishmen as any words of Latin or French extraction.
Several of the remaining words are not employed by Chancer
himself in his other works, and they never appear again in
English literature. He availed himself of the license of a
translator for a special purpose, and when that purpose was
answered, the new words thus used were dismissed from further
service, and heard of no more. Hence the charge, that Chaucer's
poems, and especially his translations, have corrupted his native
speech by a large and unnecessary admixture of a foreign verbal
element, is wholly without foundation.*

* Of the two hundred and fifty French words which make up the pairs of
rhymes transferred by Chaucer from his original, the following are wanting in
Coleridge's Glossarial Index to the Literature of the Thirteenth Century Ada- : —
mant, address (dress), advantage, allegement and allegiance in the sense of alle-
viation, amorous, amoret, anoint, apparent, attentive (ententive), avarice, brief,
chevisance, coasting, colour, complain, conduit, confound, covine, curious, discom-
fiture, disease, disperance, displease, divine, embattled, endure, ensign, fable, fined,
 —

392 '
MIXED CHARACTER OF ENGLISH Lect. IX.

The essential character of English, as a mixed and com-

posite language, was indelibly stamped upon it before the time
of Chaucer. As compared with Anglo-Saxon, it may pro-
perly be styled a new speech, new in syntax, and renewed and
enriched in vocabulary ; yet, in spite of the influx of foreign
words in the course of the fourteenth century, it was no more a
new language than the English nation was a new people and ;

it remained always a and appropriate medium for the ex-

fit

pression of English thought and English feeling, changing only

as the new nationality advanced and grew to the fulness of its
manhood.
It is not easy to make an intelligible, specific comparison be-
tween the dialect of Chaucer and that of earlier writers, because
there is perhaps no one of them whose subjects agree so nearly
with those treated by him, that their diction would be presumed
to correspond as closely as the idioms of their respective periods
would allow. The style of his prose works, whether translated
or original — if, indeed, any of them are original — does not,

flowret, fluter, foundation (foundement), garment, glory, habit in sense of inhabit,

hardiment, illuminated (enlumined), jaundice, lace in the sense of net or snare,
languor, lineage, losenger, meagre, mention, misericorde, moison, musard, muse,
verb, noblesse, ounce, weight, person, pleasant, prise inthe sense of praise, present
(in present), ragonce (should be jagonce, hyacinth), reasonable, record, recreantise,
refrain, religion, remember, remembrance, renown, request, return, scutcheon, size,
suckeny, table, towel, rain, victory, vermeil. Also the following, of which the
stem is found in Coleridge Accordance, acquainta&fc, delitous, despitous, envious,
:

outrageews, paintwrc, pleader, portraitures, repentance, savored, savorous; and

these, of whieh derivatives or allied forms occur in Coleridge :
—Courage (coura-
geous, Cole.), garden (gardener, Cole.), glutton (gloterie, Cole.), measure (measur-
able, Cole.), moneste ( amonestment, Cole.), tressour (tressed, tressure, Cole.). The
very rapid increase of the French element in the English vocabulary, between the
beginning and the middle of the fourteenth century, renders it highly probable
that many of these ninety words had already been introduced by other writers
during that interval. Some of them, certainly, such as religion (which occurs in
the Semi-Saxon of the Ancren Riwle, though, strangely enough, not in the litera-
ture of the thirteenth century), were naturalized a hundred and fifty years before
Chaucer's career as an author began. When the character and value of these
words are considered, I believe few scholars would convict Chaucer of the crime of
corrupting his native tongue, even upon proof that he was the first English
writer who had ever ventured to use any of them.
Lect. IX. chaucer's works not historical 393

so far as the stock of words is concerned, differ very essentially

from that of the original writings ascribed to Wycliffe, which
discuss similar subjects; but they are marked by more of artis-
tic skill in composition, and by greater flexibility and grace of
periodic structure.
It is remarkable that Chaucer, eminently national as, in spite
of the extent of his indebtedness to foreign sources, he certainly
is, should yet never have thought of taking the subject of his
inspiration from the recent or contemporaneous history of his
own country. In the case of a poet who did not concern him-
self with the realities of material life, but was devoted to didactic
or speculative views, or even to depicting the higher workings
of passion, this omission would not seem strange. But Chaucer
lived among the flesh-and-blood humanity of his time, and
deeply sympathized with it. He was a contemporary of the Black
Prince, and, as a true Englishman, he could not but have been
profoundly interested in the campaigns of that heroic soldier,
and proud of the trophies of Creci and Poitiers. But the glories
of English and French chivalry, which shed such a golden glow
on the canvas of his contemporary, the chronicler Froissart, are
nowhere reflected from the pages of Chaucer. On the contrary,
he seems studiously to avoid allusion to the history and political
concerns of his own country, even when they lie most obviously
in his path. The character of the Knight, in the Prologue to
the Canterbury Tales, afforded him an opportunity of enlivening
his verse with some flush of national exultation, but in his enu-
meration of the Knight's campaigns, he mentions none of the
scenes where English valour had been pitted against the chivalry
of France ; and yet he tells us of this warrior, that —
a.d. 1365. At Alisandre he was whan it was wonne.

Ful ofte tyme he hadde the bord bygonne

Aboven alle nacioims in Pruce.
In Lettowe hadde reyced and in Kuce,
No cristen man so ofte of his degre.
In Gernade atte siege hadde he be
394 CHAUCER AND FROISSART Lect. IX.

a.d. 1344. Of Algesir, and riden in Belmarie.

a.d. 1367. At Lieys was he, and at Satalie,
a.d. 1352. Whan they were wonne and in the Greete
; see
At many a noble arive hadde he be.
At mortal batailles hadde he ben fiftene,
And foughten for our feith at Tramassene
In lystes thries, and ay slayn his foo.
This ilke worthi knight hadde ben also
Somtyme with the lord of Palatye,
Ageyn another hethene in Turkye, &c.

The events here referred to extend from about the date of

the battle of Creci to that of the campaign of the Black Prince
in Spain, but the Knight participates in no English battle ; and
though, when the poet speaks of the martial prowess of the
Squire, his son, he mentions that

He hadde ben somtyme in chivachie,

In Flaundres, in Artoys, and in Picardie,

he does not take occasion for any expression of patriotic senti-

ment, or even intimate that the young soldier had there been
engaged in the national service, or in anything more than pri-
vate raids or the petty warfares of feudal barons, in which the
honour and interest of England had no stake.
The silence of Chaucer on these subjects appears still more
extraordinary, from the fact that he must have personally known
the chronicler Froissart, who was long in the service of Philippa
of Hainaut, the wife of Edward and who, after an absence
III.,

of seven-and-twenty years, returned to England in the reign of

Kichard II., 'to iustifye the hystories and maters that he hadde
written,' and to present to the king the ' fayre boke' I have men-
tioned, well enlumyned, couered with veluet,' and * garnysshed
6

with elapses of syluer and gylte,' in which were engrossed 6 all

the matters of amours and moralytees, that in four and twentie
yeres before he hadde made and compyled.'*

* Froissart, chap, cc, reprint of 1812, ii. p. 609.

Lect. ix. chaucer's obligations to French poets 395

Froissart, as appears from his own statements, neglected no

opportunity of making the acquaintance of persons intelligent in
political and military affairs and his character of a maker of
;
6

hystories was as well known both in France and in England as

'

was that of Thucydides in Greece, while he was composing his

immortal history of the Peloponnesian war. His reputation as a
poet, too, learned in criticism and the history of French litera-
ture, would naturally have attracted Chaucer to him. Chaucer's
Complaint of the Black Knight, and Froissart's Dit du Cheva-
lier Bleu, are the same poem, in an English and a French dress,

and there are some remarkable resemblances of thought and

expression between Chaucer's Book of the Duchess and Frois-
sart's Paradise of Love. In these cases, though it may be
impossible to say which was the original, the coincidence proves
that the works, and in all probability the person, of the one
author were known to the other.
Under these circumstances, we should suppose that the his-
torical zeal and ability of Froissart would have inspired the
English poet with the desire to celebrate the same events in a
poetic form. But Froissart himself did not treat historical sub-
jects in verse, and poetry seems to have been considered a fit
vehicle only for themes of a more imaginative character than
the hard realities of contemporaneous martial and political life.
Chaucer borrowed much from French authors —
more even
than has been until recently supposed —
and the influence of
French literature is constantly seen in his works, even where
they are not translations ; but there is every reason to suppose
that those from whom his tales were directly taken had, in gene-
ral, as little claim to originality as himself. Continued research
is constantly carrying further back the invention of the fables
which we habitually ascribe to the Middle Ages, and there are
but few of them which can, with any confidence, be affirmed to
belong to the period in which they are first known to us as
existing in a written form.
Few things in literature are more surprising than the antiquity
396 LITERACY PROPERTY Lect. IX.

and universality of popular fables. Many of these, considered

as natural personifications or exemplifications of universal
passions and moral qualities, may
be supposed to have arisen
independently of each other, as the forms in which, in rude ages,
certain primary ideas and opinions spontaneously clothe them-
selves. But there are others, so artificial in their conception
and treatment, and so marked and peculiar in the selection and
character of their personages, that it seems quite impossible that
they could have had been
possessed so close a similarity, if they
original products of different ages and countries and yet they ;

are found among peoples between whom no intercourse can have

existed since the commencement of the historic period. Every
reader of Grimm and Firmenich will remember the diverting
Low-German story of the race between the hedgehog and the
hare, which indeed cannot, in its present form, be of great an-
tiquhvy but it is affirmed to exist in some of the North- American
;

Indian tribes, who certainly neither derived it from nor commu-

nicated it to the whites.
In Chaucer's time, whatever had been given to the world
was regarded as common property. Most works of the Middle
Ages were anonymous, and authors seldom made any scruple
in employing inventions or poetical embellishments which
suited their purpose, without acknowledgment, and evidently
without consciousness of wrong. Our modern notions of the
sacredness of literary property, of the perpetual title of an
author to the coinage of his own brain, are, in part at least, the
fruit of circumstances dependent on the mechanical conditions
of the art of printing. So long as books were multiplied only
by the slow and costly process of manual copying, the additional
burden of a compensation to the author, in the shape of a copy-
right,would have effectually prevented the circulation of most
works and writers who toiled for present fame or future im-
;

mortality would have defeated their own purpose by imposing

conditions upon the copying of their works, which would, in
most cases, have prevented the multiplication of them altogether.
Lect. IX. LITERARY PROPERTY 397

But when, by the invention of printing, book-making became

a manufacture, the relations between the producer and the con-
sumer were changed. It is true, that when once the mechani-
cal facilities were provided, an edition could be published at
what had been the cost of a single copy but for this purpose,
;

the arts of type-founding and type-setting must first be acquired

by a long apprenticeship, and a large capital must be invested
in types and presses. This capital and this industry could be
secured from a dangerous competition, only by protective laws.
The protection originally designed for the benefit of the capitalist,
the printer, yielded returns, which, first the editors of classical
works, and finally authors of original compositions, were allowed
to share in about that small proportion which, in ordinary cases,
the profits of the writer still bear to those of the publisher ; and
hence the notion of a right in literary property. This has given
birth to a new feature, if not a new estate, inmodern society —
a class of men who live by literary production, a body of pro-
fessional writers, whose motive for authorship consists mainly in
the pecuniary rewards it yields, rewards which can be secured
to them only by the authority of laws recognizing the right of
property in literary wares, and punishing the infraction of that
right as in other cases of invasion of property. The authority
of law, in all well-ordered governments, carries with
it a moral

sanction,and the code, which establishes the legal right of an

author to the exclusive use and benefit of his intellectual labours,
has created a respect for those rights, that extends even beyond
the limits marked out by the law.
That the legal title of the author is an important ingredient
in the respect felt for his professional property is proved by the

fact, that in cases which the law does not reach — as in regard
to the works of ancient or foreign writers unprotected by an
international copyright — the odium attached to plagiarism is
less strongly felt ; and the commercial spirit of our age, in this
as well as in other things, is much less tender of the reputation
than of the purse.
398 INVENTION IN LITERATURE Lect. IX.

Van Lennep, the most eminent living writer of Holland, in

some remarks at a congress of authors and publishers held at
Brussels, not long since, to consider the general question of
literary property, said For nearly forty years I have lived
:
(

principally by robbery and theft;' and he justified his practice

by the example of Virgil, Dante, Tasso, Milton, Moliere, Eacine,
Voltaire, Schiller, Vondei, and Bilderdijk, all of whom he de-
clared to be as unscrupulous plunderers as himself.
When, then, Chaucer and Gower appropriated and national-
ized the tales versified by French poets, or by classic authors, they
felt that they were only taking up waifs, or estrays, which had

been left by the original owners free to chance occupancy, and

which the Norman or Eoman bard had himself probably come
into possession of by finding,' as the lawyers phrase it. It is
f

an etymological remark worth making, now that we are upon

the subject, that the very word invention, commonly used of
the origination of a poem or a machine, radically means, not
creation of that which is new, but accidentally coming upon, or
finding, that which is old.

And, in fact, how much is there either historically or psycho-

logically new what the dialect of criticism calls invention ?
in
Shakespeare, the most original of writers, invented nothing, or
next to nothing, in the way of plot or incident and if you strip ;

his dramas of their artistic dress and moral element, the events
are just what do or may happen a hundred times within the
observation of every man of experience in the world's affairs.
For invention, in the way of creation of plot, for novel and
startling situations and combinations, you must go, not to
c
Shakespeare, but to what are called sensation' novels. There
you will find abundance of incident, that not only never did,
but, without an inversion of the laws of humanity, never could
happen while in all genial literature, the mere events of the
;

story can at any time be matched in the first newspaper you take
up. Just in proportion as the words or the works of the per-
sonages of the dialogue or the narrative are new to human nature
LECT. IX. INVENTION IN LITERATURE 399

under the conditions supposed, just in proportion as they startle

and vicious
or surprise the reader or the spectator, they are false
and the necessary and consciously felt truth of them, as logical
results of the character and circumstances of the person depicted,
is the test of the genius of the writer.
The ingenious gentleman who manufactured a stupendous
marine reptile out of the bones of whales was certainly a great
inventor but the judicious do not rank him higher than the
;

learned comparative anatomist who demonstrated that the

hydrarchus was an imposture, or than the renowned naturalist
whose free choice has authorized America to claim him as her
own, by a better title than the accident of birth, and who is
content to accept the works of Grod, even as they come from the
hands of their Creator.
So far as Chaucer was avowedly, or at least undisguisedly, a
translator, there is of course no question of originality; but even
in this capacity he shows great power of language, and the
three or four hundred lines, which he has here and there inter-
polated into his otherwise close translation of the work of De
Lorris, will be at once recognized as among the passages of the
poem finest in sentiment and most beautiful in imagery and
expression.*

Chaucer's ability as a translator was known, and highly appreciated, by his

*

literary contemporaries in France. Wright, in his curious collection, the Anecdota

Literaria, publishes the following complimentary stanzas addressed to Chaucer by
Eustache Deschamps, a French poet of his own time :

BALLADE A GEOFFROI CHAUCER, PAR EUSTACHE DESCHAMPS.

[From the Bibliotheque Royale, MS. 7219, fol. 62, ro.]

Socrates, plains de philosophie,

Seneque en meurs et angles en pratique,
Ovides grans en ta poeterie,
Bries en parler, saiges en rethorique,
Aigles tres haultz, qui par ta theorique
Enlumines le regne d'Eneas,
L'isle aux geans, ceulx de Bruth, et qui as
Seme les fleurs et plante le rosier
Aux ignorans de la langue Pandras ;

Grant translateur, noble G-efFroy Chaucier.

400 CHAUCER AND THE ITALIAN POETS Lect. IX.

It has been thought strange that Chaucer, who borrowed so

freely from French literature, should have taken so little from
Italian sources. He is supposed to have been twice in Italy he ;

professes to have learned the story of patient Grriselda, or the

Clerke's Tale, from Petrarch, at Padua; and he speaks of Dante
with reverence, and paraphrases from the Inferno of that poet
the inscription over the gates of the infernal regions. But his
writings do not show much evidence of a familiarity with Italian
literature, nor does he appear to be indebted to it for anything
more than the story of Troilus and Creseide —which is a trans-
lation, or rather a paraphrase, of the Filostrato of Boccaccio -^
and that of Palamon and Arcite, which is taken from the

Tu es d'amours mondains dieux, en Albie,

Et de la rose, en la terre angelique,
Qui d' Angels Saxonne est puis fleurie
Angleterre d'elle ce nom s' applique,
Le derrenier en rethimologique,
En t>on Angles le livre translatas :

Et un vergier ou du plant demandas

De ceuls qui font pour eulx auctoriser,
N'a pas long temps que tu edifias,
Grant translateur, noble Geffroy Ckaucki

A toy pour ce, de la fontaine Helye

Kequier avoir un ouvrage autentique,
Dont la doys est du tout en ta baillie,
Pour refrener d'elle ma soif ethique
Qu'en ma Gaule serai paralitique
Jusques a ce que tu m'abuveras.
Eustace sui, qui de mon plans aras
Mais prens en gre les euvres d'escolier
Que, par Clifford, de moy avoir pourras,
Grant translateur, noble Gieffroi Chaucier.

U Envoy.
Poete hault, loenge destinye,
En ton jardin ne seroie qu'ortie ;

Considere ce que j'ay dit premier,

Ton noble plan, ta douce melodie ;

Mais pour scavoir, de rescrire te prie,

Grant translateur, noble Geffroy Chaucier.
Lect. IX. CHAUCER'S LITERARY CHRONOLOGY 401

Teseide of the same author. Chaucer's recension of this latter

tale differs much in plan, arrangement, and incident from the
Teseide, to which, as we shall see, it is greatly superior in
imagery and sentiment, though, perhaps, not in the conduct
of the narrative.
Dante was too severe, Petrarch too sentimental, for the cheer-
ful and buoyant spirit of Chaucer, and it is therefore not sur-
prising that he should have copied or imitated the lively
Boccaccio rather than the greater but more unreal creations
of those authors.
Chaucer, in fine, was a genuine product of the union of
Saxon and Norman genius, and the first well-characterized
specimen of the intellectual results of a combination, which
has given to the world a literature so splendid, and a history so
noble.
The English is the only Gothic tribe ever thoroughly imbued
with theRomance culture, and at the same time interfused with
southern blood, and consequently it is the only common repre-
sentative of the two races. The civilization and letters of Grer-

many and Scandinavia are either wholly dissimilar to those of

Southern Europe, or they are close imitations. On the other hand,
the social institutions and the poetry of the Eomance nations
are self-developed, and but slightly modified by Gothic influ-
ences. In England alone have the best social, moral, and intel-
lectual energies of both families been brought to coincide in
direction ; and and English literature we
in English character
find, if not all the special excellences which distinguish each

constituent of the English nationality, yet a resultant of the two

forces superior in power to either.
We are not well acquainted with Chaucer's literary chronology,
but there is good reason to believe that his translation of the
Eoman de la Eose was his first important work, and the Canter-
bury Tales his last, as it is unquestionably his greatest.
The Eoman de la Eose is in two parts —
the commencement,
written by Guillaume de Lorris about the year 1250, containing
D D
 ;

402 chaucer's accidence Lkct. ix.

not far from forty-one hundred verses, and the sequel or con-
tinuation written by Jean de Meung, half a century later, and
extending to about nineteen thousand verses. Criticism upon
the literary merits of works not belonging to English literature
would here be out of place; and in our examination of Chaucer's
Eomaunt of the Eose, we must confine ourselves chiefly to his
ability as a translator, though some of his embellishments and
improvements of the original will be found to deserve more
special attention.
The work of De Lorris is translated entire. The continuation
by De Meung is much abridged, but I believe not otherwise
essentially changed. The generally close correspondence be-
tween the first part of the Eomaunt of the Eose and the best
printed edition of the work of De Lorris —
that of Meon —
affords a gratifying proof that the existing manuscripts of both
are, in the main, faithful transcripts of the respective authors'
copies; for if either had been much altered, the coincidence
between the two could not be so exact. We are, therefore,
warranted in believing that we have the Eomaunt of the Eose
very nearly as the translator left it, in all points except that of
grammatical inflection.

In this important particular there is much uncertainty and

confusion, with respect not only to the dialect of the Eomaunt,
but to that of all Chaucer's works. The manuscript copies of
his writings in the different public and private libraries of Eng-
land do not appear to have been collated by any competent
scholar, and none of the printed editions, except, perhaps,
Wright's Canterbury Tales, are entitled to much confidence as
faithful reproductions of the codices. Caxton's second edition
has been supposed to be of high authority, because it professedly
conforms to a manuscript which he believed to be authentic
but this was a point on which Caxton was by no means quali-
fied to pronounce, and notwithstanding his professions of strict

adherence to his text, his avowed practice of reducing what he

calls the 6
rude English ' of early authors, to an orthographical
Lect. IX. PRINTED TEXTS OF CHAUCER 403

and grammatical standard of his own, detracts much from the

value of all his editions of works of preceding centuries.
There are certain points of inflection in all the works of
Chaucer, on which we are much in the dark. The most im-
portant of these, both syntacticall} , and in reference to versifi-
7

cation, is the grammatical and prosodical value of the final e.

Most generally, it seems to have stood as the sign of the plural,
but sometimes, apparently, of case, and sometimes even of
gender, in nouns, and of the definite form in the adjective.
But the published texts are not uniform and harmonious enough
in the use of this letter to enable us to form a consistent theory
of its force, and to state the rules which governed its employ-
ment. There appears to be little doubt, however, that it occurs
more frequently in the manuscripts than in the printed editions
It was often obscurely written, or indicated by a mere mark,
which later transcribers and printers have overlooked, and the
restoration of it is, in many cases, absolutely necessary to the
metre of lines which are found in the midst of passages generally
of exquisite versification.*
The printed copies are very inaccurate also in discriminating
between the regularly and the irregularly conjugated verbs. In
modern times, not only have many verbs originally irregular
become regular in conjugation, but the two systems are some-
times blended. Thus the Anglo-Saxon, ere op an, to creep,
made the past tense singular, creap. But we say, crept, and
the like, the t final standing for ed, the usual ending of the
regular conjugation, which some grammatical improver sup-
posed to be a necessary sign of the past inflection. The best
manuscripts of Chaucer do not justify this corruption, though it

appears in all the old editions.

* My learned friend, Professor Child, of Harvard University, has kindly com-

municated to me many interesting observations on the e final in Chaucer, but, as
he is still continuing his researches, I will not anticipate his conclusions, which
trust will soon be given to the world by himself. See Wright's Notes on the
Reeve's Tale, Anecdota Literaria, p. 23 et seq.
D D 2
 —

404 THE ROMAUNT OF THE ROSE Lect. IX.

The translation of the Eoman de la Rose, in the form we

possess it, is not, then, a safe authority upon the accidence of
English at the commencement of Chaucer's literary career;
but, from its general fidelity to the original, it affords a fair
opportunity for comparing the relative power of poetical ex-
pression, possessed, at that time,by the two languages. English
had not then attained to the full compass, flexibility, and grace,
with which Chaucer himself, in his later works, endowed it.
Still, I believe that no competent judge can examine the French

text and its English counterpart, without coming to the con-

clusion, that the language, which, a generation or two before,
had shown itself, in the hands of Eobert of Gloucester and his
follower De Brunne,poor, rude, and unpolished, had now, by
accretion and development, become so improved as to be in no
wise inferior to the original of the Roman de la Rose, in any of
the special qualities that go to make up a perfect poetical
diction.
The metre is the same in the translation as in the original
iambic, octosyllabic rhyme — but as the e final was, except
when followed by a word beginning with h, or with a vowel,
generally pronounced in both languages, a majority of the
lines have a superfluous or ninth syllable in the terminal
rhyme, which thus becomes an amphibrach instead of an iambus.
In this respect, however, no rule of sequence or arrangement is
followed, the alternate succession of masculine and feminine,
or single and double rhymes, not having then become obligatory
in French, as it never did in English verse.
So far as, with our imperfect knowledge of the pronunciation
of English in Chaucer's time, we are able to judge, the versi-
fication of this translation, though in general flowing and cor-
rect, is less skilful than that of the poet's later works and he ;

exhibits less facility in rhyming in the Romaunt than in his

Canterbury Tales. Thus, where a double -rhymed ending occurs,
he, much more frequently than in his original compositions,
Lect. IX. THE ROMAUNT OF THE ROSE 405

makes use of two words in one line as a consonance to a single

word in another. Thus

13 74. And many homely trees there were,

That peaches, coines, and apples bere,
Medlers, plummes, peeres, chesteinis
Cherise, of whiche many one faine is.

So again
1382. With cipres, and with oliveris.
Of which that nigh no plenty here is.

and
1577. Againe the Sunne an hundred hewis,
Blew, yellow, and red, that fresh and new is.

But these licenses are not common, and in general both rhyme
and metre are unexceptionable.
To give an extended comparison between the diction of the
French poet and his English translator is here impossible, and
I must content myself with a specimen or two, which will serve
to direct the attention of the reader to the mode in which
Chaucer has embellished and improved upon his original. This
he effects by the use of more expressive words, by the addition
of picturesque features to the imagery, and by the greater con-
densation of style which the structure of English sometimes
allows.
Verses 119 — 122 of the original run thus:
Si vi tot covert et pave
Le fons de l'iave de gravele;
La praerie grant et bele
Tres au pie de l'iave batoit.

This Chaucer renders, in four and a half verses, thus :

Tho' saw I wele

The bottome y-paved everidele
"With gravel, full of stones shene;
The meadowes softe, sote and grene,
Beet right upon the water side.
406 THE ROMAUNT OF THE HOSE Lect. IX.

An explanatory remarkis sometimes introduced by the

translator, as in thecomparison of the song of the birds in the
rose-garden to the chant of the sirens. De Lorris has said,
672. Tant estoit cil chans dous et biaus,
Qu'il ne sembloit pas chans d'oisiaus,
Ains le peust Ten aesmer
A chant de seraines de mer,
Qui, par lor vois qu'eles ont saines
Et series,* ont non seraines.

In the translation thus :

Such swete song was hem emong,

That me thought it no birdes song,
But it was wonder like to bee
Song of meremaidens of the see,
That, for hir singen is so clere,

Though we meremaidens clepe hem here

In English, as isour usaunce,
Men clepe hem sereins in France.

But Chaucer's amplifications of the text of De Lorris are not

numerous, nor, with a single exception, of much importance.
The addition, in the case I refer to, was noticed in Lecture XI.
of my First Series, and I here recur to it, not only for its in-
herent interest, as the expression of a generous and truly English
sentiment, of which there is no trace in the original, but, more
especially, because, in a later work, the poet repeats, expands,
and enforces the sentiment, in a tone which plainly indicates that
he had been censured for expressing it, and was seizing an occasion
for a spirited defence of his principles. The connection between
the two passages renders it necessary to re-examine the first.
The word vilain denoted primarily a man of rustic and
plebeian birth, and afterwards, from the general disposition of
the high-born and the rich to ascribe base qualities to men of
humble origin, it came to signify, also, ignoble in spirit, mean
* Roquefort expla'ns this word: Joli, agreable, doux, melodieux, paisible,
modere, tranquille, lent, grave, —
rather a formidable list of meanings to be
deduced from the Latin adverb, sero, late, to which he refers serie.
Lect. IX. THE ROMAUNT OF THE ROSE 407

and vulgar. At a later period, the word acquired in English

even a more offensive moral meaning but in Chaucer's time, ;

though employed occasionally by the poet himself in the same

metaphorical way as in French, it was not habitually used in
any other than the feudal sense of a tenant, or a serf bound to
the soil he tilled, or in the more general acceptation of a plebeian,
low-born person.* De Lorris had introduced this word and its

derivative, vilonnie, into a passage, v. 2086, which Chaucer

translates thus :

2175. ' Villanie at the beginning,

1
I woll,' sayd Love, over all thing
'

Thou leave, if thou wolt ne be

False, and trespace ayenst me
I curse and blame generally
All hem that loven villany,
For villanie maketh villeine,
And by his deeds a chorle is seine.
These villaines arne without pitie,
Friendship, love, and all bountie.
I nill receive unto my servise
Hem that ben villaines of emprise.'

Villanie (vilonnie) as first used in this extract is employed in

a moral sense, but in the couplet
For villanie maketh villeine,
And by his deeds a chorle is seine,

villeine, as plainly appears by the original,

Vilonnie fait li vilains,

* This latter was the common meaning long after Chaucer's time, and even as
late as the beginning of the sixteenth century. Fisher thus uses it, in his memo-
rial sermon on the Countess of Eichmond and Derby, mother of Henry VII.,
preached in 1509. Speaking of the prayer of Christ for the forgiveness of his
enemies, and his expected intercession for the departed countess, he says Yf :
— '

in this mortall Body he prayed and asked forgyveness for his Enemyes that cruci-
fyed hym * * * and yet nevertheless he opteyned his petycion for them moche ;

rather it is to suppose, that he shall opteyne his askynge for * * * this noble princes
than for his mortal Enemyes, which were many and but vylayncs? Bosvile's
reprint, 1708, p. 24 Here the word means persons of low condition, as con-
:

trasted with the rank of the deceased noble princess.'

'
 : : :

408 THE EOMAUNT OF THE HOSE Lect. IX.

is the nominative to malceth, and villanie is its objective.

Hence the meaning is : villains, or persons of plebeian rank,
commit villany or base actions, or, in other words, those who
are villains in a legal sense are especially prone to be guilty of
the meannesses which were morally stigmatized as villany.
Against this opinion, Chaucer's noble though he was of
spirit,

gentle birth, compelled him to protest, and he introduced into

his translation this disclaimer

But understond in thine entent,

That this is not mine entendement,
To clepe no wight in no ages
Onely gentle for his linages
But whoso is vertuous,
And in his port not outrageous,
When such one thou seest thee beforne,
Though he be not gentle borne,
Than maiest well seine this in sooth,
That he is gentle, because he doth
As longeth to a gentleman
Of hem none other deme I can,
For certainly withouten dreede
A chorle is demed by his deede,
Of hye or lowe, as ye may see,
Or of what kinred that he bee.*

Although the original harshness of the feudal relation be-

tween the Norman lord and the Saxon churl had been some-
what softened by three centuries of common interest and reci-
procal dependence and helpfulness, yet such sentiments as these
were of too dangerous a tendency to be well received by the
higher classes, in an age when so many popular apostles of
liberty, in France and in England, were preaching the natural
equality of man. Hence Chaucer was undoubtedly blamed for
unnecessarily proclaiming this disorganising doctrine, in the
translation of a work which professed no such social heresy.
But the poet did not shrink from the position he had taken,
* See Longer Notes and Illustrations, III. at the end of this lecture.
 — : ; ;

Lect. IX. THE KOMAUNT OP THE ROSE 409

and in the Wife of Bath's Tale he again advanced and main-

tained the opinion, that the true test of gentility is nobleness
of and courtesy of manner, and not ancestral rank. This
life

position is enforced at much length, the argument extending to

a hundred verses, and being conducted with a spirit which gives
it altogether the air of a reply to a personal attack. It is as
follows:

But for ye speken of swiche gentilesse,

As is descendit out of old richesse,
Therefor schuld ye ben holden gentil men
Swiche arrogaunce is not worth an hen.
Lok who that is most vertuous alway,
Prive and pert, and most entendith ay
To do the gentil dedes that he can,
Tak him for the grettest gentil man.
Crist, wol we clayme of him our gentilesse,
Nought of oure eldres for her olde richesse.
For though thay give us al her heritage,
For which we clayme to be of high parage,
Yitmay thay not biquethe, for no thing,
To noon of us, so vertuous lyvyng,
That made hem gentil men y-callid be,
And bad us folwe hem in such degre.
Wei can the wyse poet of Florence,
That hatte Daunt, speke of this sentence
Lo, in such maner of rym is Dauntes tale * :

* I have not been able to identify the precise passage in Dante referred to by-
Chaucer, but the Italian poet expresses very similar sentiments in the Canzone
prefixed to the fourth Trattato in the Convito :
—
E poiche tempo mi par d' aspettare,
Diporro giu lo mio soave stile,
Ch' io ho tenuto nel trattar d' Amore,
E diro del valore
Per lo qual veramente e 1' uom gentile,
Con rima aspra e sottile,
Riprovando il giudicio falso e rile

******
Di

Ed
que', che yoglion che di gentilezza
Sia principio ricchezza

e tanto durata
410 THE EOMAUNT OF THE EOSE Lect. IX*

Ful seeld uprisith by his braunchis small

Prowes of man, for God of his prowesse
Wol that we claime of him our gentilesse
For of our auncestres we no thing clayme
But temporal thing, that men may hurt and mayme.
Ek every wight wot this as well as I,
If gentiles were plaunted naturelly
Unto a certayn lignage doun the line,
Prive ne apert, thay wolde never fine
To done of gentilesce the fair office,
They might nought doon no vileny or vice.

The poet manifestly holds that gentility is not a generic dis-

tinction, and at the same time tacitly gives in his adhesion to
the doctrine of the perpetuity of species, just now under dis-
cussion, in a class of philosophers who were not dreamed of by
Chaucer as likely to debate that question five centuries after his
age. He proceeds :
—

La cosi falsa opinion tra nui,

Che 1' uom chiama colui
Uomo gentil, che puo dicere : I'fui

******
Nipote o
Benche

Che
sia
figlio di cotal valente,

da ni'ente

siccome si crede,
le divizie,
Non posson gentilezza dar, ne torre;
Perocche vili son di lor natura.
* * * * *
E gentilezza dorunque virtute,
Ma non virtute ov' ella
Siccome e cielo dovunque la Stella
Ma cio non e converso.
* * * * *
Pero nessun si vanti,
Dicendo per ischiatta io son con lei,
:

Ch'elli son quasi Dei

Que' e' han tal grazia fuor di tutti rei
Che solo Iddio all' anima la dona,
Che vede in sua persona
Perfettamente star, sicche ad alquanti
Lo seme di felicita s' accosta,
Messo da Dio nell' anima ben posta.
Lect. IX. TRANSLATION 411

Tak fuyr and ber it in the derkest hous,

Bitwixe this and the mount Caukasous,
And let men shit the dores, and go thenne,
Yit wol the fuyr as fair and lighte brenne
As twenty tliousand men might it beholde;
His office naturel ay wol it holde,
Up peril on my lif, til that it dye.
Her may ye se wel, how that genterye
Is nought annexid to possessioun,
Sithins folk ne doon her operacioun
Ahvay, as doth the fuyr, lo, in his kynde.
For God it wot, men may ful often fynde
A lordes sone do schame and vilonye.
And he that wol have pris of his gentrie,
For he was boren of a gentil hous,
And had his eldres noble and vertuous,
And nyl himselve doo no gentil dedes,
Ne folw his gentil aunceter, that deed is,
He nought gentil, be he duk or erl
lis

For vileyn synful deedes maketh a cherl.

For gentilnesse nys but renome
Of thin auncestres, for her heigh bounte,
Which is a straunge thing to thy persone
Thy gentilesce cometh fro God alloone.
Than comth oure verray gentilesse of grace,
Itwas no thing biquethe us with oure place.
Thinketh how nobil, as saith Valerius,
Was thilke Tullius Hostilius,
That out of povert ros to high noblesse.
Eedith Senek, and redith eek Boece,
Ther schuln ye se expresse, that no dred is,

That he is gentil that doth gentil dedis.

And therfor, lieve housbond, I conclude,
Al were it that myn auncetres wer rude,
Yit may the highe God, and so hope I,

Graunte me grace to lyve vertuously

Than am I gentil, whan that I bygynne
To lyve vertuously, and weyven synne.

The dialect of the translation of the Eoman de la Rose

is, in general, more archaic than that of Chaucer's later, and
412 TRANSLATION Lect. IX.

especially his original works, and these latter, which reach the
highest excellence of expression in the Canterbury Tales, exhibit
a force and beauty of diction that few succeeding authors have
surpassed.
Chaucer's translation of the Eomaunt of the Eose, which
was a work of was perhaps consciously de-
his earlier years,
signed as a preparation for original poetic effort. But whether
so designed or not, he could hardly have selected a better exer-
citation or school of practice, in the use of his mother tongue
as a medium of imaginative composition.
The French Eoman de la Eose —
or rather the first part of
the two poems which pass under that name, but which are by
different authors, and but slightly connected as commencement
—
and sequel was in a style wholly new to English, and its dialect
was richest in many points, both of thought and of expression,
where the poverty of English was greatest. A translation of it,
therefore, was a work admirably suited, in the hands of a genial
artist, to the improvement of the practical diction of English,

in the points where it needed to be reformed before it could

become a fit vehicle for the conceptions of a truly original
poetic spirit.
Indeed it may be said, as a general truth, that one of the
very best methods of learning to express ourselves aptly in our
native language is to habituate ourselves to the utterance of
thoughts and the portrayal of images conceived by other minds,
and embodied in other tongues, and there is perhaps no practice,
by which we can so readily acquire the command of an extensive
vocabulary, or give to our personal dialect so great a compass,
flexibility and variety of expression, as by the translation of
authors whose thoughts run in channels not familiar to our
native literature.
Nor is it that, in translation, we borrow either the words, or
even the phraseological combinations of those from whom we
translate. This would be but a restamping of old coin without
effacing the foreign image and superscription, a slavish imita-
 — ;

Lect. IX. chaucer's minor poems 413

tion of the original, which a man capable, or ambitious of be-

coming capable, of well using his own tongue, could not descend
to. But it is, that when we think another man's thoughts in
our own words, we are forced out of the familiar beats of our
own personal diction, and compelled sometimes to employ
vocables and verbal combinations, which, though they may be
perfectly idiomatic, we have not before appropriated and made
our own by habitual use, sometimes to negotiate new alliances
between vernacular words, which, if they never have yet been
joined together, nevertheless lawfully and profitably may be.*
It is impossible here to go into a critical examination of the
numerous works of Chaucer, original and imitative, and the
space at our command will only enable us to take a cursory
view of some of the more important of his remaining poems.
Of the former class, one of the best known is the Troilus and
Creseide, which is founded on the Filostrato of Boccaccio, and
in part directly translated from that author. The additions to
the Italian are extensive, important, and probably mainly
original, though certainly, in part, derived from French writers.
Chaucer himself makes no mention of Boccaccio, but professes
from Lollius, a Latin author
to derive the incidents of the story
but no Latin origiual is known, nor have the longer additions
been traced to any other source. It cannot be said that the
poem is essentially improved by the changes of the translator,
though, in some passages, great skill in the use of words is

exhibited,and the native humour of Chaucer pervades many

portions of the story, which, in the hands of Boccaccio, were
of a graver cast ; but, upon the whole, the merit of Chaucer's
* Maister Cheekes iudgement was great in translating out of one tongue into an
other, and better skill he had in our English speach to iudge of the Phrases and
properties of wordes, and to diuide sentences, than any else had that I haue
knowne. And often he woulde englyshe his matters out of the Latine or Greeke
vpon the sodeyne, by looking of the booke onely without reading or construing at
all: An vsage right worthie and verie profitable for all men, as well for the vnder-
standing of the booke, as also for the aptnesse of framing the Authors meaning
and bettering thereby their iudgement, and therewithall perfiting their tongue and
vtterance of speach. Epistle to Wilson's Translation of Demosthenes. London 1570.
:
 :

414 THE FLOWER AND TEE LEAF Lect. IX.

contributions to the original tale is not such as, in a brief and

general view of his poetical and philological character, to re-
pay an analysis.
The exquisite poem, the Flower and the Leaf, is, I am afraid,
better known by Dryden's modernization of it than by the orioi-
nal text. It first appeared in 1597, and its authenticity has been
suspected, but the internal evidence is almost decisive in its

favour. Chaucer himself, in the Legend of Good Women, ex-

pressly alludes to the subject, as one on which he had written, and
there can be little doubt that the poem in question is his. Parts
of have been shown to be imitations or translations from the
it

French, but these constitute an inconsiderable proportion of the

work, and it must be regarded as among the most truly original,
as it certainly is one of the finest, of Chaucer productions. Indeed
it may be said, with respect to many of the poet's alleged obli-
gations to Eomance authors, the evidence of which has been
industriously collected by Sandras and others, that the passages
cited in proof of the theory that our authorwas little better than
a translator, are, for the most part, mere commonplaces, which
are found in all literatures, and the true origin of which dates
so far back that no Eomance author, ancient or modern, can
fairly be supposed to have first expressed them.
The general plan of the Flower and the Leaf is well enough,
though somewhat quaintly, stated by the first editor :

A gentlewoman, out of an arbour in a grove, seeth a great conrpanie

of knights and ladies in a daunce upon the greene grasse the which :

being ended, they all kneele downe, and do honour to the daisie, some
to the flower, and some Afterward this gentlewoman
to the leafe.
learneth by one of these ladies the meaning
hereof, which is this
They which honour the floAver, a thing fading with every blast, are
such as. looke after beautie and worldly pleasure. But they that
honour the leafe, which abideth with the root, notwithstanding the
frosts and winter stormes, are they which follow vertue and during
qualities, without regard of worldly respects.

One of the most striking characteristics of this poem is the

 ;

Lect. ix. chaucer's sympathy with nature 415

sympathy it manifests with nature. Some tokens of this feeling

Ploughman, but it is first fully displayed
are discoverable in Piers
by Chaucer. The same sensibility to the charms of rural scenery
and landscape beauty is indeed shown elsewhere by our author,
but perhaps nowhere in so high a degree. This feature of the
poem renders it probable that it is one of Chaucer's later works
for the perception of landscape beauty depends upon a long
training of the eye, which is hardly perfected until a somewhat
advanced period of life. In the hey-day of youth, we do not
see (rod in his works, and the increased enjoyment of rural
scenery is one of the compensations reserved by Providence for
the sober age of those who have so familiarized themselves with
the ways of Nature as to understand some of the many voices in
which she speaks to her children.*
But the love of nature, as exhibited in this poem, is rather a
matter of feeling than of intelligent appreciation or of refined
taste ; for the description of the grove applies to the clipped and
* I venture here to quote a passage from a discourse of my own, delivered and
published in 1847 : —
4
The age of the -wise man has another compensation. It has been wisely ordered,
that the sense of material beauty in the myriad forms of spontaneous nature and
formative art, is the last developed of all the powers of sensuous perception. It
cannot arrive at its full perfection until the abatement of the "natural force"
allows to the pure intelligence its due superiority over the physical energies, and
the sense to which the impressions of visible beauty are addressed has been refined
and spiritualized by long, and perhaps unconscious, sesthetical cultivation. We say
unconscious cultivation, for in this school of life our great teacher often disguises
her lessons. Of all our organs, the eye is the most susceptible of culture, and it
is the one for whose involuntary training Nature has made the largest provision
Untaught, newborn vision distinguishes but outline and colour, and it is long obser-
vation, alone, that gives the perception of the relief which springs from the dis-
tribution of" light and shade, the notions of distance and relative position, and the
estimate of comparative magnitudes. Thus far. unreflecting experience carries
her pupil. But the ethereal perception of beauty is a product of the period when
strengthening intellect has acquired its full dominion over mortified passion, the
superadded fruit of moral culture, and it attains not its ripeness, save under the
rays of an autumnal sun. Nature has thus reserved for the sober eye of age the
most intelligent appreciation, and the most exquisite enjoyment, of the choicest of
her sensuous gifts, and the evening of the scholar who has made his life a dis-
cipline is cheered by the most ennobling contemplations of the world of intellect,
and gilded with the most exalted pleasures of the world of sense.'
 —

416 THE FLOWER AND THE LEAF Lect. IX.

trimmed artificial plantation, and not to the wild and free luxu-
riance of forest growth. Chaucer here unfortunately followed
his literary reminiscences, instead of trusting to his own instincts
and his taste ; for heborrowing from a French poet when he
is

speaks of the ' okes great/ which grew ( streight as a line,' and
at equal distances from each other,* and of the ' hegge,'

Wrethen in fere so well and cunningly,

That every branch and leafe grew by mesure,
Plaine as a bord, of an height by and by.

But this description of the turf must have been original, for
it is in England
o that one oftenest finds :

The grene gras

So small, so thicke, so short, so fresh of hew,
That most like unto green wool wot I it was.

I believe no old manuscript of the Flower and the Leaf is

known to be extant. This is much to be regretted, because

Speght's edition is evidently exceedingly corrupt, and the versi-
fication, which seems to have been very polished and mellifluous,
is much impaired by the inaccuracy of the text.

* Dans le Dit du Lyon (de G-. Machault), les arbres de ou aborde le poete,
l'ile

sont tous de meme hauteur, et plantes a egale distance ; genre de paysage deja
decrit par Gr. de Lorris et qui charmait les anciens Bretons.

Li Tergiers etoit compassez,

Car d' arbres y avoit assez,
Mais de groissour et de hautesse
Furent pareil, et par noblesse
Plante si, que nulz ne savoit
Com plus de l'un a l'autre avoit.
Sandras, Etude sur Chaucer, p. 100.

In the translation of Owen, or the Lady of the Fountain, by Villemarque, is

this passage " Apres avoir erre longtemps, j'arrivai dans la plus belle vallee du
:

monde; la s'elevaient des arbres, tous de meme hauteur;" and in a note, two
similar passages from the Myvyrian and the Mabinogion are cited.—Villemarque,
Les Romans de la Table Ronde, pp. 181, 228. This seems to indicate a taste
generated, or rather depraved, by a too artificial civilization, such as we can hardly
suppose to have existed in any early Celtic nation.
Lect. IX. CANTERBURY TALES 417

Chaucer's greatest work, that on which his claim to be ranked

among the first ornaments of modern literature must principally
rest, is his Canterbury Tales. This is a collection of stories re-
lated by the members of a company of pilgrims as they rode
together to worship and pay their vows at the shrine of 'the
holy blisful martir,' St. Thomas a Becket.
The host of an inn, the Tabard, at South wark where the —
pilgrims, twenty-nine in number, accidentally meet on their
way to Canterbury, and pass the night joins their company, —
and acts as the presiding spirit of the party. It is agreed that
each pilgrim shall tell at least one tale — for there is some con-
fusion about the number — on the journey to Canterbury, and
another on the return ; but the whole number of stories is

twenty-four only, Chaucer having died before the work Was

completed. After a brief introduction, filled with the most
cheerful images of spring, the season of the pilgrimage, the poet
commences the narrative with a description of the person and
the character of each member of the party. This description
extends to about seven hundred lines, and, of course, affords
space for a very spirited and graphic portrayal of the physical
aspect, and an outline of the moral features, of each. This
latter part of the description is generally more rapidly
sketched, because it was a part of the author's plan to allow his
personages to bring out their special traits of character, and
thus to depict and individualize themselves, in the inter-
ludes between the tales. The selection of the pilgrims is evi-
dently made with reference to this object of developement in
action, and therefore constitutes an essential feature of the
plot. We
have persons of all the ranks not too far removed
from each other by artificial distinctions, to be supposed
capable of associating upon that footing of temporary equality,
which is the law of good fellowship, among travellers bound on
the same journey and accidentally brought together. All the
great classes of English humanity are thus represented, and
opportunity is given for the display of the harmonies and the
E £
418 CANTERBURY TALES L F.cr. IX.

jealousieswhich now united, now divided the interests of dif-

ferent and different vocations in the commonwealth.
orders
The clerical pilgrims, it will be observed, are proportionately
very numerous. The exposure of the corruptions of the church
was doubtless a leading aim with the poet, and if the whole
series,which was designed to extend to at least fifty-eight tales,
had been completed, the criminations and recriminations of the
jealous ecclesiastics would have exhibited the whole profession
in an unenviable light. But Chaucer could be just as well as
severe. His portrait of the prioress, though it does not spare

the affectations of the lady, is complimentary and his c good

;

man of religion,' the c

pore Persoun of a toun,' of whom it is
said that

Cristes lore, and his apostles twelve,

He taught, and ferst he folwed it himselve,

has been hundreds of times quoted as one of the most beautiful

and generous, conscientious, intel-
pictures of charity, humility,
ligent devotion to the duties of the clerical calling, which can
be found in the whole range of English literature.
None of these sketches, I believe, has ever been traced to a
foreign source, and they are so thoroughly national, that it is
hardly possible to suppose that any imagination but that of an
Englishman could have conceived them. In the first introduc-
tion of the individuals described in the prologues to the several
stories, and in the dialogues which occur at the pauses between
the tales, wherever, in short, the narrators appear in their own
persons, the characters are as well marked and discriminated,
and as harmonious and consistent in action, as in the best
comedies of modern times. Although, therefore, there is, in
the plan of the composition, nothing of technical dramatic form
or incident, yet the admirable conception of character, the con-
summate skill with which each is sustained and developed, and
the nature, life, and spirit of the dialogue, abundantly prove,
that if the drama had been known in Chaucer's time as a
 ;

Lect. IX. CANTEKBURY TALES 419

branch of living literature, he might have attained to as high

excellence in comedy as any English or Continental writer.

The story of a comedy is but a contrivance to bring the
characters into contact and relation with each other, and the
invention of a suitable plot is a matter altogether too simple to
have created the slightest difficulty to a mind like Chaucer's.

He is essentially a dramatist, and if his great work does not

appear in the conventional dramatic form, it is an accident of

the time, and by no means proves a want of power of original

conception or of artistic skill in the author.
This is a point of interest in the history of modern literature,
because it is probably the first instance of the exhibition of
unquestionable dramatic genius in either the Grothic or the
Komance languages. I do not mean that there had previously
existed, in modern Europe, nothing like histrionic representa-

tion of real or imaginary events ; but neither the Decameron of

Boccaccio, to which the Canterbury Tales have been compared,
nor any of the Mysteries and Moralities, or other imaginative
works of the Middle Ages, in which several personages are
introduced, show any such power of conceiving and sustaining
individual character, as to prove that its author could have fur-
nished the personnel of a respectable play. Chaucer, therefore,
may fairly be said to be not only the earliest dramatic genius of
modern Europe, but to have been a dramatist before that which
istechnically known as the existing drama was invented.*
The tales related by the pilgrims are as various as the cha-
humorous, moral,
racters of the narrators, grave, gay, pathetic,
licentious, chivalric and vulgar. Few
perhaps of the stories —
none of them —
are original in invention, and some are little
more than close translations from the Latin or the French

* The second volume of the Reliquiae Antiquae of "Wright and Halliwell contains
a sermon written in Chaucer's own time against Miracle Plays.' It is of con-
'

siderable interest, both from its subject, and as a philological monument, and I
subjoin to this lecture copious extracts from it. See Longer Notes and Illustra-
tions, IV.
E E 2
 ;

420 THE NONNE PItESTES TALE Lect. IX.

but most, especially those of a gayer cast, are thoroughly im-

bued with Chaucer's spirit and with English national humour
they have been animated with a new life, and all that constitutes
their real literary value is entirely the poet's own.
It is of course impossible to give an analysis of any number
of these tales, and nothing but the perusal of them can convey
to the student the least idea of their extraordinary merit.
There are, however, besides the general features to which I
have alluded, some traits which remarkably distinguish all the
tales — with the exception of two or three professedly didactic
in character — from most of Chaucer's imitative works. They
are pervaded with an eminently practical, life-like tone, and a
pithy sententiousness which, by the exceeding appositeness of
the sentiment to the circumstances detailed, is strikingly con-
trasted with the moral platitudes and exhausted commonplaces
of the French poets he so often copies, and still more strongly dis-
tinguished from the ethical lessons with which contemporaneous
writers so freely sprinkle their pages. English morality has
generally been ethics in action, not in theory or profession, and
Chaucer modified most of his Canterbury Tales in accordance
with this trait of the national character.
The tale which is most unmistakably marked with the
peculiarities of Chaucer's genius, and is therefore the most
characteristic of the series, is the Nonne Prestes Tale. This is

a story of the carrying off of a cock by a fox, and the escape of

the fowl from the devour er through the folly of Eeynard in
opening his mouth to mock his pursuers, in compliance with the
advice of his prey. These mere incidents are certainly not of
Chaucer's invention, and the naked plan of the tale has been
thought to be borrowed from a French fable of about forty
lines, found in the poems of Marie of France but Chaucer has ;

extended it to more than six hundred verses, the part thus

added consisting chiefly of a dialogue for, —
at thilke tyme,' '

'Bestis and briddes could speke and synge' on —

the warnings
conveyed by visions, between the cock, who had been terrified
 ! !

Lect. IX. THE NONNE PRESTES TALE 421

by a dream, and the pride of his harem, c fayre damysel

Pertilote,' whom he had waked by snoring in the agonies of his
nightmare. In this discussion Partlet assails Chanticleer with
both ridicule and argument, trying half to shame and half to
reason him out of his unmanly fears :
—
1
Away !
quod sclie, fy on yow, herteles
'
'

Alias quod sche, for by that God above

!
'
'
!

Now have ye lost myn hert, and al my love ;

I can nought love a coward, by my feith.

For certis, what so eny womman seith,
We alle desiren, if it mighte be,
To have housbondes, hardy, riche, and fre,

And secre and no nygard, ne no fool,

Ne him that is agast of every tool,
Ne noon avaunter, by that God above
How dorst ye sayn, for schame unto your ! love,
That any thing might make yow afferd ?
Have ye no mannes hert, and han a berd? '

She ascribes his dream to replecciouns,' quotes 6 Catoun, e

which that was so wise a man,' as saying, ( ne do no force of

dremes,' and recommends an energetic course of remedies :
—
Of lauriol, century and fnmytere,
Or elles of elder bery, that growith there,
Of catapus, or of gaytre beriis,
Of erbe yve that groweth in our yerd.

The cock, in his reply, questions the authority of Cato, and

shows much reading, quoting freely from legendary and classic

lore. He pities the womanly ignorance of his feathered spouse,

and, apropos of the legend of ' Seint Kenelm,' says :
—
1 hadde lever than my schert,
1

That ye had rad his legend, as have I,

Dame Pertelot, I say yow trewely,
Macrobius, that writ the avisioun
In Auffrik of the worthy Cipioun,
Affermeth dremes, and saith that thay been
Warnyng of thinges that men after seen.
422 THE NONNE PRESTES TALE Lect. IX.

And forthermore, I pray yow loketli wel

In the Olde Testament, of Daniel,
If he huld dremes eny vanyte
Rede eek of Joseph, and ther schal ye see
"VYhethirdremes ben som tyme (I say nought alle)
Warnyng of thinges that schnl after falle.
Lok of Egipt the king, daun Pharao,
His baker and his botileralso,
Whethir thay felte noon effect in dremis.'

He now tries to recover the good graces of his favourite

sultana by a method familiar to henpecked husbands, personal
flattery :
—
8
Whan I se the beaute of your face,
Ye ben so scarlet hiew about your eyghen,
It makith al my drede for to deyghen.'

But, by way of quiet retaliation for Partlet's sarcasms, he cites a

Latin proverbial saying Mulier est hominis confusio, which
:

he turns into a compliment by this translation :

—
* Madame, the sentence of this Latyn is
Woraman is mannes joye and mannes blis.'

He now
fleigh doun fro the beem
For it was day, and eek his hennes alle.
* * * *
He lokith as it were a grim lioun ;

And on his toon he roineth up and doun

Him deyned not to set his foot to grounde.
He chukkith, whan he hath a corn i-founde,
And to him rennen than his wifes alle.
The fox seizes him while he is crowing, and the conclusion of
the tale is as follows :
—
Now, goode men, I pray herkneth alle

Lo, how fortune torneth sodeinly

The hope and pride eek of her enemy.
This cok that lay upon this foxes bak,
In al his drede, unto the fox he spak,
 ' ; ; ; ;

Lect. IX. THE KNIGHTES TALE 423

And saide, sire, if that I were as ye,

*

Yet schuld I sayn, (as wis God helpe me)

*
Turneth agein, ye proude cherles alle ;

A verray pestilens iipon yow falle.

Now am I come unto this woodes syde,

Maugre youre hede, the cok schal heer abyde
I wol him ete in faith, and that anoon.'
The fox answered, in faith, it schal be doom'
'

And whil he spak that word, al sodeinly

This cok brak from his mouth delyverly,

And heigh upon a tree he fleigh anoon.
And whan the fox seigh that he was i-goon,
* Alias quod he, o Chaunteclere, alias
!
'
' !

I have to yow,' quod he, y-don trespas, '

Inasmochc as I makid you aferd,

Whan I yow hent, and brought out of the yerd
But, sire, I dede it in no wicked entent
Com doun, and I schal telle yow what I ment.
I schal say soth to yow, God help me so.'
* Nay than,' quod he, I schrew us bothe tuo,
'

And first I schrew myself, bothe blood and boones,

If thou bigile me any ofter than oones.
Thou schalt no more thurgh thy flaterye,
Do me to synge and wynke with myn ye.
For he that wynkith, whan he scholde see,
Al wilfully, God let him never the !

1
Nay,' quod the fox, but God him give meschaunce,
'

That is so undiscret of governaunce,

That jangleth, when he scholde holde his pees.'

The Knightes Palamon and Arcite, is a

Tale, or the Story of
favourable instance of Chaucer's manner of dealing with the
fables he borrowed from Eomance authors. The Knight's Tale
is an abridged translation of a part of Boccaccio's Teseide, but
with considerable changes in the plan, which is, perhaps, not
much improved, and with important additions in the descriptive
and the more imaginative portions of »the story. These additions
are not inferior to the finest parts of Boccaccio's work, and one
of them, the description of the Temple of Mars, is particularly
interesting, as proving that Chaucer possessed a power of
424 THE KXIGIITES TALE Lect. IX.

treating the grand and terrible, of which no modern poet but

Dante had yet given an example. The poet here intermixes
the comic with the tragic, as actual life, and life's great inter-
preter, Shakespeare, so often do. Nature smiles through her
tears. Isolated events, it is true, are frequently stamped with
unmitigated sadness, but human life, as a whole, whether
individual or general, is interspersed with ludicrous scenes.
There is some confusion between the description of the
edifice itself, and of the paintings upon the walls of it but it ;

seems to have been a representation, at Thebes, of a temple

of Mars in Thrace, with its decorations. One feature of the
construction of the temple is very striking, as showing the
ghastly character of the light by which the darkness of its

interior was made visible :

The nortlien light in at the dore schon,

For wyndow in the walle ne was there noon,
Thorugh which men might no light discerne.

I suppose the *'

northern light' is the aurora borealis, but this
phenomenon is so rarely mentioned by mediaeval writers, that
it may be questioned whether Chaucer meant anything more
than the faint and cold illumination received by reflection
through the door of an apartment fronting the north.
The views which the poets of classic antiquity and those of the
middle ages took of nature, were modified and limited partly
by the character of their knowledge of physical law, and partly
by the actual connection between natural phenomena and the
practical interests of human life. Celestial and meteoric ap-
pearances, which neither affected the temperature of the atmo-
sphere and the distribution of rain and snow, nor were regarded
as explicable by known law, or as possessing an astrological
significance capable of interpretation, appear to have attracted
very little attention. In like manner, terrestrial objects, which
were not sources of danger or of profit, which neither helped
nor hindered material interests, did not in general excite interest
enough to stimulate to the closeness of observation which is
 — ;

Lect. IX. THE SQUYERES TALE 425

necessary to bring out the latent poetry that lies hid under
Nature's rudest surfaces. Ignorance of geography and of his-
toiy smothered the cosmopolite charity which ages of wider
instruction and culture have shown, and it is not strange that
the Greeks, who regarded every foreigner as a barbarian,
entitled to none of the privileges of Hellenic humanity, should
have felt no sympathy with those humble creatures which men
too selfishly consider as at all times subject to their irrespon-
sible dominion, and as without individual rights and interests
of their own. It is difficult to suppose such changes in physical
law as the non-appearance of the aurora borealis, during the
many centuries which have left no record of this striking
phenomenon, would imply; but when we remember that the
poetry of Greece and of Eome contains only the fewest, faintest,
and most questionable allusions to the phosphoric sparkling of
the sea, we may well believe that those who had a hundred times
witnessed the coruscation of the northern lights, thought it a
meteor too unrelated to the life of man to be worthy of poetic
celebration.
Every student of Chaucer, in reading the Squyeres Tale,
will share the wish of Milton, that we could
Call up him who left half told
The story of Cambuscan bold,
Of Camball, and of Algarsife,
And who had Canace to wife,
That own'd the virtuous ring of glass,
And of the wondrous horse of brass
On which the Tartar king did ride.
This most admirable tale, which is unfortunately unfinished,
is the wildest and the most romantic of Chaucer's works. The
origin of the fable has not been discovered, and it has been
argued that it must have been drawn from an Oriental source
not because any analogon to it is known to exist in Eastern
literature, but because it is harmony with the
too little in
character of European invention to be supposed of Occidental
growth. However this may be, the scene and accessories of the
 : ;; ;

426 THE SQUTERES TALE Lect. IX.

story do not belong to the sphere of Oriental fiction, and the

following speculations of the bystanders on the mysterious pro-
perties of the brazen horse and the magic mirror, sword and
ring, can hardly be other than the work of Chaucer,
. if not in
substance, at least in form and tone

Greet was the pres that swarmed to and fro

To gauren on this hors that stondeth so ;

For it so high was, and so brod and long,

So wel proporcioned to be strong,
Right as it were a steed of Lumbardye
Therto so horsly, and so quyk of ye,
As if a gentil Poyleys courser were ;

For certes, fro his tayl unto his eere

Nature ne art ne couthe him nought amende
In no degre, as al the poepel wende.
But evermore her moste wonder was,
How that it couthe goon, and was of bras
It was of fayry, as the poeple semed.
Diverse peple diversly they demed;
As many hedes, as many wittes been.
They murmured, as doth a swarm of been,
And made sidles after her fantasies,
Rehersyng of the olde poetries,
And seyden it was i-like the Pagase,
The hors that hadde wynges for to fie,
Or elles it was the Grekissch hors Synon,
That broughte Troye to destruccioun,
As men may in the olde gestes rede.
*
Myn
hert,' quod oon, is evermore in drede,
'

I trow som men of armes ben therinne,

That schapen hem this cite for to wynne
It were good that such thing wereknowe.'
Another rowned to his felaw lowe,
And sayde It ly th, for it is rather lik
: '

An apparence maad by some magik,

1
As jogelours play en at this festes grete.
Of sondry thoughtes thus they jangle and trete,

As lewed peple demeth comunly

Of thinges that ben maad more subtily
 ;

Lect. IX. THE SQUYERES TALE 427

Than they can in her lewednes comprehende,

They deemen gladly to the badder ende.
And som of hem Avondred on the mirrour,
That bom was up into the maister tonr,
How men might in it suche thinges se.
Another answerd, and sayd, it might wel be
Natnrelly by composiciouns
Of and of heigh refiexiouns *
angels, ;

And Rome was such oon.

sayde that in
They speeke of Alhazen and Vitilyon,
And Aristotle, that writen in her lyves
Of queynte myrrours and prospectyves,
As knowen they that han her bokes herd.
And other folk have wondred on the swerd,
That wolde passe thorughout everything
And fel in speche of Telophus the kyng,
And of Achilles for his queynte spere,
For he couthe with it bothe hele and dere,
Eight in such wise as men may with the swerd,
Of which right now ye have your selven herd.
They speeken of sondry hardyng of metal,
And speken of medicines therwithal,
And how and whan it schukle harded be,
Which is unknowe algat unto me.
Tho speeken they of Canacees ryng,
And seyden alle, that such a wonder thing

Of craft of rynges herd they never noon,

Sauf that he Moyses and kyng Salamon

* This reasoning reminds one of the popular explanation of table-turning and

other kindred mysteries. Persons who cannot detect the trick, and are afraid of
being suspected of a superstitious belief in the supernatural character of the
phenomenon, if they honestly confess their inability to solve the problem,
take refuge in 'science,' and ascribe the alleged facts to electricity, though the
known powers of that agent are as inadequate to furnish a rationale of the extra-
ordinary gyrations and saltations which bewitched tables, chairs and other house-
hold gear are affirmed to execute, as are

' composiciouns
Of angels [angles], and heigh refiexiouns,'

to explain the properties of the Tartar's magic mirror.

Men love to cheat themselves with hard Avords, and indolence often accepts the
name of a phenomenon as a substitute for the reason of it.
 :

428 CHAUCER AND GOWER Lect. IX.

Hadden a name of connyng in such art.

Thus seyen the peple, and drawen hem apart.
But natheles som seiden that it was
Wonder thing to make of feme aisschen glas,
And nought like aisschen of feme,
yit is glas
But han i-knowen it so feme
for they ;

Therfor cesseth her janglyng and her wonder.

As sore wondrecl som of cause of thonder,
On ebbe and flood, on gossomer, and on myst,
And on alle thing, til that the cause is wist.
Thus janglen they, and demen and devyse,
kyng gan fro his bord arise.
Til that the

Two other tales are invested with a good deal of critical

interest, by the fact that they are generally supposed to have
been taken, though with important modifications, from Grower's
Confessio Amantis, which is believed to have been published
while Chaucer was engaged upon the Canterbury Tales. But
Grower appears to have invented nothing, and as not only the
incidents but the plots of both tales are found in more ancient
forms, it is more probable that the two poets borrowed them
from a common source than that one of them, even before the
days of copyright, should, without acknowledgement, have pla-
giarized from a friend and contemporary of his own nation.
Either would, no doubt, have made free use of foreign authors,
and of those popular legends which had for centuries floated
about the world, and were fairly to be regarded as nullius filii,
common property, to which possession was a sufficient title but ;

Chaucer cannot be convicted of conveying' anything that was

'

rightfully Grower's, without stronger evidence than the resem-

blance between these stories. Indeed there is, in Grower's dic-
tion, some internal evidence that the story of Constance is a
translation from the French, such, for example, as the use of
enviroune as an adverb, in the French sense of nearly,
about, as

Within a ten mile enviroune,

Lect. IX. CITAUCER AND GOWER 429

within about ten miles.* Other instances to the same purpose

might be cited but when we consider the intimate relations of
;

the two languages, and the uncertainty of the boundary between

them at that period, it must be admitted that such evidence is
worth little.
The leading incidents of the stories are the same in both
authors, but in Chaucer's version, have, in general, more minute-
ness of detail, though it is observable that where Gower is the
most circumstantial, Chaucer is the most concise; and in his
treatment of the tales there are many passages, where there is
an appearance of artificial condensation and abridgement of the
narrative as related by Grower, and a studied neglect of circum-
stances not wholly uninteresting in themselves, but, at the
same time, not essential to the conduct of the story.
Grower's work had been recently published, and was fresh in
the memory of those for whom Chaucer was writing hence it ;

is highly probable that these variations were introduced for the

express purpose of giving a new tone and character to histories,
the leading circumstances of which were already familiar. A
stanza in Chaucer's version of the Man of Lawes Tale, or the
History of Constance, is particularly curious, because, as some
of Chaucer's critics have suggested, it is evidently designed as a
criticismupon Grower's treatment of an incident in the story.
In both narratives, King Alia, a Saxon king, visiting Eome as
a pilgrim, invites the Emperor of Rome to dine with him. In
Grower, Morice, the son of King Alia, is sent to an imperial
country residence, to deliver the invitation. Grower thus ex-
presses this :
—
This emperour out of the towne,
Within a ten mile enviroune,
Where as it thought him for the beste
Hath sondry places for to reste,

* Enviroun is used in the same way in the Libel of English Policy, a poem of
the following century, which will be noticed hereafter, and by Lyclgate, but I have
not observed it in any work of Gower's time.
 :

430 CHAUCER AND GOWER Lect. IX.

And as fortune wolde it tho

He was dwellend at one of tho.
The King Allee forth with thassent
Of Custe his wife hath thider sent
Morice his sone, as he was taught,
To the emperour, and he goth straught
And in his fader halve he sought
As he, whiche his lordship sought,
That of his highe worthinesse
He wolde do so greet mekenesse,
His owne town to come and se,
And yive a time in the citee,
So that his fader might him gete,
That he wolde ones with him ete.

This did not suit Chaucer's more courtly notions of the

respect and deference due from even a king to so exalted and
sacred a personage as the Emperor Kome, and he makes King
of
Alia present the invitation in person, censuring at the same time
Grower's version of the story, thus

Som men wold seye, how that his child Maurice

Doth his message unto the emperour :

But, as 1 gesse, Alia was nat so nyce,

To him that is so soverayn of honour,
As he that is of Cristes folk the flour,
Sent eny child, but it is best to deeme
He went himsilf, and so it may wel seme.

There upon the whole, no doubt that Chaucer's is the later

is,

production, and, though it is a more finished performance than

that of Gower, it is somewhat injured by the intentional omis-

sion of circumstances which are used not without effect in

Grower's version, but which Chaucer dropped, in order that the

coincidence between the two might not be too close.
The other narrative which has been thought to be borrowed
from the Confessio Amantis, is the Wyf of Bathes Tale. The
dialect of this story, as given by Grower, varies considerably from
that of the rest ot his poem, as it is older in structure, and con-
tains several obsolete words which Gower does not elsewhere
Lect. IX. JOHN GOWER 431

employ. It is therefore, in all probability, an adaptation of a

more ancient tale, in which the incidents, and in part the lan-
guage, are preserved. In Chaucer's version there is the same
manifest intention of departing from Grower as in the story of
Constance, and it is in this tale that he enforces, in the person of
the old dame, the opinions concerning the true test of gentle
rank, which he had formerly interpolated into his translation of
the Romaunt of the Rose. No such opinions are expressed by
Grower, or, so far as I know, by any older English or French
author, and they are no doubt Chaucer's own.*
Grower was a contemporary of the author of Piers Ploughman,
and of Wycliffe as well as of Chaucer. He is known to English
readers by the long poem styled the Confessio Amantis, or
Lover's Confession. The reputation of Grower, which was, for a
long time, above his merits, seems to be in some measure due
to his connection with Chaucer, though he did not entertain

* A remarkable form of expression, which occurs in Terse 3098 of the Eomaunt

of the Eose, and which I do not remember to have observed elsewhere in Chaucer's
works, deserves special notice —
'
Say boldely thy will' (quod he)
1
I nill be wroth, if that I
may.
For nought that thou shalt to me say.'

The meaning of the phrase, if that I may,' here is

'
if I can not-be wroth; if I
:

can refrain from being wroth. I find an analogous phrase in Paul Louis Courier,
Pamphlets Politiques, Seconde Lettre Particuliere Vous ne saurez rien cette
:
'

fois pas un mot, nulle nouvelle pour vous punir, jc veux ne vous rien dire, si je
; ;

puis.' I will not-tcll you anything, if I can.'

In both these passages, the determination, in the mind of the speaker, not-to-do
the thing in question, or to refrain from it, is conceived to be so strong, that it has
ceased to be a mere negation, and has assumed the form of a proposition logically
positive.
In Chaucer, the coalescent negative verb, nill, gives the expression a force
which Courier could not attain to for in languages where a negative verbal form
;

exists, the negation is more energetic than when a separate particle is used. The
Latin nolo, the English I nill, are a species of affirmative, which means more
than non volo,7 will not —
the absence of a volition —
and, on the contrary,
implies a strong volition in the opposite direction. Courier felt this, and there-
fore he does not use the negative verb, jc ne veux, but he puts the expression of
will in an affirmative form je veux, and connects the negative with the
:
act
nC'Vous-rien-dire.
432 gower's COXFESSIO AHANTIS Lect. IX.

the views of reform which Chaucer shared with the other great
writers of that century whom we have just named. His literary
inferiority is perhaps to be ascribed to the very fact that he
did not possess the manly independence and moral courage of
Wycliffe and of Chaucer, and was unable to shake off the
feeling of deference to traditional authority, which in all ages
has proved so generally fatal to originality in productive intel-
lectual effort.
Many of Grower's works are in Latin, and the only one which
is generally accessibleis the Confessio Amantis, an English

poem, written, as the author declares, at the request of King

Eichard II. In a proem which was suppressed in the copies
issued after Eichard's deposition, he thus states the motive and
occasion of the composition of this work

I thenke and have it understoncle,

As it upon a tide,
befell
As thing, which shulde tho betide,
Under the town of newe Troy,
Which toke of Brute his firste joy,
In Themse, whan it was flowcnd,
As I by bote came rowend,
So as fortune her time sette,
My lege lord perchaunce I mette,
And so befell as I came nigh,
Out of my boote, whan he me sigh,
He bad me come into his barsre.
And whan I was with him at large,
Amonges other thinges said,
He hath this charge upon me laid,
And bad me do my besinesse,
That worthynesse
to his highe
Some newe thing I shulde boke,
That he himself it mighte loke
After the forme of my writing.

The language of this last couplet would seem to imply that,

though we have Froissart's testimony to. the fact that the King
knew French, he was ignorant of Latin, and desired to have
Lect. IX. gower's confessio amantis 433

something from the pen of Grower, which he could read by

himself, without the aid of an interpreter. He resolved to
comply with the royal command, and, because

men sain, and sothe it is,

That who that wisdom writ,

al of
It dulleth ofte a mannes wit,
To hem that shall it alday rede,

to produce something of a less grave and severe cast than his

former works ; to —
go the middel wey,
And write a boke betwene the twey,
Somewhat of lust, somewhat of lore.
* * * *
And for that fewe men endite
In oure englisshe, I thenke make
A boke for King Eichardes sake.

To make a boke after his heste,

And write in such a maner wise,
"Whichmay be wisdome to the wise,
And play to hem that list to play.
The title of the poem, The Lover's Confession, indicates its

general subject, which is a consultation, in the form of a con-

fession, between an unsuccessful lover and an experienced
counsellor. The prologue is devoted to an exposure of the
evils of the time, in which the schism in the church is alluded
to, as the cause of the social wrongs of the age, and of the cor-
ruptions of the clergy, including, of course,

This newe secte of lollardie.

The prologue is much superior to the rest of the work, though

certainly not very appropriate to the poem. The author seems
to have written it with the view of covertly giving the king
some useful suggestions, by pointing out existing abuses, and
hinting at the remedy. He speaks of himself and his general
purpose thus
F F
434 GOWEIt's CONFESSIO AMANTIS Lect. IX.

I which am a borel clerke

Purpose for to write a boke
After the worlde, that whilom toke
Long time in olde daies passed.
But for men sain it is now lassed
In worse plight than it was tho,
I thenke for to touche also
The world, which neweth every day,
So as may.
I can, so as I
Though have upon honde
I sikenesse
And longe have had, yet wol I fonde
To write and do my besinesse,
That in some part so as I gesse
The wise man may ben advised.

The following laudatio temporis acti is a fair specimen of

the general tone of the prologue :
—
If I shall drawe into my minde
The time passed, than I finde
The world stode in al his welthe,
Tho was the life of man in helthe,
Tho was plente, tho was richesse,
Tho was the fortune of prowesse,
Tho was knighthode in pris by name,
Wherof the wide worldes fame
Write in croniques is yet witholde.
Justice of lawe tho was holde,
The privelege of regalie
Was sauf, and all the baronie
Worshiped was in his estate.
The citees knewen no debate,
The people stode in obeisaunce
Under the reule of governaunce,
And pees with rightwisnesse keste,
With charite tho stode in reste,
Of mannes herte the corage
Was shewed than in the visage.
The word was liche to the conceipto,
Without semblaunt of deceipte,
Tho was there unenvied love,
Lect. IX. gower's confessio amantis 435

Tho was vertue set above,

And was put under fote.
vice
Now stant the crope under the rote,
The worlde is chaunged overall,
And therof moste in speciall
That love is falle into discorde.
And that I take to recorde
Of every lond for his partie
The comun vois, which may nought lie,

Nought upon one, but upon alle.

It is that men now clepe and calle
And sain, that regnes ben devided,
In stede of love is hate guided,
The werre wol no pees purchace,
And
lawe hath take her double face,
So that justice out of the wey
With rightwisnesse is gone awey.
And thus to loke on every halve,
Men sene the sore without salve,
Whiche al the worlde hath overtake.
Ther is no regne of alle out take,
For every climat hath his dele
After the torninge of the whele,
Which blinde fortune overthroweth,
Wherof the certain no man knoweth,
The heven wot what is to done.

At the commencement of the action, the author, in the

character of a despairing lover, wanders alone in a forest, and
offers a prayer to Venus, who makes her appearance and refers

the suppliant to her priest, for counsel and consolation. After

an exhortation from this father confessor, the penitent begins
his shrift, which is chiefly in the form of answers to questions,
Venus's priest being evidently partial to the Socratic method of
argument. The counsels and comforts of the confessor consist
principally of narratives, from ancient as well as mediaeval
legendary lore, which have generally little application to the
immediate subject. These are mainly, if not altogether, trans-
lations, or rather metrical paraphrases, from classical as well as
F F 2
436 JOHN GOWER Lect. IX.

later Latin authors, and are executed with very moderate skill,

whether considered as versions or as adaptations. Of original

imaginative power, the poem shows not the slightest trace, and
its principal merit lies in the sententious passages, which are
here and there interspersed, and which, whether borrowed or
original, are often pithy and striking. 'In his earlier works,
Grower had employed Latin and French altogether. It is
generally supposed that he adopted English as the language of
the Confessio Amantis in consequence of the success of Chaucer's
poem in the vernacular but I think the lines I have already
;

quoted authorise us to believe that English was selected in com-

pliance with the wish of the monarch, at whose request the
work was undertaken.
Of Grower's principal French work, the Speculum Medi-
tantis, no copy is known to be in existence, but there are
extant about French amatory ballads composed by him in
fifty

imitation of Provenzal models, but which seem to exhibit no

special merit in invention or in style.
In one of these, he apologises for his want of command of
French, as an Englishman, and it is remarkable that, if he was
conscious of any deficiency in this respect, he should not have
resorted to English until a late period of his life.* It is not
improbable, as has been often suggested, that certain passages
in the prologue to Chaucer's prose Testament of Love, con-
demning the use of French by native English writers, may
have been aimed at Gower. 6 There ben some,' says he, ( that
speke their poysy mater in Frenche, of whyche speche the
Frenche men have as good a fantasye, as we have in hearing of
Frenche mennes Englysshe.' Let then clerks endyten in
'

* Al universite de tout le monde

Jolian Gower ceste balade envoie,
Et si jeo nai de franc^ois la faconde,

Pardonetz moi qe jeo de eeo forsvoie.

Jeo sui Englois si quier par tiele voie
Estre excuse mais quoiquc nulls endie,
Lamour parfit en dieu se justifie.
Lect. IX. gower's versification 437

Latyn, for they have the propertye of science, and the knowinge
in that facultye ; and lette Frenchmen in theyr Frenche also
endyte theyr queynt termes, for it is kyndly to theyr mouthes
and let its shewe our fantasyes in suche wordes as we lerned of
our dames tonge.'*
Grower certainly survived Chaucer, but was probably born
before him. His English is philologically older, both in voca-
bulary and in grammatical structure, than that of Chaucer,
though younger in both respects than the dialect of Piers
Ploughman. Pauli ascribes his frequent use of French words
to his habit of composing in that language, but his vocabulary
does not differ essentially in this respect from those of Lang-
lande, Chaucer, and other authors of their time and I see no ;

reason for believing that his dialect was more affected by

Eomance influences than the common written language of the
age inwhich he lived.
The metre of the Confessio Amantis is the octosyllabic, of
four iambuses, besides the superfluous syllable which often
makes what is called a feminine rhyme. In point of rhythm
and metre, Grower's versification is smooth, though less melo-
dious than that of Chaucer, and his rhymes are inartificial, the
same word, or the same entire syllable, being repeated for the
consonance, without scruple. This peculiarity is also observable
in his French ballads. The conjugation of the verb is varied
to suit the convenience of the poet, with little regard to the
Saxon distinction of strong and weak inflection, or to what
appears to have been the common usage of his age. He also
confounds the affirmative particles yea and yes, at least accord-
* This passage and that befora referred to are not the only ones in which
Chaucer appears to censure his "brother poet for the condemnation he passes, in
;

the prologue to the Man of Lawes Tale, on the immorality of the stories of Canace
and of Apollonius of T} re, both of which are found in the Confessio Amantis, is
r

understood by Tyrwhitt and other critics to have been designed to apply to Gower.
It is much to be lamented that Chaucer himself should have polluted his own
greatest work with such shocking grossness and licentiousness as many of his tales
exhibit.
f See First Series, Lecture I. p. 22.
 —

438 go wee's DICTION Lect. IX.

ing to Pauli's text ; but this may be the fault of editors and
printers, for in Grower's time no English idiom was better esta-
blished than this distinction. In fact, though not without
power as a sententious thinker, Gower gives little evidence of
artistic skill, or of the possession of any of the higher attributes
of the poet.
Philologically speaking, Grower is, as I have already remarked,
older than Chaucer, though his first English work was not com-
posed until the reputation of Chaucer, as a great original and
national poet, was established. The difference, however, in
this respect, is in degree ratherthan in kind, and as it consists
more in the tone, and in a negative want of the life and fresh-
ness and accuracy of Chaucer's English, it is not easy to specify
its peculiarities. I may however mention, in addition to the
irregularity in verbal inflection already noticed, the more fre-
quent use of the participial termination in -end, which marks
the true distinction between the present participle and the
verbal noun in -ing —
a distinction, which, as was observed in a
former lecture, became obsolete in English in the latter part of
the fourteenth century, though kept up long afterwards in the
Scottish dialect. There are, so far as I have been able to
observe, no improvements of diction or style in Grower, which
had not been as wT ell, or by Chaucer and in
better, exemplified ;

these particulars the latter must be considered the master of

the former. Skelton and those who have copied him are there-
fore in error in saying that — i
Grower first garnished our
English rude,' for most of Chaucer's works are older than the
Confessio Amantis, and Grower himself makes Venus style
Chaucer 6
her poet,' and say that
in the iloures of his youth,
In sundry wise, as he well couth,
Of dittees and of songes glade,
The which he for my sake made,
The lond fulfilled is over all.
This, of course, implies that Chaucer's poems had already
Lect. IX. LITERATURE OF FOURTEENTH CENTURY 439

acquired a wide circulation before Grower wrote in English

verse at all.

The Confessio Amantis, then, did not directly aid in enlarging

the vocabulary or improving the syntax of English ; and it did
not introduce new metrical forms or enrich the poetical diction.
But it was useful in diffusing a knowledge of the new literary
tongue, in familiarizing the English speech as a written lan-
guage to those whose proper heritage it was— but who had been
taught alien accents by a foreign nurse — thus giving to it its
just and lawful predominance in the land where it was cradled,
and had now grown to a strong and luxuriant adolescence.
Grower was rather an imitator of Chaucer than the creator of
his own literary style but his works, as being of a higher moral
;

tone, or at least of higher moral pretensions, and at the same

time, of less artificial refinement, were calculated to reach and
influence a somewhat larger class than that which would be
attracted by the poems of Chaucer, and, consequently, they
seem to have had a wider circulation. The name of Chaucer
does not, I believe, occur in the works of Shakespeare but the ;

play of Pericles —
which, though its authorship is disputed, was
published in Shakespeare's own time as a work of his compo-
sition —is avowedly formed on the story of Apollinus, Prince of

Tyre, in the Confessio Amantis and Grower himself is intro-

;

duced by name into the play, and performs the office of the
chorus of the ancient drama. There is no doubt that the poem
of Grower, however inferior to the works of his master, was much
esteemed in his lifetime, and still enjoyed a high reputation
in ages when Chaucer was almost forgotten. But posterity has
reversed the judgement of its immediate predecessors, and though
Gower will long be read, he will never again dispute the palm
of excellence with the true father of English literature.
In taking leave of the great authors of the fourteenth century,
I ought perhaps to apologise for devoting so large a portion of
this brief course to the dialect and the literature of that period*
But I am convinced that the importance of Langlande and
440 ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPTS Lect. IX.

Wycliffe and Chaucer to all subsequent English philology and

intellectual effort,though long vaguely recognised, is not yet
appreciated and understood. Nor shall we be able to estimate
their relative place and just significance in our literary history,
until still more of the forgotten authorship of that and the
preceding centuries shall be brought to light, and linguistic
science, as applied to the English tongue, be much further
advanced than it now is, or, without increased facilities of in-
vestigation, can be.
From the corruption of original texts through the ignorance
or arrogance of those who transcribed them, it is evident that
we can ascertain the grammatical system of particular writers
of the period we are discussing only by the examination of
authors' copies. This renders the publication of such, whenever
they can be discovered, a matter of great interest and importance.
If, indeed, the manuscript of the earliest version of the Old

Testament, which is ascribed to Hereford, is really his own,

the value attached to such originals might well seem exag-
gerated, for it would be clear that one important authority
was not to be reconciled with itself. Not onty does the latter
portion of that translation differ from the earlier in its inflec-

tional system, but in the books which come last in the manu-

script, the grammar is, in many points, more archaic than in

the books which precede them in the copy, and which therefore,
presumably, were first executed. Doubtless, the paleographical
evidence is decisive as to the identity of the handwriting in the
historical books and the Prophets. But it is a long step from
this question to that of the authorship of the manuscript, and
even the opinion of the very learned and conscientious editors
of the Wycliffite translations cannot outweigh the internal
evidence to the contrary, unless supported by strong external
testimony. Until such proof is adduced, we are at liberty to
believe that the manuscript ascribed to Hereford is not an

original, but a copy of a version by at least two different trans-

lators, who adopted different systems of accidence.
Lect. IX. LITERATURE OF FOURTEENTH CENTURY 441

The original manuscript of a translation of Higden's Poly-

chronicon by Trevisa, a contemporary of Chaucer, is said, upon

I know not what authority, to be and is now in

still extant,
course of publication. Trevisa is reported to have translated
the whole or a part of the Bible into English, and the publica-
tion of the chronicle may throw some light on his connection
with the Wycliffite versions, and thus contribute to elucidate
some very important questions in the history of the language
and history of England.*
The zeal and activity of British scholarship are fast rescuing
the remaining sibylline leaves of old English literature from
destruction, and a few years more will prepare the way for the
crowning labour in the early philology of England a worthy —
edition of the worthiest of her ancient poets, the immortal
Chaucer.
In the meantime, though the texts of the authors upon whom
I have dwelt so long present many prosodical and grammatical
problems which cannot yet be solved, they are all perfectly
accessible, and, so far as the general purposes of literary culture
and literary criticism require, intelligible. By the help of the
notes and glossaries which accompany the recent editions of old
English writers, from Layamon and the Ormulum to Langlande,
"Wycliffe, Chaucer and Grower, every one of them may be easily
read, without preparatory study, and a great familiarity with
their dialect may be acquired at less cost of time and labour
than are needed to learn to spell out, by help of dictionary and
grammar, a page of French or G-erman.
But, like the traveller, who, absorbed by the fair proportions
of a Grecian portico and the living sculptures of its pediment,
forgets to explore the interior of the temple, I have lingered
too long about the vestibule, and must now hasten to pass
through the darkened corridors which lead to the still more
sacred portions of the magnificent structure.

* See Longer Notes and Illustrations, V. at the end of this lecture.

442 SIGNIFICANCE OF WORDS Lect. IX.

LONGER NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

SIGNIFICANCE OF INDIVIDUAL WORDS.

The shallowness of popular English and American criticism is no-

where more glaringly manifested than in the extravagant commendations
which have been bestowed on some modern dictionary-makers, as philo-
sophical expositors and discriminators of words.
Lexicographers are tinder a constant temptation to save themselves
labour by building on the foundation of their predecessors, and to
study dictionaries, not literature. They thus acquire the habit of re-
garding words as completely significant individuals, and they are prone
to multiply descriptions, to make distinctions where no difference exists,
and especially to ascsibe to single vocables meanings which belong,
either to entire phraseological combinations, grammatical agglutinations
so to speak, or to a different member of the phrase from that to which
they assign them. Hence their definitions are too diffuse, and often so
much embarrassed by conditions and qualifications as to smother the
radical idea of the word altogether, or to confine it to a special sense
which it only accidentally possesses, instead of giving it a general
expression, which admits of the protean variety of shade and extension,
that, in cultivated languages, belongs to almost all words, except names
of visible objects, and mere terms of art whose signification is not
organically developed from the root, but arbitrarily and conventionally
imposed upon it. In studying the definitions of the dictionaries which
pass for the best in this respect, we find that there was in the mind of
the lexicographer not a clearness of distinction, but a confusion of
thought arising from the habit of incessantly poring on word-lists, and
constantly contemplating individual terms isolated from those connec-
tions and relations which alone can breathe into them a living spirit,
and make them anything but unelastic and inert matter.
It is futile to attempt to make that absolute which is, in its nature,
relative and conditional, to formulate that which in itself does not con-
stitute an individual and complete idea, to make technical definition a
mouthpiece for words which ought to be allowed to speak for them-
selves by exemplification, and to petrify them into a rigidity of form
irreconcilable with that play of feature which is so essential to life-like
expressiveness. Dictionary-definitions, considered as a means of philo-
Lect. IX. OBSOLETE ANGLO-SAXON WORDS 443

logical instruction, are as inferior to miscellaneous reading as a hortus-

siccus to a botanic garden. Words, with the exception above stated,

exert their living powers, and give utterance to sentiment and meaning,
only in the organic combinations for which nature has adapted them,
and not in the alphabetic single-file in which lexicographers post and
drill them. The signification of the vocabulary belonging to the higher
workings of the mind and heart depends on the context, and therefore
these words have almost as many shades of meaning as they have pos-
sible combinations with other words in periods and phrases. These
shades can only be perceived and apprehended by a wide familiarity
with the literature which presents verbal combinations in all their
variety and all that a dictionary can do is to give the general meaning
;

of the vocable and illustrate its changeable hues by exemplification of

its most important uses. There does not exist a dictionary of any lan-
guage, living or dead, whose definitions are to be considered evidence
as to the exact meaning of words. The best dictionary of any living
language yet executed is unquestionably that of the German by the
brothers Grimm, now in course of publication. These great philologists
do not attempt formal definition at all. They give the nearest corres-
ponding Latin equivalent, and a brief general indication of the meaning
of the word, but leave the student to gather the precise signification or
significations from the exemplifications. Eichardson's valuable English
dictionary gives no definitions. A dictionary is but an index to the
literature of a given speech or rather it bears to language the relation
;

which a digest bears to a series of legal reports. Neither is an authority ;

and he is but a sorry lawyer who cites the one, an indifferent scholar
who quotes the other, as such.

n.

OBSOLETE ANGLO-SAXON WORDS.

In Illustration I. to Lecture III. I have given a list of many Anglo-

Saxon words derived from the three roots, hyge or hige, mind or
thought; mod, mind, passion, irritability, wit, genius, intellect, sense;
and ge- thane, mind, thought, opinion. Of these, hyge and its score
of derivations are all obsolete. Of the equally numerous progeny of
mod, there remain only mood, moodily, moodiness, moody, mad. The
thirty Anglo-Saxon words derived from wit are reduced to less than
half a dozen, though we have formed several new compounds and
derivations from the same root. From ge-thanc, we have a larger
444 OBSOLETE ANGLO-SAXON WORDS Lect. IX.

number, but many of them are of modern formation, and most of the
Anglo- Saxon derivatives from this root are obsolete. The preface to
Alfred's Boethius cited in Illustration IV. Lecture III. contains, exclu-
sive of repetitions and various forms and inflections of the same vocable,
about seventy words. Of these, the following important ones are obso-
lete :temetta, leisure (from the same root as the adjective empty),
andget or andgit, sense, meaning, and its derivative, andgitfulli-
cost; earfod, hard', biddan, though extant with the meaning of to
command, has become obsolete in the religious sense of to pray, where
a Romance word has supplanted it; gereccan, to express, render, or
tell] healsian, to beseech or implore, though still used as a salutation

in the religious and poetic dialect, and in the sense to call to, in that of
navigation; hwilum, dat. pi. of the noun hwil, sometimes, obsolete
in English, but, in the form whiles, extant in Scotch, and sometimes
used in English, jocosely, in the form whilom our adverb while or
;

whilst is the same word with a different meaning; led en, speech, lan-
guage, used by Chaucer but now lost; lichoman, body; niasd, measure,
obsolete as a noun, though mete, verb, is used in the solemn style, and
mete, adjective, may be allied, but this is doubtful; mod, mind, obsolete
in this sense; ongitan, to understand, cognate with andget; rice,
kingdom-, the modern rich is- from the same root; rime, number, extant
only in rhyme, mistakenly supposed to be from the Greek. The coinci-
dence between rim and Greek apidfioe is noticeable; mistlic, not
cognate with mix, but a compound of mis and lie, un-like, and hence
various; spell, language, obsolete in this and many other Anglo-Saxon
meanings; sweotol plain, clear\ swifte, very ; underfon, to under-
take, assume, receive; wealhstod, translator; wendan, the source of
our to wend, but obsolete in the sense to turn; witan, to blame, but
the verb to twit is from this root, and derived either from the compound

a3d wit an, ed witan, se twit an, or possibly from the gerundial to
witenne, he witenne, he is to blame*
is to
It is true that some of the words I have mentioned were still in use

* The revisors of the English Bible of 1611 sacrificed a genuine Saxon-English

idiom when, in Galatians ii. 11, they wrote: he was to be blamed, for: he was to
blame. It is remarkable that even Tyndale did not dare to use this latter form,
which, in his ignorance of Anglo-Saxon, he probably took for a vulgar colloquial-
ism; but the truer philological instinct of Shakespeare did not scruple to
retain the phrase.
"We have still several corresponding idioms. Franklin's hats to sell is an
'
'

instance, and
: '
it is to seek'has not been long disused. This form occurs also
in Dutch, and it is curious that in the phrase: te zoek zijn, to be wanting, to be
to seek, the verb tezoeken has dropped the old ending e n, as in English. ,
Lect. IX. ROMAUNT OF THE ROSE 445

in Chaucer's time, but much the greater proportion of them had been
already irrecoverably lost, and hence, independently of the direct testi-
mony of the monuments of early English letters, it is evident that
the language must have become comparatively poor in all its higher
departments. The vocabulary of the printed literature of the thirteenth
century consists of about 8,000 words, of which not far from 7,000 are
Anglo-Saxon. Rejecting words of foreign origin, and what are obviously
different forms of the same vocable, Bosworth's Anglo-Saxon Dictionary
contains something less than twice the latter number. Neither Cole-
ridge nor Bosworth can be supposed to be complete but if we assume ;

that the one is as nearly so as the other, it would follow that one-half
of the total Anglo-Saxon vocabulary had been lost before the year 1300.
But as Coleridge's Glossarial Index is confined to printed books, and
Bosworth embraces most known Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, his list is

probably considerably more exhaustive than that of Coleridge. Be-

tween the year 1300 and Chaucer's time, there was, doubtless, some
further loss, and, upon the whole, I think it quite safe to say that at
least one-fourth, and in all probability one-third, of the words com-
posing the Anglo-Saxon tongue were utterly forgotten before Chaucer
had written a line. It further appears, from the character of the par-
ticularwords which I have shown to have been lost, that the moral and
intellectual,and the poetical nomenclatures were the portions of the
vocabulary which had suffered most, and hence that a new supply of
terms in these departments was an imperious necessity for all the pur-
poses of literary culture.

III.

chaucer's additions to the roman de la rose.

Sandras, Etude sur Chaucer, p. 38, in speaking of Chaucer's

translation of the Roman de la Rose, observes :
'
Nulle intention de
donner au Roman Rose une couleur nationale, nulle intention de
de la
l'embellir ou de Les differences qu'une comparaison scru-
le corriger.

puleuse peut decouvrir sont insignifiantes, et ce qu'on a pris pour des

interpolations se lit dans les manuscrits complets.' For one who has
had no opportunity of consulting les manuscrits complets,' it is difficult
'

to judge how far they sustain this broad statement but the passage ;

referred to in the text, which I think few readers would regard as

1
insignificant,' is not found either in Meon's edition of the text of De
Lorris, or in theDutch translation published by Kausler in Vol. II. of
his Denkmaler Altniederliindischer Sprache und Litteratur.
 ;; ; ; ;

446 ROMAUNT OF THE ROSE Lect. IX.

The entire passage in Meon's edition of the French text, vol.

pp. 83, 84, stands thus : — i.

2086. Vilonnie premierement,

Ce dist Amors, veil et commant
Que tu guerpisses sans reprendre,
Se tu ne veulz vers moi mesprendre
2090. Si maudi et escommenie
Tous ceus qui aiment vilonnie.
Vilonnie fait li vilains,

Por ce n'est pas drois que ge Tains

Viloins est fel et sans pitie,
2095. Sans servise et sans amitie.
Apres, te garde de retraire
Chose des gens qui face a taire :

N'est pas proesce de mesdire, &c. &c.

Chaucer's interpolation, it will be seen, is introduced between verses

2095 and 2096. In the Dutch translation the passage is as follows :

2006. Ic verbiede hu, alle dorperheide

Te loechene eewelijc sonder hale,
Vp dat ghi mi wilt dienen wale.
Ic ghebanne ende doe bekinnen :

Dorperhede, alle die minne[n]

Van hem te doene, verstaet mie
Dorpre no dorpernie ne gaerdic nie,
Want si fel zijn ende sonder ghenade,
In hem te hebben valschen rade
Te niemene dracht hi minne
So quaderande van zinne.
Wacht hu mede, dat ghi niet vertrect
Dinghen, die willen zijn bedect,
Ende te heelne, dat te heelne staet
En es gheene meesterie te seggen quaet, etc. etc.

This translation is probably older than that of Chaucer, and is a fair

one, though I cannot agree with Kausler, that it kann, als Ueber- '

tragung betrachtet, fiir meisterhaft gelten und darf sich dem

Chaucer'schen Versuche kuhn an die Seite stellen.'
The omission of what I have called an interpolation of Chaucer's,
in bothMeon's text and in this old Dutch version, is certainly prima-
an addition by the English translator and we
facie evidence that it is ;

have a right to call upon those who affirm that his supposed amplifi-
 :

Lfct. IX. ROMAXTNT OF THE ROSE 447

cations of his original are all found in the best manuscripts, to produce
their texts of this passage.
I take this occasion to call the attention of English scholars to the
great interest of this Dutch translation, and, in fact, of the general
Netherlandish literature of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth
centuries, which, it is hardly extravagant to say, is as little known to
English and American scholars as that of China. I question whether
there is any cognate source of instruction upon early English philology

and etymology, which, if properly worked, would yield a richer harvest.

The translation in question does not conform so closely to Meon's text
as does that of Chaucer, but some passages, where Chaucer followed a
different reading from that text, correspond pretty nearly with the
Dutch. Thus, in this passage :
—
21. Within my twentie yeere of age,
When that love taketh his courage
Of younge folke, I wente soone
To bed, as I was wont to doone
And fast I slept, and in sleeping
Me mette such a swevening,
That liked me wondrous wele,
But in that sweven is never a dele
That it n' is afterward befall,
Right as this dreame woll tell us all.

Meon's text of the first five verses of the corresponding passage

is: —
Ou vintiesme an de mon aage,
Oil point qu' Amors prend le paage
Des jones gens, couchiez estoie
, Une nuit, si cum je souloie,
Et me dormoie moult forment, etc. etc.

The Dutch : —
Te minen rechten xx jar en,
Alse minne neemt te waren
Van ionghen lieden haren cheins,
So lach ic in een groet ghepeins
Vp mijn bedde, ende wart beuaen
Met eenen slape also zaen, etc. etc.
Chaucer here uses soone in the sense of early in the evening —a
meaning mentioned by Gill, as I have noted in my First Series,
Lecture XXV. p. 580 —
and the Dutch zaen, in the last line above
448 A SERMON AGAINST MIEACLE-PLAYS Lect. IX.

quoted, corresponds nearly enough to render it highly probable that

both translators followed a text different from that of Meon, which does
not contain the same idea. It is singular that the word courage or
corage, in the second line quoted from Chaucer, should have been so
generally misunderstood. It is, as I have pointed out in a note on the
word courage in the American edition of the first volume of Wedg-
wood's Etymological Dictionary, the Low-Latin coraagium or cora-
gium, prestationis species, a due or tribute, as is clearly shown
both by the French paage and the Dutch cheins.

IV.

A SERMON AGAINST MIRACLE-PLAYS.

Knowe gee, Cristen men, that as Crist God and man is bothe weye,
trewth, and lif, as seith the gospel of Jon, weye to the errynge, trewth
to the unknowyng and doutyng, lif to the strynge to hevene and
weryinge, so Crist dude nothings to us but effectuely in weye of
mercy, in treuthe of ritwesnes, and in lif of ^ildyng everlastynge joye
for oure continuely morning and sorwynge in this valey of teeres. In
myraclis therfore that Crist dude heere in erthe, outher in hymsilf
outher in hise seyntis, weren so efectuel and in ernest done, that to
synful men that erren thei brou^ten for^yvenesse of synne, settynge
hem in theweye of rijt beleve to doutouse men not stedefast, thei
;

brou^ten in kunnying to betere plesen God and verry hope in God to

been stedefast in hym and to the wery of the weye of God, for the
;

grette penaunce and suffraunce of the trybulacioun that men moten

have therinne, thes brou^ten in love of brynnynge charite, to the
whiche alle thing is lijt, and he to suffere dethe, the whiche men
most dreden, for the everlastynge lyf and joye that men moste loven
and disiren, of the whiche thing verry hope puttith awey alle weri-
nesse heere in the weye of God. Thanne sythen myraclis of Crist
and of hyse seyntis weren thus efFectuel, as by oure bileve we ben
in certeyn, no man shulde usen in bourde and pleye the myraclis and
werkis that Crist so ernystfully wroujte to oure helye for whoevere ;

so doth, he errith in the byleve, reversith Crist, and scornyth God.

He errith in the bileve, for in that he takitli the most precious werkis
of God in pley and bourde, and so takith his name in idil, and so
mysusith oure bileve. A Lord sythen an erthely servaunt dar not
! !

taken in pley and in bourde that that her erthely lord takith in ernest,
myche more we shulden not maken oure pleye and bourde of tho
 ;

Lect. IX. A SERMON AGAINST MIRACLE-PLATS 449

myraclis and werkis that God

so ernestfully wroujt to us for sothely ;

whan we synne is taken awey, as a servaunt whan

so done, drede to
he honrdith with his mayster leesith his drede to offendyn hym,
namely, whanne he bourdith with his mayster in th t nd that his
mayster takith in ernest.

An half frynde tariere to soule helthe, redy to excusen the yvil and
hard of bileve, with Thomas of Ynde, seith, that he wil not leevyn the
forseyd sentense of myraclis pleyinge, but and men schewen it hym bi
holy writtopynly and by oure bileve. Wherfore that his half
frenschip may be turnyd to the hoole, we prey en hym to beholden first
in the seconde maundement of God that seith '
Thou schalt not take
Goddis name in idil
;
and sythen the mervelous werkis of God ben
'

his name, as the gode Averkis of craftesman been his name, than in this
hest of God is forbeden to takun the mervelouse werkis of God in idil
and how mowen thei be more takyn in idil than whanne thei ben
maad mennus japynge stikke, as when thei ben pleyid of japeris ?
And sythen ernestly God dyde hem to us, so take we hem of hym ;

ellis fosothe we taken hem in veyn. Loke thanne, frend, jif thi byleve
tellith that God dide his myraclis to us for we shulden pleyn hem, and
yn trowe it seith to the, nay, but for thou schuldist more dredyn hym
'

and lovyn hym,' and certis greet drede and gret effectuel loove suffrith
no pleyinge nor japyng with hym. Thanne sythen myraclis pleyinge
reversith the wille of God, and the ende for the which be wroujt
myraclis to us, no doute but that myraclis pleyinge is verre takyng
of Goddis name in ydil. And jif* this suffisith not to thee, albeit that
it shulde suffisen to an hethene man, that therefore wil not pley in the

werkis of his mawmete, I preye thee rede enterly in the book of lyf
that is Crist Jhesus, and if thou mayst fynden inhym that he evere
exsaumplide that men shulden pleye myraclis, but alwey the revers,
and oure byleve cursith that ladden or lassen over that Crist exsaum-
plide us to don. Hou thanne darst thou holden with myraclis pleyinge,
sythen alle the werkis of Crist reversiden hem, and in none of his
werkis thei ben groundyd ? namely, sythen thou seyst thiselven that
thou wolt nothing leven but that may be schewid of oure bileve, and
sythen in thing that is acordyng with the flessh and to the likyng of it,
as is myraclis pleyinge, thou wilt nothing don ajenus it, but jif it be
schewid of oure bileve myche more in thing that is with the spirit,
;

and alwey exsawmplid in the lif of Christ, and so fully writen in the
booke of lif, as is levyng of myraclis pleyinge and of alle japyng, thou
shuldest not holden a^enys it, but if it myjte ben schewid ajens the
G G
450 A SERMON AGAINST MIRACLE-PLATS Lect. IX.

bileve, sytlien in al thyng that is dowtous men shulden holden with

the party e that more favowrable to the spirit, and more exsawmpplid
is

in the lif of Christ and so as eche synne distruyith hymsilf, and eche
;

falshed, so thi answere distruyith hymsilfe, and therby thou mayst

wel witen that it is not trewe, but verre unkyndenesse ; for if thou
haddist hadde a fadir that hadde sufFred a dispitouse deth to geten thee
thyn heritage, and thou therafter woldest so lijtly bern it to make
'

therof a pley to the and to alle the puple, no dowte but that alle gode
men wolden demyen the unkynde, miche more God and alle his seyntis
demyen alle tho cristen men unkynde that pleyen or favouren the pley

of the deth or of the myracles of the most kynde fadir Crist, that dyede

thingis,
•

Therfore siche myraclis pleyinge

first, is
•••••
and wroujte myraclis to bryngen men to the evere-lastande heretage of
hevene.

grete synne byforne the, second,

now on dayes
it
witnessith
witnessith grete foly
thre

in the doinge, and the thridde greet venjaunse aftir for rijt as the ;

chyldren of Israel, whan Moyses was in the hil bisily preyinge for hem,
thei mystristyng to hym, honouriden a calf of gold, and afterward eetyn
and drinken and risen to pleyn, and afterward weren sleyn of hem thre
and twenty thowsend of men ; so thanne as this pleyinge wittnesside
the synne of ther maumetrie beforn, and her mystryst to Moyses
whanne thei shulde most ban tristenede to hym, and after ther foly in
ther pleyinge, and the thridde the venjaunse that cam after so this;

myraclis pleyinge is verre witnesse of mennus averice and coveytise

byfore, that is maumetrie, as seith the apostele, for that that thei
shulden spendyn upon the nedis of ther nejeboris, thei spenden upon
the pleyis, and to peyen ther rente and ther dette thei wolen grucche,
and to spende two so myche upon ther pley thei wolen nothing grucche.
Also to gideren men togidere to bien the derre ther vetailis, and to
stiren men to glotonye, and to pride and boost, thei pleyn thes myraclis,
and also to han wherof to spenden on these myraclis, and to holde
felawschipe of glotenye and lecherie in sich dayes of myraclis pleyinge,
thei bisien hem beforn to more gredily bygilen ther ne^bors, in byinge
and in sellying ; and now on dayes is werre
so this pleyinge of myraclis
witnesse of hideous ceveytise, that maumetrie. And ri^t as Moyses
is

was that tyme in the hil most travelynge aboute the puple, so now is
Crist in hevene with his fader most bisiJy preyinge for the puple and ;

never the latere as the chlyndren {sic) of Israel diden that tyme that
in hem was, in ther pleyinge of ther maumetrie, most folily 1o distrojen
the grete travele of Moyses, so men now on dayecs, after ther hidouse
Lect. IX. A SERMON AGAINST MIRACLE-PLATS 451

maumetree of covetyse in tlier pleyinge of myraclis, thei don that in

hem is to distroje the ententive preyere of Crist in hevene for hem,
and so ther myraclis pleyinge witnessith ther most folye in ther doynge,
and therfore as unkyndely seiden to Aaron the children of Israel,
Moyses beinge in the hil, we Aviten never hoAV it is of Moyses, make
'

us therfore Goddis that gon biforn us,' so unkyndeli seyen men nowe
on dayes, Crist doth now no myraclis for us, pley Ave therfore his
'

olde,' addyng many lesynges therto so coloAvrably that the puple jife as
myche credense to hem as to the trwthe, and so thei forjeten to ben
percever of the preyere of Crist, for the maumetrye that men don to
siche myraclis pleyinge maumetrye, I seye, for siche pleyinge men
;

as myche honoryn or more than the Avord of God AA^hanne it is prechid,

and therefore blasfemely thei seyen, that siche pleyinge doith more
good than the AA'ord of God Avanne it is prechid to the puple. A !

Lord Avhat more blasfeme is ajenus thee, than to seyen to don the
!

byddyng, as is to prechen the word of God doth fer lasse good than to
don that that is bodyn onely by man and not by God, as is myraclis
pleying ? Eit forsothe, as the lyknesse of myraclis Ave clepen myraclis,
rijt so the golden calfe the children of Israel clepiden it God; in the
Avhiche thei hadden mynde of the olde myraclis of God beforn, and for
that licnesse thei Avorschipidenand preyseden, as thei AA orschipiden
r

and presiden God in the dede of his myraclis to hem, and therefore
thei diden expresse maumetrye. So sythen noAV on daies myche of the
puple Avorschipith and preysith onely the licnesse of the myraclis of
God, as myche as the Avorde of God in the prechours moAvth by the
whiche alle myraclis be don, no dowte that ne the puple doth more
maAvmetrie noAV in siche myraclis pleyinge than dide the puple of
Israel that tyme in heryinge of the calf, in as myche as the lesynges
and lustus of myraclis pleyinge that men Avorschipen in hem is more
contrarious to God, and more acordynge Avith the devil, than Avas that
golden calf that the puple Avorschipid. And therefore the maumetrye
that tyme but figure and licknesse of mennus maumetrye noAve,
Avas
and therfore seith the apostel, asse thes thingis in figure fellen to hem,
and therefore in siche myraclis pleyinge the deA el is most plesid, as the
r

dyvel is best payid to disceyve men in the licnesse of that thing in

AA'hiche by God man Averen conA ertid biforhond, and in Avhiche the
r

devel Avas tenyd byfornhond. Therfore oute of doute siche myraclis

pleying pretith myche more venjaunce than dide the pleyinge of the
chyldren of Israel, after the heriynge of the calf, as this pleyinge settith
but japes grettere and more benfetes of God.

G G 2
452 EECOEDS OF COMMON LIFE Lect. IX.

RECORDS OF COMMON LIFE.

I have somewhere seen it stated that Trevisa's manuscript of his

translation of Glanvilla de Proprietatibus Rerum is still in existence.
Philologically speaking, an edition of a work of this character would
be more valuable than a chronicle or a poem of equal extent. The
variety of subjects discussed by Glanville supposes a correspondingly
extensive vocabulary, and a greater range of verbal combination than
would be likely to occur in historical narrative, or in poetry, the
dialect of which more conventional than that of prose. It is to
is

works on natural knowledge, and which connect themselves with prac-

tical life, that we are chiefly to look for information upon the actual
speech of bygone ages, and especially upon historical etymology the —
true story of the metamorphoses and migrations of words.
Grammaticasters seek the history of language in written, and espe-
cially in elegant literature; but, except in the fleeting dialect of
pedants, linguistic change and progress begin in oral speech, and it is
long before the pen takes up and records the forms and words which
have become established in the living tongue.
If you would know the present tendencies of English, go, as Luther
did, to the market and the workshop you will there hear new words
;

and combinations, which orators and poets will adopt in a future

generation and in investigating the philological history of past ages,
;

whose market-places are grass-grown, and the hum of whose industry

is stilled, you must resort to those written memorials whose subjects

most nearly approximate to the busy every-day life of their time.

That literature which best preserves the unpremeditated, half-uncon-
scious verbal expression of humanity is richest in true philological
instruction, as it is in its revelations of the intellect and the heart of
man hence the great value and the profound interest of old familiar
:

letters, journals, private records of all sorts. Precisely the disclosures

we shrink most from making with respect to ourselves, and the out-
spoken expressions we are shyest in using, attract us most in the life

of distant ages. The most memorial of the actual

insignificant original
words of a living man has an imperishable worth to remote posterity.
Refined and sensitive persons destroy their family letters, and are re-
luctant to record their names in the albums of paper and of stone with
which all places of resort abound but, though we may not approve the
;

vanity which led a distinguished author to have his name carved on

Lect. IX. OLD RECORDS 453

the summit of a pyramid he did not climb, I think no traveller looks

on the record of a visit to one of the tombs of the Egyptian kings by
an ancient Greek — who expresses his disappointment at finding nothing
to admire, ei p/ ruv \iOov— or at the inscription rudely cut on the legs
of a gigantic statue at the entrance of the great rock-temple of Abou
Simbel, to commemorate the halt of a detachment of Roman soldiery
sent up into Nubia in search of deserters — or even at the bare name
which, three hundred years ago, the old herbalist, Belon, scratched
with the point of his dagger on the smoky wall of a convent kitchen,
—
now in ruins, in Arabia Petrasa without feeling that he has added
to his stores of knowledge both a historical fact and a form of words,'
'

which will adhere to his memory when many an eloquent phrase shall
have vanished from it.
 ;

LECTUEE X.

THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATUEE FROM THE

BEGINNING OP THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY TO THE TIME
OF CAXTON.

When the political and mental agitations of the fourteenth

century — which had been, if not occasioned, at least greatly
increased by the antipapal schism —
had once subsided, the in-
tellectual activity of the age of Langlande and Wycliffe and
Chaucer suddenly ceased, and was followed by a long period of
repose, or perhaps I might rather say, of lethargy. The literary
monuments we possess of the early part of the fifteenth century
exhibit few traces of original power. In some of them, even
the language seems to have rather retrograded than advanced
nor did it manifest much substantial progress, until the new
life, which the invention of printing infused into literature,
made itself felt in England.
The English mind, brilliant as were its achievements in the
era we have just passed over, was not yet so thoroughly roused
and enlivened, that it was able to go on in the path of creative
literatureby its own inherent energies. It still required external
impulse and it was only by the succession of electric shocks it
;

received from the four greatest events in modern history, which

so rapidly followed each other — the invention of printing, the
discovery of the passage around the Cape of Grood Hope, and of
the American continent, and the Eeformation —
that it was fully
awakened and inspired with that undying energy which, for
three hundred years, has filled the world with its renown.
 :

Lect. X. THOMAS OCCLEVE 455

The first important poetical writer of the fifteenth century,

whose works have come down to us, is Thomas Occleve, a
lawyer, who is supposed to have flourished about the year 1420.
Most of his works exist only in manuscript, and those that have
been printed are not of a character to inspire a very lively
desire for the publication of the remainder. They are princi-
pally didactic, and in great part most important
translations, the
of them being a treatise on the Art of Government, taken
principally from a Latin work of Egidius, a Eoman writer of
the thirteenth century. The diction of Occleve is modelled
after that of Chaucer, of whom he professes to have been a
pupil, but there are some grammatical differences, the most
noticeable of them being the constant omission of the n final in

the infinitive mood, and in the third person plural of the verbs.
This, though not uncommon, was but of occasional, or at least
of very irregular occurrence in the preceding century.
I can find nothing better worthy of citation from this author
than his lamentation upon Chaucer, which Warton gives from
an unpublished manuscript
But weleawaye, so is myne herte wo,
That the honour of English tonge is dede,
Of which I wont was han counsel and rede !

O mayster dere, and fadir reverent,

My mayster Chaucer, fioure of eloquence,
Mirrour of fructuous entendement,
O universal fadir in science,
Alas, that thou thine excellent prudence
In thy bed mortel mightest not bequethe !

"What eyled Deth ? Alas why would he sle the !

O Deth that didist nought harm singulere

In slaughtre of him, but all the lond it smertith :

But natheless, yet hastowe no powere

His name to sle. His hie vertue astertith
Unslayn from thee, which aye us lifely hertith.
With boke[s] of his ornate enditing,
That is to all this lond enlumyning.

The versification of this extract is interesting as showing that

456 E FINAL Lect. X.

the e final, which seems to have become silent soon after, was

still pronounced in Occleve's time, at least in poetry, as it had

been in Chaucer's; for bequeath, spelt bequethe, is made to
rhyme to sle the —
In thy bed mortel mightest not bequethe!
What eyled Deth ? Alas why would he sle the ?

The e final, which is mute in prose, is still counted in French

versification, and not unfrequently requires a prosodical accent,
though in actual reading of poetry, it is not much dwelt upon.
That it was once normally articulated in prose, in both English
and French, there can be no doubt. At what period it became
silent in either, it is difficult to determine, partly because
orthography seldom accurately represents orthoepy, and partly
because the change, like other orthoepical and grammatical
revolutions, came in gradually, and locally, so that while one
province or writer in a given century may have dropped the e,

another may have retained it many years later. The cause of

the loss of this articulation is the same in both languages,
namely, the tendency of both to discard inflectional syllables —
a tendency much aggravated in English by the confusion intro-
duced into its grammar through a mixture of unrelated tongues
discordant in their accidences.
Changes of this sort are not received in literature until they
have been long established in speech, and the fact, that in
French poetry the e final still counts as a syllable, while it has
been null in English verse for certainly three centuries, would
seem to imply that it continued to be colloquially pronounced
in France much longer than in England.
Contemporaneously with Occleve lived James I. of Scotland,
who was illegally seized, in his early childhood,* by Henry IV.

* There a good deal of discrepancy among the authorities as to the date of

is
King James's capture —
or rather as to his age at the time —
and the duration of
his imprisonment. In the third and fifth stanzas of the second canto of the
Kings Quair, the king himself says that he was taken prisoner at the age of
LeCT. X. JAMES I. OF SCOTLAND 457

of England in the year 1405, and kept for nearly twenty years
a prisoner. His captor caused him to be well educated, and
besides several pieces written, as it is said, unequivocally in the
Scottish dialect — the which does not come within
criticism of
the plan of this course —
he wrote, in English, as it seems, a
poem in about fourteen hundred lines, called the King's Quair,
or book. This is a eulogistic rhapsody on the Lady Jane Beau-

three, and in the sixth stanza of the same canto, he states that he had already
been imprisoned eighteen years, when he first saw his mistress :

in.

Not far passit the state of innocence

But nere about the nowmer of zeiris thre,
Were it causit throu hevinly influence
Of Goddis will, or other casualtee,
Can I not say, bot out of my contree,
By thair avise y* had of me the cure
Be see to pas, tuke I my aventure.

v.

Upon the wevis weltring to and fro,

So infortunate was we that fremyt day,
That maugre plainly quethir we wold or no,
W 4
strong hand by forse schortly to say,
Of inymyis taken and led away,
"We weren all, and bro 4 in thaire contree,
Fortune it schupe non othir wayis to be.

VI.

Quhare as in strayte ward, and in strong prison,

So fere forth of my lyf the hevy lyne,
W 4
out confort in sorowe, abandoune
The secund sistere, lukit hath to tuyne,
Nere, by the space of zeris twice nyne,
Till Jupiter his merci list advert,
And send confort in relesche of my smert.

In Holinshed's History of Scotland, reprint of 1808, vol. vi. p. 407, it is said:

1
taken he was in the ninth yeare of his age, the 33 (sic) day of March, in the
yeare of our incarnacion 1406, and was kept in captivitie of the Englishmen by
the space of eighteene yeares.' On page 426, the king is said to have been
murdered on the 21 of February 1436, in the 44 yeere of his age.' If King
'

James was forty-three years old in 1436, he must have been more than eight in
1406, and upon the whole I think it safer to follow King James's own chronology
than that of historical compilers.
 :

458 JAMES I. OF SCOTLAND Lect. X.

fort, whom King James afterwards married ; and though its

subject and purpose did not give room for much fertility of
invention, it is full of delicacy, grace and feeling, smooth and
artistic in versification, and, in general poetic merit, superior to
any other English verse of the fifteenth or even the first half of
the sixteenth century.
The dialect is remarkable both for the occasional introduction
of Scandinavian words and forms — reminiscences, possibly, of
the author's childhood, which was used to a dialect much modified
by Northern influences —
and especially for its freedom from all
French terms and idioms which had not been fairly naturalized
in English. The proportion of Eomance words in the King's
Quair is scarcely greater than in the works of Chaucer or of Grower,
and, as in those authors, we find that most of them are intro-
duced rather for the sake of rhyme and metre, than for any
superior adaptedness to poetical expression. His description of
the lady of whom he was enamoured is worth quoting at length

And therew* kefl I doim myn eye ageyne,

Quhare as I faw walkyng under the Toure,
Full fecretely, new cumyn hir to pleyne,
The faireft or the frefcheft zoung floure
That ever I fawe, metho*, before that houre,
For quhich fodayne abate, anon aftert,
The blude of all my body to my hert.
And though I ftood abaifit tho a lyte,
No wonder was ; for quhy ? my wittis all
Were fo ouercome w* plefance and delyte,
Only through latting of myn eyen fall,
That fudaynly my hert become hir thrall,
For ever of free wyll, for of manace
There was no takyn in hir fuete face.

And in my hecle I drew ry* haflily,

And eft fones I lent it out ageyne,
And faw hir walk that verray womanly,
With no wight mo, bot only women tueyne,
Than gan I ftudy in myfelf and feyne,
Ah ! fuete are ze a warldly creature,
Or hevingly thing in likenefle of nature ?
 ;

Lect. X. JAMES I. OF SCOTLAND 459

Or ar ze god Cupidis owin princeffe ?

And cumyn are to loufe me out of band,

Or are ze veray Nature the goddefle,
That have depayntit w* zour hevinly hand,
This gardyn full of flouris, as they ftand ?
Quhat fall I think, allace quhat reverence !

Sail I meiler to zour excellence ?

GifF ze a goddefTe be, and y* ze like

To do me payne, I may it not aflert
GifF ze be warldly wight, y* dooth me fike,

Quhy left God mak zou fo my dereft hert,

To do a fely prifoner thus fmert,
That lufis zou all, and wote of no* but wo,
And, therefore, merci fuete ! fen it is fo.

Quhen I a lytill thrawe had maid my mone,

Bewailing myn infortune and my chance,
Unknawin how or quhat was bell to done,
So ferre I fallying into lufis dance,
That fodeynly my wit, my contenance,
My hert, my will, my nature, and my mynd,
Was changit clene ry* in ane other kind.
Of hir array the form gif I fal write,
Toward her goldin haire, and rich atyre,
In fretwife couchit w* perlis quhite,
And grete balas lemyng as the fyre,
W 1
mony ane emerant and faire faphire,
And on hir hede a chaplet frefch of hewe,
Of plumys partit rede, and quhite, and blewe.
Full of quaking fpangis bry* as gold,
Forgit of fchap like to the amorettis,
So new, fo frefch, fo pleafant to behold,
The plumys eke like to the flour e jonettis,
And other of fchap, like to the floure jonettis;
And, above all this, there was, wele I wote,
Beautee eneuch to mak a world to dote.
About hir neck, quhite as the fyre amaille,
A gudelie cheyne of fmall orfeverye,
Quhare by there hang a ruby, w t out faille
Like ane hert fchapin verily,
to
That, as a fperk of lowe fo wantonly
Semyt birnyng upon hir quhite throte,
Now gif there was gud pertye, God it wote.
 ; ; :

460 JAMES I. OF SCOTLAND Lect. X.

And walk that frefche Mayes morowe,

for to
Ane huke fhe had upon her tiffew quhite,
That gudeliare had not bene fene to forowe,
As I fuppofe, and girt fche was alyte
Thus halflyng lowfe for hafte, to fuich delyte,
Itwas to fee her zouth in gudelihed,
That for rudenes to fpeke thereof I drede.
In hir was zouth, beautee, w* humble aport,
Bountee, rieheffe, and womanly faiture,
God better wote than my pen can report,
Wifdome, largefTe eftate, and conyng fure
In every point, fo guydit hir mefure,
In word, in dede, in fchap, in contenance,
That nature my 1 no more hir childe auance.
Throw quhich anon I knew and underftude
Wele y* fche was a warldly creature,
On quhom to reft myn eye, fo mich gude
It did my woful hert, I zow affure
That it was to me joye w*out mefure,
And, at the laft, my luke unto the hevin
I threwe furthwith, and faid thir verfis fevin
O Venus clere ! of goddis ftellifyit,

To quhom I zelde homage and facrifife,

Fro this day forth zour grace be magnifyit,

That me refiauit have in fuch wife,
To lyve under zour law and fo feruife
Now help me furth. and for zour merci lede
My hert to reft, y* deis nere for drede.
Quhen I w* gude entent this orifon
Thus endit had, I ftynt a lytill ftound,
And eft myn eye full pitoufly adoun
I keft, behalding unto hir hound, lytill

That w* on the ground,

his bellis playit
Than wold I fay, and figh tnerew* a lyte,
Ah wele were him y* now were in thy plyte
! !

An othir quhile the lytill nyghtingale,

That fat upon the twiggis, Avoid I chide,
And fay ry* thus, Quhare are thy notis fmale,
That thou of love has fong this morowe tyde ?
Seis thou not hir y* fittis the befyde ?

Ffor Venus' fake, the blisfull goddeffe clore,

Sing on agane, and mak my Lady chere.
 ; ; ; : :

LECT. X. JAMES I. OF SCOTLAND 461

And eke I pray, for all the paynes grete,

That, for the love of Proigne, thy filler dere,
Thou fufferit quhilom, quhen thy brellis wete
Were with the teres of thyne eyen clere,
All bludy ronne y l pitee was to here,
The crueltee of that unkny^ly dede,
Quhare was fro the bereft thy maidenhede.
Lift up thyne hert, and fing w* gude entent,
And in thy notis fuete the trefon telle,
That to thy filter trewe and innocent,
Was kythit by hir hufband falfe and fell,

Ffor quhois gilt, as it is worthy well,

Chide thir hufbandis y l are falfe, I fay,
And bid them mend in the XX deuil way.
lytill wreich, allace ! maift thou not fe

Quho comyth zond ? Is it now time to wring ?

Quhat upon the ?

fory tho* is fallin
Opyn thy throte hallow no left to
; fing ?
Allace fen thou of refon had felyng,
!

Now, fwete bird fay ones to me pepe,

I dee forwo me think thou gynis flepe.
;

Haftow no mynde of lufe ? quhare is thy make ?

Or artow feke, or fmyt w* jeloufye ?
Or is fche dede, or hath fche the forfake ?
Quhat is the caufe of thy melancolye,
That thou no more lift maken melodye ?
Sluggart, for fchame lo here thy golden houre
!

That worth were hale all thy lyvis laboure.

Gif thou fuld fing wele ever in thy lyve,
Here is, in fay, the time, and eke the fpace
Quhat woftow then ? Sum bird may cum and ftryve
In fong w* the, the maiftry to purchace.
Suld thou than cefie, it were great fchame allace,
And here to wyn gree happily for ever
Here is the tyme to fyng, or ellis never.

1 tho* eke thus gif I my handis clap,

Or gif I call, than will fche flee away
And, gif I hald my
than will fche nap
pes,
And gif I crye, fche wate not quhat I fay
Thus quhat is bell, wate I not be this day,
Bot blawe wynd, blawe, and do the leuis fchake,
That rum tuig may wag, and make hir to wake.
 ; ;

462 JAMES I. OF SCOTLAND Lect. X.

With that anon ry* fche toke tip a fang,

Quhare com anon mo birdis and alight
Bot than to here the mirth was tham amang,
Ouer that to fee the fuete ficht
Of hyr ymage, my fpirit was fo light,
Metho* I flawe for joye w*out areft,
So were my wittis bound in all to fell.
And to the nottis of the philomene,
Quhilkis fche fang the ditee there I maid
Direft to hir y was
fc
my hertis quene,
Withoutin quhom no fongis may be glade,
And to that fanct walking in the fchade,
My bedis thus with humble hert entere,
Deoutly I faid on this manere.
Quhen fall zour merci rew upon zour man,

Quhois feruice is yet uncouth unto zow,

Sen quhen ze go, there is not ellis than,
Bot hert quhere as the body may not throu
Folow thy hevin, quho fuld be glad bot thou,
That fuch a gyde to folow has undertake,
Were it throu hell, the way thou no* forfake.
And, efter this, the birdis everichone
Tuke up ane other fang full loud and clere,
And w* a voce faid, Well is vs begone,
That with our makis are togider here
We proyne and play w*out dout and dangere,
All clothit in a foyte full frefch and newe,
In luffis fervice befy, glad, and trewe.
And ze frefch May, ay mercifull to bridis,
Now welcum be, ze floure of monethis all,

Ffor not onely zour grace upon us bydis,

Bot all the warld to witnes this we call,
That ftrowit hath fo plainly over all,
W new frefch fuete and tender grene,
fc

Our lyf, our luft, our governoure, our quene.

This was their fang, as femyt me full heye,
W l full mony uncouth fwete note and fchill,

And therew 1 all that faire vpward hir eye

Wold call amang, as it was Goddis will,
Quhare I might fe, Handing alone full Hill,
The faire faiture y* nature, for maiftrye, f

In hir vifage wro* had full lufingly.

Lect. X. JAMES I. OF SCOTLAND 463

And, quhen fche walkit, had a lytill thrawe

Under the fuete grene bewis bent,
Hir faire frefch face, as quhite as any fnawe,
Sche turnyt has, and furth her wayis went
Bot tho began myn axis and turment,
To fene hir part, and folowe I na my*,
Metho* the day was turnyt into ny*.

The dialect of this poem is English in almost everything but

the spelling. Only a single old manuscript of the King's Quair
exists,and I do not know that there is any reason to suppose it
an authentic copy. The occasional
to be the original, or even
halting of the metre, which is in general smooth, is strong
evidence of some corruption of the text; and it may be
considered impossible that a young man, educated in England
from the age of three or even of eight or nine years, should
have employed the orthography of the manuscript in ques-
tion. It is, therefore, either a transcript made by a scribe not
well versed in the English dialect, or it has been nationalized
by some Caledonian, who ' loved Scotland better than the
truth.'
King James acknowledged Gower and Chaucer as his masters,
but he certainly did not learn from them this spelling of the
concluding stanza of the poem, in which he confesses his
obligations to them :
—
Vnto impnis of my maisteris dere,
Gowere and Chaucere, that on the steppis satt
Of rhethorike, quhill thai were ly vand here,
Superlatiue as poetis laureate,
In moralitee and eloquence ornate,
I recommend my buk in lynis seven,
And eke thair saulis vnto the blisse of hevin.

Apart from the internal evidence of the poem itself, we have

abundant other proof that its dialect is, not that of the Scottish
nation in the first third of the fifteenth century. Holinshed
has preserved for us a piece of testimony on this subject,
directly connected with the prince himself, in a letter written
464 LYDGATE Lect. X.

by King Kobert to King Henry IV., in anticipation of the

possibility of theyoung prince's capture while trying to force 6

the blockade,' and proceed to France. The diction of this

epistle is in the same pedantic strain which characterised the
dialect of many Scotch writers of the following century. Fully
twenty-five per cent, of the words are French or Latin, and
among them are such expressions as :
'
thair empire is caduke
e
and quhan princes ar roborat be amitee of other, &c.,'
fragill,'

'to obtemper to thir owr desires,' and the like. In short, the
whole style of the letter is as remote as possible from the sim-
plicity and naturalness of expression that marked the English
of that period, and of which King James's poem constitutes so
good a specimen.
A little later, or about the year 1430, flourished Lydgate, a
poet of moderate merit, but to whom the popularity of his
principal subjects, the Fall of Princes, taken from Boccaccio,
the Destruction of Troy, and the Siege of Thebes all founded —
on middle-age adaptations and amplifications of classical narra-
tives —
gave a more general circulation than the works of any
other writer of that century obtained.
Lydgate's poems are extremely numerous, and mostly still

inedited. They embrace a vast variety of subjects, including

some not precisely fit to be treated by an ecclesiastic. The un-
published works, so far as can be judged by the scanty extracts
in Warton and other critical writers, are of at least equal merit
with those which have been printed. be washed
It is much to
that a selection of them might be edited, because, from their
great variety of topics, metre and prevalent tone, they would,
no doubt, furnish important contributions to the history of
English philology. Lydgate was one of the few Englishmen of
his time who enjoyed the benefit of both an English education
and a Continental literary training. He not only visited Italy,
as did hundreds of the priesthood, for professional purposes, but
carefully studied and mastered the languages and secular litera-
ture of that country and of France; and he is said to have
opened a school at his monastery, after his return, for the
 ;

Lect. X. MINOR POETRY OF FIFTEENTH CENTURY 465

instruction ofyoung gentlemen in the arts of poetry and rhetoric,

and in all that is called belles-lettres learning.
The Story of Thebes was written as a sort of continuation of
the Canterbury Tales, and is preceded by a prologue, in which
the author says he fell accidentally into company with Chaucer's
pilgrims, and was invited to join them, and contribute a tale for
the entertainment of the party. The dialect of this composition
is evidently an imitation of the style and diction of Chaucer
and hence it ismore antiquated than that of Lydgate's other
works, many of which are evenmore modern, both in vocabulary
and in idiom, than the diction of Spenser, who lived a century
and a half later.

The Fall of Troy is a compilation from a great variety of

sources, strung together not without art, and embellished with
many apparently original inventions of Lydgate's own. It pos-
sesses an interest of an archaeological as well as of a philological
character, for it brings the action of the personages, their cos-
tumes, their architecture and their habits to those of Lydgate's
time, and consequently adds something to our knowledge of the
English social life of the fifteenth century.
The versification of Lydgate is generally very smooth, but it

is sometimes on account
difficult to resolve it into prosodical feet,

of the irregularity in the pronunciation of the e final, which was

now fluctuating, sometimes articulated and sometimes silent.
Upon what rule the pronunciation rested, or whether the poet
arbitrarily articulated or suppressedit, as the convenience of

metre dictated, I am unable to say but it is evident that in his

;

time there was a rapidly increasing inclination to drop it in

speech, though it was still retained in the orthography of a
great number of words which have now lost it.
The minor poetry of the fifteenth century is in general of
little interest or value, though there are some devotional pieces
not devoid of merit in versification, if wanting in originality of
thought. I give, as a specimen, a poem to the Virgin, from
Wright and Halliweli's Keliquise Antique, vol. ii. pp. 212, 213 :

II H
466 MINOR POEMS OF FIFTEENTH CENTURY Lect. X.

Mary moder, wel thow be !

Mary mayden, thynk on me

Majdjn and moder was never non
To the, lady, but thou allon.
Swete Mary, mayden clene,
Shilde me iro all shame and tene
And out. of syn, lady, shilde thou me,
And out of det, for charite.
Lady, for thi joyes fyve,
Gyf me grace in this life
To know and kepe over all thyng
Cristyn feath and Goddis biddyng,
And truly wynne allthat is nede
To me and myne, bothe cloth and fede.
Helpe me, lady, and alle myne,
Shilde me, lady, fro hel pyne.
Shilde me, lady, fro vilany,
And fro alle wycked cumpany.
Shilde me, lady, fro evel shame,
And from all wyckid fame.
Swete Mary, mayden mylde,
Fro the fende thou me shilde,
That the fende me not dere
Swete lady, thou me were
Bothe be day and be nyjt
Helpe me, lady, with alle thi mygt,
For my frendis, lady, I pray the,
That thei may saved be
To ther soulis and ther life,
Lady, for thi joyes fyve.
For myn enimys I pray also,
That thei may here so do,
That thei nor I in wrath dye
Swete lady, I the pray,
And thei that be in dedly synne,
Let hem never dye ther in ;

But swete lady, thou hem rede

For to amende ther my seede.
Swete lady, for me thou pray to hevyn kyng,
To graunt me howsill, Christe, and gode endyng.
Jhesu, for thi holy grace,
In heven blisse to have a place
Lkct. X. MINOR POEMS OF FIFTEENTH CENTURY 467

Lady as I trust in the,

These prayers that thou graunt me
And I shall, lady, her belyve
Grete the with avys fyve,
A pater noster and a crede,
To helpe me, lady, at my nede.
Swete lady, full of wynne,
Full of grace and gode within,
As thou art flour of alle thi kynne,
Do my synnes for to blynne,
And kepe me out of dedly synne,
That I be never takyn therin.

T add, from the same collection, a short poem on grammatical

rules, written in a dialect which shows that the author, however
good a Latinist he may have been, had very vague notions of
English accidence and orthography :
—
My lefe chyld, I kownsel ye
To furme thou awyse ye
thi vj . tens,
And have mynd of thi clensoune,
Both of nowne and of pronowne,
And ilk case in plurele,
How thai sal end, awyse the wele
And thou nowth,
thi participyls forgete
And thi comparysons be yn thi thowth
Thynk of the revele of the relatyfe,
And then schalle thou the bettyr thryfe
Lat never interest downe falle,
Nor penitet with hys felows alle
And how this Englis schalle cum in,
Wyt tanto and quanto in a Latyn,
And how this Englis schalle be chawngede,
Wyt verbis newtyrs qwen thai are hawede
And howe a verbe schalle be furmede,
Take gode hede that thou be not stunnede
The ablatyfe case thou hafe in mynd,
That he be saved in hys kynd
Take gode hede qwat he wylle do.
And how a nowne substantyfe,
Wylle corde with a verbe and a relatyfe
Posculo, posco, peto.
H H 2
 ; ;

468 MINOR POEMS OF FIFTEENTH CENTURY Lect. X.

And yf thou wylle be a grammarion,

Owne thi fyngers to construccyon,
The infenytyfe mode alle thorowth,
Wyt his suppyns es mykylle wroth
And thynk of propur nownnys,
Both of kastels and of townnys
And when oportet cums in plas,
Thou knawys miserere has no gras.

The political poetry of this period, as a contribution to

contemporaneous history, has a value quite independent of its

merits, or rather demerits, in a literary point of view. The

rhymed chronicles are every way worthless ; but some of the
controversial and polemic political verse has much higher
claims. The Libel of English Policy, a poem of some fifteen

hundred lines, written apparently in the year 1436, is among

the most important productions of its kind, and is remarkable
for far-sighted views of public policy, and the knowledge it
displays of the material resources and commercial interests of
England. The prologue deserves quoting at length :
—
THE LIBEL OF ENGLISH POLICY.
Here beginneth the prologe of the processe of the Libelle of Englyshe
Polycye, exhortynge alle Englande to kepe the see enviroun, and
namelye the naroive see, shewynge ivhate profete commeth thereof
and also worshype and salvacioun to Englande and to alle Englyshe
menne.

The trewe processe of Englysh poly eye,

Of utterwarde to kepe thys regne in rest
Of oure England, that no man may denye,
Nere say of soth but one of the best
Is thys, that who seith southe, northe, est, and west,
Cheryshe merchandyse, kepe thamyralte,
That we bee maysteres of the narowe see.
Ffor Sigesmonde the grete emperoure,
Whyche yet regneth, whan he was in this londe
Wyth kynge Herry the v te , prince of honoure,
Here moche glorye as hym thought he founde;
A myghty londe, whyche hadde take on honde
To werre in Ffraunce and make mortalite,
And evere welle kept rounde aboute the see.
Lect. X. MINOR POEMS OF FIFTEENTH CENTURY 469

And kynge thus he seyde, My brothere,'

to the '

Whan he perceyved too townes Calys and Dovere,

1
Of alle youre townes to chese of one and othere,
1
To kepe the see and sone to come overe
1
To werre oughtwardes and youre regne to recovere,
1
Kepe these too townes, sire, and youre mageste,
* As youre tweyne eyne to kepe the narowe see.'
Ffor if this see be kepte in tyme of werre,
Who cane here passe withought daungere and woo ?
Who may eschape, who may myschef dyfFerre ?
What marchaundye may for by be agoo ?
hem muste take truse every ffoo,
Ffor nedes
Fflaundres, and Spayne, and othere, trust to me,
Or ellis hyndered alle for thys narowe see.

Therfore I caste me by a lytele wrytinge

To shewe att eye thys conclusione,
Ffor concyens and for myne acquytynge
Ayenst God and ageyne abusyon,
And cowardyse and to oure enmyes confusione
Ffor iiij. thynges our noble sheueth to me,
Kyng, shype and, swerde, and pouer of the see.

Where bene oure shippes ? where bene oure swerdes become ?

Owre enmyes bid for the shippe sette a shepe.
Alias ! oure reule halteth, hit is benome ;

Who dare weel say that lordeshyppe shulde take kepe ?

thoughe myne hert gynne to wepe,
I wolle asaye,
To do we wole ever the,
thys werke, yf
Ffor verry shame, to kepe aboute the see.

Shalle any prynce, what so be hys name,

Wheche hathe nobles moche lyche oures,
Be lorde of see, and Fflemmyngis to oure blame
Stoppe us, take us, and so make fade the floures
Of Englysshe state, and disteyne oure honnoures ?

Ffor cowardyse, alias hit shulde so be

!

Therfore I gynne to wryte now of the see.

After the prologue, follow chapters on the trade between the

Continental states, which is conducted by way of the British
channel, the object being to show that if England controls that
 ; ; ;

470 MINOR POEMS OF FIFTEENTH CENTURY Lect. X.

strait by her maritime towns on both coasts, and her fleets,

she is virtually the mistress of the commerce of "Western

Europe. These chapters furnish a good deal of information on
the productive industry, the imports and exports, and all the
financial interests of the countriesbounded by the Atlantic and
the Baltic seas, as well as of the most important Mediterranean
ports, which latter seem to have furnished England with many
of the lighter and more costly articles of trade and luxury,
called by the writer, commodites and nycetees
i :
'
—
The grete galees of Venees and Filorence
Be wel ladene wyth thynges of complacence,
Alle spicerye and of grocers ware,
Wyth swete wynes, alle manere of chaffare,
Apes, and japes, and marmusettes taylede,
Nines, trifles, that litelle have availede,
And thynges wyth whiche they fetely blere oure eye,
Wyth thynges not enduryng that we bye ;

Ffor moche of thys chaffare that is wastable

Mighte be forborne for dere and dyssevable.
And that I wene, as for infirmitees,
In oure Englonde is suche comoditees,
Wythowten helpe of any othere londe,
Whych by wytte and practike bethe ifounde,
That alle humors myght be voyded sure
Whych that we gledre wyth oure Englysh cure,
That wee shulde have no nede to skamonye,
Turbit, euforbe, correcte, diagredie,
Rubarde, sene, and yet they bene to nedefulle
But I knowe thynges also spedefulle,
That growene here, as these thynges seyde
Lett of this matere no mane be dysmayde,
But that a man may voyde infirmytee
Wythoute degrees fet fro beyonde the see.
And yett there shulde excepte be ony thynge,
It were but sugre, truste to my seyinge.
He that trustith not to my seyinge and sentence,
Lett hym better serche experience.
In this mater I wole not ferthere prese,
Who so not beleveth, let hym leve and sease.
 ;

Lect. X. MINOR POEMS OF FIFTEENTH CENTURY 471

Thus these galeise for this lykynge ware,

•
And etynge ware, bere hens oure beste chaffare,
Clothe, wolle, and tynne, whiche, as I seyde beforne,
Oute of this londe werste myghte be forborne.
Ffor eche other londe of necessite
Have grete nede to by some of the tlire ;

And wee resseyve of hem into this cooste

"Ware and chaffare that lyghtlye wol be loste.
And wolde Jhesu that oure lordis wolde
Considre this wel, both yonge and olde ;

Namelye olde, that have experience,

That myghte the yonge exorten to prudence.
'What harme, what hurt, and what hinderaunce
Is done to us unto youre grete grevaunce,
Of suche londes and of suche nacions ?
As experte men knowe by probacions
By wretynge as discured oure counsayles,
And false coloure alwey the countertayles
Of oui'e enmyes, that dothe us hindermge
Unto our goodes, oure realme, and to the kynge ;

As wysse men have shewed welle at eye,

And alle this is colowred by marchaundrye.

This chapter is an ensampelle of deseytte/ which

followed by *

furnishes some curious information on modes and rates of

exchange and usury :
—
Also they bere the golde owte of thys londe,
And souketh the thryfte awey oute of oure honde,
As the waffore soukethe honeye fro the bee,
So mynuceth oure commodite.
Now wolle ye here how they in Cotteswolde
"Were wonte to borowe, or they schulde be solde,
Here wolle gode, as for yere and yere,
Of clothe and tynne they did in lych manere,
And in her galeys schyppe this marchaunclye ?
Than sone at Venice of them men wol it bye,
Then utterne there the chaffare be the payse.
And lyghtly als ther they make her reys.
And whan tho gode bene at Venice solde,
Than to carrye her chaunge they ben fulle bolde
472 PROSE OF FIFTEENTH CENTURY Lect. X.

Into Flaundres, whan tliei this money have,

They wyll it profre ther sotelte to save.
To Englysshe marchaundis to yeve it oute by eschaunjre,
To be paid agayn, thei make not straunge,
Here in Englonde, semynge for the better,
At the resey vinge and syght of the iettir,

By iiij. pens lesse in the noble rounde,

That is xij. pens in the golden pounde.

And yf we wolle have of paymente,

A fulle monythe than moste hym nedes assente,
To viij. pens losse, that is shellyngis tweyne,
In the Englysshe pound, as eftesones ageync
Ffor ij. monthes xij. pens must be paye,
In the Englysshe pounde, what is that to seve,
Bnt iij. shyllingis, so that in pounde felle
Ffor hurte and harme harde is Avyth hem to delle.
And whenne Englysshe marchaundys have contente
This eschaunge in Englonde of assente,
That these seyde Veneciance have in wone,
And Florentynes, to bere here golde sone
Overe the see into Flaundres ageyne.
And thus they lyve in Flaundres, sothe to sayne,
And in London, wyth suche chevesaunce
That men calle usure, to oure losse and hinderaunce.

The wide range of vocabulary required for the lists of com-

modities and for the other commercial topics discussed in this
poem, invests it with a good deal of philological interest, but it

offers nothing new in point of syntax or inflection.

The prose writers of the first three quarters of the fifteenth
century are not very numerous, nor, with an exception or two,
important. There are several chroniclers of this period who
have little historical merit, and it may be remarked as a rule
almost without exception, that the secular prose of the fifteenth
century is greatly inferior to the poetry, both in literary skill
and The time had not yet come for the
in philological interest.
cultivation of the diction of prose. The freedom of speech,
which had grown up in the decrepitude of Edward III. and
the imbecility of his successor, the weak and unfortunate
Lect. x. Bisnop pecock: 473

Kichard II., was gone. Liberty of thought was restrained in too

many ways, tyrannized over by too many despotisms, to be
allowed much range of exercise. The realities of life, political,
social, ecclesiastical, could not safely be discussed, and it was
only the imaginative, unsubstantial world of poetry, in which
the English mind was allowed a little room for expansion.
But, in spite of every effort to quench it, the spark which
Wycliffe had kindled still glowed in the dreary ash-heap of
faintly
the Church itself; and the works of Pecock afford a gratifying-
proof that the mantle of the reformer had fallen on worthy
shoulders, though he who bore it was so little able to comprehend
the scope and logical consequences of the principles on which
he acted, that he knew not even in what direction he was
marching.
The principal work of Pecock is called The Eepressor of
over-much Blaming of the CI erg}'. It was written about the
year 1450, and a very good edition of it has just been published
in the series entitled Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain
and Ireland in the Middle Ages. It is, as its title indicates, a
defence of many of the doctrines held by the Church of Eome
against the attacks of the Lollardists, or followers of Wycliffe,
and other reformers. But while Pecock assailed the heretical
opinions of the Lollardists, and sustained, with moderation, the
supremacy of the Papal See, the adoration of images and the
like, he was at the same time unconsciously undermining the

position on which he stood, by admitting that general councils

were not infallible, that the Scriptures were the true rule of
faith, and that religious dogmas ought to be supported by
argument, and not by the bare decree of an unreasoning
authority. Clearer-sighted men than himself saw whither
Pecock was drifting, and that his well-meant defence of the
Church was, in reality, a formidable attack upon the radical
principles of its organisation and the groundwork of its power.
He was, therefore, degraded from his bishopric, compelled to
recant, and confined for the rest of his life in a conventual prison.
474 bishop pecock Lfecr. X.

The appearance work

like the Repressor is important in the
of a
ecclesiastical annals ofEngland, because so many of the writings
of the early reformers were destroyed by the relentless hostility of
the authorities of the Church, that our materials for a full history

of those anticipatory movements are incomplete. But the work of

Pecock has still stronger claims to the attention of the student
of English literary history, both from its philological interest
and from its intrinsic merits, as being, if not the first, yet
certainly the ablest specimen of philosophical argumentation
which had yet appeared in the English tongue. The style of
Pecock bears a remarkable resemblance to that of Hooker, who
lived a century and a half later and this likeness in vocabulary
;

and structure of period is one of the many evidences tending to

prove that theology had, from the time of Wycliffe to the
seventeenth century, a dialect of her own, which was in a great
measure distinctfrom and independent of that of secular
literature, and the regularity of whose progress was little
affected by the fluctuations that mark the history of the English
language in other departments of prose composition.
Although, in diction and arrangement of sentences, the
Repressor is much in advance of the chroniclers of Pecock's
age, the grammar, both in accidence and syntax, is in many
points nearly where Wycliffe had left it; and it is of course in
these respects considerably behind that of the poetical writers
we have just been considering. Thus, while these latter
authors, as well as some of earlier date, employ the objective
plural pronoun them, and the plural possessive pronoun their,
Pecock writes always Jiem for the personal and her for the
possessive pronoun. Thus in chapter xx. vol. ii. p. 128, 'Forto
conuicte and ouercome the said erring persoones of the lay
peple, and for to make hem leue her errouris, an excellent
remeclie is the dryuyng of hem into sure knowing, or into
weenyng or opinioun, that tliei neden mich more to leerne and
knowe into the profit and sure leernyng and knowing of Groddis
lawe and seruice, than what thei mowe leerne and knowe bi her
Lect. X. Bisnop pecock 475

reading and studiying in the Bible oonli,' &c. These pro-

nominal forms, however, soon fell into disuse, and they are
hardly to be met with in any English writer of later date than
Pecock. With respect to one of them, however, the objective
hem for them, it may be remarked that it has not become
obsolete in colloquial speech to the present day ; for in such,
phrases as I saw 'em, I told 'em, and the like, the pronoun em
(or 'em) is not, as is popularly supposed, a vulgar corruption of
the full pronoun them, which alone is found in modern books,
but it is the true Anglo-Saxon and old English objective plural,
which, in our spoken dialect, has remained unchanged for a
thousand years.
To those not familiar with the English of the end of the
sixteenth, and the beginning of the seventeenth century, the
style of Pecock has a quaint and antiquated air, from the free
use of several obsolete forms, and especially of the adjective
termination able, which he constantly adds to Saxon roots, as,
for example, unlackable, instead of the French indispensable,
unagainsayable, for indisputable. But such words were very
common a hundred and fifty years after Pecock wrote, though
now disused. The rejection of these hybrid words from the
modern vocabulary is an instance of the unconscious
curious, as
exercise of a linguistic instinct by the English people. The
objection to such adjectives is their mongrel character, the root
being Saxon, the termination Eomance and it is an innate
;

feeling of the incongruity of such alliances, not the speculative

theories of philologists, which has driven so many of them out
of circulation. Besides these forms, Pecock uses the verbal
plural in en, and some other archaic inflections, as well as some
now obsolete words. The union of these old inflections with a
modern structure of period is interesting, because it shows
that the fusion of French and Saxon had given to their pro-
duct — the —a
linguistic character which was
English tongue
founded more on logical principle than on grammatical form,
and that our maternal speech has been for four hundred years
476 BISHOP PECOCK Lect. X.

substantially the same, though its inflectional characteristics

have been considerably changed.
The second chapter of the first part of the Kepressor is here
printed entire, as a sample of Pecock's logic :

Forto meete ajens the firste bifore spoken opinioim, and forto
Vnroote and updrawe it, y schal sette forth first xiij. principal conclu-
siouns. But for as miche as this vnrooting of the first opinioim and
the proofis of tho xiij. conclusiouns mowen not be doon and made
withoute strengthe of argumentis, therfore that y be the better and the
cleerer vndirstonde of the lay peple in summe wordis to be aftir spoken
in this present book, y sette nowe bifore to hem this doctrine taken
schortli out of the faculte of logik. An argument if he be ful and
foormal, which is clepid a sillogisme, is mad of twey proposiciouns
dryuing out of hem and bi strengthe of hem the thridde proposicioun.
Of the which e thre proposiciouns the ij. first ben clepid premissis, and
the iij e folewing out of hem is clepid the conclusioun of hem. And the
.

firste of tho ij. premissis is clepid the first premisse, and the ij
e. of hem
is clepid the ij
e
. premisse. And ech such argument is of this kinde,
that if the bothe premissisben trewe, the conclusioun concludid out and
bi hem trewe and but if euereither of tho premissis be trewe,
is also ;

the conclusioun is not trewe. Ensaumple her of is this. Ech man {

is at Eome, the Pope is a man, eke the Pope is at Pome.' Lo here ben
sett forth ij. proposicions, which ben these, 'Ech man is at Rome;'
and The Pope is a man
c
and these ben the ij. premyssis in this argu-
; '

ment, and thei diyuen out the iij e proposicioun, which is this, 'The
.

Pope is at Rome,' and it is the conclusioun of the ij. premissis. Wher-

fore certis if eny man can be sikir for eny tyme that these ij. premyssis
be trewe, he may be sikir that the conclusioun is trewe thouj alle the ;

aungelis in heuen wolden seie and holde that thilk conclusioun were
not trewe. And this is a general reule, in euery good and formal and
ful argument, that if his premissis be knowe for trewe, the conclusioun
oujte be avowid for trewe, what euer creature wole seie the contrarie.
What propirtees and condiciouns ben requirid to an argument, that
he be ful and formal and good, is taujt in logik bi ful faire and sure
reuliSj and may not be taugt of me here in this present book. But
wolde God it were leerned of al the comon peple in her modiris lan-
gage, for thanne thei schulden therbi be putt fro myche ruydnes and
boistosenes which thei han now in resonyng and thanne thei schulden ;

soone knowe and perceue whanne a skile and an argument bindith

and whanne he not byndith, that is to seie, whanne he concludith and
 :;

Li:ct. X. BISHOP PECOCK 477

proueth his conclusioun and whanne lie not so dootli ; and thanne thei
sclmlden kepe hem silf the better fro falling into errouris, and tliei
my^ten the sooner come out of errouris bi heering of argnmentis maad
to hem, if thei into eny errouris weren falle; and thanne thei sclmlden
not be so blunt and so ruyde and vnformal and boistose in resonyng,
and that bothe in her arguying and in her answering, as thei now ben
and thanne sclmlden thei not be so obstinat ajens clerkis and ajens her
prelatis, as siunme of hem now ben, for defaut of perceuyng whanne an
argument procedith into his conclusioun needis and whanne he not so
dooth but semelh oonli so do. And miche good wolde come forth if a
schort compendiose logik were deuysid for al the coinoun peple in her
modiris langage and certis to men of court, leernyng the Kingis lawe
;

of Ynglond in these daies, thilk now seid schort compendiose logik

were ful preciose. Into whos making, if God wole graunte leue and
leyser,y purpose sumtyme aftir myn othere bisynessis forto assaie.
But now thus miche in this wise ther of here talkid, that y be
as for
the better vndirstonde in al what y schal argue thoruj this present
book, y wole come doun into the xiij. conclusiouns, of whiche the flrste
is this : It longith not to Holi Scripture, neither it is his office into
which God hath him ordeyned, neither it is his part forto grounde eny
gouernaunce or deede or seruice of God, or eny lawe of God, or eny
trouthe which mannis resoun bi nature may fyncle, leerne, and knowe.
That this conclusioun is trewe, y proue thus Whateuer thing is
:

ordeyned (and namelich bi God) for to be ground and fundament of

eny vertu or of eny gouernaunce or deede or treuth, thilk same thing
nmste so teche and declare and seie out and jeue forth al the kunnyng
vpon the same vertu or gouernance or trouthe, wher with and wherbi
thilk same vertu, gouernaunce, or trouthe is sufncientli knowen, that
withoute thilk same thing the same kunnyng of thilk same vertu, gouer-
naunce, or trouthe may not be sufncientli knowen, so that thilk same
vertu, gouernaunce, or trouthe, in al the kunnyng withoute which he
may not at fulle be leerned and knowen, muste nedis groAve ibrth and
come forth out and fro oonli thilk thing which is seid and holden to be
ther of the ground and the fundament, as anoon aftir schal be proued
but so it is, that of no vertu, gouernaunce, or treuthe of Godclis moral
lawe and seruice, into whos fyncling, leerning, and knowing mannis witt
may by his natural strengthe and natural helpis come, Holi Scripture al
oon jeueth the sufficient kunnyng neither fro and out of Holi Scrip-
;

ture al oon, whether he be take for the New Testament al oon, or for
the Newe Testament and the Oold to gidere, as anoon after schal be
proued, growith forth and cometh forth al the knowing which is nedeful
478 BISHOP PECOCK Lect, X.

to be had upon it : wherfore nedis folewith, that of no vertu or gouer-

naimce or troutlie into which the doom of mannis resoun may sufficientli
ascende and come to, for to it fynde, leerne, and knowe withoute reue-
lacioun fro God mad ther vpon, is groundid in Holi Scripture.
The firste premisse of this argument muste needis be grauntid. For-
whi, if the sufficient leernyng and kunnyng of eny gouernaunce or eny
trouthe schulde as miche or more come iro an other thing, as or than
fro this thing which is seid to be his ground, thanne thilk other thing
schulde be lijk miche or more and rather the ground of thilk gouern-
aunce than this thing schulde so be and also thilk gouernaunce or
;

trouthe schuld haue ij. diuerse groundis and schulde be bildid vpon ij.
fundamentis, of which the oon is dyuers atwyn fro the other, which
forto seie and holcle is not takeable of mannis witt. Wherfore the first
premisse of the argument is trewe. Ensaumple her of is this But
:

if myn hous stode so in this place of erthe that he not stocle so in

an othir place of erthe ellis, this place of the erthe were not the ground
of myn hous ;
and if eny othir place of the erthe bare myn hous, certis
myn hous were not groundid in this place of the erthe and in lijk
:

maner, if this treuthe or gouernaunce, that ech man schulde kepe

mekenes, were knowe bi sum other thing than bi Holi Scripture, and
as weel and as sufficiently as bi Holi Scripture, thilk gouernaunce or
trouth were not groundid in Holi Scripture. Forwhihe stood not oonli
ther on ; and therfore the first premisse is trewe. Also thus Ther mai
:

no thing be fundament and ground of a wal, or of a tree, or of an hous,

saue it upon which the al hool substaunce of the Aval, or of the tree, or
of the hous stondith, and out of which oonly the wal, tree, or hous
cometh. Wherfore bi lijk sidle, no thing is ground and fundament of
eny treuthe or conclusioun, gouernaunce or deede, saue it upon which
aloon al the gouernaunce, trouthe, or vertu stondith, and out of which
aloon al the same treuthe or gouernance cometh.
That also the ij e premisse is trewe, y proue thus What euer deede
. :

or thing doom of resoun dooth as fulli and as perfitli as Holi Scripture

it dooth, Holi Scripture it not dooth onli or al oon ; but so it is, that
what euer leernyng and kunnyng Holi Scripture jeueth upon eny of the
now seid gouernauncis, trouthes, and vertues, (that is to seie, upon eny
gouernaunce, trouthe, and vertu of Goddis lawe to man, in to whos
fynding, leernyng, and knowing mannis resoun may bi him silf aloon,
or with natural helpis, rise and come,) mannis resoun may and can geue
the same leerning and knowing, as experience ther upon to be take
anoon wole schewe for thou canst not fynde oon such gouernaunce
;

taujt in Holi Scripture to be doon, but that resoun techeth it lijk weel
 —

Lect. X. TEOSE OF FIFTEENTH CENTUItT 479

and lijk fulli to and if thou wolt not trowe this, assigne thou
be doon ;

summe suche and Wherfore folewith that of noon suche now

assaie.
seid gouernauncis the leernjng and knowing is had and taught bi Holi
Scripture oonli or aloone and therfore the ij e preniisse of the firste
; .

principal argument must needis be trewe.

And thanne ferther, thus : Sithen the bothe premissis of the first

principalargument ben trewe, and the argument is formal, nedis muste

the conclusioun concludid bi hem in the same arguyng be trewe, which
is the bifore set first principal conclusioun.

The Pas ton Letters contain many very curious specimens of

epistolary composition belonging to this and the preceding cen-
tury. They are principally written by persons of rank and
condition, but often betray a singular ignorance of the rules
of grammar and orthography.
is no doubt that English was now the almost universal
There
spoken language of all classes of English society but it does ;

not even yet seem to have been regarded as a fit medium of

formal communication in volume of
official circles. The first

Eo} al and Historical Letters during the reign of Henry IV.

7

the only volume yet published —

embracing official correspond-
ence from 1399 to 1400, contains upwards of sixty letters,
reports, and other communications, the parties to which were
English or Scotch. All these, with the exception of one in
Scotch, and one and part of another in English, are in Latin or
in French ; laymen generally using the latter, while ecclesi-
astics commonly preferred the more learned language. It is,

however, a singular fact, that two of Henry's ambassadors to

France, Swynford and De when French
Eyssheton, at a period
was so commonly used documents in England, pro-
in public
fessed themselves as ignorant of that language as of Hebrew.
6
Vestras litteras,' say they in a letter to the French Commis-
sioners, dated October 21, 1404, 'scriptas in Gallico, nobis
tanquam in idiomate Hebraico * * * recepimus.'
indoctis
These same persons write to Henry IV. in Latin, and in all
probability their grammatical knowledge of English was about
on a par with their attainments in French.
480 PROSE OF FIFTEENTH CENTURY Lect. X.

The solitary English letter in this volume is as follows :

LORD GREY DE RUTHYN TO GRIFFITH AP DAVID AP GRIFFITH.

Gruffuth ap David ap Gruffuth.

We send the greting welle, but no thyng with goode hert.
And we have welle understande thy lettre to us sent by Deykus
Vaghan, our tenaunt, which maken mention and seist that the fals John
Weele hath disseyved the. And seist that alle men knowne Avelle that
thu was under the protectioun of Mered ap Oavvii, and sent to the as
thu seist by trete of thy cousynes, Maester Edward, and Edwarde ap
David, and asked the if thu woldest come inne, and he wolde gette the
thy chartere of the Kyng, and that thu sholdest be Keyshate in Chirk-
lond and other thyngis he beheght the, which he fullfylled noght, as
;

thu seiste and after warde asked the whether thu woldest go over the
;

see with him, and he wolde gette the thy chartere of the King, and
bryng the to hym sounde and saufe, and thu sholdest have wages as
moche as any gentelle man that went with hym. And overe thus thu
seideist that John Welle seide befor the Bishope of Seint Assaph, and
befor thy cousynes, that, rather than thu sholdest faile, he wolde spenne
of his oun goode xx marcis.
Heer up on thu trusted, as thu seiste, and duddest gete the two men,
and boght the armoure for alle peces, horsen, and other araie, and
comest to Oswaldestree a nyght befor that thei went and on the mo-
;

row e after thu sendest Piers Cambr, the receyvour of Chirklonde, thries
to hym, to telle hym that thu was redy, and he seide that thu sholdest
speke no worde with him. And at the last he saide he haclde no wages
for the, as thu seiste, and he hadde fully his retenue, and bade the goo
to Sir Richarde Laken to loke whether he haclde nede of the other noo,
with the which thu, as thu seiste, haddest nevere ado, ne nevere mad est
covenaunt Avith. For thu woldest, as thu seiste, have goon for no wages
with hvm over see, but for to have thy chartere of the Kyng, and sume
lyvyng that thu myghtest dwelle in pees.
And, as thu seist, Sir Eichard Laken and Straunge wolle berre
wittenesse that thu was redy and wylly for to goon with hym gifFe he
hadde be trewe. And also thu seiste he cam to Laken and to Straunge
and wolde have made hem to take the, and thu haddest wittyng tlier of,
as thu seiste, and trussed the fro tliennes, and knowelechest that thy
men cam and breeke our parke by nyght, and tooke out of hyt two of
our horses, and of our menis.
And, as hit is tolde the, thu seiste, that Ave ben in pourpose to make
our men brenne and slee in Avhat so ever cuntree thu be inne, and Avilt
Lect. X. PROSE OF FIFTEENTH CENTURY 481

withouten doute, as thu seiste, as many men as we slee and as many

honsen that we brenne for thy sake, as many brenne and slee for our
sake. And, as thu seiste. thu wilt have bothe breede and ale of the
best that is in our lordshipe
; and heer of thu biddest us have no doute,
the whiche is agayn our wylle, gife any thu have breede other ale so,
and ther as thu berrest up on us that we sholde ben in pourpose to
brenne and sleen men and housen for thy sake, or for any of thyn en-
clinant to the, or any of hem that ben the Kinges trewe liege men, we
was nevere so mys avised to worch agayn the Kyng no his lawes,
whiche giffe we dudde, were heigh tresoun but thu hast hadde nils
;

messageres and fals reportoures of us touchyng this matere and that

;

shalle be welle knowen un to the King and alle his Counsaile.

Ferthermore, ther as thu knowlechest by thyn oun lettre that thy
men hath stolle our horsen out of our parte, and thu recettour of hem,
we hoope that thu and thy men shalle have that ye have deserved.
For us thynketh, thegh John Welle hath doon as thu aboven has certe-
fied, us thynketh that that sholde noght be wroken towarde us. But
we hoope we shalle do the a pry ve thyng a roope, a ladder, and a
;

ring, heigh on gallowes for to henge. And thus shalle be your endyng.
And he that made the be ther to helpyng, and we on our behalfe shalle
be welle willyng. For thy lettre is knowlechyng.
Written, etc.

ii
 LECTUEE XL

THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE FROM CAXTON

TO THE ACCESSION OF ELIZABETH.

The importance of the invention of printing, startling and

mysterious as it seemed, was very imperfectly appreciated by
contemporary Europe. It was at first regarded only as an
economical improvement, and in England it was slow in pro-

ducing effects which were much more speedily realized on the

Continent. In England, for a whole generation, its influence
was scarcely perceptible in the increase of literary productivity,
and it gave no sudden impulse to the study of the ancient
tongues, though the printing-offices of Germany and Italy, and,
less abundantly, of France, were teeming with editions of the

Greek and Latin classics, as well as of the works of Gothic and

Romance writers, new and old.
The press of Caxton, the first English printer, ^as in activity
from 1474 to 1490. In these sixteen years, it gave to the world
sixty-three* editions, among which there is not the text of a

* The whole number of productions issued by Caxton is stated, in the Appendix

to the late reprint ofThe Game of the Chesse, by Mr. Vincent Figgins, at sixty-
seven, three of which were printed before Caxton's return to England. Several
of these were but pamphlets, or perhaps single sheets. They may be classed as
follows: In French, two in Latin, seven two or three with Latin titles, but
; ;

language of text not indicated in the list the remainder in English. The only
;

original works of native English authors are The Chronicles of Englond, The
:

Descripcioun of Britayne, The Polycronycon, Grower's Confessio Amantis,

Chaucer's Tayles of Cantyrburye, Chaucer's and Lydgate's Minor Poems, Chau-
cer's Book of Fame, Troylus and Creseide, Lydgate's Court of Sapience, Lydgate's
Lyf of our Ladye, and possibly one or two others. These, with the exception of
the poems of Lydgate, and of Caxton's own additions to the works he published,
all belong to the preceding century.
Lect. XL caxton's peess 483

single work of classic antiquity, though there are a few transla-

tions of Greek and Latin authors, chiefly taken, however, at
second hand from the French. Caxton printed a few ecclesias-
tical manuals, and a volume of parliamentary statutes, in Latin,

and one or two works in French but it does not satisfactorily

;

appear that his press issued a single original work by a contem-

porary English author, if we except his own continuations of
older works published by him. He rendered good service to
his own generation, indeed, by printing editions of Chaucer,
Gower and L} dgate, and thus disseminating the works of those
T

authors through England but it is very doubtful whether, in

;

the end, the publication of those editions was not an injury,

rather than a benefit, to the cause of later English literature.
It was Caxton's general practice, as appears from his own re-
peated avowals, to reduce the orthography and grammar, and
sometimes even the vocabulary, of the authors he printed, to
the usage of hisown time, or rather to an arbitrary and not
very uniform standard set up by himself. He had spent a large
part of his life and in France, where he established
in Flanders
presses, and where he printed both in French and in Latin
before undertaking any English work. His own style is full of
G-allicisms in vocabulary and phrase, and there is very little
doubt that his changes of his copy were much oftener corrup-
tions than improvements.* In the preface to his second edition
of the Canterbury Tales, he professes to have conformed to an
approved manuscript; but this declaration evidently only nega-
tives the addition or omission of verses, or, as he expresses it:

* The number of French words in Caxton's translations is large. In the

second edition of the Game of the Chesse —
believed to be the first book he
printed in England —
they are nearly three times as numerous, proportionately,
as in the Z\Iorte d' Arthur printed by him, but translated by Malorye and yet
;

Malorye — whose general diction is perhaps more purely Anglo-Saxon than that
of any English writer, except the Wycliffite translators, for at least a century
before his age —
adopted from his original many words which appear for the first
time in English in his pages.
 ;

484 caxton's PRESS Lect. XI.

'setting in somme thynges that he [Chaucer] never sayd ne

made, and leving out many thynges that he made, whyche ben
;
requysite to be sette in it and we have no reason to doubt
'

that in what he held to be minor matters, he practised in this

case something of the same license as with other authors.*
The printing of a manuscript generally involves the destruc-
tion of the original ; and there is little probability that any of
those employed by Caxton escaped the usual fate of authors'
copies. Besides this, the printing of a work greatly diminishes
the current value of existing manuscripts of the same text, just
as a new edition of a modern book often makes earlier impres-
sions worthless. In Caxton's age, English scholars possessed no
such critical acquaintance with their mother tongue, as to have
the slightest notion of the great importance of scrupulously
preserving the original texts of earlier writers; and hence
Caxton's editions undoubtedly caused, not only the sacrifice of
the manuscripts on which they were founded, but the neglect
and destruction of many others, which might otherwise have

* The whole passage is as follows Whiche book I hare dylygently oversen,

:
'

and duly examyiied to the encle that it be made accordyng unto his owen makyng
for I fynde many of the sayd bookes, whiche wryters hare abrydgyd it, and
many thynges left out, and in some places hare sette certayn versys that he never
made ne sette in hys booke of whyche bookes so incorrecte was one broughte to
;

me vi. yere passyd, whiche I supposed had ben veray true and correcte, and
accordyng to the same I clyde do enprynte a certayn nomber of them, whyche
anon were solde to many and dyverse gentyl men, of whom one geutylman cam
to me, and sayd that this book was not according in many places unto the book
that Gefferey Chaucer had made. To whom I answered, that I had made it
accordyng to my copye, and by me was nothing added ne mynushyd. Thenne he
sayd, he knewe a book whyche hys fader had and moche lovyd, that was very
trewe, and accordyng unto hys owen first book by hym made; and sayd more, yf I
wold enprynte it agayn, he wold gcte me the same book for a copyc. How be it
he wyst well that hys fader wold not gladly departe fro it. To whom I said, in
caas that he coude gcte me suche a book, trcwe and correcte, yet I wold ones
endevoyre me to enprynte it agayn, for to satisfy the auctour, where as tofore by
ygnoraunce I erryd in hurtyng and dyffamyng his book in dyverce places, in
setting in somme thynges that he never sayd ne made, and leving out many
thynges that he made whyche ben requysite to be sette in it. And thus we fyll
at accord, and he full gentylly gate of
hys fader the said book, and delyvcred it to
me, by whiche I have corrected my book, as hecre after alle alonge by the ayde
of almighty God shal folowe, whom I humbly beseche &c'
Lect. XI. ENGLISH OF FIFTEENTH CENTURY 485

been saved to a period when their worth would have been better
appreciated. This serves to explain how it is that we have
older, better, and more numerous manuscripts of the Wycliffite
versions of the Bible than of Chaucer; and, in a purely literary
point of view, it is a cause of congratulation, rather than of
regret, that Caxton never undertook the publishing of those
translations. Had he done this, we should, in all probability,
now possess only a corrupt printed text, and a few manuscripts
of doubtful value; whereas the want of an early printed edition
has insured the careful preservation of the codices, and the
scholarship of this century has given us two complete and
admirably edited ancient texts, with various readings from a
greatnumber of old and authentic copies.
The w orks of Pecock, as I have observed, show
T
that in his
hands the English theological prose dialect, though still sub-
stantially the same in grammatical form, had made a consider-
able advance upon Wycliffe and more especially
in vocabulary,
in the logical structure and the poems of King
of period ;

James I. and of Lydgate exhibit, though in a less degree, in-

creased affluence and polish of diction as compared with Chaucer.
But in the secular prose of the fifteenth century we find few
evidences of real progress and in the productions of Caxton's
;

press, which, as we have seen, generally bear his own ear-mark,

little improvement is visible. For the every-day purposes of
material life, and for the treatment of such poetic themes and
the creation of such poetical forms as satisfied the taste of the
English people, the language of England was very nearly suffi-

cient, as Chaucer and had left it, and there

his contemporaries
was naturally little occasion for efforts at improvement in speech
until new conditions of society and of moral and intellectual
culture should create a necessity for it.

These new conditions, which were common to Great Britain

and to the Continent, upon the intel-
produced a visible effect
lectual life of the latter long before they showed themselves as
influential agencies in the literature of England. The insular
 ?
486 ENGLISH OF CAXTON S TIME Lect, XI.

position of that country prevented the rapid spread of the new

opinions and the new discoveries which originated in German
and Kornance Europe; and they were the slower in disseminat-
ing themselves among the English people, because France, the
country with which England had the freest and most frequent
communication, was behind Italy and Germany in availing
itself of them.
The commercial and political relations between England on
the one hand, and Germany and the Italian states on the other,
were of no such closeness or importance as to create a reciprocal
influence between them. The vernacular tongues of these
latter were stranger to the Englishman than the speech of
France, which was still, to a considerable extent, the language
of English jurisprudence; and classical literature had not yet
become so well known to English laymen
the Latin as to make
works of G-erman and Italian literati readily intelligible to
them. At the same time, a growing national hostility to France
had gradually diminished the influence of French literature;
and thus, from the end of the fourteenth century till near the
close of the fifteenth, the English mind was left to its own
unaided action, its own inherent resources, while all the other
European states were territorially and politically so connected
that they w ere
T
constantly acting and reacting upon each other
as enlivening and stimulating forces.
The civil wars of England had also an unfavourable effect
upon English literature; for —
though the moral excitement of
periods of strife and revolution often begets a mental activity
which, after the tumult of war is over, manifests itself in
splendid intellectual achievement — it is as true of letters as of
laws, that, for the time being, the clash of arms hushes their
voice to silence.
Perhaps thereis no better method of enabling the reader

to form an idea of the condition in which Caxton found the

English of his time, and the state to which he contributed to
bring it, than by introducing extracts from the Morte d' Arthur
Lect. XL tub morte d'arthur 487

and from Caxton himself. The Morte <T Arthur is not, indeed,
a work of English invention, nor, on the other hand, is it just
to style it simply a translation. No continuous French original
for it is known but it is a compilation from various French
;

romances, harmonized and connected so far as Malory e was

able to make a consistent whole out of them, by supplying here
and there links of his own forging.
In the introduction to the reprint of 1817, Southey says:
'The Morte d' Arthur is a compilation from some of the most
esteemed romances of the Eound Table. Had the volumes
from which it is compiled existed in English, Sir Thomas
Malory would not have thought of extracting parts from them,
and blending them into one work. This was done at the best
possible time : a generation earlier, the language would have
retained too much
Teutonic form a generation later, and
of its ;

would have devolved into the hands of

the task of translation
men who performed it as a trade, and equally debased the
work which they interpreted and the language in which they
wrote.' This is very superficial criticism.
e
A would have carried us back to the time
generation earlier '

of Pecock ;
'
would have brought us down to
a generation later '

that of Lord Berners, the translator of Froissart. If Pecock

be taken as the standard of his age, I admit the language
must be regarded as still retaining much more of its Teutonic
form than it showed in the hands of Sir Thomas Malorye. But
while Pecock was grammatically behind his age, he was rhetori-
cally far in advance of it and I am by no means certain that
;

he could not have given us a better translation of the patch-

work put together by Malorye than Malorye has done. On the
other hand, I cannot admit that Lord Berners debased either (
'

6
the work he interpreted or e the language in which he wrote,'
'

in his sometimes slovenly, but always marvellously spirited,

translation of the great chronicler Froissart.*

* I apply the epithet '

great ' to Froissart advisedly. I know that critical in-
vestigators — tithers of mint and cumin — have detected errors of time and place
488 THE MORTE D'ARTHUR Lect. XL

The narrative of the death of Arthur, which I take from the

fifth chapter of the twenty-first book of the Morte d' Arthur,

according to Southey's reprint of Caxton's edition of 1485, is a

favourable specimen of Malorye's style. The proportion of
French words, which does not exceed four per cent., is smaller
than Malorye's general average; but it would be difficult to find
any author of later date than the middle of the fourteenth
century whose vocabulary is so ( Teutonic as his ' :
—
Therfore sayd Arthur vnto syr Bedwere, take thou Excalybur my
good swerde and goo with it to yonder water syde, and whan thou
eomest there I charge the throwe my swerde in that water & come
ageyn and telle me what thou there seest. My lord said Bedwere your
commaundement shal be doon & lyghtly brynge you worde ageyn. So
syr Bedwere departed, & by the waye he behelde that noble swerde

in his chronology and his geography and no doubt he has sometimes ascribed, to
;

an insignificant and forgotten John, quaint words and hard knocks which were
really spoken and given by an equally insignificant and forgotten Peter. But his
canvas shows no false colouring, no want of keeping, no confusion of costume;
and the incidents he narrates, if not always true of the persons whom he introduces
as parties to them, were, in general, true of somebody, or —
which comes to the
same thing —
might have been so, without any violation of the proprieties of
nature.
Turner did not hesitate to introduce into his landscapes a tree —
if necessary
for his lights,and shades, and distances —
where nature had blunderingly left it
out, or some ruthless woodman cut it down. But there is this difference between
the two artists the painter deliberately invented the missing object, and painted it
:

in the chronicler simply admitted that which was narrated to him, if his instincts
;

told him it was probable and apposite, without very scrupulously inquiring into
its exact historical truth.
"Without Froissart, we might construct a skeleton history of the fourteenth cen-
tury —a plot drama which should be more exact in the mechanical
of the
shifting of the scenes than his narrative —
but the dramatis personam would be
wired skeletons also, with no pulse in their arteries, no 'speculation in the eyes
they glare with.'
A modern historian, writing the annals of Froissart' s time, would certainly
omit the story of the Lorde of Corasse's familiar spirit Orton, and, in speaking
'
'

of the island of Cephalonia, would fail to inform us that the fayry and the
'

nympes be moche conuersaunt there;' but Froissart's mixture of the truth and the
fable which intermixed themselves in the life of his time, makes us more inti-
mately acquainted with the man and woman of the fourteenth century than we
could become by the study of true annals in one volume, and of a learned essay on
popular superstitions in another.
Lect. XI. THE MOKTE d'aRTHUH 489

that the pomel & & thenne he

the hafte was al of precyous stones,
sayd to hym self throwe this ryche swerde in the water therof shal
yf I
neuer come good but harme & losse. And thenne syr bedwere hydde
excalybur vnder a tree. And so as sone as he myght he came ageyn
vnto the kyng and sayd he had ben at the water and had throwen the
swerde in to the water. What sawe thou there sayd the kyng, syr he
sayd I sawe no thynge but wawes and wyndes. That is vntrewly sayd
of the sayd the kynge. Therfore goo thou lyghtelye ageyn and do my
commaundemente as thou arte to me leef & dere spare not but throwe it
in. Than syr bedwere retorned ageyn & took the swerde in hys hande,
and than hym thought synne and shame to throwe awaye that nobyl
swerde, and so efte he hydde the swerde and retorned ageyn and tolde
to the kyng that he had ben at the water and done his commaunde-
mente. What sawe thou there sayd the kyng. Syr he sayd I sawe no
thynge but the waters wappe and wawes wanne. A
traytour vntrewe
sayd kyng Arthur now hast thou betrayed me twyse. Who wold haue
wente that thou that hast been to me so leef and dere and thou arte
named a noble knyghte and wold betraye me for the richesse of the
swerde. But now goo ageyn lyghtly for thy longe taryeng putteth me
in grete jeopardy e of my lyf. For I haue taken colde, and but yf thou
do now as I byd the, yf euer I may see the I shal slee the (wyth) myn
owne handes, for thou woldest for my ryche swerde see me dede.
Thenne Syr Bedwere departed and wente to the swerde and lyghtly
took hit up, and wente to the water syde and there he bounde the
gyrdyl aboute the hyltes, and thenne he threwe the swerde as farre in
to the water as he myght, & there cam an arme and a hande aboue the
water and mette it, & caught it and so shoke it thryse and braundysshed,
and than vanysshed awaye the hande wyth the swerde in the water.
So syr Bedwere came ageyn to the kyng and tolde hym what he sawe.
Alas sayd the kyng helpe me hens for I drede me I haue taryed ouer
longe. Than syr Bedwere toke the kyng vpon his backe and so wente
wyth hym to that water syde & whan they were at the water syde,
;

euyn fast by the banke houed a lytyl barge wyth many fayr ladyes in
hit, & emonge hem al was a quene, and al they had blacke hoodes, and

al they wepte and shryked whan they sawe Kyng Arthur.

Now put me in to the barge, sayd the kyng and so he dyd softelye.
And there receyued hym thre quenes wyth grete mornyng and soo they
sette hem doun, and in one of their lappes kyng Arthur layd hys heed,
and than that quene sayd, a dere broder why haue ye taryed so longe
from me. Alas this wounde on your heed hath caught ouermoche
colde. And soo than they rowed from the londe, and syr bedwere
490 CAXTON'S ENGLISH Lect. XL

behelde all hym. Than syr bedwere cryed a rny

tho ladyes goo from
lord Arthur what shal become of me now ye goo from me. And leue
me here allone emonge myn enemyes. Comfort thy self sayd the kyng
and doo as wel as thou mayst, for in me is no truste for to truste in.
For I wyl in to the vale of auyiyon to hele me of my greuous wounde.
And yf thou here neuer more of me praye for my soule, but euer the
quenes and the ladyes wepte and shryched that hit was pyte to here.
And assone as syr Bedwere had loste the syght of the baarge he wepte
and waylled and so took the foreste, and so he wente al that nyght and
in the mornyng he was ware betwixte two holtes hore of a chapel and
an ermytage.

Caxton's introduction to the Morte d' Arthur is rather more

thickly sprinkled with French and Latin words than his ordinary
writing, but it is, upon the whole, a fair sample of his style and
diction, which, it will be observed, contrasts strongly with the
Saxon-English of Malorye :
—
After that I had accomplysshed and fynysshed dyuers hystoryes as
wel of contemplacyon as of other hystoryal and worldly actes of grete
conquerours & prynces. And also certeyn bookes of ensaumples and
doctryne. Many noble and dyuers gentylmen of thys royame of
Englond camen and demaunded me many and oftymes, wherfore that I
haue not do made & enprynte the noble hystorye of the saynt greal,
and of the moost renomed crysten Kyng. Fyrst and chyef of the thre
best crysten and worthy, kyng Arthur, whyche ought moost to be re-
membred emonge vs englysshe men tofore al other crysten kynges.
For it is notoyrly knowen thorugh the vnyuersal world, that there been
ix worthy & the best that euer were. That is to wete thre paynyms,
thre Jewes and thre crysten men. As for the paynyms they were tofore
the Incarnacyon of Cryst, whiche were named, the fyrst Hector of Troye,
of whome thystorye is comen bothe in balade and in prose. The second
Alysaunder the grete, & the thyrd Julyus Cezar Emperour of Rome
of whome thystoryes ben wel kno and had. And as for the thre Jewes
whyche also were tofore thyncarnacyon of our lord of whome the fyrst
was Due Josue whyche brought the chyldren of Israhel in to the londe
of byheste. The second Dauyd kyng of Jherusalem, & the thyrd Judas
Machabeus of these thre the byble reherceth al theyr noble hystoryes
& actes. And sythe the sayd Incarnacyon haue ben thre noble crysten
men stalled and admytted thorugh the vnyuersal world in to the nombre
of the ix beste & worthy, of whome was fyrst the noble Arthur whose
Lect. xi. caxtom's ENGLISH 491

noble actes I purpose to wryte in thys present book here folowyng.

The second was Charlemayn or Charles the grete, of whome thystorye
is had in many places bo the in frensshe and englysshe, and the thyrd
and last was Go defray of boloyn, of whose actes & life I made a book
vnto thexcellent prynce and kyng of noble memorye kyng Edward the
fourth, the sayd noble Jentylmen instantly requyred me temprynte
thystorye of the sayd noble kyng and conquerour king Arthur, and of
his knyghtes wyth thystorye of the saynt greal, and of the deth and
endyng of the sayd Arthur. AfFermyng that I ouzt rather tenprynet
his actes and noble feates, than of godefroye of boloyne, or any of the
other eyght, consyderyng that he was a man born wythin this royame
and kyng and Emperour of the same.
And that there ben in frensshe dyuers and many noble volumes of
his actes, and also of his knyghtes. To whome I answered, that dyuers
men holde oppynyon, that there was no suche Arthur, and that alle
suche bookes as been maad of hym, ben but fayned and fables, by cause
that somme crony cles make of hym no mencyon ne remembre hym noo
thynge ne of his knyghtes. Wherto they answered, and one in specyal
sayd, that in hym that shold say or thynke, that there was neuer suche
a kyng callyd Arthur, myght wel be aretted grete folye and blyndenesse.
For he sayd that there were many euydences of the contrarye. Fyrst
ye may see his sepulture in the monasterye of Glastyngburye. And
also in polycronycon in the v book the syxte chappytre, and in the
seuenth book the xxiii chappytre where his body was buryed and after
foimclen and translated in to the sayd monasterye, ye shal se also in
thystorye of bochas in his book de casu principum, parte of his noble
actes, and also of his falle. Also galfrydus in his brutysshe book re-
counteth his lyf, and in diuers places of Englond, many remembraunces
ben yet of hym and shall remayne perpetuelly, and also of his knyghtes.
Fyrst in the abbey of Westmestre at saynt Edwardes shryne remayneth
the prynte of his seal in reed waxe closed in beryll. In whych is
wryton Patricius Arthurus, Britannie, Gallie, Germanie, dacie, Im-
perator. Item in the castel of clouer ye may see Gauwayns skulle, &
Cradoks mantel. At Wynchester the rounde table, in other places
Launcelottes swerde and many other thynges. Thenne al these thynges
consydered there can no man reasonably gaynsaye but there was a kyng
of thys lande named Arthur. For in al places crysten and hethen he is
reputed and taken for one of the ix worthy. And the fyrst of the thre
Crysten men. And also he is more spoken of beyonde the see moo
bookes made of his noble actes than there be in englond as wel in duche
ytalyen spanysshe and grekysshe as in frensshe. And yet of record re-
492 NEW INFLUENCES Lf.ct. XL

mayne hym in Wales in the tonne of Camelot the grete

in wytnesse of
stones &
mernayllous werkys of yron iyeng vnder the grounde & ryal
vautes which dyuers now lyuyng hath seen. Wkerfor it is a meruayl
why he is no more renomed in his owne contreye, sanf onelye it accordeth
to the word of god, whyche sayth that no man is accept for a prophete
in his owne contreye. Thefie all these thynges forsayd aledged I coude
not wel denye, but that there was suche a noble kyng named arthur and
reputed one of the ix worthy & fyrst & cheyf of the cristen men, &
many noble volumes be made of hym & of his noble knygtes in frensshe
which I haue seen & redde beyonde the see which been not had in our
maternal tongue, but in walsshe ben many & also in frensshe, & somme
in englysshe but no wher nygh alle. Wherfore suche as haue late ben
drawen oute bryefly in to englysshe, I haue after the synrple connyng
that god hath sente to me, vnder the fauour and correctyon of al noble
lordes and gentylmen enprysed to enprynte a book of the noble hystoryes
of the sayd kynge Arthur, and of certeyn of his knyghtes after a copye
vnto me delyuerd, whyche copye Syr Thomas Malorye dyd take oute of
certeyn bookes of frensshe and reduced it in to Englysshe. And I
accordyng to my copye haue doon sette it in enprynte, to the entente
that the noble men may see and lerne the noble acts of chyualrye, the
jentyl and vertuous dedes that somme knyghtes vsed in tho clayes, by
whyche they came to honour, and how they that were vycious were
punysshed and ofte put to shame and rebuke, humbly bysechyng al
noble lordes and ladyes wyth al other estates of what estate or degree
they been of, that shal see and rede in this sayd book and werke, that
they take the good and honest actes in their remembraunce, and to
folowe the same. Wherin they shalle fynde many joyous and playsaunt
hystoryes and noble & renomed actes of humanyte, gentylnesse and
chyualryes. For herein may be seen noble chyualrye, Curtosye, Hu-
manyte, frendlynesse, hardynesse, loue, frendshyp, Cowardyse, Murdre,
hate, vertue, and synne. Doo after the good and leue the euyl, and it
shal brynge you to good fame and renommee. And for to passe the
tyme this book shal be plesaunte to rede in, but for to giue fayth and
byleue that al is trewe that is conteyned herin, ye be at your lyberte,
but al is wryton for our doctryne, and for to beware that we falle not
to vyce ne synne, but texcercyse and folowe vertu, by whyche we may
come and atteyne to good fame and renommee in thys lyf, and after thys
shorte and transytorye lyf to come vnto euerlastyng blysse in heuen,
the whyche he graunt vs that reygneth in heuen the blessyd Trynyte.
Amen.
But the period was at hand when the four great events
Lect. XI. BISHOP FISHER 493

I mentioned in the last lecture were to exert upon England

the full strength of their united influence and I shall now
;

endeavour to point out the effects they produced during the

first half of the sixteenth century, though I shall not have

space always to distinguish between these effects as referable

to this or that particular cause, or to describe specifically the
different modes in which those causes acted. Itmust suffice,
for the present, to say that the influence of them allwas in one
and the same direction. They all tended to promote a wider
and more generous culture, a freer and bolder spirit of inves-
tigation, a more catholic and cosmopolitan view of the mutual
relations of different branches of the human family, a deeper
insight into the secrets of this mysterious life of ours, and a
range of the imagination corresponding to the vastly enlarged
field of observation which was now opened to the vision of men.
I have repeatedly spoken of the diction of theology and
religion in England, as having always been in a more advanced
state of culture than that of secular prose. This continued to
be the relation of the two dialects, not only through the
period to which my sketches extend, but until after the Eesto-
ration of Charles II. From that epoch, theology declined in
general estimation, and was no longer regarded as a necessary
study for laymen of finished education. Its dialect was of
course neglected, and in the space of a single generation it lost,

and has never since recovered, its ancient superiority over the
tongue of secular life.
An extract from a sermon delivered by Bishop Fisher in
1509, in memory of the Countess of Derby, mother of King
Henry VII., will serve to show the character and condition of
the language when employed for solemn and religious purposes
at this period :
—
This holy Gofpel late red contayneth in it a Dyalogue, that is to fay
a Commynication betwixt the Woman of bleflyd Memory, called
Martha, and our Savyour Jhefu. Which Dyalogue I would apply unto
this noble Prynces late deceafyd, in whofe remembrance this office and
494 BISHOP FISHER Lect. XI.

obfervances be done at this time. And thre thyngs by the leave of

God I will entende. Firft, to fhew wherein Prynces may well be
this
lykned and compared unto the bleffyd Woman Martha. Second, how
fhe may complain unto our Savyour Jhefu for the paynful dethe of her
body, like as Martha dyd for the dethe of her Broder Lazarus. Thyrde,
the comfortable Anfwere of our Savyour Jhefu unto her again. In the
firft fhall ftand her prayfe and commendation; In the fecounde, our

mournynge for the grete lofs of hyrr In the thyrd, our comfort again.
;

Fyrft I fay, the comparyfon of them two may be made in four thyngs
In noblenefs of Perfon, In difcypline of their Bodys, In orderyng of
their Souls to God, In Hofpytalytyes kepping, and charytable dealyng
to their Neighbours. In which four, the noble Woman Martha (as lay
the Doctors, entreatynge this Gofpel and hyr Lyfe) was fingularly to be
commended and prayfed wherefore let us confider lykewife, whether
:

in this noble CountefTe may ony thynge like be founde.

Firfte, the bleffed Martha was a woman of noble blode, to whom by
inherytance belonged the Caftle of Bethany and this noblenefs of blode
;

they have, which defcended of noble Lynage. Beficle this, there is a

noblenefs of maners, withouten which, the noblenefs of blode is moche

defaced, for as Boecius fayth, if oughte be good in the noblenefs of
blode, it is for that thereby the noble men and women fholcle be

afhamed, to go out of kynde, from the vertuous maners of their aun-

cetrye before. Yet alfo there is another nobleneffe, which aryfeth in
every Perfon, by the goodneffe of nature, whereby full often fuch as
come of ryghte pore and unnoble Fader and Mocler, have grete abletees
of nature to noble decles. Above all the fame, there is a foure maner
of nobleneffe, which may be called, an encreafed nobleneffe, as by mar-
ryage and affynyte of more noble perfons fuch as were of leffe con-
;

clycyon, may encreafe in hygher degree of nobleneffe.

In every of thefe, I fuppofe, this Counteffe was noble. Fyrft, fhe

came of noble blode, lyneally defcendyng of Kyuge Edward the ;d.

within the foure degree of the fame. Her Fader was Johan Duke of
Somerfet, her Moder was called Margarete, ryghte noble as well in
maners, as in blode, to whom fhe was a veray Daughter in all noble
maners, for fhe was bounteous and lyberal to every Perfon of her
knoAvledge or acquaintance. Avarice and Covetyfe fhe moft hated, and
forowed it full moche in all perfons, but fpecially in ony, that belonged
unto her. She was alfo of fyngular Eafynefs to be fpoken unto, and
full curtayfe anfwere fhe would make to all that came unto her. Of
mervayllous gentylenefs fhe was unto all folks, but fpecially unto her
owne, whom fhe trufted and loved ryghte tenderly. Unkynde fhe
Lect. XI. LORD BERXERS'S FROISSART 495

wolde not be unto no creature, ne forgetfull of ony kyndnefs or fervyce

done to her before, which is no lytel part of veray noblenefs. She was
not vengeable, ne cruell, but redy anone to forgete and forgyve injuryes
done unto her, at the leeft defyre or mocyon made unto her for the
fame. Mercyfull alfo and pyteous fhe was unto fuch, as was grevyed
and wrongfully troubled, and to them that were in Poverty, or feke-
nefs, or any other myfery.
To God and to the Chirche full obedient and tradable. Serchynge
his honour and plefure full befyly. A warenefs of her felf fhe had
alway to efehewe every tlryng, that myght difhonefl ony noble Woman,
or diftayne her honour, in ony condycyon. Fryvelous thyngs, that
were lytell to be regarded, fhe wold let pafs by, but the other, that
were of weyght and fubflance, wherein fhe myght proufyte, fhe wolde
not let for ony payne or labour, to take upon hande. Thefe and many
other fuch noble condycyons, left unto her by her Ancetres, fhe kept
and encreafed therein, with a greate dylygence.
The third noblenefs alfo fhe wanted not, which I fayd, was the noble-
nefs of Nature. She had in a maner all that was prayfable in a
Woman, either in Soul or Body. Fyrft, fhe was of fmgular Wifedom
ferre paflyng the comyn rate of women. She was good in remem-
braunce and of holdyng memorye, a redye wytte Ihe had alfo to
conceive all thyngs, albeit they were ryghte derke Right ftudious fhe
:

was in Bokes, which fhe had in grete number, both in Englyfh and in
Frenfhe, and for her exercife and for the profyte of others, fhe did
tranflate divers maters of Devocyon out of the Frenfh into Englyfh.
Full often fhe complayned, that in her youth e, fhe had not given her to
the underflanding of Latin, wherein fhe had a lytell perceyvyng,
fpecyally of the Eubiyfhe of the Drdynall, for the faying of her Servyce,
which fhe did well underfland. Hereunto in favour, in words, in geflure,
in every demeanour of herfelf fo grete noblenefs did appear, that what
fhe fpake or dyde, it mervaylloufly became her.

The most important English work of the first quarter of the

sixteenth century, whether as a philological monument, or as a
production which could not have failed to exert an influence on
the tone of English literature, Lord Berners's Translation of
is

the Chronicles of Froissart,first volume of which was

the
published in 1523, the second in 1525. Lord Berners had been
distinguished in military and civil life, in which he continued
actively engaged until he returned from a mission to Spain in
496 LORD BERNERS'S FIIOISSAET Lect. XL

1518, and was appointed to the responsible, but, apparently, not

very laborious, post of Governor of Calais, which then belonged
to the English crown. He occupied his leisure with literary
pursuits, and, besides the Chronicles of Froissart, he translated
Arthur of Little Britain, an absurd romance of chivalry, and
several other works. He states, in the preface to Froissart,
and elsewhere, that the task was undertaken by command of
Henry VIII. The translation of so voluminous a work was
probably not begun until his retirement to a post of comparative
quiet and if we suppose that he devoted the same time to the
;

first as to the second volume, it must have been commenced

about the year 1521.

Notwithstanding the sworn friendship between Henry VIII.
and Francis I. —of which so ostentatious a profession was made
at the famous Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520 —
Henry was
cajoled by the adroit flattery bestowed on him by the Papal
Court, for his Treatise on the Seven Sacraments, into a secret
league with Pope Leo X. and Charles V., then King of Spain,
but not yet emperor, against Francis I. This alliance was
concluded in November 1521, and in the summer of 1522
Henry commenced hostilities against France. The extrava-
gant prodigality of the English prince, in royal festivities and
other showy but unprofitable expenditures, had exhausted the
treasures which the avarice of his father had accumulated, and
he was obliged to resort to the most burdensome and unjust
measures to replenish his exchequer and prepare for the foreign
war in which he was about to engage.
It is a not improbable conjecture, that the hope of reconciling
the English people to the expenses and sacrifices of a war with
France was a prominent motive with the king for desiring a
translation of Froissart to appear at this time. However this

may be, few things could have been better calculated to

accomplish this object than the brilliant and picturesque
sketches given, by the most delightful of chroniclers, of the
exploits of the Black Prince, and of the other numerous
Lect. XL LORD BERNERS's FROISSART 497
i

instances of heroic daring and chivalrous achievement with

which his spirited pages glitter. A large part of France was the
undoubted patrimon}^ of the Norman dynasty in England, and
there had been questionable claims to other still more extensive
provinces. The revival of the memory of these asserted rights
might be expected to have, by appealing to the interests and the
pride of England, a powerful effect in exciting the ambition of
the people, and inducing them cheerfully to submit to the new
burdens which a war with France would impose upon them.
Lord Berners's translation of Froissart was the first really
important work printed in the English language, relating to
modern history. It was almost the only accessible source of
information respecting the local history of England, and her
relations to the Continental powers, in the fourteenth century •

for though the scene is for the most part laid in France and
Spain, yet it contains a pretty full account of the wars of
Edward III. with the Scots, and of the insurrectionary move-
ments in the time of Eichard II. ; and, moreover, England was
a direct party to almost every event which it narrates as belong-
ing more immediately to the domestic history of France or
of Spain.
The entire subject, then,was one of special interest to the
English people, and the extraordinary literary merit and the
popular character of the work eminently fitted it, both to
initiate Englishmen into a knowledge of some of the principal
epochs of their own national life, and to promote a taste for
historical reading and composition. It must, therefore, inde-
pendently of its philological worth, be considered as a work of
great importance in English literary history, because it un-
doubtedly contributed essentially to give direction to literary
pursuits in England, and thus to lay the foundation of an entire
and very prominent branch of native literature.
It was soon followed by a considerable number of new
English histories, such as those of Hall and Fabian, and by
editions and continuations of earlier annalists, as, for example,
1£ K
 —

498 LORD BERBERS'*? FROISSART Lect. XL

i

of Hardynge ; and we are therefore probably indebted for these,

such as they are, and in some degree even for the more valuable
compilation of Holinshed, to the impulse given to historical
studies by the publication of Lord Berners's Froissart.
The translation is executed with great skill ; for while it is

faithful to the text, it adheres so closely to the English idiom

that it has altogether the air of an original work, and, with the
exception of here and there a single phrase, it would not be
easy to find a passage which exhibits decisive internal evidence
of having been first composed in a foreign tongue.
The account of the origin of the great schism in the four-
teenth century is as follows :

Anon after the dethe of the pope Gregory, the cardynalles drew
them into the conclaue, in the palays of saynt Peter. Anone after, as
they were entred to chose a pope, acordyng to their vsage, such one as
shuld be good and profitable for holy churche, the romayns assembled
the togyder in a great nombre, and came into the bowrage of saynt
Peter : they were to the nombre of xxx. thousand what one and other,
in the entent to do yuell, if the mater went nat accordynge to their
appetytes. And they came oftentymes before the conclaue, and sayd,
Harke, ye sir cardynalles, delyuer you atones, and make a pope ye ;

tary to longe ye make a romayne, we woll nat chaung him but yf

; if ;

ye make any other, the romayne people and counsayles woll nat take
hym for pope, and ye putte yourselfe all in aduentiire to be slayne.
The cardynals, who were as than in the danger of the romayns, and
herde well those wordes, they were nat at their ease, nor assured of
their lyues, and so apeased them of their yre as well as they myght
with fayre wordes but somoche rose the felony of the romayns, y*
;

suche as were next to y e conclaue, to thentent to make the cardynalles

afrayde, and to cause them to codiscende the rather to their opinyons,
brake vp the dore of the conclaue, whereas the cardynalles were.
Than the cardynalles went surely to haue been slayne, and so fledde
away to saue their lyues, some one waye and some another but the ;

romayns were nat so content, but toke them and put them togyder
agayn, whether they wolde or nat. The cardynalles than seynge the-
selfe in the daunger of the romayns, and in great parell of their lyues,

agreed among themselfe, more for to please the people than for any
deuocyon howbeit, by good electyon they chase an holy man, a car-
;

dynall of the romayne nacion, whome pope Vrbayne the fyfte had
Lect. XI. LORD BERNERS'S FROISSART 499

made cardynall, and lie was called before, the cardynall of saynt Peter.
This electyon pleased greatly y e romayns, and so this good man had all
the ryghtes that belonged to the papalite howebeit he lyued nat but
;

thre dayes after, and I shall shewe you why. The romayns, who de-
syred a pope of their owne nacion, were so ioyfull of this newe pope,
y* they toke hym, who was a hundred yere of age, and sette hym on a
whyte mule, and so ledde him vp and doune through y e cytie of Rome,
exaltyng him, and shewyng howe they had vaquesshed the cardynals,
seyng they had a pope roinayn accordyng to their owne ententes, in so
moche that the good holy man was so sore traueyled that he fell syck,
and so dyed the thyrde daye, and was buryed in the churche of saynt
Peter, and there he lyethe.
— "Reprint of 1812, vol. i. pp. 510, 511.
Of the dethe of this pope, the cardynalles were right sorowfull, for
they saw well howe the mater shulde nat goo well to passe for they :

had thought if y* pope had lyued, to haue dissimuled amonge the

romayns for two or thre yeres, and at the laste to haue brought the see
apostolyke into some other place than at Rome, at Napoles, or at
Gennes, out of the daunger of the romayns but y e dethe of the pope
:

brake their purpose. Than the cardynalles went agayne into the con-
claue in greater dauger than they were in before, for y e romayns assem-
bled them togyder agayne before the conclaue, and made semblant to
breke it vp, and to slee them all, if they dyde nat chose a pope acordyng
to their myndes, and cryed to the cardynalles, and sayd, Sirs, aduyse
yowe well if ye delyuer vs a pope romayne we be content, or els we
:

woll make your heedes reeder than your hattes be suche wordes and
:

manasshes abasshed greatly y e cardynals, for they hadde rather a dyed

confessours than martyrs. Than to brynge themselfe out of that daun-
ger and parell, they made a pope, but he was none of the colledge of
cardynals, he was archbysshop of Bare, a great clerke, who greatly had
traueyled for the welthe of holy churche ; with his promocyon of
popalyte, the romayns were apeased, for the cardynall of Genne put
out his heed out at a wyndowe of the conclaue, and sayd on hygh to y e
people of Rome, Sirs, apease you, for you haue a pope romayne, and
that isBartylmewe des Angles, archbysshop of Bare the people aun- :

swered all with one voyce, than we be content the same archebysshoppe
;

was nat as than at Rome, I thynke he was in Napoles. Than he was

incontynent sent for, of the whiche tydynges he was ryght glad, and so
came to Rome and at his comyng there was great feest made to hym
;
;

and so he had all the ryghtes that parteyned to the papalyte, and was
called Vrban the sixt of that name the romayns had great ioy his
: :

creacyon was signified to all the churches of cristentie, and also to

K K 2
500 LORD BERNERS'S FROISSAET Lect. XI.

emperours, kynges, dulses, and erles and the cardynalles sent worde to
;

all their frendes, that he was chosen by good and trewe electyon how- ;

beit, some of them repented them after, that they had spoken so largely
in the mater. This pope renounced all graces gyuen before, and so
dyuers departed fro their countres and places, and went to Eome to
—
haue grace. Vol. i. p. 511.
It hath ben long sithe I spake of holy church now I wyll retourne
;

therto, the mater requyreth it. Ye haue well herde here before, howe
by the exortacyon of the romayns, the cardynalles, who as than raygned,
to apease the people of Eome, who were greatly moued against the,
made a pope of the archbysshoprike of Bari, called before Bartylmewe
des Angles he receyued the papaly te, and was called Vrbayne the sixe,
:

and so opyned grace as the vsage was. Thentencyon of dyuers of y e

cardynals was, y l whan they myght se a better hour and tyme, they
wolde agayn retourne to their election, by cause this pope was nat pro-
fitable for them, nor also to the church as they said, for he was a
fumisshe man and malincolyous so that wha he sawe hymselfe in
;

prosperyte and in puyssance of the papalyte, and that dyuers kynges

cristned were ioyned to him, and wrote to him, and clyde put them
vnder his obeysaunce, whereof he waxed proucle and worked all on
heed, and wolde haue taken away fro y e cardynals dyuers of their
rightes and olde customes, the which e greatly displeased them : and so
they spake togyder, and ymagined howe he was nat well worthy to
gouerne the worlde wherfore they purposed to choose another pope,
;

sage and discrete, by whom the churche shulde be well gouernecl. To

this purpose the cardynals putte to all their payne, and specially he y 1
was after chosen to be pope thus all a somer they wer in this pur-
:

pose for they that entended to make a newe pope durst nat shewe their
;

myndes generally, bycause of the romayns so that in the tyme of the

;

vacacyon in the courte, dyuers cardynals departed fro Eome, and went
about Eome to sport the in dyuers places at their pleasure. And pope
Vrbane went to another cytie called Tyeulle, and ther he lay a long
season, in this vacacion tyme, whiche myght nat longe endure for at
:

Eome ther were many clerkes of sudrie places of the worlde, abydinge
for graces, the whiche was promysed to dyuers of them. Than the
cardynals all of one acorde assembled togyder, and their voyces rested
on sir Eobert of Genesue, somtyrne sonne to the erle of Genesue. His
n bysshoppe of Therouene, and
first promocyon was, he wa after bys-
shoppe of Cambrey, and he was called cardynal of Genesue. At this
election were the most parte of the cardynals, and he was called Cle-
ment. — p. 547.
Lect. XI. MORE'S LIFE OF RICHARD III. 501

Lord Berners's orthography is irregular and confused ; but

this is probably, in a considerable degree, the fault of he
printers, who at that time were generally Germans or Dutch-
men, little acquainted with English. His syntax is marked by
archaisms, such as the use of the form in -th in the third per-
son singular present indicative, and not unfrequently in the
plural and in the imperative ; and his style, like that of other
secular compositions up to this period, is much less advanced in
philological development than the diction of contemporaneous
theological literature, or, with the exception of an inflection or
two, even than that of Pecock, who lived three quarters of a
century earlier. The difference, however, between Lord Ber-
ners and Fisher, from whom I have given an extract, is not
wholly owing to the superior culture of the theological dialect,
but partly to the fact that Lord Berners wrote in advanced life.

His though more idiomatic than most of the productions

style,

of Caxton's press, had probably been formed by the perusal of

those works, and the long years he had spent in camp and
council had allowed him no leisure to keep up with the later
philological improvement of his native tongue.
There is another historical work of the first half of the
sixteenth century, the style of which exhibits a later phase of
the language than Lord Berners's Froissart, or than any other
secular prose composition of its own period: I refer to the
celebrated Life of Eichard III., ascribed to Sir Thomas More,
which first appeared anonymously in Grafton's edition of
Hardynge's Chronicle, printed in 1543.* In this edition it was,
in all probability, modernized to the standard of the times, and
I strongly suspect that this process was carried farther still by
Bast ell, who published More's works in 1557. Rastell, indeed,
complains that the text, as given by Grafton in Hardynge, and
in Hall's Chronicle, is ' very muche corrupte in many places,
sometyme hauyng lesse, and sometime hauing more, and altered
in wordes and whole sentences muche varying from the copie
:

* See First Series. Lecture VI. p. 124.

502 SIR THOMAS MORE Lect. XI.

of his own hand, by which thys is printed ;' but I find it difficult

to believe that either the orthography or the syntax of Kastell's

edition is that of the year 1513, when the work is alleged to
'
have been written,' though left 'unfinished.'*

Although the historical value of this work is questionable, it is

of much philological importance, because it is indisputably the

best English secular prose which had yet been written. The excel-
lence of its style is such as an Englishman in that age could have
attained only by a familiar acquaintance with the more advanced
diction of the theological literature of the English language.
This acquaintance More certainly possessed in a high degree, but
his own controversial writings are inflamed by a passion which
destroyed his mastery over self, and betrayed him, not only into
hasty and violent expression, but into a confusion of thought
which is remarkable in a man otherwise so clear-headed.f
More became a madman the moment he approached the
question of religious reform.^ He wished to have it engraved

* See Longer Notes and Illustrations, I., at the end of this lecture.

f A striking instance of this will be found in the First Series, Lecture XXVI.
p. 581.
His opponents declared that he delighted in worrying those unsound in the
|
faith, and that, not content with the torture scientifically applied, in pursuance of
his orders, by the regular professors of that art attached to the prisons, he set
up an amateur inquisition in his own garden, where he used to tie persons sus-
pected of heresy to a tree, which he jocosely called the Tree of Life, and have
them soundly whipped, after which he accompanied them to the Tower to see
them racked secundum artem. All this More denies, and it is fair to let him
have the benefit of his traverse in his own words. Dyuers of them,' says he,
'

'
haue sayd that of suche as were in my howse whyle I was chauncellour, I vsed
to examyne them wyth turmentes, causynge them to be bouden to a tre in my
gardyn, and there pituously beten. * * * For of very trouth, albe it that
for a great robbery or a heyghnouse murder, or sacryledge in a chyrche, wyth
caryenge away the pyxe wyth the blessed sacrament, or vylanously castynge it
out, I caused some tyme such thynges to be done by some offycers of the marshalsy
or of some other prysos wyth whyche orderynge of them by theyr well deserued
payne, & wythout any greate hurte that afterwarde sholde stycke by them,
I founde out and repressed many suche desperate wreches, as ellys had not fayled
to haue gone ferther abrode, & to haue done to many good folke a gret deale
mych more harme yet though I so dyd I theues, murderers, and robbers of
;

chyrches, and notwythstandynge also that hcretylces be yet mych worse then al they,
yet sauyng onely theyr sure kepynge, I neuer dyd els cause any such thyng to be
 ;

J.ECT. XI. SIR THOMAS MORE 503

on his tombstone that he was 'Furibus, Homicidis, Hcereticisque

moled us,' the scourge of Thieves, Murderers, and Heretics,
capping the climax with the heretic, as the greatest malefactor
of the three. But More is not the only public functionary
who has desired that his funeral monument should perpetuate
the infamy of his most criminal abuses of power.*
We ought not to expect to find, in the controversial writings of
a man inspired by such furious passions, models of elegance or
correctness of style, and accordingly it is only in the Life of
Eichard More seems to deserve the praise so
III. that often
bestowed upon him as one of the first great English prose
writers.f
More's Life of Eichard III. is found not only in the complete
edition of his works published in 1557, but in Hardynge, Hall,
and Holinshed. It is, therefore, readily accessible, and it has
been so often quoted as to be in some degree familiar to all
students of English literature. I prefer, therefore, to illustrate
his style by an extract from some of his less known writings
and I select, for that purpose, the rarest of them all, the

—
done to any of them all in all my lyfe.' The Apologye of syr Thomas More,
knyght, 1533, fs. 195, 196 (Collected Works, edition of 1557, p. 901). He then
proceeds to state two exceptions where he admits that he applied corporal
chastisement, one to a chylde and a seruaunt in his own house, for speaking
'
'

and teaching vngraeyouse heresye agaynst the blessed sacrament of the aulter,'
'

and another where the same discipline was administered to a half-insane person
for gross indecency of behaviour at public worship, He proceeds :
'
And of all
that euer came in my
hande for heresy, as helpe me God, sauynge as I sayd the
sure keping of them, and yet not so sure neyther but that George Constantyne
coulde stele awaye ellys had neuer any of them any strype or stroke gyue them,
;

so mych as a fylyppe on the forhed.' More's method of sure keping' of persons

'

charged with heresy, it appears, was to confine them in the stocks in his garden,
where the inconvenience they endured from exposure to the weather, and from the
painful mode by which they were secured, was, of itself, a torture as inhuman as
the infliction of the rod. Upon the whole, then, his own evidence convicts him
of being an uncharitable hater and a cruel persecutor of those who differed from
him in religious opinion.
* James Buchanan is said to have expressed the wish that the word 'Le-
compton might be carved on the slab which should cover his grave.
'

f See, on the authorship of this work, First Series, Lecture VI. p. 124.
504 SIR THOMAS MORE Lect. XI.

unpaged leaf between pp. 1138 and 1139 of Eastell's edition,

which is wanting in very many copies :
—
After that sir Thomas More hadde caused to be printed this laste
booke (intitled the answer to the first parte of the poysoned boke,
:

which a namelesse heretike hath named the supper of the lord) he wrote
and caused to bee printed in the ende thereof (after certaine correccions
of faultes escaped in the printyng thereof) this that followeth

Sir Thomas More knighte

to the christen reader.

After these faultes of the printer escaped in this boke, I shall not
let,good reders, to geue you like warnynge of one faute of myne owne,
escaped me in my booke laste put forth of the debellacion of Salem and
Byzance. In y e first chapter wherof (Numero. 933. and in the seconde
colume) cancell and putte out one of those ouersightes that I lay to y e
pacifier, in those ix lines, of which the first is the n line of y e same
colume, and the last is the 19 (the first of which 9 lines beginneth
thus Moreouer &c.).
: For of trouthe not the pacifier but myselfe was
ouersene in that place wyth a litle hast in misse remebring one worde
of his. For whereas he sayth in the parson of Byzance, in the third
lefe of Salem and Bizance I wil cause it to be writen into this
:
'

dyaloge worde for worde as it is come to my handes I forgate wha I

:
'

answered it that he said, as it is come,' and toke it as though he

'

sayde '
as it commeth to myne handes.'
And knowen many that haue red it, of which
therfore albeit that I haue
I neuer found any that found it, yet sythe it happed me lately to looke
theron, and find mine ouersight my self, I wold in no wise leue it,
good reder, vnreformed. Nor neuer purpose while I liue, whersoeuer I
may perceiue, either mine aduersary to saye well, or my selfe to haue
saide other wyse, to let for vs both indifferently to declare and saye
the truth.
And surely if they wold vse }^eself same honeste plaine truthe
towarde me, you shold sone see, good reders, all our contecions ended.
For than shold you se, that like as I haue not letted after mine apologye
to declare y* Tindale hadde somewhat amended and asswaged in one
point his formar euill assercions concerning satisfaccion, so shovdde he
confesse the trouth that I had truely touched him, and that hymselfe
had sore erred, as well in the remenat therof, as in all his other
heresies. And than also, like as I let not here, for the pacifiers part, to
declare myself ouersene with hast in this one poit, so should he not
Lect. XI. WILLIAM TYNDALE 505

let well and honestly to say the trouth on the tother side, and cofesse
himself very far onersene w* log leisure, in al the remenant besyde.
is debated betwene vs.
I saye not in all that he saith, but in all that
Iwote wel y e best horse wer he which wer so sure of fote, that
runne he neuer so fast wold neuer in his life neither fall nor stiible.
But sithe we can fynde none so sure, that horse is not much to be mis-
liked, which that with courage and prycking forth in hast, happing for
all hys fowre fete sometime to catch a fall, getteth vp again lightly by

himself w t oute touch of spurre or any check of y e bridle. No nor

yet that horse to be caste awaye neither, that getteth vp agayne apace
w* the checke of them bothe. Nowe lyke as with the best kinde can
I not compare, so of the third sorte at the least wise will I neuer fayle
to be, that is to wyt, ryse and reforme my selfe, whan any manne shewe
me my faulte. And as nere as I can wyll I serche them, and as sone as I
spye them, before anye man controlle the, aryse, and as I now do, mine
own reforme the. Which kynd is, you wotte, well nexte vnto the
selfe

best. But yet on the tother side, of all myne aduersaries coulde I neuer
hitherto fynde any one, but whan he catcheth once a fall, as ech of them
hath caught full manye, there lyeth he still tumblyng and toltryng in
myre, and neyther spurre nor brj^dle ca one ynche preuayle, but as
though they were not fallen in a puddle of dirte, but rubbed and layde
in litter vncler the manger at theyr ease, they whyne and they byte, and
they kick and they spurne at him that would help them vp. And y*
is yet a fourth kynde, the woorst, ye wotte well, that canne be.

This extract is a fair average specimen of the modesty, can-

dour, charity, refinement, and logic of Sir Thomas More in his
controversial writings. His Treatise on the Passion, written
during his last imprisonment, and interrupted by his depriva-
tion of pen, ink, and paper, by order of the king, is in better
temper, but little superior in style or ability to this frag-
ment. His fame as an English writer must rest on the Life of
Eichard III., if, indeed, that is his work, and his claim to our
sympathy as a man finds a better support in his family letters
and his last hours, than in his voluminous theological discus-
sions, or in his administration of his spiritual jurisdiction.
More's most conspicuous antagonist was Tyndale, whose
translation of the New Testament, first published in 1526, has
exerted a more marked influence upon English philology than
506 THE REFORMATION Lect. XI.

any other native work between the ages of Chaucer and of

Shakespeare. I have, in the twenty-eighth lecture of my first

series, and elsewhere in the same volume*, so fully discussed

the merits and importance of this translation that I need not
again enter upon it but I append to this lecture the eighth
;

chapter of Matthew from Tyndale's translation, edition of 1526,

reprinted at And over, from Bagster, in 1837. For further
illustration, I subjoin the singular translation of the same
chapter, executed by Sir John Cheke about the year 1550.
When we consider the extensive circulation which the works
of Wycliffe and other reformers had for a long period enjoyed,
and the progress which the dialect of theology had made, it
seems remarkable that, at the commencement of the reforma-
tory movement, there should have been found in England so
few men capable of maintaining its principles by argument.
But the brutal and malignant despotism of Henry VIII. had so
effectually put down the spirit of free inquiry in the earlier
years of his reign, that when he himself thought it convenient
to throw off allegiance to the see of Rome, there was a want of
theological talent and learning in his dominions, which had to
be supplied from Continental sources. Hence, very many of
the instructors of the English people in the principles of the
Eeformation were of German, Dutch, or Swiss birth, and the
English reformers themselves had often resorted to the Conti-
nent for study, or for security from persecution. These foreign
teachers generally wrote in Latin, and when their writings
were translated, paraphrased, or epitomized for the edification
of the laity, they brought with them many new words and
idioms —a special phraseology, in fact, suited to the discussion
of the doctrines they advanced. At that period of universal
religious excitement, the study of theology was, to the man of
liberal culture, just what the study of political history and
public economy is in our day —
a necessary complement to the

* See First Series, pp. 113, 171, 383, 625, 627, and Illustrations II. and III. at

the end of this lecture.

 :

Lect. XI. CLASSICAL LEARNING 507

special learning required for the exercise of his particular pro-

fession, or the performance of his general duties as a member
of the body politic. Every man of education, every man who
read at all in fact, read theological books, and consequently
there was, almost at once, a very considerable accession of Latin
words to the vocabulary of English.
The study of classical literature was in England rather a
consequence, than an efficient cause, of the Keformation. In
Germany, France, and Italy, the case had been otherwise.
There, the revival of Greek, and especially of Latin secular
philology, preceded and prepared the way for the diffusion of
works of religions The literature of Greece
controversy.
enlightened and liberalized the minds of scholars, and the
speech of Eome furnished a vehicle, a universal language, by
means of which the works of a free inquirer in one country
could be circulated in another, without the delay of translation,
or the expense of getting up new editions ; while, in England,
the first step necessarily was to make the treatise intelligible
by an English version.
There is no doubt that the desire of reading in their native
form new works, which at that time were exciting a profound
interest throughout the civilized world, and of consulting the
original texts of the sacred writings, and of the fathers of the
church, was one of the principal incentives to the study of
classical lore, which had hitherto made little progress in
England.* The by Caxton,
versions of classic authors, printed
were made at second hand from the French, with the exception
of Cicero's De Amicitia, which was translated from the original
by Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester.
Even the universities afforded but slender facilities for the
acquisition of classical Latin and Greek, and the Greek pro-
* Sir Thomas More quotes Tyndale as making this extraordinary assertion
'Eemember ye not howe in our owne time, of al that taught grammar in England
not one understode ye latine tong ? More denies that the fact is apposite as an
'

illustration for the purpose for which Tyndale had used it, but so far from dis-
puting its truth, he impliedly admits it. Workes, p. 723 d.
508 MODERN GRAMMARS Lect. XL

Cambridge was not founded until about 1540.

fessorship at
Hence the few Englishmen who desired to pursue such studies
were obliged to repair to the Continental schools for that pur-
pose. It is true that the transfer of instruction from the
monasteries to public schools —a step absolutely indispensable
to the progress of classic philology —
had begun with the cen-
tury. Lilly, the famous grammarian, who had learned Greek
in the Levant,became the first master of St. Paul's School in
1500; and about twenty-two grammar schools were established
within as many years after that date. Cardinal Wolsey exerted
his powerful influence in support of a more liberal sj^stem of
education than had been pursued at the conventual seminaries
but his plans of improvement met most violent opposition from
the jealousy of the monastic orders, and from their reluctance
to surrender the monopoly of education, which had proved so
lucrative a source of income, and at the same time so efficient
a means of securing political influence. Besides this, the new
schools had to contend with the superstitious prejudices of the
clergy, most of whom both thought all heathen literature pro-
fane and blasphemous, and feared danger from the creeping
in of heresies in consequence of the general diffusion of an
acquaintance with the New Testament in the Greek text.
For these reasons, classical literature long remained at a low
ebb, and it can hardly be said to have exerted an appreciable
influence upon the English language much before the middle of
the reign of Henry VIII.
The first immediate result of this study was naturally an
increased attention to the grammar of the vernacular, and a
disposition to assimilate its theory to that of the ancient lan-
guages. Hitherto, neither English, nor even French, is known
to have possessed dictionaries, grammars, or written rules or
philological helps of any sort.* There existed, indeed, several

* English was ordered to be taught in the common schools in the fourteenth

century,and in a passage already referred to, Tyndale and Sir Thomas More speak
of grammar-schools, the masters of which were ignorant of Latin. Here, then, is
Lect. xi. palsgrave's grammar 509

Anglo-Latin glossaries and vocabularies, but these seem to have

been intended to facilitate the study of conventual Latin rather
than to serve to explain the meaning of English words.* So
far as yet appears, the first grammatical treatise in the English
language —
the earliest evidence that any Englishman had ever
thought of subjecting any modern tongue to the discipline of
philological principle and precept —
is Palsgrave's remarkable

French grammar, composed Mary,

for the use of the Princess

and printed in 1530. This presents a very full and complete

view of French accidence, syntax, and idiomatic structure, with
a copious vocabulary. As it is written in English and constantly
illustrates French grammar by comparison with English, it is of
hi^h value as a source of information upon the authorized forms

a period of a century and a half, during which English was scholastically taught.
How was this practicable without accidences or grammatical manuals of some
kind ? Of all literary products, children's school-books are the most perishable.
Spelling-books fifty years old are as rare as Caxtons, and the present existence of
a real horn-book is as questionable as that of the unicorn. An English grammar,
of Chaucer's time, or Pecock's, or even of Tyndale's boyhood, would be a trouvaille,
that would well repay a half-year's search among mouldering manuscripts.
* The author of the compilation called Promptorius or Promptorium Parvu-
lorum, Way's very valuable edition of which is one of the most important
contributions ever made to English historical etymology, expressly states that he
prepared the work for the use of young ecclesiastics, 'qui nunc ad usum
clericalis loquele velut cervi ad fontes aquarum desiderant sed Latina vocabula
ignorantes,' etc.
It is an observation of some interest with respect to the permanence of local
dialects, which many modern linguists so strongly insist upon, that the author
declares comitatus tamen Northfolchie modum loqueiidi solum sum secutus,
:
'

quern solum ab infancia didici, et solotenus plenius perfectiusque cognovi,' and

again, at the close of the preface: 'Explicit preambulum in libellum predictum,
secundum vulgarem modumloquendi orientalium Anglorum.' This preface is
dated in 1440. Eorby's vocabulary of East-Anglia gives us the peculiarities of
the colloquial dialect of the same counties in 1830. There are, it is true, some
coincidences between the two word-lists, but he must be a philologer of easy
faith, who can find in the comparison of them satisfactory evidence that the
special dialect of the Orientales Angli of 1440 was identical with that of the
East-Anglians of 1830. It must however be admitted, for the comfort of be-
lievers in the immutability of vulgar speech, that the Chronicle of Capgrave, a
Norfolk man who flourished in the first half of the fifteenth century, presents
many more points of resemblance with the modern dialect of that county than
are to be found in the Promptorium.
 510 CLASSICAL LEARNING Lect. XL

of our own language at that period ; and, though intended solely

for instruction in a foreign tongue, the study of it could not
have failed to throw much light on the general principles of
English syntax, and thus to contribute, in an important degree,
to the improvement of English philology. Palsgrave's views of
the logical and syntactical structure of language were taken
from one of the Greek grammars then in vogue. He accordingly
applied the doctrines of ancient grammar to his exposition of
the theory of the French, and indirectly of the English, and
his work did much to introduce the grammatical nomenclature
of the Latin into English, and to establish philological opinions
more in harmony with the structure of ancient inflected, than of
modern indeclinable, languages.*
The inducements which the writings of German and Swiss
and Dutch Eeformers suggested for acquiring a knowledge of
Hebrew and Greek and classical Latin, gave a great impulse to
the study of the humanities, as they were called. Ancient
authors were made comparatively familiar, by translations whose
vocabulary and style were marked by Latinisms and the diction ;

of English writers, who were able to read those authors in the

original, was, consciously or unconsciously, enriched by borrowed
phrases and single terms, needed to express the new ideas and
new sentiments that were pouring in from so many sources.
Thus the profane literature of Greece and Kome contributed,
both directly and indirectly, to enlarge the stock of English

* The most remarkable peculiarity of Palsgrave's English is, that where an ad-
jective belonging to the technical nomenclature of grammar follows its noun, he
commonly makes its plural in s ; thus : verbes acty xes parsonalles, verbes depo-
nentes or comens, pronounes interrogative.?, &c &c. We have still current in
English a few examples of adjectives inflected for the plural, but they are cases
where the noun has been so long dropped from the phrase, that it has been for-
gotten. Thus, in 'Know all men by these presents,' presents is an adjective,
agreeing with letters understood; per has litteras prescntts. Premises, in deeds of
conveyance, is also an adjective, its noun being understood.
Palsgrave was, so far as I know, the first writer who used & figured pronuncia-
tion, which he employs both to convey the sounds of the letters, and to show how
the liaisons are made. Thus he writes
Regnans par droit, heureux et glorieux,
Renavnpaivlroatevrevzcglorievz.
Lect. XI. SKELTON 511

words, and the vocabulary grew with constantly increasing

rapidity.
It is fortunate that Tyndale's translation of the New Testa-
ment, first published in 1526, was executed before the traditional
sacred dialect, handed down from the time of Wycliffe, was yet
much affected by this flood of Latinisms, which, a few years
later, produced so marked a change in the English language.
The Ehemish version shows us something of what we should
have had in the place of our present translation, had Tyndale's
work been postponed a short time longer. An English trans-
lator of the next generation would not have thought of studying
Wycliffe, but would have taken the current English of his time
as the standard of style, and given us a text perhaps a little
more accurate than that of Tyndale, but altogether inferior in
force, beauty, and purity of expression.
But let us turn for a moment to the poetic literature of the
reign of Henry VIII. It is little to the credit of modern taste
and refinement, that so gross and repulsive an author as Skelton
should be better known to students of old English literature,
than the graceful and elegant Surrey and Wyatt. Puttenham
f
well characterizes Skelton as a rude rayling rimer,' and it is
not too much to say of him, that while he has all the coarseness
of Swift, he does not atone for it by a spark of the genius of
Chaucer. Most of Skelton's works appeared in the time of
Henry VIII., but he seems to have had a reputation for
learning in his earlier youth ; for Caxton, in the preface to
an
edition of the iEneid which he had himself translated from a
French version, speaks of Skelton as one ( knowne for suffyc}T ent
to expoune and Englysshe every dyffyculte that is therein;' and
at a later day, when he was tutor to Prince Henry, afterwards
King Henry VIII., he was complimented by Erasmus as ( Britan-
nicarum literarum decus et lumen.' It is more to his classical
scholarship than to his poetical works that he owed his original
literary reputation, and though his translations of some ancient
authors, which are still preserved in manuscript, would be a
valuable contribution to English philology, the loss of his
512 STEPHEN HA WES Lect. XL

rhymes would be but a trifling injury to English literature.

His learning certainly did little for the improvement of his
English style, and we may say of his diction in general, that all
that is not vulgar is pedantic.
Stephen Hawes, who flourished in the reigns of Henry VII.
and Henry VIII., was the author of the Passetyme of Pleasure
and of several other poems, all popular in his time and all now
deservedly forgotten. Warton thinks that he c added new
graces to Lydgate's manner,' but these graces I am unable to
discover, and I agree with Wright in the opinion, that in all
respects his works are
c
monuments of the bad taste of a bad

age.' They have, however, a certain philological interest, both

on account of their versification, which, though far from melli-
fluous, presents some improvements, and especially as showing

the rapidity with which French and Latin words were now
flowing into the language, and as illustrating that connection
between rhymed verse and a Eomance vocabulary, of which I
have so often spoken. The fifth chapter of his dull allegory,
the Passetyme of Pleasure, is entitled, 'How Science sent him
fyrst to Gramer, where he was received by Dame Congruyte,'
and is as follows :

1.

The lady Gramer in all humbly wyse,

Dyd me receyve into her goodly scoole
To whose doctrine I dyd me advertise
Por to attayne, in her artyke poole,
Her gyfted dewe, for to oppresse my doole
To whom I sayde that I wold gladly lerne
Her noble connynge, so that I myght descerne
2.

What thatand why that it was made ?

it is,

To whych she answered than, in speciall,

By cause that connynge shoulde not pale ne fade,

Of every scyence it is originall,

Whych doth us tech ever in generall

In allgood ordre to speke directly,
And for to wryte by true ortografy.
 ; ; :; ;

Lect. XL STEPHEN HAWKS 513

3.
Somtyme Egypt reygned a noble kyng,
in
Iclyped Evander, whych dyd well abounde
In many vertues, especially in lernyng
Whych bad a doughter, that by her study found
To wryte true Latyn the fyrst parfyt ground.
Whose goodly name, as her story sayes,
Was called Carmentis in her livyng dayes.

4.
Thus in the tyme of olde antiquytie,
The noble phylosophers, wyth theyr whole delyghte,
For the comon prouffyte of all humanite.
Of the seven sciences for to knowe the ryght,
They studied many a long wynters nyght,
Eche after other theyr partes to expresse,
Thys was theyr guyse to eschewe ydelnesse.
5.

The pomped carkes wyth foode dilicious

They dyd not feed, but to theyr sustinaunce
They folowed not theyre fleshe so vycious,
But ruled it by prudent governaunce
They were content ahvay wyth suffisaunce,
They coveyted not no worldly treasure,
For they knewe that it myght not endure.
6.

But nowe a dayes the contrary is used

To wynne the mony theyr studyes be all set.
The commen profyt is often refused,
For well is he that may the money get
From his neyghbour wythout any let.
They thynke nothynge they shall from it pas,
Whan all that is shall be tourned to was.

7.
The bryttel fleshe, nourisher of vyces,
Under the shadowe of evyll slogardy,
Must need haunte the carnall delices
Whan that the brayne, by corrupt glotony,
Up so downe is tourned than contrary.
Frayle is the bodye to grete unhappynes,
Whan that the head is full of dronkennes.
L L
 ; ;

514 STEPHEN IIAWES Lect. XI.

8.

So doo they now ; for they nothyng prepence

Howe cruell deth doth them sore ensue.
They are so blynded in worldly necligence,
That to theyr merite they wyll nothyng renewe
The seven scyences, theyr slouth to eschewe ;

To an others profyt they take now no keepe,

But to theyr owne, for to eate, drynke, and sleepe.
9.

And all thys dame Gramer told me every dele,

To whom I herkened wyth all my diligence
And after thys she taught me lyglit well
Fyrst my Donet and then my accidence.
I set my mynde wyth percying influence
To lerne her scyence, the fyrst famous arte,
Eschewyng ydlenes and layeng all aparte.
10.
Madame, quod I, much
as there be
for as
Eight partes of speche, I would knowe ryght fayne,
What a noune substantive is in hys degre,
And wherefore it is so called certayne ?
To whom she answered ryght gentely agayne,
Sayeng alway that a noune substantyve
Might stand wythout helpe of an adjectyve.
11.
The Latyn worde whyche that is referred
Unto a thynge whych is substancyall,
For a noune substantyve is wel averred,
And wyth a gender is declynall
So all the eyght partes in generall
Are Laten wordes, annexed properly
To every speche, for to speke formally.
12.
And gramer is the fyrst foun dement
Of every science to have construccyon :

Who knewe gramer wythout impediment;

Shoulde perfytely have intelleccion
Of a lytterall cense and moralyzacion.
To construe every thynge ententifiy.
The worde is gramer wel and ordinatly.
 ;

Lect. XL SUREET AND WTATT 515

13.

By worde made orygynally,

the world was
The hye Kynge sayde, it was made incontinent
He dyd eommaunde, al was made shortly.
To the world the worde is sentencious judgemente.
I marked well dame Gramers sentement,
And of her than I dyd take my lycence,
Goynge to Logyke wyth all my dylygence.

In these thirteen stanzas are ninety-one lines, of which sixty-

sixend in rhyming words of Latin or French origin, and in
stanzas fifth, eleventh, and twelfth, not a single rhyme is of
Anglo-Saxon derivation.
The poems of Surrey and of W}^att, who flourished in the
latter part of the reign of Henry VIII., are in a very different
strain, Loth of thought and of language. They are of import-
ance in the history of English, from the great advance they show
upon the diction of other versifiers of the period and in the ;

history of literature, as proving that Italian poetry was now be-

o-inning toassume somewhat the same influence upon English
verse which French had exercised a hundred and fifty years
before. There was, however, this difference. The French
poets not only banished the native rrrythms and dictated the
forms of English poetry, but they contributed very essentially
to the creation of a new poetic diction, by introducing new
words and grammatical idioms, while the Italian poets, though
supplying models of poetic composition and suggesting new
metres and metrical combinations, added little or nothing to
the vocabulary, and did not at all influence the syntax of
English.
Surrey — in imitation of the
Italian poets who were striving
to discard rhyme, as a barbarous corruption of the dignity of
verse, and to restore the classic metres, or at least a system of
versification founded exclusively on prosodical accent — trans-
lated two books of Virgil's iEneid, in blank verse ; and this is
said to be the first specimen of unrhymed poetry in the English
L L 2
516 BLANK VEESE Lect. XI.

tongue. This Warton calls a 'noble attempt to break the

bondage of rhyme,' and Eoger Ascham thinks that in the
experiment Surrey was seeking c the fayrest and ryghtest way.'
But the versification of the translation is rugged and uneven,
and, upon the whole, greatly inferior, in smoothness of flow and
skill in melodious adaptation of words, to Surrey's own rhymed
poems. A writer long accustomed to compose in rhyme, but
who from the restraints of consonance,
at last sets himself free
is apt to makea bad use of his new found-liberty, and to
convert it into too great prosodical license. This was the case
with Surrey, whose blank verse is very often quite undistinguish-
able from common prose.
The dialect of Surrey, and of Wyatt whose works very
closely resemble the poems of Surrey, is much more modern
than that of any preceding writer, and it is noticeable that we
find in them a less frequent use of forms now obsolete than in
even the prose authors of the same period. This is a singular
fact, for in all literatures the diction of poetry inclines to
archaism of expression and the departure of Surrey and Wyatt
;

from the usual rule is perhaps to be explained by the circum-

stance that they had no English precedents in the vein of
poetry which they chose to pursue, and, consequently, no native
models of a poetic diction consecrated to the utterance of the
sentiments they wished to express. They therefore adopted the
colloquial dialect of their time, which had discarded many in-
flections and idioms still habitually retained in written literature
whether prose or verse whereas, if they had employed poetic
;

forms examples of which already existed in English, they could

hardly have failed to follow their diction also.
The poems of these authors have exercised a more important
influence on the poetical dialect of the English language than
has been generally supposed; for their popularity — which was
partly due to their adoption of a popular dialect — and their

great merit, not only made them authoritative standards and

models, but tended in a considerable degree to discourage the
Lect. XI. BISHOP LATIMER 517

study of older authors, who now very soon began to he con-

sidered as rude and barbarous. Although, therefore, Surrey and
Wyatt did much to polish and refine the language of their art,
yet they on the other hand deprived it of something of its
force and energy, by lessening the authority, and consequently
occasioning the neglect, of the great master whom Spenser,
half a century later, was wise enough to hold to be at once the
fountain and the reservoir of the English tongue.
The sermons of Bishop Latimer, which belong to this period,
are of much interest, because they are written in a very familiar
style, and give us, perhaps, a better idea of the living speech of
educated men at that time than any other existing literary
monument. The sermons of Latimer, and other works of
similar linguistic character, serve well to show a truth which
has but lately begun to be recognized in philology: that though
foreign-born words and new logical combinations of familiar
words are generally introduced by written literature, yet syntac-
tical and inflectional changes originate with the people, and are
current in eveiy-day speech some time before they are recog-
nized as admissible in formal composition. Latimer's writings,
reduced to the modern orthography, present scarcely more
difficulty to a reader of our own time than a newspaper of this
century ; but there are few prose or poetical works of that day
belonging to the higher walks of literature, which are not much
more archaic and vocabulary than these plain-
in their structure
spoken homilies. The following extracts are from the rare
volume of sermons, seven in number, preached by Latimer
before King Henry VIII. and his Court, in March and April,
1549: —
FROM SERMON II.

I can not go to my boke for pore folkes come vnto me, desirynge me
that I wyll speake y* theyr matters maye be heard. I trouble my Lord
& beynge at hys house noAve and then I walke in the
of Canterbury e,
garden lokyng in my boke, as I canne do but little good at it. But
some thynge I muste nedes do to satisfye thys place.
518 BISHOP LATIMER Lect. XI.

I am no soner in the garden and liaue red a whyle, but by and by

commeth there some or other knocking at the gate.
Anone cometh my man and sayth Syr, there is one at the gate
:

woulde speake wyth you. When I come there, then is it some or other
that desireth me that I wyll speake that hys matter might be heard, &
that he hath layne thys longe at great costes and charges, and can not
once haue hys matter come to the hearing, but am5g all other, one
moued me at thys time to speake.
especially
Thys it syr
is : A
gentylwoman came to me and tolde me, that a
greate mankepeth certaine landes of hyrs from hyr and wilbe hyr
tenaunte in the spite of hyr tethe. And that in a whole twelue moneth
she coulde not gette but one daye for the hearynge of hyr matter, and
the same daye when the matter shoulde be hearde, the greate manne
broughte on hys syde a greate syghte of Lawyers for hys counsayle,
the gentilwoman had but one ma of lawe and the great man shakes
:

him so, so that he ca [not] tell what to do, so that when the matter
came to the poynte, the Judge was a meane to the gentylwoman that
she wold let the great ma haue a quietnes in hyr Lande. I beseche
your grace that ye wyll loke to these matters.

FROM SERMON III.

Ther is a certen ma that shortely after my fyrst sermon, beyng asked

if he had byn at y e sermon that day, answerd, yea 1 praye you sayd
:

he how lyked you him ? marye, sayd he, eue as I lyked hym alwayes, a
sedicious felow. Oh Lord he pinched me there in dede, nay he had
rather a ful byt at me. Yet I comfort myselfe with that, y* Christ hi
selfe was noted to be a sturrer vp of the people agalst the Emperoure,
and was contented to be called sedyciouse.
It becommeth me to take it in good worthe, I am not better then he
was. In the kynges daies y* dead is, a meanye of vs were called
together before him to saye our myndes in certaine matters. In the
ende one kneleth me downe, & accuseth me of sedycion, that I had
preched sedyciouse doctryne. A heuy salutation, and a hard poit of
such a mans doynge, as if I should name hym, ye woulde not thynke
it. The kynge turned to me and saied What saie you to that, syr ?
:

Then I kneled downe, and turned me first to myne accuser, and

required hym
Syr, what fourme of preachlge would you appoynt me to preache
before a kynge ?
Woulde you haue me for to preache nothynge as concerninge a Kynge
in the Kynges sermo. Haue you any commissyon to apoj^nt me what I
shal preache ? Besydes thys I asked hym dyuers othere questyons, and
Lf.CT. XI. BISHOP LATIMER 519

he would make no answer to none of them all. lie had nothynge to

saye. Then I turned me to the kynge, and submitted my selfe to hys
grace and saycl : I neuer thoughte my selfe worthy, nor I neuer sued to
be a preacher before youre grace, but I was called to it, and woulde be
wylling yf 3^011 mislyke me, to geue place to my betters. For I graut
ther be a gret meany more worthie of the rome then I am. And if be
so youre graces pleasure to allowe theym for preachers, I coulde be
content to bere theyr bokes after them. But if youre grace allowe me
for a preacher, I would desyer your grace to geue me leue to dischardge
my c5ciece. Geue me leue to frame my doctrine accordenge to mine
audyece. I had byn a veri dolte to haue preached so at the borders of
your realme as I prech before your grace.

FROM THE SAME.

"Wo worthe these giftes, they subuert iustyce euerye where. Sequiintur
retributiones. Some what was geue to the before, & they must nedes
gyue somewhat again, for gyffegafe was a good felowe, this gyifegaffe
led the clen fr5 iustice. They folow giftes. A good felowe on a time
had an other of hys trends to a breake faste, and sayed Yf you wyll
:

come you shall be welcome, but I tell you afore hande, you shall haue
but sclender fare, one dish and that is all. What is that, saide he. A
puddyne, and nothynge els. Mary, sayde he, you ca not please me
better, of all mettes, that is for myne owne toth. You may draw me
round about the towne with a puddyng.
These brybinge magistrates and iudges folow gyftes faster the the
fellowe would folio we the puddynge.
I am content to beare the title of sedition w* Esai. Thankes be to
God, I am not alone, I am in no singularitie. Thys same man that
layed sedition thus to my charge was asked an other tyme, whether he
were at the sermon at Paules crosse he answered y 1 he was there, and
;

beynge asked what newes there. Marye quod he, wonderfull newes,
wee were ther cleane absolued, my mule and all hadde full absolution.
Ye may se by thys, that he was such a one that rode on a mule, and
that he was a gentylma.
In dede hys mule was wyser then he, for I dare say, the mule neuer
sclaundered the preacher. Oh what an vnhappy chaunce had thys
Mule to carrye such an Asse vppon hys backe ! I was there at the
sermon my selfe. In the end of his sermon he gaue a generall abso-
lution, and as farre as I remember, these, or such other lyke were hys
wordes, but at the least I am sure, thys was hys meanynge. As
manye as do knowledge your selfes to be synners, and confesse the
same and standes not in defece of it, and hertely abhorreth it,
520 BISHOP LATIMER Lect. XI.

and wyl beleve in y e death of Christ, and be conformable therunto, Ego

absoluo vos, quod he. Now, saith thys getylman, hys mule was
absolued. The preacher absolued but such as were sory and dyd
repente. Bilyke then she dyd repente hyr stumblynge, hys Asse was
wyser then he a greate deale. I speake not of worldely wysedome, for
therin he is to wyse, yea, so wyse, that wyse men maruayle howe
he came trulye by the tenth part of that he hathe. But in wisdome
which consisteth in rebus Dei, in rebus Salutis, in godlye matters, &
pertayning to our saluacyo, in this wisedome he is as blynde as a bittel.
Thei be Tanquam equus et mulus in quibus non est intellectus ; Lyke
horses and mules that haue no understandynge.
If it were true that the mule repented hyr of hyr stumblyng I
thynke shee was better absolued then he. I pray God stop his mouthe,
or els to open it to speake better, and more to hys glory. An other
man quickned with a word I spoke (as he saied opprobriously agaynste
the nobility that theyr childre dyd not set forthe Gods worde, but were
vnpreachynge prelates) was offended wyth me.

FROM SERMON VI.

The arte of shutynge hath ben in tymes past much estemed in this
realme, it is a gyft of God that he hath geuen vs to excell all other
nacions wythall. It hath bene Goddes instrumente, whereby he hath
gyue vs manye victories agaynste oure enemyes. But nowe we haue
taken vp horynge in tounes, in steede of shutyng in the fyeldes. A
wonderous thynge, that so excellente a gift of God shoulde be so lytle
estemed. I desyer you my Lordes, even as y e loue the honoure, and
glory of God, and entende to remove his indignacion, let ther be sente
fourth some proclimacion, some sharpe proclimacion, to the iustices of
peace, for they do not their dutye. Justices now be no iustices, ther be
manye good actes made -for thys matter already. Charge them vpo theyr
allegiaunce y* this singular benefit of God maye be practised, and that
it be not turned into bollyng, glossyng, and whoryng wythin the townes,

for they be negligente in executyng these lawes of shutyng.

In my tyme my poore father was as diligent to teach me to shote as
to learne anye other thynge, and so I thynke other menne dyd theyr
children. He taught me how to drawe, how to laye my bodye in my
bowe, and not to drawe wyth stregth of amies, as other nacions do,
but with strength of the bodye. I had my bowes boughte me ac-
cordyng to my age & stregth as I encreased in them, so my bowes
;

were made bigger and bigger, for men shal neuer shot well, excepte
they be broughte vp in it. It is a goodly art, a holsome kynde of
Lect. XI. SIR JOHN CIIEKE 521

exercise, much commended in phisike. Marsilius Ficinus, in hys

boke de triplici vita (it is a greate while sins I red hym nowe), but I
remebre he commendeth this kinde of exercise, and sayth that it
wrestleth agaynste manye kyndes of diseases. In the reuerece of God,
let it be continued.

Sir John Cheke, Professor of Greek in the University of

Cambridge, is perhaps the first Englishman in whose prose style

the influence of a familiarity with classical literature is fully

and clearly manifested. I mean the legitimate and proper
influence, which is, not the crowding of our diction with Latin
w^ords and idioms, not an affluence of quotation or of remi-
niscence of ancient history and fable, but grammatical accuracy
in syntax and inflection, strict attention to the proper use of
words singly considered, and idiomatic purity in the construc-
tion of phrases and the arrangement of periods. In vocabulary,
Cheke was a purist by principle for in his almost only known
;

original composition, the Hurt of Sedition, he employs none but

words which had been for centuries familiar to every intelligent
Englishman. In his specimen of a translation of the New
Testament, of which only a few chapters are extant if, indeed, —
more ever existed —
he carries his purism still farther, and
introduces many Anglo-Saxon compounds, of his own coinage,
in place of the technical words belonging to Christian doctrine
which older translators had transferred, without change, from
the Greek and Latin texts to their own versions.*
Cheke was no advocate of popular rights, but the following
paragraphs from his Hurt of Sedition may even now be read
with profit by those whom they concern. I take them from

* See Cheke' s translation of the eighth chapter of Matthew's gospel, in

Longer Notes and Illustrations, III., at the end of this lecture.
Among the new words fabricated by Cheke for his translation are biwordcs, :

parables, examples crossed, crucified

; dcbitee (deputy) of ye fourth part,
;

tetrarch forsaiers and forschewers, prophets froscnt, sent out, and frosender,
; ;

he who sends out; freschman, proselyte; gainbirth, regeneration; groundwrought,

founded hundcrdcr, centurion
; moond (mooned), lunatic onwritcng, super-
; ;

scription ; outpcopling, carrying into captivity; outborn, alien; outcalhd, elect;

soulisch (animal), the natural man ; trutom (true turn), true translation.
522 SIR JOHN CHEKE Lect. XI.

Holinshed, reprint of 1808, vol. iii. pp. 987, 988, 992, 1005,
1007.

Among so manie and notable benefits, wherewith God hath alreadie

and plentifullieindued vs, there is nothing more beneficial], than that
Ave haue by his grace kept vs quiet from rebellion at this time. For
we see such miseries hang ouer the whole state of the common-wealth,
through the great misorder of your sedition, that it maketh vs much to
reioise, that we haue beene neither partners of your doings, nor con-
spirers of your counsels. For euen as the Lacedemonians for the
auoiding of drunkennesse did cause their sons to behold their seruants
when they were drunke, that by beholding their beastlinesse, they
might auoid the like vice euen so hath God like a mercifull father
:

staied vs from your wickednesse, that by beholding the filth of your

fault, we might iustlie for offense abhorre you like rebels, whome else

by nature we loue like Englishmen. And so for our selues, we haue

great cause to thanke God, by whose religion and holie word dailie
taught vs, we learne not onelie to feare him trulie, but also to obeie
our king faithfullie, and to serue in our owne vocation like subiects
honestlie. And as for you, we haue suerlie iust cause to lament you
as brethren, and yet iuster cause to rise against you as enimies, and
most iust to ouerthrow you as rebels.
For what hurt could be doone either to vs priuatlie, or to the whole
common-wealth generallie, that is now with mischiefe so brought in by
you, that euen as we see now the flame of your rage, so shall we neces-
sarilie be consumed hereafter with the miserie of the same. Wherefore
consider your selues with some light of vnderstanding, and marke this
greeuous and horrible fault, which ye haue thus vilelie committed,
howe heinous it must needs appeare to you, if ye will reasonablie con-
sider that which for my duties sake, and my whole countries cause, I
will at this present declare vnto you. Ye which be bound by Gods
word not to obeie for feare like men-pleasers, but for conscience sake
like cristians, haue contrarie to Gods holie will, whose offense is euer-
lasting death, and contrarie to the godlie order of quietnesse, set out to
vs in the kings maiesties lawes, the breach whereof is not vnknowne to
you, f:iken in hand vncalled of God, vnsent by men, vnfit by reason,
to cast awaie your bounden duties of obedience, and to put on you
against the magistrats, Gods office committed to the magistrats, for the
reformation of your pretensed iniurics. In the which dooing ye haue
first faulted grieuouslie against God, next offended vnnaturallie our

souereigne lord, thirdlie troubled miserablie the whole common-wealth,

Lect. XT. SIR JOHN CHEKE 523

vncloone cruellie manie an honest man, and brought in an vtter miserie

both to vs the kings subiects, and to your selues being false rebels. And
yet }^e pretend that partlie for Gods cause, and partlie for the common-

wealths sake, ye doo arise, when as your seines cannot denie but ye ;

that seeke in word Gods cause, doo breake indeed Gods commande-
ments and ye that seeke the common-wealth, haue destroied the com-
;

mon-wealth and so ye marre that ye would make, and brake that ye

:

would amend, because ye neither seeke anie thing rightlie, nor would
amend anie thing orderlie.
* * * *
But what talke I of disobedience so quietlie ? Haue not such mad
rages run in your heads, that forsaking and bursting the quietnesse of
the common ye haue heinouslie and traitorouslie incamped your
peace,
and there like a bile in a bodie, naie like a sinke in a
selues in field,
towne, haue gathered togither all the nastie vagabonds and idle loiterers
to beare armour, &c. &c.
* * # *
Desperate sicknesse in physicke must haue desperate remedies, for
meane medicines will neuer helpe great griefes. So if ye cast your
selues into such sharpe diseases, ye must needs looke for sharpe medi-
cines againe at your physicians hands. And worthie ye be to suffer
the extremitie in a commonwealth, which seeke to doo the extremitie,
and by reason must receive the like ye offer, and so be contented to
bide the end willinglie which set on the beginning willfullie.
* * * *
Thus the whole countrie lacking the good opinion of other nations,
is cast into shame by your vnrulinesse, and the proceedings of the
great
countrie, be they neuer so godlie, shall be ill spoken of, as vnfit to be

brought into vse and good things hereby that deserue praise, shall
;

bide the rebuke of them that list to speake ill, and ill things vntouched
shall be boldlier mainteined.
* * # *
And with what dutie or vertue in ye, can ye quench out of memorie
this foule enterprise, or gather a good report againe to this realme, who
haue so vilelie with reproch slandered the same, and diuerslie discre-
dited it among others, and abated the good opinion which was had of the

iust gouernement and ruled order vsed heretofore in this noble realme,
which is now most grieuous, bicause it is now most without cause.
If this outward opinion (without further inconuenience) were all, yet
it might well be borne, and would with ease decaie as it grewe but it :

hath not onlie hurt vs with voice, but indangered vs in deed, and cast
524 THE REFORMATION AND CLASSICAL LEARNINGS Lect. XI.

vs a great deale behind the hand, where else we might haue had a
iollie foredeale. For that opportunitie of time which seldome chanceth,
and is alwaies to bee taken, hath beene by your froward meanes lost
and so
this yeare, vainlie spent at home for bringing downe of you,
which should else haue beene otherwise bestowed, that it
profitablie
hath beene almost as great a losse to vs abrode, to lacke that we might
haue obteined, as it was combrance at home to go about the ouerthrow
of you, whose sedition is to be abhorred. And we might both con-
uenientlie haue inuaded some, if they would not reasonablie haue
growne to some kind of friendship, and also defended others which
would beside promise for times sake vniustlie set upon vs, and easilie
haue made this stormie time a faire yeare vnto vs, if our men had
beene so happie at home, as our likelihood abrode was fortunat.

The Reformation, at first, gave a stimulus to the study of

Latin as the universal speech of science and of philosophical
and religious discussion, and of Greek as the language in which
the New Testament — if not originally written in that tongue
had at least come down from the primitive ages of Christianity.
But the attention of the learned was soon drawn from the
secular literature of Greece and Rome and absorbed in theo-
logical and scholastic casuistry; and finally a superstitious
distrust of the tendency of profane scholarship succeeded to the
admiration with which the classical authors had been so recently
regarded. The dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII.
broke up some schools, and numbers of the Greek and Latin
manuscripts preserved in the conventual libraries were de-
stroyed —
sometimes in the blind fury of a popular outbreak,
and sometimes by the monks themselves, who preferred burning
their books to allowing them to pass into the hands of the here-
tics. Hence the cause of classical learning sustained a check in
England, and the study can hardly be said to have fairly re-
vived until the reign of Elizabeth, who was herself a good Greek
and Latin scholar.
This short interruption, so far from proving injurious to the
improvement of the English language, was rather a benefit to
it ; for it put a temporary stop to the influx of Latin words,
Lect. XT. MYSTERIES AND MORALITIES 525

which were threatening to overwhelm the Anglo-Saxon vocabu-

lary, and before the study of Greek and Latin came again into
vogue, English had gathered strength enough and received suffi-
cient polish and culture to be able to sustain itself as a literary
dialect against the encroachments of ancient or foreign philo-
logies.
About the close of the first third of this century, John
Heywood introduced a new species, if not a new genus of lite-
rature —
the comedy. The comedy is distinguished from the
Mysteries, Moralities, Interludes, and other histrionic exhibi-
tions which had preceded it, by devoting itself to the repre-
sentation of popular manners and of scenes from familiar life.
The Mysteries were properly theological, the Moralities ethical,
in aim, and professedly in tone. The characters were either
taken from sacred history or they were allegorical personifica-
tions of virtues and vices. To draw an exact line between
them, or between either of them and later forms of theatrical
representation, is impossible, because they belong to uncritical
ages, when authors themselves had no clear notions of the prin-
ciples of imaginative literature, or of the boundaries by which
truth to nature requires us to divide its different branches ;and
what they confounded in practice, it is idle for us to attempt to
separate in theory.
These ancient scenic entertainments were often intermixed
with buffoonery and burlesque, or with incidents and dialogue
of a graver character, sometimes approximating closely to the
incidents and sentiments of real life. They therefore prepared
the way and the composition of both comedy
for the reception
and tragedy —
for the entire drama, in short —
and this branch
of English literature is more indebted to these rude essays for
its special character than to the influence of the classic stage.
I ought here to notice certain important formal and substan-
tial between the English drama and that of the
distinctions
Continent in general, the French especially, which latter shows
much more strongly the influence of classic models, and of the
526 THE ENGLISH DRAMA Lect. XL

traditions belonging to the scenic representations of the middle

ages. In form, the English writers have usually disregarded
the unities of time and place to which the French so strictly
adhere, and in action and tendency, they have a less distinctly
avowed, though not less real, moral and didactic character.
The comedies of Moliere, for instance, are professedly designed
to satirize, each some one prevalent vice or folly; and every
play is as conspicuously marked and labelled as the phials of an
apothecary's shop ; so that the moral patient is always informed
beforehand what malady the medicine is intended to cure, and
what drug he is about to swallow. The moral of the English
comedy is not thus ostentatiously displayed, nor, in the highest

examples of that species of composition, is the purpose of the

dramatist limited to the exposure and castigation of a single
weakness or a single wrong.
And herein, as in all else, the Shakespearian drama is in-
finitely more true to nature than all other schools. Providence
and nature indeed are great moral teachers, but their lessons are
neither ticketed nor announced in advance nor are they single, ;

or observant of the stage proprieties of time or place. A man

is not born, and bred, and trained up', and sent out into the
world, with a retinue of dramatis personse, for no other purpose
than to show forth, by his example, the excellence of virtue, or,
by his punishment or disgrace, the evils of ambition and avarice,
the folly of pride or the absurdities of fashion and social con-
ventionalism ; for even the Deity does not employ persons solely
as means to an end. We are all here for a multitude of pur-
poses, individual to ourselves or common to our fellow-men,

and none is sent hither only as a model or as a warning. The

lessons of the world are incidental, not formal or specific ; and
that great humanity, from which we are to learn how to solve the
problems of social life, is a wise teacher indeed, but no pedant.
The Heywood,
plays of to borrow the words of Wharton, ' are
destitute of plot, humour, or character' — certainly very essential

ingredients in true comedy. Hence, they are of no intrinsic

Lect. XL Jonx HEYWOOD 527

importance, and their literary interest is only that which attaches

to all distinctly characterized first essays in every branch of
composition. They are valuable, not as models, but only as the
first clearly recognized specimens of their kind, and as marking
a period of transition and of a new creation in dramatic art.
They have, too, a philological interest and value, but this will
be more appropriately considered in connection with the diction
of the later English dramatists, who, by a short interval, pre-
ceded Shakespeare.
In any general view of English literature, a notice of the ballad
poetry is indispensable but in a course devoted chiefly to the
;

philology of our tongue, this branch of our poetry must occupy

a very subordinate place, because the diction of the ballads
does not appear truly to represent either the colloquial language
of their own periods, or the literary dialect, as exhibited in any
other form of prose or poetical composition. It is therefore to

be regarded nomenclature rather than as a part of

as a special

the general language of England. The English ballads are

usually of moderate merit, and they seem to have been com-
posed by and for persons of a low grade of culture. There are
indeed many very striking exceptions to this latter remark, but
in these cases, the dialect rises at once above the level of that of
the ordinary ballad poetry, assimilates itself to the diction of
other poetical writings, and is hardly distinguishable from them
in either vocabulary or inflection.
The singular grammatical forms of many English ballads
seem be mere ignorant corruptions, or unwarrantable licenses
to
of inferior rhymsters, and they can never be cited as authorities
in philological discussion. The Scottish ballads are in general
superior to the English, and it is highly probable that they
derive many of their literary as well as their dialectic peculiari-
ties from the songs of the Scandinavian bards, whose popular
ballads are generally of a higher rank than those of the English
or of any other of the Northern nations. The Scottish resemble
the Scandinavian ballads both in form and in diction, and some
528 OLD ENGLISH BALLADS Lect. XI.

Northern words and forms occur in them, of which it would not

be easy to produce examples in other branches of literature.
The individual peculiarities of dialect which mark these per-
formances are too numerous to be noticed in detail, but I may
observe in general, that the conjugations of the verbs seem to
be almost arbitrarily varied, and the writers often fail to dis-
tinguish between the radical and the servile, or so to speak
accidental, parts of words.
Besides this, there is, as to most of them, a total uncertainty
with respect to their local origin and their date, and therefore
we can assign them to no dialectic class, no definite period, in
the history of the language. In spite, therefore, of the beauty,

the psychological, and even the historical interest of many of

these productions, they must be excluded from the rank of
influences or of landmarks in our philological annals.*

LONGER NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

SIR THOMAS MORE S LIFE OF RICHARD III.

As I have observed in my
former Series of Lectures, Appendix,
p. 388, the coalescent forms asaued and afied occur in Hardynge's text
of More's Life of Richard III., p. 547, reprint of 1812. The passage
is probably an addition by Grafton, as it is not found in Raster's

edition. It would seem not likely that so learned a man as More would
have employed such incorrect expressions but, nevertheless, a case of
;

coalescence is found in the edition of Rastell just referred to, and it is

possible that it is one of many which the original manuscript contained,
and which the editor had resolved into their elements. It is this
'
This deuise be it that it made the matter to wise men more un-
all

lykely, well perceyuyng that the intendours of suche a purpose wolde

* I cannot dismiss the subject of ballads without drawing the attention of my

readers to the admirable and very complete collection of English and Scottish
ballads, in eight volumes, edited by Professor F. J. Child, of Harvard University.
Great care has been exercised in the selection of the most authoritative texts, and
they are illustrated with a profusion of folk-lore, which, with the ballads, makes
the work a true encyclopaedia of popular song.
Lect. XL more's life of richard hi. 529

rather liaue hadde theyr harneys on theyr backes than tane bonnde
them uppe in barrelles' &c. —
Workes of Sir Thomas More, p. 45, E.
On pages 52, 66 and 61 of Rastell's edition, are inserted long passages,
which, according to the marginal note, were not written by Master '

More in this history by him writte in English, but are translated out of
this history which he wrote in Eaten.' The orthography of these
passages not distinguishable from that of the rest of the work, nor
is

indeed would it be easy to point out any special differences, in syntax

or diction, between what is declared to be More's composition, and
what is, apparently, Rastell's translation. But between 1513 and 1557
very considerable changes had taken place in the spelling and the
phraseological combinations of English, and it is hence fairly to be
inferred that the editor, according to the custom of the time, had con-
formed the orthography and the grammar of More's original manuscript
to later usage.
Holinshed incorporated this life into his chronicle, and in the edition
of 1586 it is professedly printed 'according to a copie of his [More's]
owne hande, printed among his other Works.' This of course refers to
Rastell's edition but the editor modernizes Rastell's text, as Rastell,
;

no doubt, had done with More's original. In my former Series of

Lectures, XXVI., p. 584, I have noticed the distinction between sith
and since as having arisen while those between the two affirmative and
between the two negative particles were passing away. Sir Thomas
More, according to the edition of 1557, generally employs sith as an
illative, since as an adverb or preposition of time ; but the distinction is

so often disregarded, that it is evident it had not become fully established

in his time, or in that of his editor. Thus on
H, in a passagep. 50,
translated by Rastell, sith, but, two lines lower, in More's text, sin&, are
illatives; and sins is employed in the same way, pp. 64, H, 136, H,
and elsewhere. On the other hand, sith is a time-word, p. 223, D,
1427, C, and in other passages. The cases of the use of sins as an
illative on pp. 50 and 64 occur in the Life of Richard III., and in both
instances, the Holinshed of 1586, reprinted in 1808, has sith. The
logical distinction between since and sith, as respectively expressive of
sequence and consequence, had now become clearly recognized, and
Holinshed modernized his author accordingly.
In fact, not only is the orthography of Rastell very greatly changed
in Holinshed, but rhetoric and grammar are, in numerous instances,
accommodated to the taste or critical opinions of the later editor. Thus,
in the first paragraph, Rastell has :
'
Kyng Edwarde of that name the
fourth ; ' Holinshed : ' King Edward the fourth of that name ;
' Rastell
MM
530 TYNDALE Lect. XI.

' Edwarde the Prynce, a thirtene yeare of age

;
' Holinshed :
'
Edward
the prince, a thirteene yeares of age.'
More's manuscript being no longer in existence, we cannot presume
to say how far Eastell corrected he did not make very con-
it ; but if

siderable alterations, he must have been, for his time, the most con-
scientious of editors. I regret that I have not been able to institute
a comparison between Eastell and the original editions of More's con-
troversial writings, as this would furnish a means of judging how nearly
his text of the Life conforms to the manuscript.
Note. — Since my manuscript was sent to press, I have had an oppor-
tunity of comparing the original edition of More's Apology, printed by
Eastell in 1533, with the text given by the same publisher in his
edition of More's complete English works, printed in 1557. As we
might expect in the repetition of a work by the same press, the
differences between the two texts are, in general, orthographical
merely, such, for example, as the spelling, eye, eyen, muche, fearde
in the later, for the yie, yien, myche, ferd, of the former edition, and I
have not observed any instance of a change in grammatical construc-
tion, or of the substitution of a different word, in the text of 1557.
With respect to sith and since, I note that in the Apology sith
is used

as an illative between fifty and sixty times, as a time- word twice, folios
76 and 110, edition of 1533, while since (synnys, synne, synnes,)
occurs, always as a time-word, on folios 77, 84, 106, 148, 199, 202,
203, 210, 214, 232 and 243.

II.

Matthew's gospel chapter viii. from tyndale.

1 When Jesus was come downe from the mountayne, moch people
folowed him.
2 And lo, there cam a lepre, and Avorsheped him saynge, Master, if

thou wylt, thou canst make me clene.

3 He putt forthe his hond and touched him saynge I will, be clene, :

and immediatly his leprosy was clensed.

4 And Jesus said vnto him. Se thou tell no man, but go and shewe
thysilf to the preste and offer the gyfte, that Moses commaunded to be
offred, in witnes to them.
5 When Jesus was entred in to Capernaum, there cam vnto him a
certayne Centurion, besechyng him
6 And saynge Master, my servaunt lyeth sicke att
: home off the

palsye, and is grevously payned.

 :: :

Lect. XL TTNDALE 531

7 And Jesus sayd vnto him. I will come and cure him.
8 The Centurion answered and saide Syr I am not worthy that
:

thou shuldest com vnder the rofe of my housse, but speake the worde
only and my servaunt shalbe healed.
9 For y also my selfe am a man vndre power, and have sowdeeres
vndre me, and y saye to one, go, and he goeth and to anothre, come,
:

and he cometh and to my servaunt, do this, and he doeth it.

:

10 When Jesus herde these saynges he marveyled, and said to

:

them that folowed him Verely y say vnto you, I have not founde so
:

great fayth : no, not in Israeli.

11 I say therfore vnto you, that many shall come from the eest and
weest, and shall rest with Abraham, Ysaac and Jacob, in the kyngdom
of heven
12 And the children of the kingdom shalbe cast out in to the
vtmoost dercknes, there shalbe wepinge and gnasshing of tethe.
13 Then Jesus said vnto the Centurion, go thy wave, and as thou
hast believed so be it vnto the. And his servaunt was healed that
same houre.
14 And Jesus went into Peters housse, and saw his wyves mother
lyinge sicke of a fevre,
15 And he thouched her hande, and the fevre leeft her; and sire
arose,and ministred vnto them.
16 When the even was come they brought vnto him many that
were possessed with devylles, And he cast out the spirites with a word,
and healed all that were sicke,
17 To fulfill that whiche was spoken by Esay the prophet sainge
He toke on him oure infirmytes, and bare oure sicknesses.
18 When Jesus saw moche people about him, he commaunded to
go over the water.
19 And there cam a scribe and said vnto him master, I woll folowe :

the whythersumever thou goest.

20 And Jesus said vnto him: the foxes have holes, and the byrddes
of the aier have nestes, but the sonne of man hath not whereon to leye
his heede
21 Anothre that was one of hys disciples seyd vnto him: master
suffre mefyrst to go and burye my father.
22 But Jesus said vnto him folowe me, and let the deed burie
:

their deed.
23 And he entred in to a shyppe, and his disciples folowed him,
24 And lo there arose a greate storme in the see, in so moche, that
the shippe was hyd with waves, and he was aslepe.
mm 2
532 SIR JOHN CIIEKE Lect. XI.

25 And his disciples cam vnto him, and awoke him, sayinge:
master, save us, we perishe.
26 And he said vnto them: why are ye fearfull, o ye endewed with
lytell faithe ?Then he arose, and rebuked the wyndes and the see,
and there folowed a greate calme.
27 And men marveyled and said: what man is this, that bothe
wyndes and see obey him ?
28 And when he was come to the other syde, in to the countre off
the gergesens, there met him two possessed of devylls, which cam out
off the graves, and were out off measure fearce, so that no man myght
go by that waye.
29 And lo they cryed out saynge O Jesu the sonne off God, what
:

have we to do with the ? art thou come hyther to torment vs before the
tyme [be come] ?
30 There was a good waye off from them a greate heerd of swyne
fedinge.
31 Then the devyls besought him saynge: if thou cast vs out,
suffre vs to go ourewaye into the heerd of swyne.
32 And he said vnto them go youre wayes: Then went they out,
:

and departed into the heerd of swyne. And lo, all the heerd of swyne
was caryed with violence hedlinge into the see, and perisshed in the
water.
33 Then the heerdmen need, and went there ways into the cite, and
and what had fortuned vnto them that were possessed
tolde every thinge,
of the devyls.
34 And lo, all the cite cam out, and met Jesus. And when they
sawe him they besought him, to depart out off there costes.

III.

SIR JOHN CHEKE's TRANSLATION OF MATTHEW VIII.

And when he cam from y e hil y eer folowd him a greet companj of
men, and lo a leper stood, and boud himself to him and said L. if yow
l

wilt yow maist clens me, And Jesus stretched forth his hand, and
touched him and said. J wil. be thow clensed. And bi and bi his
lepernes was clensed. And Jesus said vnto him, look yow tel no man.
But go y wais schew yself to y priest. And offer y* gift which Moses
e

ei
comanded to be given y* y might beer witness yeerof.
As Jesus cam into Capernaum, yeer cam an hunderder vnto him and
sued vnto him on this sort. Sir mi servant 2 lieth sick in mi house of

1 2 TTCU£.
TTpOffEKVVSl.
Lect. XL SIR JOHN CHEKE 533

y palsej, grevousli tormented. And Jesus said vnto him. I wil come
e

and heel him. And y e hunderder answerd him with y ee s wordes. Sir
J am not a fit man whoos house ye schold enter. Sai ye onli y e word
and mi servant schal be heeled. For I am a man vnder y e power of
1

oyer, and have soldiers vnderneth me, and J sai to s soldier go and
y
he goeth, and to an other com and he cometh, and to mi servant do y s
and he doth it. Jesus heering y s marvelled and said to y em y* folowed
him. Truli J sai vnto yow, J have not found so greet faith no not in
Jsrf. But J sai vnto yow y* mani schal com from y e Est, and y e West,
and schal be set with Abraham Jsaak and Jacob in y e kingdoom of
heaven, but y e childern of y e kingdoom schal be thrown in to outward
darknes, yeer schal be weping and gnasching of teth. And Jesus said
to y hunderder, go y wais and as yow belevedst, so be
e it vnto y e . And
his servant was heeled even in y e saam howr.
And Jesus cam in to Peters hous, and saw his moother in law laid
down and sick of
y
e
a^ess, 2 and he touched her bi y e hand and y e a^es
left her, and sche roos and served them.
And late in y e evening y ei brought him mani y* was develled, and
with his word he cast out y e sprits, and healed al y* weer il at ease, y t
Jsaie y e p°pheets wordes which he spaak might be fulfilled. He hath
taken our weaknes on him, and hath born our sickness.
And Jesus seing much resort about him comanded yem to go to ye
fur side of y e water. And on of y e Scribes cam and said vnto him.
Master J wil folow y e whiyersoever yow goost. and Jesus said vnto
him, Foxes hath dens, and y e birds of y'aier hath nests, but y e son of
man hath not wheer he mai lai his hed.
And an oyer of his disciples said vnto him. Sir suffer me first to
depart, and buri mi fayer. And Jesus said vnto him folow me and let
e
y deed buri yeer deed.
And after he entered into a boot 3 his discipils 4 folowed him, and lo
yeer was a greet stoorm on y e see, in so much y 1 y e boot was coverd
with y e waves. He slept. And his discipils came and raised him, and
said. L. save vs we perisch. And he said vnto yem, ye smalfaithd
whi be ye aferd. yen ^ie roos an(i rebuked y e windes and y e see, and
yeer was a great calm. But y e men yeer marveled and saied. What
maner of man is y is j l winds and see obej him.
And after he was come en y e other side into y e gergeseens contree,
yeer me tt him ij develds, coming forth from e graves, veri fiers men, 5
y
so y* no man cold pas y* wai, and lo y ei cried and said, what haav we

1 2 3 4 5
7raig, 7rvps.roQ. tzXolov. fiadrjTai. ^a\nro\.
534 SIK JOHN CHEKE Lect. XL

to do with y e Jesus yow son of god. Camest yow hither afoor hand to
torment vs. And yeer was a good wai from y em an herd of mani swijn
feeding. And y e devels desird him saieng. Jf yow cast vs forth suffer
vs to go into ee heard of swijn. And he bad cm goo. And ei went
y y y
forth, and went into e
y herd of swijn. And
e
y hool heerd of swijn
lo
set on y eer wai bi an hedlong place 2 in to y e see, and died in y e waters.
l

And y e swijnherds fled and came into citee, and told y em y ee hool
matter, and what taking y e develleds weer in. And loo y e hool cittee
cam forth and met Jesus, and after y ei had seen him y ei desired him y*
eer
he wold depart out of yoos coosts.

1 &pjj.r)(TE. 2 Kara rov KprjjJivov

 LECTUEE XII.

THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE DURING THE

REIGN OP ELIZABETH.

The Mirrour for Magistrates, to which Warton devotes much

more and ascribes more importance than it merits, was
space,
the first conspicuous work that appeared after the accession of
Elizabeth, and was moreover the most voluminous production
in English poetry between the time of Lydgate and that of
Spenser. It was the work of several different writers but only
;

one of them, Sackville, better known as the author of Grorboduc,

exhibits any real poetical power.
The general plan of the work is an imitation of Boccaccio's
De Casibus Principum, which, as I have mentioned, was made
by Lydgate the groundwork of his Fall of Princes but the ;

personages in the Mirrour for Magistrates all belong to English

history, and the narrative part of the poem is little else than a
rhymed chronicle, designed to include all the tragical events
known to have happened to persons distinguished in the annals
of England.
The prologue by Sackville, or Induction as he calls it, is not
destitute of invention, and the versification is smooth and flow-
ing ; but, both in this respect and in its allegorical representa-
tions, it is so far inferior to Spenser, that it has been deservedly
eclipsed by that great author. Nor does
this work possess
much marks of progress
philological value, for it exhibits few
or change in the language. In this latter particular, it is more
archaic than Surrey and Wyatt, who preceded it by a generation.
 :

536 STANIHURST Lect. XII.

The e final is sometimes articulated in the possessive, though

otherwise silent, as :

"With Nighte's starres thick powdred every where.

This is a point of some interest, because it helps to explain a

grammatical corruption, which about this time became almost
universal — the employment of the personal pronoun his as the
sign of the possessive case.
A remnant of the old Anglo-Saxon gerundial, in its passive
sometimes occurs, as
signification,

The soile that earst so seemly was to seen,

seen being here used passively, instead of our modern form to

be seen. In this case, however, seen is not a participle, but has
the force of a true passive infinitive or gerundial.
Sackville is the principal, if not the sole, author of a more
important work, which has been published both under the title

of Grorboduc and of Ferrex and Porrex. This is remarkable as

being the first regular tragedy in the English language, though
constructed in many respects upon very different principles
from the modern tragedy. The most noticeable feature of its
form is the introduction of what was called the i dumb show/
an allegorical pantomimic chorus, at the beginning of each act,
and of a regular vocal chorus at the end of each except the last.

The use of the former seems to have been to fill up the space
between the acts with something which should serve to render
less abrupt the change of time and place for the unities are;

not observed in the play, and Sackville evidently thought that

this departure from the canons of the classic stage ought to be
in some way compensated.
The rule of unity of time and place had really no higher
origin than the mechanical difficulties of scene-shifting on the
primitive stage. It is fortunate for dramatic truth that modern
artists have been wise enough to rise above so arbitrary a pre-
scription. Life and nature exhibit no man's whole character,
 ;

Lect. XII. STANIHURST 537

develope and illustrate no master passion, in a single day, or

upon a single scene. In the moral and intellectual, as in the
physical world, time is an essential element. The events which
subdue or aggravate our native propensities produce no imme-
diate and appreciable effects upon character. Moral results are
slowly unfolded, and can be seen and appreciated only by the
alternate lights and shades of differently combined circum-
stances and varied impulses. Nature does not upheave and shape
a continent at one throe, and even chemical affinity forms no
instantaneous combinations of multiplied ingredients. Both the
formation and the knowledge of character are gradual and slow.
We know and appreciate a man only by continued observation,
under different conditions of time and place and circumstance
and the characters of a drama can best be revealed, in all their
completeness, only by changes of outward surroundings, and a
succession of events, the occurrence of which at one place and
one time implies a greater violation'of the truth of life than is
involved in the shifting of a scene, or the supposition that days,
or weeks, or years intervene between acts of the drama which,
upon the stage, are separated by an interval of but a few
moments.
I have mentioned that Lord Berners's translation of Froissart
was followed by the appearance of several original English
chronicles, generally of slender literary merit ; but the period
we are now considering gave birth to a work of much greater
importance, both in an historical and in a philological point of
view. I refer to the Chronicle of Holinshed, which, as well as
those of Hall and other early annalists, was diligently studied
by Shakespeare, and must have influenced his style, as well as
furnished him with historical and biographical facts. Holin-
shed's history of England is a compilation from various authors,
some of earlier date, and some writing expressly for this under-
taking. There is, therefore, naturally a great diversity and
inequality of style and of literary merit. In these respects,
few parts of Holinshed come up to the Life of Eichard III.,
 — : ;

538 STANIHURST Lect. XII.

ascribed to More, still fewer to Cheke's Hurt of Sedition. The

range of subjects discussed in this compilation is great; for the
work attempts the natural, and partially the literary, history of
England, as well as its political and its martial annals. The
multiplicity of topics treated required a corresponding extent
and variety of and therefore this chronicle, in its several
diction,
parts, constituted much
the most complete and comprehensive
repository of the English tongue which had yet appeared. It
is hence of great value, as an exhibition of the full resources of

the language of prose in the middle of Queen Elizabeth's reign.

The most curious, and, to the lexicographer at least, the most
important part of this collection, is the description and history
of Ireland by Richard Stanihurst, contained in the sixth volume
of the edition of 1808. Stanihurst was a literary coxcomb, who
had a high and apparently a well-merited reputation for learn-
ing, but who did not succeed in impressing his contemporaries
with much respect for his abilities as an original writer, or even
as a translator; for, like most of the literati of his time, he
attempted the difficult problem of rendering the beauties of
classic poetry in modern verse. He published a version of the
first four books of Virgil's iEneid in hexameters, but does not
seem to have found encouragement in public favour to prosecute
(
the work. Nashe, as quoted by Warton, observes that Stany-
hurst, the otherwise learned, trod a foul, lumbring, boisterous,
wallowing measure in his translation of Virgil.' The reader
will not find in the following specimen, which I take from
Warton, much cause to dissent from this opinion :

With tentiue listning each wight was setled in harkning

Then father iEneas chronicled from loftie bed hautie
You bid me, O princesse, to scarifie a festerd old sore,
Now that the Troians were prest by the Grecian armie.

Warton adds, With all this foolish pedantry, Stanyhurst was

'

certainly a scholar. But in this translation he calls Chorebus,

one of the Trojan chiefs, a bedlamite he says that old Priam
;
 — : —

Lect. XII. STANIHURST 539

girded on his sword Morglay* the name of a sword in the

Grothicromances that Dido would have been glad to have been
;

brought to bed even of a cockney, a Dandiprat hopthumb and ;

that Jupiter, in kissing his daughter, bust his pretty prating

parroV The same critic quotes these lines from a piece of
Stanihurst's called 'An Epitaph against rhyme,' the object of
which, I suppose, was to illustrate, by example, the great supe-
riority of the hexameter to the more modern measures, and the
advantages of combining the two systems:

A Sara for goodnesse, a great Bellona for budgenesse,

For myldnesse Anna, for chastitye godlye Susanna.
Hester in a good shift, a Iudith stoute at a dead lift
Also Iulietta, with Dido rich Cleopatra :

With sundrie namelesse, and women many more blamelesse, &c.

Stanihurst flourished in that brief period of philological and

literary affectation which for a time threatened the language,
the poetry, and even the prose of England with a degradation
as complete as that of the speech and the literature of the last
age of imperial Eome. This quality of style appears in its

most offensive form in the nauseous rhymes of Skelton, in its

most elegant in Lillie, in its most quaint and ludicrous in
Stanihurst. Spenser and Shakespeare were the Dei ex mackina
who checked the ravages of this epidemic but it still showed
;

virulent symptoms in Sylvester, and the style of glorious Fuller

and of gorgeous Browne is tinted with a glow which is all the
more attractive because it is recognised as the flush of convales-
cence from what had been a dangerous malady.
6
Stanihurst's dedication of his history to Sir Henrie Sidneie,
Lord Deputie Generall of Ireland,' is characteristic :

My verie good Lord, therehaue beene diuerse of late, that with no

small and great commendation, haue throughlie imploied them-
toile,

selues in culling and packing togither the scrapings and fragments of

* Warton seems to have overlooked the obvious etymology of this name,

which is Komance, not Gothic, it being a compound of m or t and glaive.
540 STANIHUEST Lect. XII.

the historie of Ireland. Among which crue, my fast friend, and inward
companion, maister Edmund Campion did so learnedlie bequite him-
selfe, in the penning of certeine breefe notes, concerning that countrie,

as certes it was greatlie to be lamented, that either his theame had not
beene shorter, or else his leasure had not beene longer. For if Alexan-
der were so rauisht with Homer his historie, that notwithstanding
Thersites were a crabbed and a rugged dwarfe, being in outward feature
so deformed, and in inward conditions so crooked, as he seemed to
stand to no better steed, than to lead apes in hell yet the valiant cap-
:

teine, weighing how liuelie the golden poet hath set forth the ouglie
dandeprat in his colours, did sooner wish to be Homer his Thersites,
than to be the Alexander of that doltish rithmour, which vntertooke
with his woodden verses to blase his famous and martiall exploits how :

much more ought Ireland (being in sundrie ages seized of diuerse good
and coragious Alexanders) sore to long and thirst after so rare a clarke
as maister Campion, who was so vpright in conscience, so deepe in
iudgement, so ripe in eloquence, as the countrie might haue beene well
assured to haue had their historie trulie reported, pithilie handled, and
brauelie polished.
Howbeit although the glose of his fine abbridgment, being matcht
with other mens dooings, bare a surpassing kind of excellencie yet it :

was so hudled up in haste, as in respect of a Campion his absolute per-

fection, it seemed rather to be a woorke roughlie hewed, than smoothlie
planed. Vpon which ground the gentlemen being willing that his so
tender a suckling, hauing as yet but greene bones, should haue been
swadled and rockt in a cradle, till in tract of time the ioints thereof
were knit, and growen strongeryet notwithstanding he was so crost
:

in the nicke of this determination, that his historie in mitching wise

wandred through sundrie hands, and being therewithall in certeine places
somewhat tickle toonged (for maister Campion did learne it to speake)
and in other places ouer spare, it twitled more tales out of schoole,
and drowned weightier matters in silence, than the author (vpon better
view and longer search) would haue permitted. Thus much being by
the sager sort pondered, and the perfection of the historie earnestlie
desired :I, as one of the most that could doo least, was fully resolued

to inrich maister Campion his chronicle, with further additions. But

weighing on the other side, that my course packthred could not haue
beene sutablie knit with his fine silke, and what a disgrace it were,
bungerlie to botch vp a rich garment, by clouting it with patches of
sundrie colours, I was forthwith reclaimed from my former resolution,
reckoning it for better, that my pen should walke in such wise in that
Lect. XII. STANIIIURST 541

craggie and balkish waie, as the truth of the matter being forprised, I
would neither openlie borrow, nor priuilie imbezell aught to anie great
purpose from his historic But as I was hammering that worke by
stealths on the anuill, I was giuen to vnderstand by some of mine
acquaintance, that others had brought our raw historie to that ripe-
nesse, as my paine therein would seeme but needlesse. Wherevpon
being willing to be eased of the burden, and loath also in lurching wise
to forstall any man his trauell, I was contented to leue them thumping
in the forge, and quietlie to repaire to mine vsuall and pristinat studies,
taking it not to stand with good maners, like a flittering flie to fall in
an other man his dish. Howbeit the little paine I tooke therein was
not so secretlie mewed within my closet, but it slipt out at one chinke
or other, and romed so farre abroad, as it was whispered in their eares
who before were in the historie busied. The gentlemen concerning a
greater opinion of me than I was well able to vphold, dealt verie effec-
tuallie with me, that as well at their instance, as for the affection I bare
my natiue countrie, I would put mine helping hand to the building
and perfecting of so commendable a worke. Hauing breathed for a
few daies on this motion, albeit I knew that my worke was plumed
with downe, and at that time was not sufficientlie feathered to flie yet :

I was by them weied not to beare my selfe coy, by giuing my entier

friends in so reasonable a request a squemish repulse. Wherefore, my
singular good lord, hereis laid downe to your lordship his view a briefe
discourse, with a iagged historie of a ragged wealepublike. Yet as
naked as at the first blush it seemeth, if it shall stand with your
honor his pleasure (whom I take to be an expert lapidarie) at. vacant
houres to insearch it, you shall find therein stones of such estimation,
as are worth to be coucht in rich and pretious collars. And in especiall
your lordship, aboue all others, in that you haue the charge of that
countrie, maie here be schooled, by a right line to leuell your
gouernement. For in perusing this historie, you shall find vice
punished, vertue rewarded, rebellion suppressed, loialtie exalted,
haughtinesse disliked, courtesie beloued, briberie detested, iustice im-
braced, polling officers to their perpetuall shame reprooued, and
vpright gouernours to their eternall fame extolled. And trulie to
my thinking such magistrats as meane to have a vigilant eie to their
charge, cannot bestow their time better, than when they sequester
themselues from the affaires of the wealepublike, to recreat and quicken
their spirits by reading the chronicles that decipher the gouernement of
a wealepublike. For as it is no small commendation for one to beare
the dooings of manie, so it breedeth great admiration, generallie to haue
542 STANIHURST Lect. XII.

all those qualities in one man harboured, for whiche particularlie

diuerse are eternised. And who so willbe addicted to the reading of
histories, shall readilie find diuerse euentsworthie to be remembered,
and sundrie sound examples be followed. Vpon which ground
dailie to
the learned haue, not without cause, adiudged an historie to be the
marrow of reason, the creame of experience, the sap of wisdome, the
pith of iudgement, the librarie of knowledge, the kernell of policie,
the vnfoldresse of treacherie, the kalender of time, the lanterne of
truth, the life of memorie, the doctresse of behauiour, the register of
antiquitie, the trumpet of chiualrie. And that our Irish historie being
diligentlie heeded, yeeldeth all these commodities, I trust the indifferent
reader, vpon the vntwining thereof, will not denie. But if anie man
his stomach shall be found so tenderlie niced, or so deintilie spiced, as
that he maie not, forsooth, digest the grosse drafFe of so base a countrie,
I doubt not but your lordship, who is thoroughlie acquainted with the
woorthinesse of the Hand, will be soone persuaded to leaue such quaint
and licourous repastours, to feed on their costlie and delicate wood-
cocks, and willinglie to accept the louing present of your heartie wel-
willer. The gift is small, the giuer his good will is great I stand in :

good hope, that the greatnesse of the one will counterpoise the smal-
nesse of the other. Wherefore that I maie the sooner vnbroid the
pelfish trash that is wrapt within this treatise, I shalle craue your
lordship to lend me either your ears in hearing, or your eies in
reading the tenor of the discourse following.

I add the following passages from pp. 6, 7, for the sake of

the odd speculations on language. It is noticeable that among
the words mentioned by Stanihurst, near the end of the extract,
as having been borrowed by the Irish from the English, are
coat and gown. These are two of the words cited by Davies as
sufficient proof to ' convict' the Englishman ' of belonging to a
race that partakes largely of Celtic blood.' I have no doubt
that Davies is an abler philologist than Stanihurst but Stani- ;

hurst is good evidence to show that these words were not

claimed as Celtic in Celtic Ireland itself, three hundred years

aduouched, aswell in some of the Irish pamphlets

I find it solemnlie
as in Girald. Camb. that Gathelus or Gaidelus, & after him Simon
Brecke, deuised the Irish language out of all other toongs then extant
 ;

Lect. XII. STANIHURST 543

in the world. And thereof (saith Cambrensis) it is called Gaidelach,

partlie of Gaidelus the first founder, and it is com-
partlie for that
pounded of all languages. But considering the course of interchanging
and blending of speeches togither, not by inuention of art, but by vse
of talke, I am rather led to beleeue (seeing Ireland was inhabited
within one yeare after the diuision of toongs) that Bastolenus, a branch
of Japhet, who first seized vpon Ireland, brought thither the same kind
of speech, some of the 72 that to this familie befell at the desolation of
Babell. Vnto whom succeeded the Scithians, Grecians, Egyptians,
Spaniards, Danes, of all which the toong must needs have borowed

part, but especiallie reteining the steps of Spanish then spoken in

Granado, as from their mightiest ancestors. Since then toHenrie
Fitzempresse the conqueror no such inuasion happened them, as
whereby they might be driuen to infect their natiue language, vntouched
in manner for the space of seuenteene hundred yeares after the arriuall
of Iberius. It seemeth to borrow of the Spanish the common phrase,
Commestato, that is, How doo you ? or how fareth it with you ? It
fetchetch sundrie words from the Latine, as arget of Argentum, monie
salle of seel, salt cappoulle of Caballus, a plough horse, or (according
;

vnto the old English terme) a caball or caple birreat of the old
:

motheaten Latine word Birretum, a bonnet. The toong is sharpe and

sententious, & offereth great occasion to quicke apophthegms and
proper allusions. Wherefore their common iesters and rimers, whom
they terme Bards, are said to delight passinglie these that conceiue the
grace and propertie of the toong. But the true Irish indeed differeth
so much from that they commonlie speake, that scarse one in fiue
hundred can either read, write, or vnderstand it. Therefore it is

preserued among certeine of their poets and antiquaries. And in verie

deed the language carrieth such difhcultie with it, what for the strange-
nesse of the phrase, and the curious featnes of the pronuntiation, that a
verie few of the countrie can atteine to the perfection thereof, and much
lesse a forrener or stranger.
A gentleman of mine acquaintance reported, that he did see a woman
in Rome, which was possessed with a babling spirit, that could haue
chatted anie language sauing the Irish and that it was so difficult, as
;

the verie deuell was grauelled therewith. A gentleman that stood by

answered, that he tooke the speech to be so sacred and holie, that no
damned feend had the power to speake it no more than they are able
;

to saie (as the report goeth) the verse of saint John the euangelist, 'Et
verbum caro factum est.' Naie by God his mercie man (quoth the
other) I stand in doubt (I tell you) whether the apostles in their
 ;

544 STANIHUIiST Lect. XII.

copious mart of languages at Jerusalem could haue spoken Irish, if

they were apposed whereat the companie heartilie laughed. As fluent
:

as the Irish toong is, yet it lacketh diuerse words, and borroweth them
verbatim of the English. As there is no vulgar Irish word (vnlesse
there be some od terme that lurketh in anie obscure shrowds or other
of their storehouse) for a cote, a gowne, a dublet, an hat, a drinking
cup but onelie they vse the same words with a little inflexion. They
:

vse also the contracted English phrase, God morrow, that is to saie,
God giue you a good morning.
The space I have devoted to Starrihurst may seem out of
proportion to his merits but I have dwelt upon him as perhaps
;

the most characteristic specimen of the very numerous, though

short-lived, class to which he belongs a class which has —
exercised a more important and, I must add, in the end bene-
ficial, influence on the English language than appears to have
been generally allowed. The straining after effect, which is so
visible in these writers, led them to employ the widest voca-
bulary within their reach, and to experiment upon all possible

combinations of words. Their extravagances were soon made

ridiculous by the purer style of the generation of authors which
immediately followed them, and while they were, but for a very
brief period, dangerous by the force of their example, their
affluenceand variety of diction long served as a repository of
verbal wealth, which succeeding literature has largely drawn
upon.
I have spoken of the literary and philological affectation of
Stanihurst's time, as having assumed its most elegant form in
the works of Lillie, the Euphuist. Though the quality of style
called Euphuism has more or less prevailed in all later periods
of English literature, the name which designates it had become
almost obsolete and forgotten, until Scott revived it in his
character of Sir Piercie Shafton. The word is taken from
Euphues,* the name of the hero of a tale by John Lillie, the
part of which 'is entitled Euphues, the anatomie of Wit
first

* The Greek ivd>ur]S means well-grown, symmetrical ; also clever, witty, and this
is the sense in which Lillie applies it to his hero.
Lect. XII. EUPHUISM 545

the second, Euphues and his England. It consists of the his-

tory and correspondence of a young Athenian, who, after
spending some time in Italy, visits England, in the year 1579;
and as this was the period when the author flourished, it was,
of course, a story of the time of its appearance. The plot is a
mere thread an endless multitude of what were esteemed
for
fine sayings to be strung upon, or, as Lillie himself expresses
it,
c
fine phrases, smooth quips, merry taunts, jesting without
meane and mirth without measure.' The formal characteristics
of Euphuism are alliteration and verbal antithesis. Its rhe-

torical and intellectual traits will be better understood by an

example, than by a critical analysis. An extract from the
e
dedication of the second edition to the author's Very good
friends, the Gentlemen Scholers of Oxford,' may serve as a spe-
cimen. It is as follows :
—
There is no privilege that needeth a pardon, neither is there any
remission to be asked, where a co??zmission is granted. I speake this,
Gentlemen, not ta» excuse the offence which is taken, but to offer a
defence where I was mistaken. A cleare conscience is a sure card, truth
hath the />rerogatiue to speake with ^lainnesse, and the modesty to heare
with patience. It was reported of some, and beleueed of many, that in
the education of Ephcebns, where mention is made of Uniuersities, that
Oxford was to much either defaced or defamed. I know not what the
enuious have picked out by malice, or the curious by wit, or the guilty
by their own but this I say, that I was as farre from
galled consciences ;

thinking ill them from iudging well. But if I should goe about
as I find
to make amends, I were then faulty in somewhat amisse, and should shew
my Apelles Prentice, who coueting to ??iend the nose warred
selfe like
the ?zeck and not vnlike the foolish Dier, who neuer thought his cloth
;

Mack vntil it was turned. If any fault be committed, impute it to

Euphues who knew you not, not to Lylie who hates you not. Yet I may
of all the rest most condemne Oxford of vnkindnesse, of vice I cannot,
who seemed to weane me before she brought me forth, and to giue me
bones to gnaw before I could get the teat to suck. Wherein she played
the nice mother, in sending me into the Country to nurse, where I tyred
at a dry breast three yeeres, and was at the last enforced to weane my
selfe. But it was destiny, for if I had not bin gathered from the tree
N N
546 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY Lect. XII.

in the bud, I should being blowne haue proued a blast and as good it
:

is to be an addle Egge, as an idle bird.

Euphues at his arriuall I am assured will view Oxford, where he
will either recant his sayings, or renue his complaints he is now on
:

the seas and how he hath beene tossed I know not

; but whereas I
:

thought to receiue him at Doner, I must meet him at Hampton.

Nothing can hinder his comming but death, neither anything hasten
his departure but vnkindnesse.
Concerning my selfe, I haue alwayes thought so reuerently of
Oxford, of the Schollers, and of their manner, that I seemed to-be
rather an Idolater than a blasphemer. They that inuented this toy
were vnwise, and they that reported it, vnkind, and yet none of them
can proue me vnhonest. But suppose I glaunced at some abuses did ;

not Iupiters egge bring forth as well Helen a light huswife in earth
as Castor a bright starre in heauen? The Estrich that taketh the
greatest pride in her feathers, picked some blast no countenance but
:

hath some blemish and shall Oxford then be blameless ? I wish it

;

were so, but I cannot think it is so. But as it is, it may be better :

and were it badder, it is not the worst. I thinke there are few Vni-
uersities that haue lesse faults than Oxford, many that haue more, none
but haue some. But I commit my cause to the consciences of those
that either know what I am, or can guesse what I should be : the one
will answer themselues in construing friendly, the other if I knew them,
I -would satisfie reasonably.
Thus loth to incur the suspicion of vnkindnesse in not telling my
mind, and not willing to make any excuse where there needs no
amends, I can neither craue pardon, lest I should confesse a fault, nor
conceale my meaning, lest I should be thought a foole. And so I end
yours assured to use.

The success of Euphues was very great. The work was

lono* a vade-mecum with the fashionable world, and considered

a model of elegance in writing and the highest of authorities in

all matters of courtly and polished speech. It contains, with all

its affectations, a great multitude of acute observations, and just

and even profound thoughts; and it was these striking qualities,

not less than the tinsel of its style, which commended it to the

practicalgood sense of contemporary England.

The style of Sir Philip Sidney, one of the brightest ornaments
of the elegant prose literature of his day, is not a little affected
 ;

Lect. XII. SYLVESTER 547

by the prevalent taste for the conceits of euphuism, though he

introduces them much less frequently than Lillie ; for they form
the staple of Lillie's diction, while they are but occasional
blemishes in that of Sidney. Sidney is, however, much less

dexterous and graceful in the use of alliteration, consonance,

and antithesis, than the great improver, if not the inventor, of
this artificial style. With Sir Philip, they are so laboured and
unnatural, as almost always to produce an appearance of clumsi-
ness and want of skill, rather than of mastery, in a trifling art
while from the pen of Lillie they flow as easily as if he could
speak no other dialect.
Sidney's tedious romance, the Arcadia, much admired when
first published, is now deservedly almost forgotten ; but his in-
genious and eloquent Defence of Poesy will always maintain a
high place in the assthetical literature of England. It is not
only an earnest and persuasive argument, but and is, in style
diction, the best secular prose yet written in England, and
indeed the earliest specimen of real critical talent in the lite-
rature.
The poems of Sidney, though relatively less remarkable than
the Defence of Poesy, and more frequently disfigured by trivial
and elegance
conceits, are, nevertheless, conspicuous for propriety
of language, and ease and grace of versification. Some of them
are in classic metres, but the best perhaps are those fashioned
after Italian models, and especially the sonnets. But the re-
semblance of these poems to those whose versification and stanza
they imitate is, as in the case of Surrey, formal merely; for
they are English, not Italian, in thought, and their diction has
borrowed nothing from the language of Italy.
The favour of the English public was next divided between
two authors, one of whom is now almost wholly forgotten, and
the other is, after atemporary oblivion, now again reviving and
recovering his just position as one of the greatest of English
poets. I refer to Sylvester, the translator of the works of Du
Bartas, a contemporary French writer, and to Spenser, the
N N 2
548 SPENSER Lect. XII.

author of the Faery Queene, the Shepherd's Calendar, and other

minor works.
The principal poem of Du Bartas, which is a history of the
Creation, was written in a sufficiently inflated style but this ;

was exaggerated by Sylvester, who added many peculiarities of

his own, such, among others, as compound, or rather agglutinated,
words made up of half a dozen radicals.* Its poetical merit is
slender, but the translation is not without philological interest,
because it contains a considerable number of words and forms,
of which examples are hardly to be met with elsewhere, and
there are passages which serve as commentaries and explanations
of obscure expressions in Shakespeare, and other dramatic
authors of the time. It is, understand how
however, difficult to

an a.ge that produced a Shakespeare could bestow such un-

bounded applause on a Du Bartas and a Sylvester.
Spenser was reproached in his own time with an excess of
archaisms; but the real fault of his diction lies rather in the
use of forms and expressions which had become obsolete because
they deserved to perish, for which no good authority could be
cited, and which were, probably, unauthorized coinages of the
inferior poets from whom Spenser took them, or in many cases
perhaps licenses of his own. In the employment of words of
these classes, he is often far from happy, but in the mastery of
the true English of his time, in acute sensibility of ear and
exquisite skill in the musical arrangement of words, he has no
superior in the whole compass of English literature.
It does notcome within my plan to criticise the allegory of
the Faery Queene, and indeed he must be a superstitious critic,
whom the defects of the plot, and its allegorical character, deter
from enjoying the endless beauties of detail with which this
most charming poem overflows.
The most striking peculiarity of Spenser's diction is analogous
to that which I have before mentioned as one of Chaucer's
greatest merits —
a rare felicity in verbal combinations and in —
* See First Series, Lecture is. p. 204.
 ;

Lect. xii. bacon's essays 549

Spenser it chiefly consists in a very nice sense of congruity in

the choice and application of epithets. His adjectives not only
qualify the noun, but they are so adapted to it, that they
heighten or intensify its appropriate meaning ; and they are
often used with a reference to the radical sense of the noun,
which shows that Spenser knew how to press even etymology
into use as a means of the embellishment of poetical diction.
The Faery Queene is at present more studied, I believe, than
it was a century since but the Shepherd's Calendar, which is
;

less familiarly known, is full of most exquisite poetry, and the

minor works of Spenser are scarcely less interesting to the

reader of taste, and to the philologist, than his great allegorical
epic.
Most of the works of Lord Bacon belong to the following
century, and therefore do not come within the period to which
our inquiries are limited but Bacon's most popular and most
;

immediately influential production, his Essays, appeared in

1596, and there is scarcely a volume in the whole prose litera-
ture of England, which is, more emphatically, at once a product
of the English intellect, and an agency in the history of English
practical ethics. The style of the Essays is very attractive,
though never pedantically exact, and often even negligent, in
its observance of the rules of grammatical concord and regimen

but though many Latinized words are introduced, even its

solecisms are English, and it is, in all probability, a fair picture
of the language used at that time by men of the highest culture,
in the conversational discussion of questions of practical philo-
sophy, or what the Grermans call ivorld-wisdom. It is didactic
in character, and though it offered nothing new to the English
heart, it revealed much to the English consciousness, of that
day. It is a formulating of the living ethics and social opinions
of the cultivated Briton of Elizabeth's age, a distinct expression
of sentiments and of principles which the nation had been
trained to act upon, though most often no doubt unconsciously
and its immediate success was owing: to its immediate and
550 ENGLISH GRAMMARS Lect. XIL

universal recognition as an embodiment of the national law of

life, which all had felt, but none had yet presented to the mind
in a recorded objective form.
We have now followed the great current of the English
speech to near the point where we propose to terminate our
investigations ; but there are several tributaries and sources of
itsphilological improvement, which require a somewhat detailed
examination before our survey can be said to be approximately
complete.
The revival of the study of classical literature, after a short
suspension, and the impulse which had been given to modern
philology by the publication of Palsgrave's French Grammar,
led to the production of a considerable number of English
grammars. These have now become exceedingly rare, and are
almost forgotten. So far as I can judge from the few I have
seen, the writers, misled by their partiality for the ancient
languages and literature, occupied themselves less with inquiry
into the facts and principles of English philology, than with
speculations upon improvements which might be introduced
into the syntax and orthography of their native speech. They
are seldom to be relied upon as evidence with regard to the
actual practice of the best native writers, and still less, as to the
true theory of the English tongue. The great authors of the
fourteenth and earlier centuries were Anglo-Saxon
little studied,

was and the cognate languages of Germany and the

forgotten,,
North were almost unknown. Hence these treatises, instead of
being, as all grammars ought to be, chiefly historical, are specu-
lative, and designed to effect a reform or re-construction of the

language. Even Ben Jonson's grammar which is known to —

us only in a sketch or abridgment, the manuscript of the com-
plete work having been destroyed by fire though a learned—
and able production, is, in many particulars, not sustained by
the practice of good authors or even by his own.*
In one respect, however, these old grammars are interesting,

* See First Series, Lecture v. p. 108.

Lect. XII. CRITICISM AND THEORY 551

if not harmonious and intelligible enough to be really instruc-

tive. I refer to their theories of orthography and pronunciation,
which are curious and often ingenious. But phonology was not
then known as a science, the radical sounds had not yet been
analyzed, and the writers were generally ignorant of the orthoepy
of the Grothic languages. Besides this, the pronunciation of
English was strangely discordant in different shires, and it is

impossible to reconcile these orthoepists with each other or with

themselves.*
Many eminent native scholars, such for example as Ascham,
systematically decried the English language as a barbarous
jargon incapable of polish or refinement, and unfit to be the
vehicle of the inspirations of poetry, or of elegant literature in
prose. Sidney, much to his honour, defends the capacities of
the English tongue for the highest culture, and it is a striking
proof of his philological insight, that he was among the first of
modern scholars to perceive the advantage of an uninflected
structure, and of a syntax founded directly on the logical, not
the formal, relation of words.f
Though Ascham was theoretically opposed to the employment
of English for literary purposes, or even in discussing the simple
and popular subject of archery, yet he showed no inconsiderable
power in the use of it, and his Schoolmaster, as well as his other
English writings, were highly useful in his time, and were, in
all respects, important contributions to the literature of that age.
Artistic theory and criticism have been plants of slow growth
in English literature. As I have said in relation to morals, the
Englishman, in every branch of mental as well as of physical
effort, inclines to action rather than to speculation. He trusts
to his instincts and his common sense to guide him, and leaves
it to others to philosophise upon the organic principles which

* See First Series, Lecture, xxii.

f For the opinions of Ascham on the English language, and for those of
other scholars of his and the immediately preceding centuries, see First Series,
Lecture xxi. pp. 444, 445 ; for those of Sidney, see same volume, Lecture iv.
p. 88.
552 CRITICISM AND THEORY Lect. XII.

have determined the shape and character of his productions.

The age of Elizabeth, however, gave birth to some works in
critical and artistical theory. One of the most conspicuous of
these is Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie, first published in
1589. It is, as the author expresses it, 'Contriued into three
Bookes : The first of Poets and Poesie, the second of Propor-
tion, the third of Ornament.' This treatise shows some learning
and some observation, but no very accurate critical appreciation
of the authors it attempts to characterise. As to the more con-
spicuous ornaments of old English literature, it is true, posterity
has confirmed many of Puttenham's judgments, at least as to
the relative rank of the authors, though not always for his
reasons. But, on the other hand, he speaks of the dull rhyming
chronicler, Harding, as ' a Poet Epick or Historicall,' who
1
handled himselfe well according to the time and maner of
his subiect;' he extravagantly commends many of his now
forgotten contemporaries, and concludes his meagre list of those
'who in any age haue bene the most commended writers in
oure English Poesie,' with this ' censure upon Queen Elizabeth
'

'But last in and first in degree is the Queene, our

recitall
soueraigne Lady, whose learned, delicate, noble Muse, easily
surmounteth all the rest that haue writte before her time or
since, for sence, sweetnesse and subtillitie, be it in Ode, Elegie,
Epigram, or any other kinde of poeme, Heroick or Lyricke,
wherein it shall please her Maiestie to employ her penne, euen
by as much oddes as her owne excellent estate and degree
exceedeth all the rest of her most humble vassalls.'
The most valuable part of this work is that which treats of
the formal requisites of poetry, and especially of versification,
because it throws a good deal of light on the pronunciation of
that age — a subject respecting which we are far from being
well informed.When, however, we compare these chapters of
Puttenham with what had long before been accomplished in
the Eomance languages in the same branch of criticism for —
example, with the Provencal Flors del Gay Saber, estier dichas
Lect. XII. TRANSLATIONS 553

Las Leys d' Amors, of the fourteenth century, published by

Gratien Arnoult — we must admit that the technicalities of the
poetic art, if instinctively practised, had been as yet but imper-
fectly discussed in England.
The Reformation, as has been before observed, had occasioned
the translation of man}^ moral and religious works from the
Latin, and thereby enriched the theological dialect. Some
essays in the translation of secular Latin and Greek authors
were made in the early part of the sixteenth century but the ;

reaction against classical learning, which succeeded to the im-

pulse given to it by the Reformation, checked this branch of
literary effort, and not many further attempts were made in it
until the study of Greek and Latin came again into vogue after
the accession of Elizabeth. Versions of ancient authors, Latin
especially, were now made in great numbers, and there are few
writers of eminence in the literature of Rome, not many in that
of Greece, who did not receive an English dress.
Notwithstanding all that has been said, by Johnson and

others,upon the influence of translation in corrupting language,

I believe there is no one source of improvement to which
English is so much indebted, as to the versions of classical
authors which were executed between the middle of the six-
teenth century and the death of Elizabeth. English, though
much enriched, was still wanting in copiousness, and there
existed no such acquaintance with Anglo-Saxon that any of its
defects could be supplied from that source. Hence Latin and
French were the only fountains from which scholars could draw,
and translations from those languages not only introduced new
words, but what was scarcely less important, new combinations
of words for expressing complex ideas.
They performed still another very signal service, which has
been almost wholly overlooked by writers who have treated of
the philological history of England. The variety of subjects
discussed, and of styles employed by the classical writers,
obliged the translators, not or y to borrow or to coin new words,
]
554 TRANSLATIONS Lect. XII.

where no native terms existed for the expression of the thoughts

they sought to render, but to seek, in English literature new
and old, inpopular speech, and in the nomenclature of the
liberaland the mechanical arts, domestic equivalents for a vast
multitude of words, whose places could not be supplied by the
transference of Latin terms, because these would have been
unintelligible. Hence these translations did not merely enrich
the language by an infusion of new philological elements, but
they gathered up, recorded, and thus preserved for future study
and use, the whole extent of the vocabulary then known to the
English nation. This process is particularly observable in the
old versions of the more encyclopedic authors, such as Plutarch's
Lives and his Morals. The Lives were translated by North,
about the middle of Elizabeth's reign, from the admirable
French version of Amyot, and though occasional errors in
rendering were committed by both Amyot and North, the
style of Plutarch is upon the whole more faithfully repre-
sented by this old and quaint version than by any of the
later attempts.
Pliny's Natural History and Plutarch's Morals came later.

They, as well as Livy and some other voluminous Latin works,

were translated by Philemon Holland, at about the close of
Elizabeth's reign, and they constitute an inexhaustible mine
of linguistic wealth. Pliny's Natural History was designed as
a complete treatise upon all the branches of material knowledge
known to the ancient world. The learning of the Greeks and
Eomans on these subjects was very little inferior to that of
England in Elizabeth's time, and few branches of science, or of
practical art, were at all cultivated at that period, which are
not represented and fully discussed by Pliny. Hence the trans-
lation of the Natural History required the employment of the
entire English nomenclature of physical learning and of mecha-
nical craft. Holland's version exhausts the technical vocabulary
of his age, thus gathering, in a single volume, the whole of the
material side of the English language, and constituting the
 —

Lect. XII. TRANSLATIONS 555

most valuable and comprehensive source of information upon

old English names of processes, of things, and of the sensuous
properties of things, which exists in a collected form.
The most celebrated translators of Latin verse in Elizabeth's
time were Phaer or Phaier, and Grolding. The former f tra-
duced,' as some old writers have it, the first nine books of
Virgil's JEneid, and the latter, with more ability, translated
Ovid's Metamorphoses and many other Latin works, in prose as
well as verse. Of Master Phaer, I suppose my readers will
not care to know more, after perusing Virgil's account of the
building of Carthage by the Moors under Queen Dido, as
Englished by him:

The Moores with courage went to worke,

some vnder burdens grones :

Some at the wals and towrs with hands

were tumbling vp the stones.
Some measurd out a place to build
their mansion house within :

Some lawes and officers to make

in parlment did begin.
An other had an hauen cast,
and deepe they trench the ground,
Some other for the games and plaies
a statelie place had found.
And pillers great they cut for kings,
to garnish foorth their wals,
And like as bees among the flours,
when fresh the summer fals,
In shine of sunne applie their worke,
when growne is vp their yoong :

Or when their hiues they gin to stop,

and honie sweet is sproong,
That all their caues and cellars close
with dulcet liquor fils,
Some doo outlade, some other bring
the stufFe with readie wils.
Sometime they ioine, and all at once
doo from their mangers fet
556 TRANSLATIONS Lect. XII.

The slothful drones, that would consume,

and nought would doo to get.
The worke it heats, the honie smels,
of flours and thime ywet, &c. &c.

Grolding's Ovid is a spirited and creditable work, and at that

date, 1567, the condition of the language would hardly have
admitted of a better. Warton bestows well-merited praise on
his version of the transformation of Athamas and Ino in the
fourth book of the Metamorphoses, and there are many other
passages not inferior in excellence.
I cannot say so much in favour of Grolding's Epistle or Dedi-
cation—a summary, or rhymed table of contents, of his
author — or of his Preface to the Reader, supposed by Warton
to have been designed for the comfort of the e
weaker Puritans,'
or f
simple sort,' as Golding calls them, who might be scandal-
ised at the heathen profanity and idolatry of Ovid. If the
Puritans of that day thought Ovid forbidden fruit, and were
6 >
simple enough to be converted to a belief in the lawfulness of
reading him by no better arguments than Grolding's, they must
have been '
weak indeed
' and I suspect stout John Knox
;
—
Grolding's contemporary, and perhaps his countryman* would —
have required stronger logic to persuade him of the innocence
of anything he held to be wrong.
During the period we are considering, the English language
received numerous and important accessions from travel and
commerce, which were enlarging with the rapid progress of
geographical discovery. Many descriptive accounts of foreign
countries were printed, and the public curiosity welcomed with
avidity narratives of adventure and observation in distant lands.
Foreigners from remote nations visited England, new wares
were introduced, the tropical world had been recently opened

* I do not know upon how good authority "Warton pronounces Golding to have
been a native of London. The epistle is dated at Earwieke,' and in my copy,
'

London, 1595, a manuscript note, in an old hand, states that Golding was a '

Scot.'
Lect. XII. TRAVEL AND COMMERCE 557

to Christian observation, and new stores of natural knowledge

flowed in from regions which had been unknown to Europe
from the commencement of the historical era.

The Fardle of Facions, a description of the manners and

customs of the different nations of the world, translated from
the Latin and printed about the year 1550, is one of the earliest

and most curious books of this class, and, for its extent, philo-
logically one of the most interesting. It was soon succeeded by

more voluminous works in the same department, among which

the most valuable are, the Decades of Peter Martyr, the travels
of Vertomannus in the East, and some other works which were
reprinted about fifty years ago in a quarto volume intended as
a supplement to Hakluyt. But these are all surpassed in im-
portance by Hakluyt's collection of voyages and travels, first

published in 1589, which not only exhibits a great range of

vocabulary, but contains many narratives of no small degree of
literary merit.
It is perhaps to the excited curiosity produced by these works
that we are to ascribe, in part at least, the progress which the
study of the Oriental languages, the Arabic especially, made in
England in the sixteenth century. The knowledge of Arabic pro-
moted that of the cognate Hebrew, and the effects of this learn-

ing are visible in the revision of the English Scriptures by the

by King James, several of whom possessed
translators appointed
an amount of Oriental learning rare in later ages of English
literary history.
There are also certain other branches of knowledge, or, at

least, of study, which, though specialities, nevertheless exerted

a considerable influence upon the general language both of
common life and of books. I refer to the nomenclature of
natural science, of alchemy, of astrology, and of the professions
of medicine and the law. These, indeed, are not generally
regarded as embraced in the term literature, but abundant
traces of them are found in literature ; for it has been seriously
argued, from Shakespeare's familiarity with legal terms, that
558 SCIENTIFIC STUDIES Lect. XII.

he must have been an attorney's clerk, at the least, if not a

practising lawyer, just as similar evidence has been cited to
prove that he was a good classical scholar and an experienced
navigator, and, as it might be, to show that he was a medical

man, because he makes one of his characters say that ' parmacity
was good for an inward bruise.'
In the sixteenth century speculation was rife in all the
pursuits I have mentioned and by virtue of that common
;

bond which has long been recognised as existing between all

knowledges, and more especially in consequence of the change-
fulness of this restless modern life of ours, there is a perpetual
intermingling and amalgamation of all classes, professions, and
dialects. The result is that the technical words of every science,
every art, are continually wandering out from the laboratory
and the workshop, and incorporating themselves into the com-
mon speech of the ignorant as well as of the learned and there ;

is scarcely a human pursuit from which the every-day language

of England has not borrowed, appropriated, and generalised

more or fewer terms of art.
Although, as I have often remarked, the dialect of theology
was a special nomenclature, yet the fact, that theology was
studied as a branch of general education, made its dialect more
familiar than that of any other single art or science, and
through the sixteenth century it maintained its relative impor-
tance as an elevating, refining, and at the same time enriching,
and essentially progressive influence. Besides a vast mass of
strictly professional works in the department of theology, the
last half of the sixteenth century produced numerous editions
and revisals of the English Scriptures, the universal circulation
of which influenced the speech of England in a variety of ways,
but most especially in counteracting the tendency of secular
literature to the adoption of a Latinised phraseology and syntax;
for all the Protestant English versions of the Bible are ulti-
mately founded on Wycliffe, and are all remarkable for the
purity of their Anglo-Saxon diction.
 '

Lect. XII. THEOLOGY 559

Next in importance to the translations of the Bible as a con-

servative influence in English philology, we must rank the
liturgy of the Anglican church, which, in its various forms,
belongs to the reign of Edward VI. and Elizabeth. The diction
of this ritual is as conspicuous for the Anglo-Saxon character of
the style as the English Bibles, and the daily repetition of por-
tions of its contents, by almost the whole population of England,
could not but have had a powerful effect in fashioning the speech,

and tincturing the written dialect, of the English people.

The diction of theology., perhaps I should say of English
prose, reached its highest point of excellence in the works of
Hooker, the first four books of whose Ecclesiastical Polity were
printed in 1594, the fifth in 1597. The style of Hooker is

sometimes unnecessarily involved and obscure, and he is fond of

Latinisms, both in words and in the arrangement of his periods.
One the inversion by which the participle
of the latter class is

in the compound and the adjective, precede the nomina-

tenses,

tive, as, for example Brought already we are even to that

:
6

estate which Gregorie Nazianzen mournefullie describeth;'

c
able we are not to deny, but that we have deserved the hatred
of the heathen; (
Dangerous it were for the feeble braine of man
to wade most High.' This is the
farre into the doings of the
usual Latin order of arrangement, and it was a favorite construc-
tion with all the translators of the period we are considerino*.
Hooker is perhaps the first English prose writer who exhibits
philosophical precision and uniformity in the use of words, and
this is the peculiarity of his style which gives it its greatest
philological value. This nicety of discrimination he extends
even to particles, a remarkable instance of which is the distinc-
tion between sithand sithence, or since, the former being always
an argumentative word, the latter simply narrative,
illative or

indicating time after. I cannot say that this distinction was

invented by Hooker, but it certainly is not much older than his
time, though a tendency towards it begins to be observable soon
after the middle of the sixteenth century. Hooker is, so far as
560 HOOKEK Lect. XII.

I know, the only important English author who constantly

observes this very important logical difference, though, indeed,
it is not often overlooked by his contemporaries, Spenser and
Sylvester. Hooker's periods are sometimes cumbrous and in-
volved, partly from the influence of his devotion to Latin theo-
logical literature, and partly from his desire to accompany his

general propositions with the conditions, qualifications, and

limitations belonging to them but he has many passages
; of the
most admirable rhetorical beauty, and of a musical flow not less

melodious than that of the periods of Milton.

I have observed that no great English writer has ever been
wholly able to suppress the quality of humour. Hooker would
be claimed as an exception, and in truth he is one of the gravest
of authors, but one cannot but suspect that a smile is lurking
under some of the illustrations which accompany his most serious
arguments. Thus, having declared that Grod works nothing
without cause, he instances the creation of woman, which he
intimates was an afterthought, and declares that Grod's ' will had
never inclined '
to perform it,
(
but that he saw it could not be
wel, if she were not created.' In this, he seems to have meant
a half jocose expression of the same sentiments to which John
Knox had, not many years before, given such passionate utter-
rance in his ungenerous, but very eloquent First Blast of the
Trumpet against the monstrous Eegiment of Women.
Hooker's works are a chain from which it is hard to detach a
link, without a fracture. The is one of
continuity of his style
its merits, and no very good idea of his manner is to be gained
from single paragraphs. There are two or three regular stock
quotations from Hooker, which are always produced as samples,
when his literary merits are under discussion, and they are
therefore somewhat familiar to the c
reading public
;
' but I am
afraid there are many D.D.s, whose only knowledge of this
great writer is derived from those passages. I can afford space

only for the second chapter of the first book of the ' Ecclesiasticall
Politie,' which I print from the rare edition of 1594.
Lect. XII. HOOKER 561

All things that are haue some operation not violent or casuall.
Neither doth any thing euer begin to exercise the same without some
foreconceaued ende for which it worketh. x\nd the ende which it
worketh for is not obteined, vnlesse the worke be also fit to obteine it
by. For vnto euery ende euery operation will not serue. That which
doth assigne vnto each thing the kinde, that which doth moderate the
force and power, that which doth appoint the forme and measure of
working, the same we tearme a Lawe. So that no certaine end could
euer be attained, vnlesse the actions whereby it is attained were regular,
that is to say, made suteable fit and correspondent vnto their end, by
some Canon rule or lawe. Which thing doth first take place in the
workes euen of God himselfe. All things therefore do worke after a
sort according to lawe :all other things according to a lawe, whereof

some superiour, vnto whome they are subiect, is author ; only the
workes and operations of God haue him both for their worker, and
for the lawe whereby they are wrought. The being of God is a kinde
of lawe to his working :for that perfection which God is, geueth
perfection to that he doth. Those naturall, necessary, and internal
operations of God, the generation of the Sonne, the proceeding of the
Spirit, are without the compasse of my present intent : which is to
touch only such operations as haue their beginning and being by a
voluntarie purpose, wherewith God hath eternally decreed when and
howe they should be. Which eternall decree is that wee tearme an
eternall lawe. Dangerous it were for the feeble braine of man to wade
farre into the doings of the most High, whome although to knowe be
life, and ioy to make mention of his name : yet our soundest know-
ledge is to know that we know him not as in deed he is, neither can
know him and our safest eloquence concerning him is our silence,
:

when we confesse without confession that his glory is inexplicable, his

greatnes aboue our capacitie and reach. He is aboue, and we vpon
earth, therefore it behoueth our wordes to be warie and fewe. Our
God is one, or rather verie onenesse, and meere vnitie, hauing nothing
but it selfe in it selfe, and not consisting (as all things do besides God)
of many things. In which essential vnitie of God a Trinitie personall
neuerthelesse subsisteth after a maner far exceeding the possibilitie
of man's conceipt. The works which outwardly are of God, they are
in such sort of him being one, that each person hath in them somewhat
peculiar and proper. For being three, and they all subsisting in the
essence of one deitie ; from the Father, by the Sonne, through the
Spirit all things are. That which the Sonne doth heare of the Father,
and which the Spirit doth receiue of the Father & the Sonne, the same
o o
562 HOOKER Lect. XII.

we haue at the hads of the Spirit as being the last, and therfore
the neerest vnto vs in order, although in power the same with the
second and the first. The wise and learned among the verie Hea-
thens themselues, haue all acknowledged some first cause, whereupon
originallie the being of all things dependeth. Neither haue they
otherwise spoken of that cause, then as an Agent, which knowing
ivhat and why it worketh obserueth in working a most exact order
or lawe. Thus much is signified by that which Homer mentioneth,
Aiog FereXeiero IjovXt}. Thus much acknowledged by Mercurius Tris-
megist. tov Ttavra icoafiov e-n-oirjaev 6 Infxiovpyoq ov ytpaiv uXXd Xoyo).
Thus much cofest by Anaxago. and Plato, terming the maker of the
world an Intellectual worker. Finallie the Stoikes, although imagining
the first cause of all things to be fire, held neuerthelesse that the same
fire hauing arte, did olio (Dali'Ceiv etti yeviaei koct^ov. They all confesse
therfore in the working of that first cause, that counsell is vsed, reason
followed, a way obserued, that is to say, constant order and law is kept,
whereof it selfe must needs be author vnto it selfe. Otherwise it
should haue some worthier and higher to direct it, and so could not it
selfe be the first. Being the first, it can haue no other then it selfe to
be the author of that law which it willingly worketh by. God there-
fore is a law both to himselfe, and to all other things besides. To
himselfe he is a law in all those things, whereof our Sauiour speaketh,
saying, My Father ivorketh as yet, so I. God worketh nothing without
cause. All those things which are done by him, haue some ende for
which they are done and the ende for which they are done, is a reason
:

of his will to do them. His will had not inclined to create woman,
but that he saw it could not be wel if she were not created, Non est
bonum, It is not good man should be alone. Therefore let vs make an
helper for him. That and nothing else is done by God, which to leaue
vndone were not so good. If therfore it be demanded, why God
hauing power and habilitie infinite, th' effects notwithstading of that
power are all so limited as we see they are the reason hereof is the
:

end which he hath proposed, and the lawe whereby his wisedome hath
stinted th' effects of his power in such sort, that it doth not worke
infinitely but correspodently vnto that end for which it worketh, euen
al things Y/"7<rrd)c, in most decent and comely sort, all things in measure,
number, and ivaight. The generall end of Gods externall working is
the exercise of his most glorious and most abundant vertue Which :

abundance doth shew it selfe in varietie, and for that cause this
varietie is oftentimes in Scripture exprest by the name of riches. The
Lord hath made all things for his owne sale. Not that any thing is
Lect. XII. HOOKER 563

made be beneficiall vnto him, but all things for him to shew bene-
to
ficence and grace in them. The particular drift of eueiy acte pro-
ceeding externally from God, we are not able to discerne, and therefore
cannot alwaies giue the proper and certaine reason of his works. How-
beit vndoubtedly a proper and certaine reason there is of euery finite
worke of God, in as much as there is a law imposed vpon it which if ;

there were not, it should be infinite euen as the worker himselfe is.
They erre therefore who thinke that of the will of God to do this or
that, there is no reason besides his will. Many times no reason knowne
to vs; but that there is no reason thereof, I iudge it most vnreasonable
to imagine, in as much as he worketh all things Kara. ri\v (jov\i]v tov
^eXij/jtarog avrov, not only according to his owne will, but the counsell
of his owne will. And whatsoeuer is done with counsell or wise reso-
lution, hath of necessitie some reason why it should be done, albeit
that reason be to vs in some things so secret, that it forceth the wit of
man to stand, as the blessed Apostle himself doth, amazed thereat,
the depth of the riches both of the ivisdome and knoivledge of God, How
vnsearchable are his iudgernents, $-c. That law eternall which God
himself hath made to himselfe, and thereby worketh all things wherof
he is the cause and author, that law in the admirable frame wherof
shineth with most perfect bewtie the countenance of that wisedome
which hath testified concerning her self, The lord p>ossessed me in the
beginning of his way, euen before his works of old, I ivas set vp, §c.
That law which hath bene the patterne to make, and is the card to guide
the world by that law which hath bene of God, and with God euer-
;

lastingly that law the author and obseruer whereof is one only God
:

to be blessed for euer, how should either men or Angels be able per-
fectly to behold? The booke of this law we are neither able nor
worthie to open and looke into. That little thereof which we darkly
apprehend, we admire, the rest with religious ignorance we humbly and
meekly adore. Seeing therfore that according to this law he worketh,
of whom, through whom, and for whom are all things, although there
seeme vnto vs cofusion and disorder in th' affaires of this present
world :Tamen quoniam bonus mundum rector temperat, recte fieri
cuncta ne dubites, Let no ma doubt but that euery thing is well done,
because the world is ruled by so good a guide, as transgresseth not his
owne law, then which nothing can be more absolute, perfect & iust.
The law whereby he worketh, is eternall, and therefore can haue no
shew or cullor of mutabilitie for which cause a part of that law being
:

opened in the promises which God hath made (because his promises are
nothing else' but declarations what God will do for the good of men)
o o 2
564 DRAMATIC DICTION Lect. XII.

touching those promises the Apostle hath witnessed, that God may as
possibly deny himselfe and not be God, as faile to performe them. And
cocerning the counsel of God, he termeth it likewise a thing vnchange-

able, the counsell of God, and that law of God whereof now we speake
being one. Nor is the freedom of the wil of God any whit abated, let
or hindered by meanes of this, because the imposition of this law vp5
himself is his own free and volutary act. This law therfore we may
name eternall, being that order which God before all ages hath set
down ivith himselfe, for himselfe to do all things by.

I have now shown how the vocabularies of many branches of

English literature had been gradually increased in copiousness,
their diction refined and polished, and their grammar simplified
but there is still one department —
and that, considered simply
in its literary aspects, the highest —
in which hitherto compara-
tively little had been accomplished. I mean that modification
of the colloquial language of actual life, which was required to
fit it for employment in the scenic representation of the various
phases and conditions of humanity, as they are conceived and
interpreted by the great masters of the dramatic art.
In popular farces, and in merely occasional theatrical
pieces intended to serve a special temporary purpose, the collo-
quial language of the day may properly be employed but in ;

dramas designed for permanent existence, the diction of the

dialogue must be of a more enduring and less changeable cha-
racter than the speech of the hour, which is always more
coloured by fleeting and superficial influences than is usually
supposed by those who have not made the actual language of
life a study.*

* Every generation, every year almost, has its pet words, applications, forms,
and combinations, originating now in some accidental circumstance, now in some
theory, early association, habit, or caprice of a favourite writer, which, for the
time, constitute unsightly excrescences upon the body of the speech, but finally
drop off and are forgotten. To take single words it is difficult at this moment
:

to find a page in a popular French writer, which does not contain the word
preoccuper, or some of its derivatives. On the other side of the Channel, I
must instance a more unfortunate case. The epithet lovely can fitly be used only
of beings capable of exciting, by their moral and physical perfections, the passion
Lect. XII. DRAMATIC DICTION 565

It is a proof of the acuteness of the English dramatists who

lived a little before,and with, Shakespeare, that they perceived
the necessity of a style somewhat removed from the vernacular
speech of their time but it is also a proof of the weakness of
;

their judgment, that, instead of adopting a phraseology which

was natural, idiomatic, and permanent, without being local or
vulgar, they invented a conventional style of expression, which
not only never was used in real society, but which never could
be, without a violation of the laws both of language and of
thought. The dialect of tragedy is not the style which men on
the stage of life, influenced as they are by temporary and acci-
dental conditions of speech, actually use, but it is the diction
which, according to the permanent and essential genius of the
language, and the supposed moral and intellectual categories of
the personages, constitutes the truest and most precise expres-
sion of the thoughts and purposes which animate them.
Although the phraseology which the earlier English play-
wrights put into the mouths of their personages is in a high
degree unnatural and inappropriate, yet in the wide variety of
their characters, and of the circumstances in which they placed
them, they not unfrequently unwittingly strayed into a fit and
expressive style, and thus there was gradually accumulated a
fragmentary and scattered store of material for a copious and
multifarious dramatic diction.

of love, and, at the same time, of reciprocating it. That only is lovely which is
both loveable and loving. In the affectation and exaggeration which so often
characterizes the phraseology of polite society, this unhappy word was seized
upon and generalized in its application, and it soon became the one epithet of com-
mendation in young ladies' seminaries and similar circles, where it was and is
applied indiscriminately to all pleasing material objects, from a piece of plum-
cake to a Gothic cathedral. Ruskin unluckily adopted this school-girl triviality,
and, by the popularity of his writings, has made it almost universal, thereby
degrading, vulgarizing, and depriving of its true significance, one of the noblest
words in the English language.
In satirical comedy such abuses of language may very well be introduced, for
the sake of pillorying them. Shakespeare —whose comedy is not in the technical
sense satirical— has a few examples of this sort, the most marked being in the
case of the word clement in the first scene of the third act of Twelfth Night, to
which I have referred on a former occasion.
566 THE BRITISH NATION Lect. XII.

In speaking of the relations of Chaucer to his time and to

the earlier literature of the language, I observed that his style
of expression was eclectic, that he coined no words and im-
ported few, but contented himself with the existing stock of
native and already naturalized foreign terms — the excellence
of his diction consisting in the judgment and taste of his
selection, and his mutual adaptation of terms individually
familiar.
For the purposes of Chaucer and his age, for the expression
of the limited range of thought and subject with which the
English nature of his time was conversant, a limited vocabulary
sufficed, and the existing literature of England supplied nearly
the entire stock of words demanded for the uses of the poet.
But in Shakespeare's day, though humanity, English humanity
especially, was still the same, yet the philosophical conception
of humanity was immensely enlarged, diversified, and enriched.
—
The myriad-minded Shakespeare as, by an application of a
term borrowed from one of the Greek fathers, Coleridge has so
appropriately called him — took in this vast conception in all
its breadth, and was endowed with a faculty of self-transforma-
tion into all the shapes in which the nature of man has been
incarnated. He hence required a variety of phraseologies —
words and combinations of words — as great as the varieties of
humanity itself are numerous.
Now this compass and flexibility of expression could be found
only in the language of a people who possessed such a moral
and intellectual constitution, and had enjoyed such a moral and
social training, as had previously fallen to the lot of no modern
nation.
The English people, as I have before observed, is a composite
nation, resulting from the fusion of a Germanic with a Scandi-
navian and a Gallo-Boman race. Its language is made up of
ingredients derived from sources as varied as its blood, and
England thus unites, in its children and its speech, the ethno-

logical elements, which, in their separate action in the social and

Lect. XII. THE BRITISH NATION 567

Europe, have shown themselves most

political life of Continental
efficient in all greatand worthy achievement.
In the political history and condition of the England of
Elizabeth's time, there were circumstances eminently favourable
to many-sided intellectual progress, and to the development of a
wide variety of individual character. Although the different
nationalities, which had contributed to the population of Eng-
land, had become so far amalgamated as to have produced a
recognizable uniformity of character, yet the chemical combina-
tion had not been so complete as wholly to extinguish the sepa-
rate traits of each. These had propagated, and still propagate,
themselves more or less unmixed, from century to century, just
as, in human and brute life, peculiarities of remote ancestry

manifest themselves in late descendants, and often reappear in

lines where for generations they had seemed to be extinct.
Hence, the English have in all ages been remarkable for indi-
viduality, and what we call originality, or, if you please, eccen-
tricity or oddity of character.
These supposed individualities usually combine, with some-
thing that is peculiar to the man John or Peter, much more that

is common to a nation, a family, or a class, and the eccentric

person is, in reality, oftener a typical or representative man than

an anomaly. He is noticed as a strange or peculiar individual,
not because his character is a departure from the general laws
of humanity, but because he is, locally or chronologically, sepa-
rated from the class to which he belongs, and we observe him
as an isolated phenomenon, not as an instance of a species.*

* True imaginative conception o^ character, whether in dramatic or in narrative

literature, depends more upon power of observation than of invention. The
truest personages in fiction are thosemost accurately copied from actual life, and
the impression produced upon us by a character in a work c. imagination is just
in proportion to the degree in which we recognize it as real. We do not know,
historically, how far Shakespeare drew from individual nature, how far his per-
sonages are portraits but modern criticism and literary history are continually
;

accumulating evidence to prove that all great artists record what they see, much
more frequently than they invent what they have never witnessed!
Modern English literature has not produced a more Shakespearian —
I might
568 THE BRITISH NATION Lect. XII.

The free development of these various forms and types of

humanity in England has been much favoured by a detached
geographical position, which has protected the nation against
controlling foreign influences, by the extended commerce and
navigation, which its long line of coast, its numerous harbours,
its coal and tin, the excellent quality of its wool, and some

other native products, have secured to it, and perhaps in a still

greater degree by the character of its political institutions,
which have been, from a remote age, of a more popular and
liberal character than those of any of the great Continental
states.

English life, in the sixteenth century, was full of multifarious

experiences. There had always been a greater number and

variety of stimulating tendencies and influences, and greater
practical liberty of yielding to them, in England than in any
other modern nation and consequently, in the time of Shakes-
;

peare, the human the human heart, affections, and

intellect,
passions,were there more fully and variously developed, and
the articulate expression of all these mental and moral con-
ditions and impulses more cultivated and diversified, than in
any contemporaneous people.
In all the facilities for the observation of human life and
nature on a wide and comprehensive scale, the Englishman of
Shakespeare's time was at a more advanced point than has even
yet been reached in the society of any other of the Gothic or
Eomance nations. This is one of the reasons why the plays of
Shakespeare have such an incontestable superiority over the
drama of all other modern countries, and why so many thoughts
which, in the recent literature of Continental Europe, have been
hailed as new revelations, are, to the Englishman, but the thou-
sandth repetition of old and familiar oracles, or generalizations

say a more original —

comic character than Lever's Major Monsoon in Charles
O'Malley. But Major Monsoon is well known to be a minutely accurate portrait
of the character, a faithful chronicle of the sayings and doings, of a real living
person.
Lect. XII. CHAUCER AND SHAKESPEARE 569

which have, from time immemorial, been matters of too uni-

versal and every-day consciousness to have been thought worthy
of a place in English literature at all.

Shakespeare stood, to the age of Elizabeth and of James, in

just the position which Chaucer occupied with respect to that
of Edward III. and of Eichard II. ; and in these two authors, the
genius and the literature of their respective ages reached its

culminating point. For the excellence of each, all preceding

English history and literature was a necessary preparation, and
the dialect of each was composed by an application of the same
principles to the philological material which earlier labourers
had gathered for them.
The material thus prepared for the two great masters of the
English tongue was in a very different state when it passed
under their respective manipulation and it may be seriously
;

questioned whether, simply as a philological constructor, Chaucer

were not the greater architect of the two. In Chaucer's time,
every department of the language was rude, defective, and un-
polished, and the task of enriching, harmonizing, and adapting
was performed by him alone. Shakespeare had been preceded
by a multitude of skilful artists, who had improved and refined
all the various special vocabularies which make up the totality
of the English language ; and the common dialect which more
or less belongs to all imaginative composition had been carried
by others to almost as high a pitch of perfection as is found in
Shakespeare himself.
Chaucer, as a linguistic reformer, had great advantages over
Shakespeare, in possessing a better philological training. He
grew up in an almost equal familiarity with French, then a
highly cultivated dialect, and with his mother tongue, and he
was also well acquainted with Latin and with Italian but we ;

have no reason to believe that Shakespeare had acquired any-

thing more than the merest smattering of any language but
his own.
But although the dialect of Shakespeare does not exhibit the
5 ^0 Shakespeare's diction Lect. xii.

same relative superiority as that of Chaucer over all older and

contemporaneous literature, its absolute superiority is, neverthe-
less,unquestionable. I have before had occasion to remark that
the greatest authors very often confine themselves to a restricted
vocabulary, and that the power of their diction lies, not in the
multitude of words, but in skilful combination and adaptation
of a few. This is strikingly verified by an examination of the
stock of words employed by Shakespeare. He introduces,
indeed, terms borrowed from every art and every science, from
all theoretical knowledge and all human experience; but his
entire vocabulary little exceeds fifteen thousand words, and of
these a large number, chiefly of Latin origin, occur but once or
atmost twice in his pages. The affluence of his speech arises
from variety of combination, not from numerical abundance.
And yet the authorized vocabulary of Shakespeare's time pro-
bably embraced twice or thrice the number of words which he
found necessary for his purposes ; for though there were at that
time no dictionaries which exhibit a great stock of words, yet in
perusing Hooker, the old translators, and the early voyagers and
travellers, we find a verbal wealth, a copiousness of diction,
which forms a singular contrast with the philological economy
of the great dramatist.
In his theory of dramatic construction, Shakespeare owes little
— in his conception of character, nothing —
to earlier or con-
temporary artists ; but in his diction, everything except felicity

of selection and combination. The existence of the whole

copious English vocabulary was necessary, in order that his
marvellous gift of selection might have room for its exercise.

Without a Cimabue and a Giotto, a Fra Angelico and a Perugino,

there could not have been a Eaphael and all previous English
;

philology and literature were indispensable to the creation of a

medium, through which such revelations of man as had not yet
been made to man might be possible to the genius of a Shake-
speare.
 INDEX.

ALE CUR
ALEXANDEK the Great, story of, BACON, Lord, essays, 549
196 Ballads, Old English, 13, 527
Alexander, Prof., monosyllabic sonnets, Beowulf, poem of, 101
98 Berners, Lord, translation of Froissart,
Alfred, King, unknown to early English 495
literature, 230 Biondelli, remarks on the dialects of
Ancren Biwle, The, 169 Italy, 338
Anglo-Saxon art, 105 Body and Soul, Dialogue between, 240
— Chronicle, 104 Boethius, Alfred's extracts from, 133
— language, character of, 92 Brunetto Latini, why he wrote in
origin of, 45, 48 French, 243
mixed, 47, 55
our knowledge of, 88
Latin words in, 60 CANALE, Martino de, why he wrote
not English, 56 in French, 243
—— pronunciation of, 62, 69 Catalan, monosyllabic poems in, 97, 117
orthography of, 65, 69 Caxton, dialect of, 483, note 490
—
;

inflections in, loss of, 107, 111 influence of, on English language
grammar of, 119 and literature, 483
derivative and composite, 95, Celtic etymologies, 85, 542
113 Chaucer, copies and editions of, 17
vocabulary of, 89, 93, 94 — Grammar 18 of,
moral and intellectual vocabulary — Canterbury 417
Tales,
of, early obsolete, 135, 136, — and Gower, Lecture and ix., specially,
443 428
formation of words in, 113 — on English, 381—388
influence
— literature, loss of, 11 — and 395
Froissart,
no influence on English, 100 — Komaunt of the Bose, 402 390,
unhistoric, 102—105 Cheke, Sir John, Hurt of Sedition, 521
— manuscripts, age of, 54 New Testament, 521, 532
— people, origin of, 43, 49 Cimbric, changes of letter in, 195
and Celts, 60, 85 Classical learning and Beformation, 507,
—
and Scandinavians, 62 69 524, 553
and Normans, 103, 106 — literature, loss of, 11
— translation of Gospels, 96 Commerce, vocabulary of, 292
Armenian language, construction in, 46 Contzen, "Wanderungen der Kelten, 31
Ascham, Boger, works, 551 Curtasye, Boke of, 291
572 INDEX
DEF LAY
DEFEBENCE to great names in lite- Frisic, pronunciation of, 51
rature, 342 Froissart as an historian, 487
Dialects, divergence of, 54, 82 — in England, 336
Drama, 564
dialect of,
Didcarnon, etymology of, 126, note
Dutch literature, old, value of, 447 GENDER, grammatical, 108
Germanic dialects, 19, 51, 76, 80
Gol ding's translation of Ovid, 555
~Tp Final, in English and French, 456 Gothic, how used in this course, 41
-*-* Edward III., Poem on the Death Gower's Confessio Amantis, 432
of, 287 Grammar, study of, 26, 27
Emphasis, changes in, 67 in England, 507—550
England and the Papacy, 1, 9, 340
English language, foreign constructions
in, 74 HAWES, Pasty me of Pleasure, 512
changes in, 33, 257 Heimskringla, Danish critic's opi-
—— commencement of, 140, 145, 262 nion of, 105
dialects in, 151 Henry III., proclamation of, 189
grammar of, 21 Hereford's share in Wycliffite versions,
mixed, 47 344, 360, 440
little used for official purposes Heywood, John, works of, 525
before fifteenth century, 479 Historical literature of Middle Ages,
periods in, 143 10, 55
vocabulary of, in thirteenth cen- Holinshed's Chronicle, 537
tury, 140, 260 Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, 559
— literature, commencement of, 146, Horn, Kyng, Geste of, 211
188, 259, 262 Humour, characteristic of English lite-
chronology 2
of, rature, 298, 300
essential character 5 of, — wanting Anglo-Saxon
in literature,
independence 6
of, 5, 298
early, unhistorical, 226, 230 — and wit products of culture, 299
minor poems, early, 242 hw, sound of, 171
— manuscripts, 440
— nation imbued with Romance cul-
ture, 401 ICELANDIC sagas, character of, 254,
— nationality, character of, 566, 568 note
— people, first existence of, 275 Icelandic vocabulary, 94
Euphuism in English literature, 544 Individuality of character, 567
Invention in literature, 398
Italian dialects, note on, 337
FABLES, popular, antiquity of, 396 Italy, traditional culture in, 299
Fer in Kyng Horn, meaning of, iw, sound of, 65, 171
215
Fifteenth century, minor poems of, 465
Fisher, Bishop, style of, 493 AMES I., of Scotland, works of, 457
French language, double form of, 23 J
mixed, 58
common literary language of LANGLANDE. See Piers Ploughman
Europe in thirteenth century, Language, how affected by great
243 authors, 382
use of in England, 336 by external causes, 147, 259
— words how introduced into English, — how classed, 106
265 Latimer, sermons of, 517
Frisic dialects, 73 Layamon, Chronicle of, 154
 INDEX 573
LIB SCI
Libel of English Policy, 468 Parsing machine, Brown's, 40
Lillie, the Euphuist, 544 Participles in Gothic languages, 72
Linguistic studies, 28 Pecock's Repressor, 473
Literary property, 396 People, meaning of the word, 275
Literature, national, what constitutes, Pet words, national, 564
263 Phaer's translation of Virgil, 555
Local dialects, 509, note Philology neglected, 25, 39
Lollards in England, 7 Piers Ploughman, date and character of,
Lord's Prayer in different dialects, 76 295, 334
Lovely, vulgar misuse of, 564, note imitators of, 334
Luxury, not inconsistent with grossness metre of, 286
of manners, 291 Political Poems, Early English, 249
Lydgate, works of, 464 Poetry, dialect of, 149
Lyric poetry, Early English, 253 Promptorium Parvulorum, 509
Pronunciation of Danish and Swedish,
68
MACARONIC poetry, English, 244 — of Spanish and Portuguese, 68
of Ausonius, 249 Purvey, revision of Wyclimte versions,
Mandeville, Sir John, extract from, 271 344, 362
vocabulary of, 268 — version of Psalm cii., 376
Minot, Laurence, poems of, 277 — on translation, 363
Miracle plays, sermon against, 448 Puttenham, Arte of English Poesy, 552
Mirrour for Magistrates, 535
Mceso-Gothic text of Matthew viii.,
393 pECORDS of common life, philo-
— language, 90 Xt logical value of, 452
Monsoon, Major, in Charles O'Malley, Reformation and classical learning, 507,
568, note 524, 553
More, Sir Thomas, English works of, — effects of, 12
501, 528 Regular and irregular verbs, 377
Morte d' Arthur, 488 Religious dialect in English, 365
Southey's criticism on, 487 Rhyme and Romance words, 390,
515
Richard Coeur de Lion, poem on, 226
NATURE, appreciation and love of, Richard II., poem on, 334
415 Robert of Brunne, 235
Nautical dialect, 334 Robert of Gloucester, Chronicle, 231
Nibelungen Lied, 19 Lives of the Saints, 233
Norman conquest of England, effects Roman de la Rose, and Chaucer's ver-
of, 138 sion, 445
Normans in England, 138 — Dutch translation of, 447
Romance, how used in this course, 42
Romance languages, origin and charac-
Normal sound of, 65 ter of, 15, 37
Occleve, Thomas, works of, 445 — oldest specimens of, 71
Ohther's Narrative, extracts from, 125 Runic characters, 69
Ormulum, the, 177
Orthography and pronunciation, 194
Owl and Nightingale, 205 O Verbal ending in, 216
*^j Sackville, works of, 535
Satiricalpoems against clergy, 251
PALSGRAVE, French grammar, 509 Scandinavian languages, 52, 81
Papacy, ascription of Divine attri- Science and art, influence of, on English
butes to, 8, 34 vocabulary, 558
 <L
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*?*"/-£
574 INDEX
SEE WYC
Seetzen's use of Platt-Deutsch, 338 Travel and commerce, effect of, on
Senses, names and division of, in English, 557
Anglo-Saxon and Old English, 135 Tyndale, New Testament, 505, 511, 530
Shakespeare and Chaucer, 569
Shakespeare and the English language, ~TT Normal sound of, 65
569 ^j Ulfilas, Bishop, 90, 91
Sidney, Sir Philip, works of, 547 Unities, dramatic, 526, 537
Skelton, works of, 511 Urban, Pope, 8
Sounds, simple and compound, 171,
note
— foreign, appreciation of, 87 VERSIFICATION, Gothic and Eo-
mance, 276, 283, 284
Spenser, Edmund, works of, 548
Stanihurst, works of, 538
Surrey and Wyatt, works of, 515 WIT,Words
product of culture, 299
Surtees' Psalter, 216 individually considered,
Sylvester, translation of Du Bartas, 383, 442
547 — in combination, 384
"Wycliffe and his school, Lecture viii.,

pp. 339—378
THEOLOGY, study of, in England, — Apology the for 367
Lollards,
506, 558 — commentary on 366
Gospels,
— dialect of, 493 — New Testament, 370
Thomas a Becket on the Papacy, 8 — 371
literary influence of,
Translation, practice of, 412 — opinions of the Papacy, and advice
Translations, effect of, on English, 553 to the Pope, 8