PART III.
THE HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
193
INTRODUCTION.
1. Tongue, Speech, Language.—We speak of the “English tongue” or of the “French language”; and we say of two nations that they “do not understand each other’s speech.” The existence of these three words—speech, tongue, language—proves to us that a language is something spoken,—that it is a number of sounds; and that the writing or printing of it upon paper is a quite secondary matter. Language, rightly considered, then, is an organised set of sounds. These sounds convey a meaning from the mind of the speaker to the mind of the hearer, and thus serve to connect man with man.
2. Written Language.—It took many hundreds of years—perhaps thousands—before human beings were able to invent a mode of writing upon paper—that is, of representing sounds by signs. These signs are called letters; and the whole set of them goes by the name of the Alphabet—from the two first letters of the Greek alphabet, which are called alpha, beta. There are languages that have never been put upon paper at all, such as many of the African languages, many in the South Sea Islands, and other parts of the globe. But in all cases, every language that we know anything about—English, Latin, French, German—existed for hundreds of years before any one thought of writing it down on paper.
3. A Language Grows.—A language is an organism or organic existence. Now every organism lives; and, if it lives, it grows; and, if it grows, it also dies. Our language grows; it is growing still; and it has been growing for many 194 hundreds of years. As it grows it loses something, and it gains something else; it alters its appearance; changes take place in this part of it and in that part,—until at length its appearance in age is something almost entirely different from what it was in its early youth. If we had the photograph of a man of forty, and the photograph of the same person when he was a child of one, we should find, on comparing them, that it was almost impossible to point to the smallest trace of likeness in the features of the two photographs. And yet the two pictures represent the same person. And so it is with the English language. The oldest English, which is usually called Anglo-Saxon, is as different from our modern English as if they were two distinct languages; and yet they are not two languages, but really and fundamentally one and the same. Modern English differs from the oldest English as a giant oak does from a small oak sapling, or a broad stalwart man of forty does from a feeble infant of a few months old.
4. The English Language.—The English language is the speech spoken by the Anglo-Saxon race in England, in most parts of Scotland, in the larger part of Ireland, in the United States, in Canada, in Australia and New Zealand, in South Africa, and in many other parts of the world. In the middle of the fifth century it was spoken by a few thousand men who had lately landed in England from the Continent: it is now spoken by more than one hundred millions of people. In the course of the next sixty years, it will probably be the speech of two hundred millions.
5. English on the Continent.—In the middle of the fifth century it was spoken in the north-west corner of Europe—between the mouths of the Rhine, the Weser, and the Elbe; and in Schleswig there is a small district which is called Angeln to this day. But it was not then called English; it was more probably called Teutish, or Teutsch, or Deutsch—all words connected with a generic word which covers many families and languages—Teutonic. It was a rough guttural speech of one or two thousand words; and it was brought over to this country by the Jutes, Angles, and Saxons in the year 449. These 195 men left their home on the Continent to find here farms to till and houses to live in; and they drove the inhabitants of the island—the Britons—ever farther and farther west, until they at length left them in peace in the more mountainous parts of the island—in the southern and western corners, in Cornwall and in Wales.
6. The British Language.—What language did the Teutonic conquerors, who wrested the lands from the poor Britons, find spoken in this island when they first set foot on it? Not a Teutonic speech at all. They found a language not one word of which they could understand. The island itself was then called Britain; and the tongue spoken in it belonged to the Keltic group of languages. Languages belonging to the Keltic group are still spoken in Wales, in Brittany (in France), in the Highlands of Scotland, in the west of Ireland, and in the Isle of Man. A few words—very few—from the speech of the Britons, have come into our own English language; and what these are we shall see by-and-by.
7. The Family to which English belongs.—Our English tongue belongs to the Aryan or Indo-European Family of languages. That is to say, the main part or substance of it can be traced back to the race which inhabited the high table-lands that lie to the back of the western end of the great range of the Himalaya, or “Abode of Snow.” This Aryan race grew and increased, and spread to the south and west; and from it have sprung languages which are now spoken in India, in Persia, in Greece and Italy, in France and Germany, in Scandinavia, and in Russia. From this Aryan family we are sprung; out of the oldest Aryan speech our own language has grown.
8. The Group to which English belongs.—The Indo-European family of languages consists of several groups. One of these is called the Teutonic Group, because it is spoken by the Teuts (or the Teutonic race), who are found in Germany, in England and Scotland, in Holland, in parts of Belgium, in Denmark, in Norway and Sweden, in Iceland, and the Faroe Islands. The Teutonic group consists of three branches—High German, Low German, and Scandinavian. High 196 German is the name given to the kind of German spoken in Upper Germany—that is, in the table-land which lies south of the river Main, and which rises gradually till it runs into the Alps. New High German is the German of books—the literary language—the German that is taught and learned in schools. Low German is the name given to the German dialects spoken in the lowlands—in the German part of the Great Plain of Europe, and round the mouths of those German rivers that flow into the Baltic and the North Sea. Scandinavian is the name given to the languages spoken in Denmark and in the great Scandinavian Peninsula. Of these three languages, Danish and Norwegian are practically the same—their literary or book-language is one; while Swedish is very different. Icelandic is the oldest and purest form of Scandinavian. The following is a table of the
GROUP OF TEUTONIC LANGUAGES.
| TEUTONIC. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Low German. | High German. | Scandinavian. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dutch. | Flemish. | Frisian. | English. | Old. | Middle. | New. | Icelandic | Dansk (or Norsk). |
Ferroic. | Svensk (Swedish). |
||||||||||||||
It will be observed, on looking at the above table, that High German is subdivided according to time, but that the other groups are subdivided according to space.
9. English a Low-German Speech.—Our English tongue is the lowest of all Low-German dialects. Low German is the German spoken in the lowlands of Germany. As we descend the rivers, we come to the lowest level of all—the level of the sea. Our English speech, once a mere dialect, came down to that, crossed the German Ocean, and settled in Britain, to which it gave in time the name of Angla-land or England. The Low German spoken in the Netherlands is called Dutch; the Low German spoken in Friesland—a prosperous province of Holland—is called Frisian; and the Low German spoken in Great Britain is called English. These three languages are extremely like one another; but the Continental language that is likest 197 the English is the Dutch or Hollandish dialect called Frisian. We even possess a couplet, every word of which is both English and Frisian. It runs thus—
Good butter and good cheese
Is good English and good Fries.
10. Dutch and Welsh—a Contrast.—When the Teuton conquerors came to this country, they called the Britons foreigners, just as the Greeks called all other peoples besides themselves barbarians. By this they did not at first mean that they were uncivilised, but only that they were not Greeks. Now, the Teutonic or Saxon or English name for foreigners was Wealhas, a word afterwards contracted into Welsh. To this day the modern Teuts or Teutons (or Germans, as we call them) call all Frenchmen and Italians Welshmen; and, when a German, peasant crosses the border into France, he says: “I am going into Welshland.”
11. The Spread of English over Britain.—The Jutes, who came from Juteland or Jylland—now called Jutland—settled in Kent and in the Isle of Wight. The Saxons settled in the south and western parts of England, and gave their names to those kingdoms—now counties—whose names came to end in sex. There was the kingdom of the East Saxons, or Essex; the kingdom of the West Saxons, or Wessex; the kingdom of the Middle Saxons, or Middlesex; and the kingdom of the South Saxons, or Sussex. The Angles settled chiefly on the east coast. The kingdom of East Anglia was divided into the regions of the North Folk and the South Folk, words which are still perpetuated in the names Norfolk and Suffolk. These three sets of Teutons all spoke different dialects of the same Teutonic speech; and these dialects, with their differences, peculiarities, and odd habits, took root in English soil, and lived an independent life, apart from each other, uninfluenced by each other, for several hundreds of years. But, in the slow course of time, they joined together to make up our beautiful English language—a language which, however, still bears in itself the traces of dialectic forms, and is in no respect of one kind or of one fibre all through.
198CHAPTER I.
THE PERIODS OF ENGLISH.
1. Dead and Living Languages.—A language is said to be dead when it is no longer spoken. Such a language we know only in books. Thus, Latin is a dead language, because no nation anywhere now speaks it. A dead language can undergo no change; it remains, and must remain, as we find it written in books. But a living language is always changing, just like a tree or the human body. The human body has its periods or stages. There is the period of infancy, the period of boyhood, the period of manhood, and the period of old age. In the same way, a language has its periods.
2. No Sudden Changes—a Caution.—We divide the English language into periods, and then mark, with some approach to accuracy, certain distinct changes in the habits of our language, in the inflexions of its words, in the kind of words it preferred, or in the way it liked to put its words together. But we must be carefully on our guard against fancying that, at any given time or in any given year, the English people threw aside one set of habits as regards language, and adopted another set. It is not so, nor can it be so. The changes in language are as gentle, gradual, and imperceptible as the changes in the growth of a tree or in the skin of the human body. We renew our skin slowly and gradually; but we are never conscious of the process, nor can we say at any given time that we have got a completely new skin.
1993. The Periods of English.—Bearing this caution in mind, we can go on to look at the chief periods in our English language. These are five in number; and they are as follows:—
| I. | Ancient English or Anglo-Saxon, | 449-1100 |
| II. | Early English, | 1100-1250 |
| III. | Middle English, | 1250-1485 |
| IV. | Tudor English, | 1485-1603 |
| V. | Modern English, | 1603-1900 |
These periods merge very slowly, or are shaded off, so to speak, into each other in the most gradual way. If we take the English of 1250 and compare it with that of 900, we shall find a great difference; but if we compare it with the English of 1100 the difference is not so marked. The difference between the English of the nineteenth and the English of the fourteenth century is very great, but the difference between the English of the fourteenth and that of the thirteenth century is very small.
4. Ancient English or Anglo-Saxon, 450-1100.—This form of English differed from modern English in having a much larger number of inflexions. The noun had five cases, and there were several declensions, just as in Latin; adjectives were declined, and had three genders; some pronouns had a dual as well as a plural number; and the verb had a much larger number of inflexions than it has now. The vocabulary of the language contained very few foreign elements. The poetry of the language employed head-rhyme or alliteration, and not end-rhyme, as we do now. The works of the poet Caedmon and the great prose-writer King Alfred belong to this Anglo-Saxon period.
5. Early English, 1100-1250.—The coming of the Normans in 1066 made many changes in the land, many changes in the Church and in the State, and it also introduced many changes into the language. The inflexions of our speech began to drop off, because they were used less and less; and though we never adopted new inflexions from French or from any other language, new French words began to creep in. In some parts of the country English had ceased to be written in books; the language existed as a spoken language only; and hence accuracy in the use of words and the inflexions of words could not be 200 ensured. Two notable books—written, not printed, for there was no printing in this island till the year 1474—belong to this period. These are the Ormulum, by Orm or Ormin, and the Brut, by a monk called Layamon or Laweman. The latter tells the story of Brutus, who was believed to have been the son of Æneas of Troy; to have escaped after the downfall of that city; to have sailed through the Mediterranean, ever farther and farther to the west; to have landed in Britain, settled here, and given the country its name.
6. Middle English, 1250-1485.—Most of the inflexions of nouns and adjectives have in this period—between the middle of the thirteenth and the end of the fifteenth century—completely disappeared. The inflexions of verbs are also greatly reduced in number. The strong1 mode of inflexion has ceased to be employed for verbs that are new-comers, and the weak mode has been adopted in its place. During the earlier part of this period, even country-people tried to speak French, and in this and other modes many French words found their way into English. A writer of the thirteenth century, John de Trevisa, says that country-people “fondeth [that is, try] with great bysynes for to speke Freynsch for to be more y-told of.” The country-people did not succeed very well, as the ordinary proverb shows: “Jack would be a gentleman if he could speak French.” Boys at school were expected to turn their Latin into French, and in the courts of law French only was allowed to be spoken. But in 1362 Edward III. gave his assent to an Act of Parliament allowing English to be used instead of Norman-French. “The yer of oure Lord,” says John de Trevisa, “a thousond thre hondred foure score and fyve of the secunde Kyng Richard after the conquest, in al the gramer scoles of Engelond children leveth Freynsch, and construeth and turneth an Englysch.” To the first half of this period belong a Metrical Chronicle, attributed to Robert of Gloucester; Langtoft’s Metrical Chronicle, translated by Robert de Brunne; the Agenbite of Inwit, by Dan Michel of Northgate in Kent; and a few others. But to the second 201 half belong the rich and varied productions of Geoffrey Chaucer, our first great poet and always one of our greatest writers; the alliterative poems of William Langley or Langlande; the more learned poems of John Gower; and the translation of the Bible and theological works of the reformer John Wyclif.
7. Tudor English, 1485-1603.—Before the end of the sixteenth century almost all our inflexions had disappeared. The great dramatist Ben Jonson (1574-1637) laments the loss of the plural ending en for verbs, because wenten and hopen were much more musical and more useful in verse than went or hope; but its recovery was already past praying for. This period is remarkable for the introduction of an enormous number of Latin words, and this was due to the new interest taken in the literature of the Romans—an interest produced by what is called the Revival of Letters. But the most striking, as it is also the most important fact relating to this period, is the appearance of a group of dramatic writers, the greatest the world has ever seen. Chief among these was William Shakespeare. Of pure poetry perhaps the greatest writer was Edmund Spenser. The greatest prose-writer was Richard Hooker, and the pithiest Francis Bacon.
8. Modern English, 1603-1900.—The grammar of the language was fixed before this period, most of the accidence having entirely vanished. The vocabulary of the language, however, has gone on increasing, and is still increasing; for the English language, like the English people, is always ready to offer hospitality to all peaceful foreigners—words or human beings—that will land and settle within her coasts. And the tendency at the present time is not only to give a hearty welcome to newcomers from other lands, but to call back old words and old phrases that had been allowed to drop out of existence. Tennyson has been one of the chief agents in this happy restoration.
202CHAPTER II.
THE HISTORY OF THE VOCABULARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.
1. The English Nation.—The English people have for many centuries been the greatest travellers in the world. It was an Englishman—Francis Drake—who first went round the globe; and the English have colonised more foreign lands in every part of the world than any other people that ever existed. The English in this way have been influenced by the world without. But they have also been subjected to manifold influences from within—they have been exposed to greater political changes, and profounder though quieter political revolutions, than any other nation. In 1066 they were conquered by the Norman-French; and for several centuries they had French kings. Seeing and talking with many different peoples, they learned to adopt foreign words with ease, and to give them a home among the native-born words of the language. Trade is always a kindly and useful influence; and the trade of Great Britain has for many centuries been larger than that of any other nation. It has spread into every part of the world; it gives and receives from all tribes and nations, from every speech and tongue.
2. The English Element in English.—When the English came to this island in the fifth century, the number of words in the language they spoke was probably not over two thousand. Now, however, we possess a vocabulary of perhaps more than one hundred thousand words. And so eager and willing 203 have we been to welcome foreign words, that it may be said with truth that: The majority of words in the English Tongue are not English. In fact, if we take the Latin language by itself, there are in our language more Latin words than English. But the grammar is distinctly English, and not Latin at all.
3. The Spoken Language and the Written Language—a Caution.—We must not forget what has been said about a language,—that it is not a printed thing—not a set of black marks upon paper, but that it is in truest truth a tongue or a speech. Hence we must be careful to distinguish between the spoken language and the written or printed language; between the language of the ear and the language of the eye; between the language of the mouth and the language of the dictionary; between the moving vocabulary of the market and the street, and the fixed vocabulary that has been catalogued and imprisoned in our dictionaries. If we can only keep this in view, we shall find that, though there are more Latin words in our vocabulary than English, the English words we possess are used in speaking a hundred times, or even a thousand times, oftener than the Latin words. It is the genuine English words that have life and movement; it is they that fly about in houses, in streets, and in markets; it is they that express with greatest force our truest and most usual sentiments—our inmost thoughts and our deepest feelings. Latin words are found often enough in books; but, when an English man or woman is deeply moved, he speaks pure English and nothing else. Words are the coin of human intercourse; and it is the native coin of pure English with the native stamp that is in daily circulation.
4. A Diagram of English.—If we were to try to represent to the eye the proportions of the different elements in our vocabulary, as it is found in the dictionary, the diagram would take something like the following form:—
204DIAGRAM OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.
| English Words. | |
|
Latin Words (including Norman-French, which are also Latin). |
|
| Greek Words. | Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Hebrew, Arabic, Hindustani, Persian, Malay, American, etc. etc. |
5. The Foreign Elements in our English Vocabulary.—The different peoples and the different circumstances with which we have come in contact, have had many results—one among others, that of presenting us with contributions to our vocabulary. We found Kelts here; and hence we have a number of Keltic words in our vocabulary. The Romans held this island for several hundred years; and when they had to go in the year 410, they left behind them six Latin words, which we have inherited. In the seventh century, Augustine and his missionary monks from Rome brought over to us a larger number of Latin words; and the Church which they founded introduced ever more and more words from Rome. The Danes began to come over to this island in the eighth century; we had for some time a Danish dynasty seated on the throne of England: and hence we possess many Danish words. The Norman-French invasion in the eleventh century brought us many hundreds of Latin words; for French is in reality a branch of the Latin tongue. The Revival of Learning in the sixteenth century gave us several thousands of Latin words. And wherever our sailors and merchants have gone, they have brought back with them foreign words as well as foreign things—Arabic words from Arabia and Africa, Hindustani words from India, Persian words from Persia, Chinese words from China, and even Malay words from the peninsula of Malacca. Let us look a little more closely at these foreign elements.
6. The Keltic Element in English.—This element is of 205 three kinds: (i) Those words which we received direct from the ancient Britons whom we found in the island; (ii) those which the Norman-French brought with them from Gaul; (iii) those which have lately come into the language from the Highlands of Scotland, or from Ireland, or from the writings of Sir Walter Scott.
7. The First Keltic Element.—This first contribution contains the following words: Breeches, clout, crock, cradle, darn, dainty, mop, pillow; barrow (a funeral mound), glen, havoc, kiln, mattock, pool. It is worthy of note that the first eight in the list are the names of domestic—some even of kitchen—things and utensils. It may, perhaps, be permitted us to conjecture that in many cases the Saxon invader married a British wife, who spoke her own language, taught her children to speak their mother tongue, and whose words took firm root in the kitchen of the new English household. The names of most rivers, mountains, lakes, and hills are, of course, Keltic; for these names would not be likely to be changed by the English new-comers. There are two names for rivers which are found—in one form or another—in every part of Great Britain. These are the names Avon and Ex. The word Avon means simply water. We can conceive the children on a farm near a river speaking of it simply as “the water”; and hence we find fourteen Avons in this island. Ex also means water; and there are perhaps more than twenty streams in Great Britain with this name. The word appears as Ex in Exeter (the older and fuller form being Exanceaster—the camp on the Exe); as Ax in Axminster; as Ox in Oxford; as Ux in Uxbridge; and as Ouse in Yorkshire and other eastern counties. In Wales and Scotland, the hidden k changes its place and comes at the end. Thus in Wales we find Usk; and in Scotland, Esk. There are at least eight Esks in the kingdom of Scotland alone. The commonest Keltic name for a mountain is Pen or Ben (in Wales it is Pen; in Scotland the flatter form Ben is used). We find this word in England also under the form of Pennine; and, in Italy, as Apennine.
8. The Second Keltic Element.—The Normans came from 206 Scandinavia early in the tenth century, and wrested the valley of the Seine out of the hands of Charles the Simple, the then king of the French. The language spoken by the people of France was a broken-down form of spoken Latin, which is now called French; but in this language they had retained many Gaulish words out of the old Gaulish language. Such are the words: Bag, bargain, barter; barrel, basin, basket, bucket; bonnet, button, ribbon; car, cart; dagger, gown; mitten, motley; rogue; varlet, vassal, wicket. The above words were brought over to Britain by the Normans; and they gradually took an acknowledged place among the words of our own language, and have held that place ever since.
9. The Third Keltic Element.—This consists of comparatively few words—such as clan; claymore (a sword); philabeg (a kind of kilt), kilt itself, brogue (a kind of shoe), plaid; pibroch (bagpipe war-music), slogan (a war-cry); and whisky. Ireland has given us shamrock, gag, log, clog, and brogue—in the sense of a mode of speech.
10. The Scandinavian Element in English.—Towards the end of the eighth century—in the year 787—the Teutons of the North, called Northmen, Normans, or Norsemen—but more commonly known as Danes—made their appearance on the eastern coast of Great Britain, and attacked the peaceful towns and quiet settlements of the English. These attacks became so frequent, and their occurrence was so much dreaded, that a prayer was inserted against them in a Litany of the time—“From the incursions of the Northmen, good Lord, deliver us!” In spite of the resistance of the English, the Danes had, before the end of the ninth century, succeeded in obtaining a permanent footing in England; and, in the eleventh century, a Danish dynasty sat upon the English throne from the year 1016 to 1042. From the time of King Alfred, the Danes of the Danelagh were a settled part of the population of England; and hence we find, especially on the east coast, a large number of Danish names still in use.
11. Character of the Scandinavian Element.—The Northmen, as we have said, were Teutons; and they spoke a dialect 207 of the great Teutonic (or German) language. The sounds of the Danish dialect—or language, as it must now be called—are harder than those of the German. We find a k instead of a ch; a p preferred to an f. The same is the case in Scotland, where the hard form kirk is preferred to the softer church. Where the Germans say Dorf—our English word Thorpe, a village—the Danes say Drup.
12. Scandinavian Words (i).—The words contributed to our language by the Scandinavians are of two kinds: (i) Names of places; and (ii) ordinary words. (i) The most striking instance of a Danish place-name is the noun by, a town. Mr Isaac Taylor2 tells us that there are in the east of England more than six hundred names of towns ending in by. Almost all of these are found in the Danelagh, within the limits of the great highway made by the Romans to the north-west, and well-known as Watling Street. We find, for example, Whitby, or the town on the white cliffs; Grimsby, or the town of Grim, a great sea-rover, who obtained for his countrymen the right that all ships from the Baltic should come into the port of Grimsby free of duty; Tenby, that is Daneby; by-law, a law for a special town; and a vast number of others. The following Danish words also exist in our times—either as separate and individual words, or in composition—beck, a stream; fell, a hill or table-land; firth or fiord, an arm of the sea—the same as the Danish fiord; force, a waterfall; garth, a yard or enclosure; holm, an island in a river; kirk, a church; oe, an island; thorpe, a village; thwaite, a forest clearing; and vik or wick, a station for ships, or a creek.
13. Scandinavian Words (ii).—The most useful and the most frequently employed word that we have received from the Danes is the word are. The pure English word for this is beoth or sindon. The Danes gave us also the habit of using to before an infinitive. Their word for to was at; and at still survives and is in use in Lincolnshire. We find also the following Danish words in our language: blunt, bole (of a tree), bound (on a journey—properly boun), busk (to dress), cake, 208 call, crop (to cut), curl, cut, dairy, daze, din, droop, fellow, flit, for, froward, hustings, ill, irk, kid, kindle, loft, odd, plough, root, scold, sky, tarn (a small mountain lake), weak, and ugly. It is in Northumberland, Durham, Yorkshire, Lincoln, Norfolk, and even in the western counties of Cumberland and Lancashire, that we find the largest admixture of Scandinavian words.
14. Influence of the Scandinavian Element.—The introduction of the Danes and the Danish language into England had the result, in the east, of unsettling the inflexions of our language, and thus of preparing the way for their complete disappearance. The declensions of nouns became unsettled; nouns that used to make their plural in a or in u took the more striking plural suffix as that belonged to a quite different declension. The same things happened to adjectives, verbs, and other parts of language. The causes of this are not far to seek. Spoken language can never be so accurate as written language; the mass of the English and Danes never cared or could care much for grammar; and both parties to a conversation would of course hold firmly to the root of the word, which was intelligible to both of them, and let the inflexions slide, or take care of themselves. The more the English and Danes mixed with each other, the oftener they met at church, at games, and in the market-place, the more rapidly would this process of stripping go on,—the smaller care would both peoples take of the grammatical inflexions which they had brought with them into this country.
15. The Latin Element in English.—So far as the number of words—the vocabulary—of the language is concerned, the Latin contribution is by far the most important element in our language. Latin was the language of the Romans; and the Romans at one time were masters of the whole known world. No wonder, then, that they influenced so many peoples, and that their language found its way—east and west, and south and north—into almost all the countries of Europe. There are, as we have seen, more Latin than English words in our own language; and it is therefore necessary to make ourselves acquainted with the 209 character and the uses of the Latin element—an element so important—in English.3 Not only have the Romans made contributions of large numbers of words to the English language, but they have added to it a quite new quality, and given to its genius new powers of expression. So true is this, that we may say—without any sense of unfairness, or any feeling of exaggeration—that, until the Latin element was thoroughly mixed, united with, and transfused into the original English, the writings of Shakespeare were impossible, the poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries could not have come into existence. This is true of Shakespeare; and it is still more true of Milton. His most powerful poetical thoughts are written in lines, the most telling words in which are almost always Latin. This may be illustrated by the following lines from “Lycidas”:—
“It was that fatal and perfidious bark,
Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark,
That sunk so low that sacred head of thine!”
16. The Latin Contributions and their Dates.—The first contribution of Latin words was made by the Romans—not, however, to the English, but to the Britons. The Romans held this island from A.D. 43 to A.D. 410. They left behind them—when they were obliged to go—a small contribution of six words—six only, but all of them important. The second contribution—to a large extent ecclesiastical—was made by Augustine and his missionary monks from Rome, and their visit took place in the year 596. The third contribution was made through the medium of the Norman-French, who seized and subdued this island in the year 1066 and following years. The fourth contribution came to us by the aid of the Revival of Learning—rather a process than an event, the dates of which are vague, but which may be said to have taken place in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Latin left for us by the Romans is called Latin of the First Period; that brought over by the missionaries from Rome, Latin of the 210 Second Period; that given us by the Norman-French, Latin of the Third Period; and that which came to us from the Revival of Learning, Latin of the Fourth Period. The first consists of a few names handed down to us through the Britons; the second, of a number of words—mostly relating to ecclesiastical affairs—brought into the spoken language by the monks; the third, of a large vocabulary, that came to us by mouth and ear; and the fourth, of a very large treasure of words, which we received by means of books and the eye. Let us now look more closely and carefully at them, each in its turn.
17. Latin of the First Period (i).—The Romans held Britain for nearly four hundred years; and they succeeded in teaching the wealthier classes among the Southern Britons to speak Latin. They also built towns in the island, made splendid roads, formed camps at important points, framed good laws, and administered the affairs of the island with considerable justice and uprightness. But, never having come directly into contact with the Angles or Saxons themselves, they could not in any way influence their language by oral communication—by speaking to them. What they left behind them was only six words, most of which became merely the prefixes or the suffixes of the names of places. These six words were Castra, a camp; Strata (via), a paved road; Colonia, a settlement (generally of soldiers); Fossa, a trench; Portus, a harbour; and Vallum, a rampart.
18. Latin of the First Period (ii).—(a) The treatment of the Latin word castra in this island has been both singular and significant. It has existed in this country for nearly nineteen hundred years; and it has always taken the colouring of the locality into whose soil it struck root. In the north and east of England it is sounded hard, and takes the form of caster, as in Lancaster, Doncaster, Tadcaster, and others. In the midland counties, it takes the softer form of cester, as in Leicester, Towcester; and in the extreme west and south, it takes the still softer form of chester, as in Chester, Manchester, Winchester, and others. It is worthy of notice that there are in Scotland no words ending in caster. Though 211 the Romans had camps in Scotland, they do not seem to have been so important as to become the centres of towns. (b) The word strata has also taken different forms in different parts of England. While castra has always been a suffix, strata shows itself constantly as a prefix. When the Romans came to this island, the country was impassable by man. There were no roads worthy of the name,—what paths there were being merely foot-paths or bridle-tracks. One of the first things the Romans did was to drive a strongly built military road from Richborough, near Dover, to the river Dee, on which they formed a standing camp (Castra stativa) which to this day bears the name of Chester. This great road became the highway of all travellers from north to south,—was known as “The Street,” and was called by the Saxons Watling Street. But this word street also became a much-used prefix, and took the different forms of strat, strad, stret, and streat. All towns with such names are to be found on this or some other great Roman road. Thus we have Stratford-on-Avon, Stratton, Stradbroke, Stretton, Stretford (near Manchester), and Streatham (near London).—Over the other words we need not dwell so long. Colonia we find in Colne, Lincoln, and others; fossa in Fossway, Fosbrooke, and Fosbridge; portus, in Portsmouth, and Bridport; and vallum in the words wall, bailey, and bailiff. The Normans called the two courts in front of their castles the inner and outer baileys; and the officer in charge of them was called the bailiff.
19. Latin Element of the Second Period (i).—The story of Pope Gregory and the Roman mission to England is widely known. Gregory, when a young man, was crossing the Roman forum one morning, and, when passing the side where the slave-mart was held, observed, as he walked, some beautiful boys, with fair hair, blue eyes, and clear bright complexion. He asked a bystander of what nation the boys were. The answer was, that they were Angles. “No, not Angles,” he replied; “they are angels.” On learning further that they were heathens, he registered a silent vow that he would, if Providence gave him an opportunity, deliver them from the 212 darkness of heathendom, and bring them and their relatives into the light and liberty of the Gospel. Time passed by; and in the long course of time Gregory became Pope. In his unlooked-for greatness, he did not forget his vow. In the year 596 he sent over to Kent a missionary, called Augustine, along with forty monks. They were well received by the King of Kent, allowed to settle in Canterbury, and to build a small cathedral there.
20. Latin Element of the Second Period (ii).—This mission, the churches that grew out of it, the Christian customs that in time took root in the country, and the trade that followed in its track, brought into the language a number of Latin words, most of them the names of church offices, services, and observances. Thus we find, in our oldest English, the words, postol from apostolus, a person sent; biscop, from episcopus, an overseer; calc, from calix, a cup; clerc, from clericus, an ordained member of the church; munec, from monăchus, a solitary person or monk; preost, from presbyter, an elder; aelmesse, from eleēmosŭnē, alms; predician, from prædicare, to preach; regol, from regula, a rule. (Apostle, bishop, clerk, monk, priest, and alms come to us really from Greek words—but through the Latin tongue.)
21. Latin Element of the Second Period (iii).—The introduction of the Roman form of Christianity brought with it increased communication with Rome and with the Continent generally; widened the experience of Englishmen; gave a stimulus to commerce; and introduced into this island new things and products, and along with the things and products new names. To this period belongs the introduction of the words: Butter, cheese; cedar, fig, pear, peach; lettuce, lily; pepper, pease; camel, lion, elephant; oyster, trout; pound, ounce; candle, table; marble; mint.
22. Latin of the Third Period (i).—The Latin element of the Third Period is in reality the French that was brought over to this island by the Normans in 1066, and is generally called Norman-French. It differed from the French of Paris both in spelling and in pronunciation. For example, Norman-French 213 wrote people for peuple; léal for loyal; réal for royal; réalm for royaume; and so on. But both of these dialects (and every dialect of French) are simply forms of Latin—not of the Latin written and printed in books, but of the Latin spoken in the camp, the fields, the streets, the village, and the cottage. The Romans conquered Gaul, where a Keltic tongue was spoken; and the Gauls gradually adopted Latin as their mother tongue, and—with the exception of the Brétons of Brittany—left off their Keltic speech almost entirely. In adopting the Latin tongue, they had—as in similar cases—taken firm hold of the root of the word, but changed the pronunciation of it, and had, at the same time, compressed very much or entirely dropped many of the Latin inflexions. The French people, an intermixture of Gauls and other tribes (some of them, like the Franks, German), ceased, in fact, to speak their own language, and learned the Latin tongue. The Norsemen, led by Duke Rolf or Rollo or Rou, marched south in large numbers; and, in the year 912, wrested from King Charles the Simple the fair valley of the Seine, settled in it, and gave to it the name of Normandy. These Norsemen, now Normans, were Teutons, and spoke a Teutonic dialect; but, when they settled in France, they learned in course of time to speak French. The kind of French they spoke is called Norman-French, and it was this kind of French that they brought over with them in 1066. But Norman-French had made its appearance in England before the famous year of ’66; for Edward the Confessor, who succeeded to the English throne in 1042, had been educated at the Norman Court; and he not only spoke the language himself, but insisted on its being spoken by the nobles who lived with him in his Court.
23. Latin of the Third Period (ii). Chief Dates.—The Normans, having utterly beaten down the resistance of the English, seized the land and all the political power of this country, and filled all kinds of offices—both spiritual and temporal—with their Norman brethren. Norman-French became the language of the Court and the nobility, the language of Parliament and the law courts, of the universities and the schools, of the Church 214 and of literature. The English people held fast to their own tongue; but they picked up many French words in the markets and other places “where men most do congregate.” But French, being the language of the upper and ruling classes, was here and there learned by the English or Saxon country-people who had the ambition to be in the fashion, and were eager “to speke Frensch, for to be more y-told of,”—to be more highly considered than their neighbours. It took about three hundred years for French words and phrases to soak thoroughly into English; and it was not until England was saturated with French words and French rhythms that the great poet Chaucer appeared to produce poetic narratives that were read with delight both by Norman baron and by Saxon yeoman. In the course of these three hundred years this intermixture of French with English had been slowly and silently going on. Let us look at a few of the chief land-marks in the long process. In 1042 Edward the Confessor introduces Norman-French into his Court. In 1066 Duke William introduces Norman-French into the whole country, and even into parts of Scotland. The oldest English, or Anglo-Saxon, ceases to be written, anywhere in the island, in public documents, in the year 1154. In 1204 we lost Normandy, a loss that had the effect of bringing the English and the Normans closer together. Robert of Gloucester writes his chronicle in 1272, and uses a large number of French words. But, as early as the reign of Henry the Third, in the year 1258, the reformed and reforming Government of the day issued a proclamation in English, as well as in French and Latin. In 1303, Robert of Brunn introduces a large number of French words. The French wars in Edward the Third’s reign brought about a still closer union of the Norman and the Saxon elements of the nation. But, about the middle of the fourteenth century a reaction set in, and it seemed as if the genius of the English language refused to take in any more French words. The English silent stubbornness seemed to have prevailed, and Englishmen had made up their minds to be English in speech, as they were English to the backbone in everything else. Norman-French had, in fact, become provincial, and was spoken 215 only here and there. Before the great Plague—commonly spoken of as “The Black Death”—of 1349, both high and low seemed to be alike bent on learning French, but the reaction may be said to date from this year. The culminating point of this reaction may perhaps be seen in an Act of Parliament passed in 1362 by Edward III., by which both French and Latin had to give place to English in our courts of law. The poems of Chaucer are the literary result—“the bright consummate flower” of the union of two great powers—the brilliance of the French language on the one hand and the homely truth and steadfastness of English on the other. Chaucer was born in 1340, and died in 1400; so that we may say that he and his poems—though not the causes—are the signs and symbols of the great influence that French obtained and held over our mother tongue. But although we accepted so many words from our Norman-French visitors and immigrants, we accepted from them no habit of speech whatever. We accepted from them no phrase or idiom: the build and nature of the English language remained the same—unaffected by foreign manners or by foreign habits. It is true that Chaucer has the ridiculous phrase, “I n’am but dead” (for “I am quite dead”4)—which is a literal translation of the well-known French idiom, “Je ne suis que.” But, though our tongue has always been and is impervious to foreign idiom, it is probably owing to the great influx of French words which took place chiefly in the thirteenth century that many people have acquired a habit of using a long French or Latin word when an English word would do quite as well—or, indeed, a great deal better. Thus some people are found to call a good house, a desirable mansion; and, instead of the quiet old English proverb, “Buy once, buy twice,” we have the roundabout Latinisms, “A single commission will ensure a repetition of orders.” An American writer, speaking of the foreign ambassadors who had been attacked by Japanese soldiers in Yeddo, says that “they concluded to occupy a location more salubrious.” This is only a foreign language, instead of the simple and homely English: “They made up their minds to settle in a healthier spot.”
21624. Latin of the Third Period (iii). Norman Words (a).—The Norman-French words were of several different kinds. There were words connected with war, with feudalism, and with the chase. There were new law terms, and words connected with the State, and the new institutions introduced by the Normans. There were new words brought in by the Norman churchmen. New titles unknown to the English were also introduced. A better kind of cooking, a higher and less homely style of living, was brought into this country by the Normans; and, along with these, new and unheard-of words.
25. Norman Words (b).—The following are some of the Norman-French terms connected with war: Arms, armour; assault, battle; captain, chivalry; joust, lance; standard, trumpet; mail, vizor. The English word for armour was harness; but the Normans degraded that word into the armour of a horse. Battle comes from the Fr. battre, to beat: the corresponding English word is fight. Captain comes from the Latin caput, a head. Mail comes from the Latin macula, the mesh of a net; and the first coats of mail were made of rings or a kind of metal network. Vizor comes from the Fr. viser, to look. It was the barred part of the helmet which a man could see through.
26. Norman Words (c).—Feudalism may be described as the holding of land on condition of giving or providing service in war. Thus a knight held land of his baron, under promise to serve him so many days; a baron of his king, on condition that he brought so many men into the field for such and such a time at the call of his Overlord. William the Conqueror made the feudal system universal in every part of England, and compelled every English baron to swear homage to himself personally. Words relating to feudalism are, among others: Homage, fealty; esquire, vassal; herald, scutcheon, and others. Homage is the declaration of obedience for life of one man to another—that the inferior is the man (Fr. homme; L. homo) of the superior. Fealty is the Norman-French form of the word fidelity. An esquire is a scutiger (L.), or shield-bearer; for he carried the shield of the knight, when 217 they were travelling and no fighting was going on. A vassal was a “little young man,”—in Low-Latin vassallus, a diminutive of vassus, from the Keltic word gwâs, a man. (The form vassaletus is also found, which gives us our varlet and valet.) Scutcheon comes from the Lat. scutum, a shield. Then scutcheon or escutcheon came to mean coat-of-arms—or the marks and signs on his shield by which the name and family of a man were known, when he himself was covered from head to foot in iron mail.
27. Norman Words (d).—The terms connected with the chase are: Brace, couple; chase, course; covert, copse, forest; leveret, mews; quarry, venison. A few remarks about some of these may be interesting. Brace comes from the Old French brace, an arm (Mod. French bras); from the Latin brachium. The root-idea seems to be that which encloses or holds up. Thus bracing air is that which strings up the nerves and muscles; and a brace of birds was two birds tied together with a string.—The word forest contains in itself a good deal of unwritten Norman history. It comes from the Latin adverb foras, out of doors. Hence, in Italy, a stranger or foreigner is still called a forestiere. A forest in Norman-French was not necessarily a breadth of land covered with trees; it was simply land out of the jurisdiction of the common law. Hence, when William the Conqueror created the New Forest, he merely took the land out of the rule and charge of the common law, and put it under his own regal power and personal care. In land of this kind—much of which was kept for hunting in—trees were afterwards planted, partly to shelter large game, and partly to employ ground otherwise useless in growing timber.—Mews is a very odd word. It comes from the Latin verb mutare, to change. When the falcons employed in hunting were changing their feathers, or moulting (the word moult is the same as mews in a different dress), the French shut them in a cage, which they called mue—from mutare. Then the stables for horses were put in the same place; and hence a row of stables has come to be called a mews.—Quarry is quite as strange. The word quarry, which means a mine of stones, 218 comes from the Latin quadrāre, to make square. But the hunting term quarry is of a quite different origin. That comes from the Latin cor (the heart), which the Old French altered into quer. When a wild beast was run down and killed, the heart and entrails were thrown to the dogs as their share of the hunt. Hence Milton says of the eagle, “He scents his quarry from afar.”—The word venison comes to us, through French, from the Lat. venāri, to hunt; and hence it means hunted flesh. The same word gives us venery—the term that was used in the fourteenth century, by Chaucer among others, for hunting.
28. Norman Words (e).—The Normans introduced into England their own system of law, their own law officers; and hence, into the English language, came Norman-French law terms. The following are a few: Assize, attorney; chancellor, court; judge, justice; plaintiff, sue; summons, trespass. A few remarks about some of these may be useful. The chancellor (cancellarius) was the legal authority who sat behind lattice-work, which was called in Latin cancelli. This word means, primarily, little crabs; and it is a diminutive from cancer, a crab. It was so called because the lattice-work looked like crabs’ claws crossed. Our word cancel comes from the same root: it means to make cross lines through anything we wish deleted.—Court comes from the Latin cors or cohors, a sheep-pen. It afterwards came to mean an enclosure, and also a body of Roman soldiers.—The proper English word for a judge is deemster or demster (which appears as the proper name Dempster); and this is still the name for a judge in the Isle of Man. The French word comes from two Latin words, dico, I utter, and jus, right. The word jus is seen in the other French term which we have received from the Normans—justice.—Sue comes from the Old Fr. suir, which appears in Modern Fr. as suivre. It is derived from the Lat. word sequor, I follow (which gives our sequel); and we have compounds of it in ensue, issue, and pursue. —The tres in trespass is a French form of the Latin trans, beyond or across. Trespass, therefore, means to cross the bounds of right.
29. Norman Words (f).—Some of the church terms introduced 219 by the Norman-French are: Altar, Bible; baptism, ceremony; friar; tonsure; penance, relic.—The Normans gave us the words title and dignity themselves, and also the following titles: Duke, marquis; count, viscount; peer; mayor, and others. A duke is a leader; from the Latin dux (= duc-s). A marquis is a lord who has to ride the marches or borders between one county, or between one country, and another. A marquis was also called a Lord-Marcher. The word count never took root in this island, because its place was already occupied by the Danish name earl; but we preserve it in the names countess and viscount—the latter of which means a person in the place of (L. vice) a count. Peer comes from the Latin par, an equal. The House of Peers is the House of Lords—that is, of those who are, at least when in the House, equal in rank and equal in power of voting. It is a fundamental doctrine in English law that every man “is to be tried by his peers.”—It is worthy of note that, in general, the French names for different kinds of food designated the cooked meats; while the names for the living animals that furnish them are English. Thus we have beef and ox; mutton and sheep; veal and calf; pork and pig. There is a remarkable passage in Sir Walter Scott’s ‘Ivanhoe,’ which illustrates this fact with great force and picturesqueness:—
30. General Character of the Norman-French Contributions.—The Norman-French contributions to our language gave us a number of general names or class-names; while the names for individual things are, in general, of purely English origin. The words animal and beast, for example, are French (or Latin); but the words fox, hound, whale, snake, wasp, and fly are purely English.—The words family, relation, parent, ancestor, are French; but the names father, mother, son, daughter, gossip, are English.—The words title and dignity are French; but the words king and queen, lord and lady, knight and sheriff, are English.—Perhaps the most remarkable instance of this is to be found in the abstract terms employed for the offices and functions of State. Of these, the English language possesses only one—the word kingdom. Norman-French, on the other hand, has given us the words realm, court, state, constitution, people, treaty, audience, navy, army, and others—amounting in all to nearly forty. When, however, we come to terms denoting labour and work—such as agriculture 221 and seafaring, we find the proportions entirely reversed. The English language, in such cases, contributes almost everything; the French nearly nothing. In agriculture, while plough, rake, harrow, flail, and many others are English words, not a single term for an agricultural process or implement has been given us by the warlike Norman-French.—While the words ship and boat; hull and fleet; oar and sail, are all English, the Normans have presented us with only the single word prow. It is as if all the Norman conqueror had to do was to take his stand at the prow, gazing upon the land he was going to seize, while the Low-German sailors worked for him at oar and sail.—Again, while the names of the various parts of the body—eye, nose, cheek, tongue, hand, foot, and more than eighty others—are all English, we have received only about ten similar words from the French—such as spirit and corpse; perspiration; face and stature. Speaking broadly, we may say that all words that express general notions, or generalisations, are French or Latin; while words that express specific actions or concrete existences are pure English. Mr Spalding observes—“We use a foreign term naturalised when we speak of ‘colour’ universally; but we fall back on our home stores if we have to tell what the colour is, calling it ‘red’ or ‘yellow,’ ‘white’ or ‘black,’ ‘green’ or ‘brown.’ We are Romans when we speak in a general way of ‘moving’; but we are Teutons if we ‘leap’ or ‘spring,’ if we ‘slip,’ ‘slide,’ or ‘fall,’ if we ‘walk,’ ‘run,’ ‘swim,’ or ‘ride,’ if we ‘creep’ or ‘crawl’ or ‘fly.’”
31. Gains to English from Norman-French.—The gains from the Norman-French contribution are large, and are also of very great importance. Mr Lowell says, that the Norman element came in as quickening leaven to the rather heavy and lumpy Saxon dough. It stirred the whole mass, gave new life to the language, a much higher and wider scope to the thoughts, much greater power and copiousness to the expression of our thoughts, and a finer and brighter rhythm to our English sentences. “To Chaucer,” he says, in ‘My Study Windows,’ “French must have been almost as truly a mother tongue as English. In him we see the first result of the Norman yeast 222 upon the home-baked Saxon loaf. The flour had been honest, the paste well kneaded, but the inspiring leaven was wanting till the Norman brought it over. Chaucer works still in the solid material of his race, but with what airy lightness has he not infused it? Without ceasing to be English, he has escaped from being insular.” Let us look at some of these gains a little more in detail.
32. Norman-French Synonyms.—We must not consider a synonym as a word that means exactly the same thing as the word of which it is a synonym; because then there would be neither room nor use for such a word in the language. A synonym is a word of the same meaning as another, but with a slightly different shade of meaning,—or it is used under different circumstances and in a different connection, or it puts the same idea under a new angle. Begin and commence, will and testament, are exact equivalents—are complete synonyms; but there are very few more of this kind in our language. The moment the genius of a language gets hold of two words of the same meaning, it sets them to do different kinds of work,—to express different parts or shades of that meaning. Thus limb and member, luck and fortune, have the same meaning; but we cannot speak of a limb of the Royal Society, or of the luck of the Rothschilds, who made their fortune by hard work and steady attention to business. We have, by the aid of the Norman-French contributions, flower as well as bloom; branch and bough; purchase and buy; amiable and friendly; cordial and hearty; country and land; gentle and mild; desire and wish; labour and work; miserable and wretched. These pairs of words enable poets and other writers to use the right word in the right place. And we, preferring our Saxon or good old English words to any French or Latin importations, prefer to speak of a hearty welcome instead of a cordial reception; of a loving wife instead of an amiable consort; of a wretched man instead of a miserable individual.
33. Bilingualism.—How did these Norman-French words find their way into the language? What was the road by which 223 they came? What was the process that enabled them to find a place in and to strike deep root into our English soil? Did the learned men—the monks and the clergy—make a selection of words, write them in their books, and teach them to the English people? Nothing of the sort. The process was a much ruder one—but at the same time one much more practical, more effectual, and more lasting in its results. The two peoples—the Normans and the English—found that they had to live together. They met at church, in the market-place, in the drilling field, at the archery butts, in the courtyards of castles; and, on the battle-fields of France, the Saxon bowman showed that he could fight as well, as bravely, and even to better purpose than his lord—the Norman baron. At all these places, under all these circumstances, the Norman and the Englishman were obliged to speak with each other. Now arose a striking phenomenon. Every man, as Professor Earle puts it, turned himself as it were into a walking phrase-book or dictionary. When a Norman had to use a French word, he tried to put the English word for it alongside of the French word; when an Englishman used an English word, he joined with it the French equivalent. Then the language soon began to swarm with “yokes of words”; our words went in couples; and the habit then begun has continued down even to the present day. And thus it is that we possess such couples as will and testament; act and deed; use and wont; aid and abet. Chaucer’s poems are full of these pairs. He joins together hunting and venery (though both words mean exactly the same thing); nature and kind; cheere and face; pray and beseech; mirth and jollity. Later on, the Prayer-Book, which was written in the years 1540 to 1559, keeps up the habit: and we find the pairs acknowledge and confess; assemble and meet together; dissemble and cloak; humble and lowly. To the more English part of the congregation the simple Saxon words would come home with kindly association; to others, the words confess, assemble, dissemble, and humble would speak with greater force and clearness.—Such is the phenomenon called by Professor Earle bilingualism. “It is, in fact,” he says, “a putting of colloquial formulæ 224 to do the duty of a French-English and English-French vocabulary.” Even Hooker, who wrote at the end of the sixteenth century, seems to have been obliged to use these pairs; and we find in his writings the couples “cecity and blindness,” “nocive and hurtful,” “sense and meaning.”
34. Losses of English from the Incoming of Norman-French.—(i) Before the coming of the Normans, the English language was in the habit of forming compounds with ease and effect. But, after the introduction of the Norman-French language, that power seems gradually to have disappeared; and ready-made French or Latin words usurped the place of the home-grown English compound. Thus despair pushed out wanhope; suspicion dethroned wantrust; bidding-sale was expelled by auction; learning-knight by disciple; rime-craft by the Greek word arithmetic; gold-hoard by treasure; book-hoard by library; earth-tilth by agriculture; wonstead by residence; and so with a large number of others.—Many English words, moreover, had their meanings depreciated and almost degraded; and the words themselves lost their ancient rank and dignity. Thus the Norman conquerors put their foot—literally and metaphorically—on the Saxon chair,5 which thus became a stool, or a footstool. Thatch, which is a doublet of the word deck, was the name for any kind of roof; but the coming of the Norman-French lowered it to indicate a roof of straw. Whine was used for the weeping or crying of human beings; but it is now restricted to the cry of a dog. Hide was the generic term for the skin of any animal; it is now limited in modern English to the skin of a beast.—The most damaging result upon our language was that it entirely stopped the growth of English words. We could, for example, make out of the word burn—the derivatives brunt, brand, brandy, brown, brimstone, and others; but this power died out with the coming in of the Norman-French language. After that, instead of growing our own words, we 225 adopted them ready-made.—Professor Craik compares the English and Latin languages to two banks; and says that, when the Normans came over, the account at the English bank was closed, and we drew only upon the Latin bank. But the case is worse than this. English lost its power of growth and expansion from the centre; from this time, it could only add to its bulk by borrowing and conveying from without—by the external accretion of foreign words.
35. Losses of English from the Incoming of Norman-French.—(ii) The arrestment of growth in the purely English part of our language, owing to the irruption of Norman-French, and also to the ease with which we could take a ready-made word from Latin or from Greek, killed off an old power which we once possessed, and which was not without its own use and expressiveness. This was the power of making compound words. The Greeks in ancient times had, and the Germans in modern times have, this power in a high degree. Thus a Greek comic poet has a word of fourteen syllables, which may be thus translated—
“Meanly-rising-early-and-hurrying-to-the-tribunal-to-denounce-another-for-an-infraction-of-the-law-concerning-the-exportation-of-figs.”6
And the Germans have a compound like “the-all-to-nothing-crushing philosopher.” The Germans also say iron-path for railway, handshoe for glove, and finger-hat for thimble. We also possessed this power at one time, and employed it both in proper and in common names. Thus we had and have the names Brakespear, Shakestaff, Shakespear, Golightly, Dolittle, Standfast; and the common nouns want-wit, find-fault, mumble-news (for tale-bearer), pinch-penny (for miser), slugabed. In older times we had three-foot-stool, three-man-beetle7; stone-cold, heaven-bright, honey-sweet, snail-slow, nut-brown, lily-livered (for cowardly); brand-fire-new; earth-wandering, wind-dried, thunder-blasted, death-doomed, and many others. But such words as forbears or fore-elders have been pushed out by ancestors; 226 forewit by caution or prudence; and inwit by conscience. Mr Barnes, the Dorsetshire poet, would like to see these and similar compounds restored, and thinks that we might well return to the old clear well-springs of “English undefiled,” and make our own compounds out of our own words. He even carries his desires into the region of English grammar, and, for degrees of comparison, proposes the phrase pitches of suchness. Thus, instead of the Latin word omnibus, he would have folk-wain; for the Greek botany, he would substitute wort-lore; for auction, he would give us bode-sale; globule he would replace with ballkin; the Greek word horizon must give way to the pure English sky-edge; and, instead of quadrangle, he would have us all write and say four-winkle.
36. Losses of English from the Incoming of Norman-French.—(iii) When once a way was made for the entrance of French words into our English language, the immigrations were rapid and numerous. Hence there were many changes both in the grammar and in the vocabulary of English from the year 1100, the year in which we may suppose those Englishmen who were living at the date of the battle of Hastings had died out. These changes were more or less rapid, according to circumstances. But perhaps the most rapid and remarkable change took place in the lifetime of William Caxton, the great printer, who was born in 1410. In his preface to his translation of the ‘Æneid’ of Virgil, which he published in 1490, when he was eighty years of age, he says that he cannot understand old books that were written when he was a boy—that “the olde Englysshe is more lyke to dutche than englysshe,” and that “our langage now vsed varyeth ferre from that whiche was vsed and spoken when I was borne. For we Englysshemen ben borne ynder the domynacyon of the mone [moon], which is neuer stedfaste, but euer wauerynge, wexynge one season, and waneth and dycreaseth another season.” This as regards time.—But he has the same complaint to make as regards place. “Comyn englysshe that is spoken in one shyre varyeth from another.” And he tells an odd story in illustration of this fact. He tells about certain merchants who were in a ship “in Tamyse” (on the 227 Thames), who were bound for Zealand, but were wind-stayed at the Foreland, and took it into their heads to go on shore there. One of the merchants, whose name was Sheffelde, a mercer, entered a house, “and axed for mete, and specyally he axyd after eggys.” But the “goode-wyf” replied that she “coude speke no frenshe.” The merchant, who was a steady Englishman, lost his temper, “for he also coude speke no frenshe, but wolde have hadde eggys; and she understode hym not.” Fortunately, a friend happened to join him in the house, and he acted as interpreter. The friend said that “he wolde have eyren; then the goode wyf sayde that she understod hym wel.” And then the simple-minded but much-perplexed Caxton goes on to say: “Loo! what sholde a man in thyse dayes now wryte, eggës or eyren?” Such were the difficulties that beset printers and writers in the close of the fifteenth century.
37. Latin of the Fourth Period.—(i) This contribution differs very essentially in character from the last. The Norman-French contribution was a gift from a people to a people—from living beings to living beings; this new contribution was rather a conveyance of words from books to books, and it never influenced—in any great degree—the spoken language of the English people. The ear and the mouth carried the Norman-French words into our language; the eye, the pen, and the printing-press were the instruments that brought in the Latin words of the Fourth Period. The Norman-French words that came in took and kept their place in the spoken language of the masses of the people; the Latin words that we received in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries kept their place in the written or printed language of books, of scholars, and of literary men. These new Latin words came in with the Revival of Learning, which is also called the Renascence.
The Turks attacked and took Constantinople in the year 1453; and the great Greek and Latin scholars who lived in that city hurriedly packed up their priceless manuscripts and books, and fled to all parts of Italy, Germany, France, and even into England. The loss of the East became the gain of the West. These scholars became teachers; they taught the Greek 228 and Roman classics to eager and earnest learners; and thus a new impulse was given to the study of the great masterpieces of human thought and literary style. And so it came to pass in course of time that every one who wished to become an educated man studied the literature of Greece and Rome. Even women took to the study. Lady Jane Grey was a good Greek and Latin scholar; and so was Queen Elizabeth. From this time began an enormous importation of Latin words into our language. Being imported by the eye and the pen, they suffered little or no change; the spirit of the people did not influence them in the least—neither the organs of speech nor the ear affected either the pronunciation or the spelling of them. If we look down the columns of any English dictionary, we shall find these later Latin words in hundreds. Opinionem became opinion; factionem, faction; orationem, oration; pungentem passed over in the form of pungent (though we had poignant already from the French); pauperem came in as pauper; and separatum became separate.
38. Latin of the Fourth Period.—(ii) This went on to such an extent in the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century, that one writer says of those who spoke and wrote this Latinised English, “If some of their mothers were alive, they were not able to tell what they say.” And Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) remarks: “If elegancy (= the use of Latin words) still proceedeth, and English pens maintain that stream we have of late observed to flow from many, we shall, within a few years, be fain to learn Latin to understand English, and a work will prove of equal facility in either.” Mr Alexander Gill, an eminent schoolmaster, and the then head-master of St Paul’s School, where, among his other pupils, he taught John Milton, wrote a book in 1619 on the English language; and, among other remarks, he says: “O harsh lips! I now hear all around me such words as common, vices, envy, malice; even virtue, study, justice, pity, mercy, compassion, profit, commodity, colour, grace, favour, acceptance. But whither, I pray, in all the world, have you banished those words which our forefathers used for these new-fangled ones? 229 Are our words to be executed like our citizens?” And he calls this fashion of using Latin words “the new mange in our speaking and writing.” But the fashion went on growing; and even uneducated people thought it a clever thing to use a Latin instead of a good English word. Samuel Rowlands, a writer in the seventeenth century, ridicules this affectation in a few lines of verse. He pretends that he was out walking on the highroad, and met a countryman who wanted to know what o’clock it was, and whether he was on the right way to the town or village he was making for. The writer saw at once that he was a simple bumpkin; and, when he heard that he had lost his way, he turned up his nose at the poor fellow, and ordered him to be off at once. Here are the lines:—
“As on the way I itinerated,
A rural person I obviated,
Interrogating time’s transitation,
And of the passage demonstration.
My apprehension did ingenious scan
That he was merely a simplician;
So, when I saw he was extravagánt,
Unto the óbscure vulgar consonánt,
I bade him vanish most promiscuously,
And not contaminate my company.”
39. Latin of the Fourth Period.—(iii) What happened in the case of the Norman-French contribution, happened also in this. The language became saturated with these new Latin words, until it became satiated, then, as it were, disgusted, and would take no more. Hundreds of
“Long-tailed words in osity and ation”
crowded into the English language; but many of them were doomed to speedy expulsion. Thus words like discerptibility, supervacaneousness, septentrionality, ludibundness (love of sport), came in in crowds. The verb intenerate tried to turn out soften; and deturpate to take the place of defile. But good writers, like Bacon and Raleigh, took care to avoid the use of such terms, and to employ only those Latin words which gave them the power to indicate a new idea—a new meaning or a new shade 230 of meaning. And when we come to the eighteenth century, we find that a writer like Addison would have shuddered at the very mention of such “inkhorn terms.”
40. Eye-Latin and Ear-Latin.—(i) One slight influence produced by this spread of devotion to classical Latin—to the Latin of Cicero and Livy, of Horace and Virgil—was to alter the spelling of French words. We had already received—through the ear—the French words assaute, aventure, defaut, dette, vitaille, and others. But when our scholars became accustomed to the book-form of these words in Latin books, they gradually altered them—for the eye and ear—into assault, adventure, default, debt, and victuals. They went further. A large number of Latin words that already existed in the language in their Norman-French form (for we must not forget that French is Latin “with the ends bitten off”—changed by being spoken peculiarly and heard imperfectly) were reintroduced in their original Latin form. Thus we had caitiff from the Normans; but we reintroduced it in the shape of captive, which comes almost unaltered from the Latin captivum. Feat we had from the Normans; but the Latin factum, which provided the word, presented us with a second form of it in the word fact. Such words might be called Ear-Latin and Eye-Latin; Mouth-Latin and Book-Latin; Spoken Latin and Written Latin; or Latin at second-hand and Latin at first-hand.
41. Eye-Latin and Ear-Latin.—(ii) This coming in of the same word by two different doors—by the Eye and by the Ear—has given rise to the phenomenon of Doublets. The following is a list of Latin Doublets; and it will be noticed that Latin1 stands for Latin at first-hand—from books; and Latin2 for Latin at second-hand—through the Norman-French.
Latin Doublets or Duplicates.
| Latin. | Latin1. | Latin2. |
|---|---|---|
| Antecessorem | Antecessor | Ancestor. |
| Benedictionem | Benediction | Benison. |
Cadentia (Low Lat. noun) |
Cadence | Chance. |
| Captivum | Captive | Caitiff. |
| 231 Conceptionem | Conception | Conceit. |
| Consuetudinem | Consuetude | Custom. Costume. |
| Cophinum | Coffin | Coffer. |
Corpus (a body) |
Corpse | Corps. |
Debitum (something owed) |
Debit | Debt. |
Defectum (something wanting) |
Defect | Defeat. |
| Dilatāre | Dilate | Delay. |
| Exemplum | Example | Sample. |
Fabrĭca (a workshop) |
Fabric | Forge. |
| Factionem | Faction | Fashion. |
| Factum | Fact | Feat. |
| Fidelitatem | Fidelity | Fealty. |
| Fragilem | Fragile | Frail. |
Gentīlis (belonging to a gens or family) |
Gentile | Gentle. |
| Historia | History | Story. |
| Hospitale | Hospital | Hotel. |
| Lectionem | Lection | Lesson. |
| Legalem | Legal | Loyal. |
| Magister | Master | Mr. |
Majorem (greater) |
Major | Mayor. |
| Maledictionem | Malediction | Malison. |
| Moneta | Mint | Money. |
| Nutrimentum | Nutriment | Nourishment. |
| Orationem | Oration | Orison (a prayer). |
Paganum (a dweller in a pagus or country district) |
Pagan | Payne (a proper name). |
Particulam (a little part) |
Particle | Parcel. |
| Pauperem | Pauper | Poor. |
| Penitentiam | Penitence | Penance. |
| Persecutum | Persecute | Pursue. |
Potionem (a draught) |
Potion | Poison. |
| Pungentem | Pungent | Poignant. |
| Quietum | Quiet | Coy. |
| Radius | Radius | Ray. |
| Regālem | Regal | Royal. |
| Respectum | Respect | Respite. |
| Securum | Secure | Sure. |
| Seniorem | Senior | Sir. |
| Separatum | Separate | Sever. |
| Species | Species | Spice. |
| Statum | State | Estate. |
| Tractum | Tract | Trait. |
| Traditionem | Tradition | Treason. |
| Zelosum | Zealous | Jealous. |
42. Remarks on the above Table.—The word benison, a blessing, may be contrasted with its opposite, malison, a curse.—Cadence is the falling of sounds; chance the befalling of events.—A caitiff was at first a captive—then a person who made no proper defence, but allowed himself to be taken captive.—A corps is a body of troops.—The word sample is found, in older English, in the form of ensample.—A feat of arms is a deed or fact of arms, par excellence.—To understand how fragile became frail, we must pronounce the g hard, and notice how the hard guttural falls easily away—as in our own native words flail and hail, which formerly contained a hard g.—A major is a greater captain; a mayor is a greater magistrate.—A magister means a bigger man—as opposed to a minister (from minus), a smaller man.—Moneta was the name given to a stamped coin, because these coins were first struck in the temple of Juno Moneta, Juno the Adviser or the Warner. (From the same root—mon—come monition, admonition; monitor; admonish.)—Shakespeare uses the word orison freely for prayer, as in the address of Hamlet to Ophelia, where he says, “Nymph, in thy orisons, be all my sins remembered!”—Poor comes to us from an Old French word poure; the newer French is pauvre.—To understand the vanishing of the g sound in poignant, we must remember that the Romans sounded it always hard.—Sever we get through separate, because p and v are both labials, and therefore easily interchangeable.—Treason—with its s instead of ti—may be compared with benison, malison, orison, poison, and reason.
43. Conclusions from the above Table.—If we examine the table on page 231 with care, we shall come to several undeniable conclusions. (i) First, the words which come to us direct from Latin are found more in books than in everyday speech. (ii) Secondly, they are longer. The reason is that the words that have come through French have been worn down by the careless pronunciation of many generations—by that desire for ease in the pronouncing of words which characterises all languages, and have at last been compelled to take that form which was least difficult to pronounce. (iii) Thirdly, the two 233 sets of words have, in each case, either (a) very different meanings, or (b) different shades of meaning. There is no likeness of meaning in cadence and chance, except the common meaning of fall which belongs to the root from which they both spring. And the different shades of meaning between history and story, between regal and royal, between persecute and pursue, are also quite plainly marked, and are of the greatest use in composition.
44. Latin Triplets.—Still more remarkable is the fact that there are in our language words that have made three appearances—one through Latin, one through Norman-French, and one through ordinary French. These seem to live quietly side by side in the language; and no one asks by what claim they are here. They are useful: that is enough. These triplets are—regal, royal, and real; legal, loyal, and leal; fidelity, faithfulness,8 and fealty. The adjective real we no longer possess in the sense of royal, but Chaucer uses it; and it still exists in the noun real-m. Leal is most used in Scotland, where it has a settled abode in the well-known phrase “the land o’ the leal.”
45. Greek Doublets.—The same double introduction, which we noticed in the case of Latin words, takes place in regard to Greek words. It seems to have been forgotten that our English forms of them had been already given us by St Augustine and the Church, and a newer form of each was reintroduced. The following are a few examples:—
| Greek. | Older Form. | Later Form. |
|---|---|---|
Adamanta9 (the untameable) |
Diamond | Adamant. |
| Balsamon | Balm | Balsam. |
Blasphēmein (to speak ill of) |
Blame | Blaspheme. |
Cheirourgon9 (a worker with the hand) |
Chirurgeon | Surgeon. |
|
234
Dactŭlon (a finger) |
Date (the fruit) |
Dactyl. |
| Phantasia | Fancy | Phantasy. |
Phantasma (an appearance) |
Phantom | Phantasm. |
Presbuteron (an elder) |
Priest | Presbyter. |
| Paralysis | Palsy | Paralysis. |
| Scandălon | Slander | Scandal. |
It may be remarked of the word fancy, that, in Shakespeare’s time, it meant love or imagination—
“Tell me, where is fancy bred,
Or in the heart, or in the head?”
It is now restricted to mean a lighter and less serious kind of imagination. Thus we say that Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ is a work of imagination; but that Moore’s ‘Lalla Rookh’ is a product of the poet’s fancy.
46. Characteristics of the Two Elements of English.—If we keep our attention fixed on the two chief elements in our language—the English element and the Latin element—the Teutonic and the Romance—we shall find some striking qualities manifest themselves. We have already said that whole sentences can be made containing only English words, while it is impossible to do this with Latin or other foreign words. Let us take two passages—one from a daily newspaper, and the other from Shakespeare:—
(i) “We find the functions of such an official defined in the Act. He is to be a legally qualified medical practitioner of skill and experience, to inspect and report periodically on the sanitary condition of town or district; to ascertain the existence of diseases, more especially epidemics increasing the rates of mortality, and to point out the existence of any nuisances or other local causes, which are likely to originate and maintain such diseases, and injuriously affect the health of the inhabitants of such town or district; to take cognisance of the existence of any contagious disease, and to point out the most efficacious means for the ventilation of chapels, schools, registered lodging-houses, and other public buildings.”
In this passage, all the words in italics are either Latin or Greek. But, if the purely English words were left out, the sentence would fall into ruins—would become a mere rubbish-heap of words. It is the small particles that give life and 235 motion to each sentence. They are the joints and hinges on which the whole sentence moves.—Let us now look at a passage from Shakespeare. It is from the speech of Macbeth, after he has made up his mind to murder Duncan:—
(ii) “Go bid thy mistress, when my drink is ready,
She strike upon the bell. Get thee to bed!—
Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come! let me clutch thee!
—I have thee not; and yet I see thee still.”
In this passage there is only one Latin (or French) word—the word mistress. If Shakespeare had used the word lady, the passage would have been entirely English.—The passage from the newspaper deals with large generalisations; that from Shakespeare with individual acts and feelings—with things that come home “to the business and bosom” of man as man. Every master of the English language understands well the art of mingling the two elements—so as to obtain a fine effect; and none better than writers like Shakespeare, Milton, Gray, and Tennyson. Shakespeare makes Antony say of Cleopatra:—
“Age cannot wither her; nor custom stale
Her infinite variety.”
Here the French (or Latin) words custom and variety form a vivid contrast to the English verb stale, throw up its meaning and colour, and give it greater prominence.—Milton makes Eve say:—
“I thither went
With inexperienc’d thought, and laid me down
On the green bank, to look into the clear
Smooth lake, that to me seem’d another sky.”
Here the words inexperienced and clear give variety to the sameness of the English words.—Gray, in the Elegy, has this verse:—
“The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,
The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed,
The cock’s shrill clarion or the echoing horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.”
236 Here incense, clarion, and echoing give a vivid colouring to the plainer hues of the homely English phrases.—Tennyson, in the Lotos-Eaters, vi., writes:—
“Dear is the memory of our wedded lives,
And dear the last embraces of our wives
And their warm tears: but all hath suffer’d change;
For surely now our household hearths are cold:
Our sons inherit us: our looks are strange:
And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy.”
Most powerful is the introduction of the French words suffered change, inherit, strange, and trouble joy; for they give with painful force the contrast of the present state of desolation with the homely rest and happiness of the old abode, the love of the loving wives, the faithfulness of the stalwart sons.
47. English and other Doublets.—We have already seen how, by the presentation of the same word at two different doors—the door of Latin and the door of French—we are in possession of a considerable number of doublets. But this phenomenon is not limited to Latin and French—is not solely due to the contributions we receive from these languages. We find it also within English itself; and causes of the most different description bring about the same results. For various reasons, the English language is very rich in doublets. It possesses nearly five hundred pairs of such words. The language is all the richer for having them, as it is thereby enabled to give fuller and clearer expression to the different shades and delicate varieties of meaning in the mind.
48. The sources of doublets are various. But five different causes seem chiefly to have operated in producing them. They are due to differences of pronunciation; to differences in spelling; to contractions for convenience in daily speech; to differences in dialects; and to the fact that many of them come from different languages. Let us look at a few examples of each. At bottom, however, all these differences will be found to resolve themselves into differences of pronunciation. They are either differences in the pronunciation of the same word by 237 different tribes, or by men in different counties, who speak different dialects; or by men of different nations.
49. Differences in Pronunciation.—From this source we have parson and person (the parson being the person or representative of the Church); sop and soup; task and tax (the sk has here become ks); thread and thrid; ticket and etiquette; sauce and souse (to steep in brine); squall and squeal.
50. Differences in Spelling.—To and too are the same word—one being used as a preposition, the other as an adverb; of and off, from and fro, are only different spellings, which represent different functions or uses of the same word; onion and union are the same word. An union10 comes from the Latin unus, one, and it meant a large single pearl—a unique jewel; the word was then applied to the plant, the head of which is of a pearl-shape.
51. Contractions.—Contraction has been a pretty fruitful source of doublets in English. A long word has a syllable or two cut off; or two or three are compressed into one. Thus example has become sample; alone appears also as lone; amend has been shortened into mend; defend has been cut down into fend (as in fender); manœuvre has been contracted into manure (both meaning originally to work with the hand); madam becomes ’m in yes ’m11; and presbyter has been squeezed down into priest.12 Other examples of contraction are: capital and cattle; chirurgeon (a worker with the hand) and surgeon; cholera and choler (from chŏlos, the Greek word for bile); disport and sport; estate and state; esquire and squire; Egyptian and 238 gipsy; emmet and ant; gammon and game; grandfather and gaffer; grandmother and gammer; iota (the Greek letter i) and jot; maximum and maxim; mobile and mob; mosquito and musket; papa and pope; periwig and wig; poesy and posy; procurator and proctor; shallop and sloop; unity and unit. It is quite evident that the above pairs of words, although in reality one, have very different meanings and uses.
52. Difference of English Dialects.—Another source of doublets is to be found in the dialects of the English language. Almost every county in England has its own dialect; but three main dialects stand out with great prominence in our older literature, and these are the Northern, the Midland, and the Southern. The grammar of these dialects13 was different; their pronunciation of words was different—and this has given rise to a splitting of one word into two. In the North, we find a hard c, as in the caster of Lancaster; in the Midlands, a soft c, as in Leicester; in the South, a ch, as in Winchester. We shall find similar differences of hardness and softness in ordinary words. Thus we find kirk and church; canker and cancer; canal and channel; deck and thatch; drill and thrill; fan and van (in a winnowing-machine); fitch and vetch; hale and whole; mash and mess; naught, nought, and not; pike, peak, and beak; poke and pouch; quid (a piece of tobacco for chewing) and cud (which means the thing chewed); reave and rob; ridge and rig; scabby and shabby; scar and share; screech and shriek; shirt and skirt; shuffle and scuffle; spray and sprig; wain and waggon—and other pairs. All of these are but different modes of pronouncing the same word in different parts of England; but the genius of the language has taken advantage of these different ways of pronouncing to make different words out of them, and to give them different functions, meanings, and uses.
239CHAPTER III.
HISTORY OF THE GRAMMAR OF ENGLISH.
1. The Oldest English Synthetic.—The oldest English, or Anglo-Saxon, that was brought over here in the fifth century, was a language that showed the relations of words to each other by adding different endings to words, or by synthesis. These endings are called inflexions. Latin and Greek are highly inflected languages; French and German have many more inflexions than modern English; and ancient English (or Anglo-Saxon) also possessed a large number of inflexions.
2. Modern English Analytic.—When, instead of inflexions, a language employs small particles—such as prepositions, auxiliary verbs, and suchlike words—to express the relations of words to each other, such a language is called analytic or non-inflexional. When we say, as we used to say in the oldest English, “God is ealra cyninga cyning,” we speak a synthetic language. But when we say, “God is king of all kings,” then we employ an analytic or uninflected language.
3. Short View of the History of English Grammar.—From the time when the English language came over to this island, it has grown steadily in the number of its words. On the other hand, it has lost just as steadily in the number of its inflexions. Put in a broad and somewhat rough fashion, it may be said that—
(i) Up to the year 1100—one generation after the Battle of Senlac—the English language was a Synthetic Language.
240(ii) From the year 1100 or thereabouts, English has been losing its inflexions, and gradually becoming more and more an Analytic Language.
4. Causes of this Change.—Even before the coming of the Danes and the Normans, the English people had shown a tendency to get rid of some of their inflexions. A similar tendency can be observed at the present time among the Germans of the Rhine Province, who often drop an n at the end of a word, and show in other respects a carelessness about grammar. But, when a foreign people comes among natives, such a tendency is naturally encouraged, and often greatly increased. The natives discover that these inflexions are not so very important, if only they can get their meaning rightly conveyed to the foreigners. Both parties, accordingly, come to see that the root of the word is the most important element; they stick to that, and they come to neglect the mere inflexions. Moreover, the accent in English words always struck the root; and hence this part of the word always fell on the ear with the greater force, and carried the greater weight. When the Danes—who spoke a cognate language—began to settle in England, the tendency to drop inflexions increased; but when the Normans—who spoke an entirely different language—came, the tendency increased enormously, and the inflexions of Anglo-Saxon began to “fall as the leaves fall” in the dry wind of a frosty October. Let us try to trace some of these changes and losses.
5. Grammar of the First Period, 450-1100.—The English of this period is called the Oldest English or Anglo-Saxon. The gender of nouns was arbitrary, or—it may be—poetical; it did not, as in modern English it does, follow the sex. Thus nama, a name, was masculine; tunge, a tongue, feminine; and eáge, an eye, neuter. Like nama, the proper names of men ended in a; and we find such names as Isa, Offa, Penda, as the names of kings. Nouns at this period had five cases, with inflexions for each; now we possess but one inflexion—that for the possessive.—Even the definite article was inflected.—The infinitive of verbs ended in an; and the sign to—which we received from the 241 Danes—was not in use, except for the dative of the infinitive. This dative infinitive is still preserved in such phrases as “a house to let;” “bread to eat;” “water to drink.”—The present participle ended in ende (in the North ande). This present participle may be said still to exist—in spoken, but not in written speech; for some people regularly say walkin, goin, for walking and going.—The plural of the present indicative ended in ath for all three persons. In the perfect tense, the plural ending was on.—There was no future tense; the work of the future was done by the present tense. Fragments of this usage still survive in the language, as when we say, “He goes up to town next week.”—Prepositions governed various cases; and not always the objective (or accusative), as they do now.
6. Grammar of the Second Period, 1100-1250.—The English of this period is called Early English. Even before the coming of the Normans, the inflexions of our language had—as we have seen—begun to drop off, and it was slowly on the way to becoming an analytic language. The same changes—the same simplification of grammar, has taken place in nearly every Low German language. But the coming of the Normans hastened these changes, for it made the inflexional endings of words of much less practical importance to the English themselves.—Great changes took place in the pronunciation also. The hard c or k was softened into ch; and the hard guttural g was refined into a y or even into a silent w.—A remarkable addition was made to the language. The Oldest English or Anglo-Saxon had no indefinite article. They said ofer stán for on a rock. But, as the French have made the article un out of the Latin unus, so the English pared down the northern ane (= one) into the article an or a. The Anglo-Saxon definite article was se, seo, þaet; and in the grammar of this Second Period it became þe, þeo, þe.—The French plural in es took the place of the English plural in en. But housen and shoon existed for many centuries after the Norman coming; and Mr Barnes, the Dorsetshire poet, still deplores the ugly sound of nests and fists, and would like to be able to say and to write nesten and fisten.—The dative plural, which ended in um, becomes an e or an en. The um, 242 however, still exists in the form of om in seldom (= at few times) and whilom (= in old times).—The gender of nouns falls into confusion, and begins to show a tendency to follow the sex.—Adjectives show a tendency to drop several of their inflexions, and to become as serviceable and accommodating as they are now—when they are the same with all numbers, genders, and cases.—The an of the infinitive becomes en, and sometimes even the n is dropped.—Shall and will begin to be used as tense-auxiliaries for the future tense.
7. Grammar of the Third Period, 1250-1350.—The English of this period is often called Middle English.—The definite article still preserves a few inflexions.—Nouns that were once masculine or feminine become neuter, for the sake of convenience.—The possessive in es becomes general.—Adjectives make their plural in e.—The infinitive now takes to before it—except after a few verbs, like bid, see, hear, etc.—The present participle in inge makes its appearance about the year 1300.
8. Grammar of the Fourth Period, 1350-1485.—This may be called Later Middle English. An old writer of the fourteenth century points out that, in his time—and before it—the English language was “a-deled a thre,” divided into three; that is, that there were three main dialects, the Northern, the Midland, and the Southern. There were many differences in the grammar of these dialects; but the chief of these differences is found in the plural of the present indicative of the verb. This part of the verb formed its plurals in the following manner:—
| Northern. | Midland. | Southern. |
|---|---|---|
| We hopës | We hopen | We hopeth. |
| You hopës | You hopen | You hopeth. |
| They hopës | They hopen | They hopeth.14 |
In time the Midland dialect conquered; and the East Midland form of it became predominant all over England. As early as the beginning of the thirteenth century, this dialect had thrown off most of the old inflexions, and had become almost as flexionless 243 as the English of the present day. Let us note a few of the more prominent changes.—The first personal pronoun Ic or Ich loses the guttural, and becomes I.—The pronouns him, them, and whom, which are true datives, are used either as datives or as objectives.—The imperative plural ends in eth. “Riseth up,” Chaucer makes one of his characters say, “and stondeth by me!”—The useful and almost ubiquitous letter e comes in as a substitute for a, u, and even an. Thus nama becomes name, sunu (son) becomes sune, and withutan changes into withute.—The dative of adjectives is used as an adverb. Thus we find softë, brightë employed like our softly, brightly.—The n in the infinitive has fallen away; but the ë is sounded as a separate syllable. Thus we find brekë, smitë for breken and smiten.
9. General View.—In the time of King Alfred, the West-Saxon speech—the Wessex dialect—took precedence of the rest, and became the literary dialect of England. But it had not, and could not have, any influence on the spoken language of other parts of England, for the simple reason that very few persons were able to travel, and it took days—and even weeks—for a man to go from Devonshire to Yorkshire. In course of time the Midland dialect—that spoken between the Humber and the Thames—became the predominant dialect of England; and the East Midland variety of this dialect became the parent of modern standard English. This predominance was probably due to the fact that it, soonest of all, got rid of its inflexions, and became most easy, pleasant, and convenient to use. And this disuse of inflexions was itself probably due to the early Danish settlements in the east, to the larger number of Normans in that part of England, to the larger number of thriving towns, and to the greater and more active communication between the eastern seaports and the Continent. The inflexions were first confused, then weakened, then forgotten, finally lost. The result was an extreme simplification, which still benefits all learners of the English language. Instead of spending a great deal of time on the learning of a large number of inflexions, which are to them arbitrary and meaningless, 244 foreigners have only to fix their attention on the words and phrases themselves, that is, on the very pith and marrow of the language—indeed, on the language itself. Hence the great German grammarian Grimm, and others, predict that English will spread itself all over the world, and become the universal language of the future. In addition to this almost complete sweeping away of all inflexions,—which made Dr Johnson say, “Sir, the English language has no grammar at all,”—there were other remarkable and useful results which accrued from the coming in of the Norman-French and other foreign elements.
10. Monosyllables.—The stripping off of the inflexions of our language cut a large number of words down to the root. Hundreds, if not thousands, of our verbs were dissyllables, but, by the gradual loss of the ending en (which was in Anglo-Saxon an), they became monosyllables. Thus bindan, drincan, findan, became bind, drink, find; and this happened with hosts of other verbs. Again, the expulsion of the guttural, which the Normans never could or would take to, had the effect of compressing many words of two syllables into one. Thus haegel, twaegen, and faegen, became hail, twain, and fain.—In these and other ways it has come to pass that the present English is to a very large extent of a monosyllabic character. So much is this the case, that whole books have been written for children in monosyllables. It must be confessed that the monosyllabic style is often dull, but it is always serious and homely. We can find in our translation of the Bible whole verses that are made up of words of only one syllable. Many of the most powerful passages in Shakespeare, too, are written in monosyllables. The same may be said of hundreds of our proverbs—such as, “Cats hide their claws”; “Fair words please fools”; “He that has most time has none to lose.” Great poets, like Tennyson and Matthew Arnold, understand well the fine effect to be produced from the mingling of short and long words—of the homely English with the more ornate Romance language. In the following verse from Matthew Arnold the words are all monosyllables, with the exception of tired and contention (which is Latin):—
245“Let the long contention cease;
Geese are swans, and swans are geese;
Let them have it how they will,
Thou art tired. Best be still!”
In Tennyson’s “Lord of Burleigh,” when the sorrowful husband comes to look upon his dead wife, the verse runs almost entirely in monosyllables:—
“And he came to look upon her,
And he looked at her, and said:
‘Bring the dress, and put it on her,
That she wore when she was wed.’”
An American writer has well indicated the force of the English monosyllable in the following sonnet:—
“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 fear, or woe, 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.”
It will be observed that this sonnet consists entirely of monosyllables, and yet that the style of it shows considerable power and vigour. The words printed in italics are all derived from Latin, with the exception of the word phrase, which is Greek.
11. Change in the Order of Words.—The syntax—or order of words—of the oldest English was very different from that of Norman-French. The syntax of an Old English sentence was clumsy and involved; it kept the attention long on the strain; it was rumbling, rambling, and unpleasant to the ear. It kept the attention on the strain, because the verb in a subordinate clause was held back, and not revealed till we had come to the 246 end of the clause. Thus the Anglo-Saxon wrote (though in different form and spelling)—
“When Darius saw, that he overcome be would.”
The newer English, under French influence, wrote—
“When Darius saw that he was going to be overcome.”
This change has made an English sentence lighter and more easy to understand, for the reader or hearer is not kept waiting for the verb; but each word comes just when it is expected, and therefore in its “natural” place. The Old English sentence—which is very like the German sentence of the present day—has been compared to a heavy cart without springs, while the newer English sentence is like a modern well-hung English carriage. Norman-French, then, gave us a brighter, lighter, freer rhythm, and therefore a sentence more easy to understand and to employ, more supple, and better adapted to everyday use.
12. The Expulsion of Gutturals.—(i) Not only did the Normans help us to an easier and pleasanter kind of sentence, they aided us in getting rid of the numerous throat-sounds that infested our language. It is a remarkable fact that there is not now in the French language a single guttural. There is not an h in the whole language. The French write an h in several of their words, but they never sound it. Its use is merely to serve as a fence between two vowels—to keep two vowels separate, as in la haine, hatred. No doubt the Normans could utter throat-sounds well enough when they dwelt in Scandinavia; but, after they had lived in France for several generations, they acquired a great dislike to all such sounds. No doubt, too, many, from long disuse, were unable to give utterance to a guttural. This dislike they communicated to the English; and hence, in the present day, there are many people—especially in the south of England—who cannot sound a guttural at all. The muscles in the throat that help to produce these sounds have become atrophied—have lost their power for want of practice. The purely English part of the population, for many centuries after the Norman invasion, could sound gutturals quite easily—just as the Scotch 247 and the Germans do now; but it gradually became the fashion in England to leave them out.
13. The Expulsion of Gutturals.—(ii) In some cases the guttural disappeared entirely; in others, it was changed into or represented by other sounds. The ge at the beginning of the passive (or past) participles of many verbs disappeared entirely. Thus gebróht, gebóht, geworht, became brought, bought, and wrought. The g at the beginning of many words also dropped off. Thus Gyppenswich became Ipswich; gif became if; genoh, enough.—The guttural at the end of words—hard g or c—also disappeared. Thus halig became holy; eordhlic, earthly; gastlic, ghastly or ghostly. The same is the case in dough, through, plough, etc.—the guttural appearing to the eye but not to the ear.—Again, the guttural was changed into quite different sounds—into labials, into sibilants, into other sounds also. The following are a few examples:—
(a) The guttural has been softened, through Norman-French influence, into a sibilant. Thus rigg, egg, and brigg have become ridge, edge, and bridge.
(b) The guttural has become a labial—f—as in cough, enough, trough, laugh, draught, etc.
(c) The guttural has become an additional syllable, and is represented by a vowel-sound. Thus sorg and mearh have become sorrow and marrow.
(d) In some words it has disappeared both to eye and ear. Thus makëd has become made.
14. The Story of the GH.—How is it, then, that we have in so many words the two strongest gutturals in the language—g and h—not only separately, in so many of our words, but combined? The story is an odd one. Our Old English or Saxon scribes wrote—not light, might, and night, but liht, miht, and niht. When, however, they found that the Norman-French gentlemen would not sound the h, and say—as is still said in Scotland—licht, &c., they redoubled the guttural, strengthened the h with a hard g, and again presented the dose to the Norman. But, if the Norman could not sound the h alone, still less could he sound the double guttural; and he very coolly let both alone— 248 ignored both. The Saxon scribe doubled the signs for his guttural, just as a farmer might put up a strong wooden fence in front of a hedge; but the Norman cleared both with perfect ease and indifference. And so it came to pass that we have the symbol gh in more than seventy of our words, and that in most of these we do not sound it at all. The gh remains in our language, like a moss-grown boulder, brought down into the fertile valley in a glacial period, when gutturals were both spoken and written, and men believed in the truthfulness of letters—but now passed by in silence and noticed by no one.
15. The Letters that represent Gutturals.—The English guttural has been quite Protean in the written or printed forms it takes. It appears as an i, as a y, as a w, as a ch, as a dge, as a j, and—in its more native forms—as a g, a k, or a gh. The following words give all these forms: hail, day, fowl, teach, edge, ajar, drag, truck, and trough. Now hail was hagol, day was daeg, fowl was fugol, teach was taecan, edge was egg, ajar was achar. In seek, beseech, sought—which are all different forms of the same word—we see the guttural appearing in three different forms—as a hard k, as a soft ch, as an unnoticed gh. In think and thought, drink and draught, sly and sleight, dry and drought, slay and slaughter, it takes two different forms. In dig, ditch, and dike—which are all the same word in different shapes—it again takes three forms. In fly, flew, and flight, it appears as a y, a w, and a gh. But, indeed, the manners of a guttural, its ways of appearing and disappearing, are almost beyond counting.
16. Grammatical Result of the Loss of Inflexions.—When we look at a Latin or French or German word, we know whether it is a verb or a noun or a preposition by its mere appearance—by its face or by its dress, so to speak. But the loss of inflexions which has taken place in the English language has resulted in depriving us of this advantage—if advantage it is. Instead of looking at the face of a word in English, we are obliged to think of its function,—that is, of what it does. We have, for example, a large number of words that are both nouns and verbs—we may use them as the one or as the other; and, 249 till we have used them, we cannot tell whether they are the one or the other. Thus, when we speak of “a cut on the finger,” cut is a noun, because it is a name; but when we say, “Harry cut his finger,” then cut is a verb, because it tells something about Harry. Words like bud, cane, cut, comb, cap, dust, fall, fish, heap, mind, name, pen, plaster, punt, run, rush, stone, and many others, can be used either as nouns or as verbs. Again, fast, quick, and hard may be used either as adverbs or as adjectives; and back may be employed as an adverb, as a noun, and even as an adjective. Shakespeare is very daring in the use of this licence. He makes one of his characters say, “But me no buts!” In this sentence, the first but is a verb in the imperative mood; the second is a noun in the objective case. Shakespeare uses also such verbs as to glad, to mad, such phrases as a seldom pleasure, and the fairest she. Dr Abbott says, “In Elizabethan English, almost any part of speech can be used as any other part of speech. An adverb can be used as a verb, ‘they askance their eyes’; as a noun, ‘the backward and abysm of time’; or as an adjective, ‘a seldom pleasure.’ Any noun, adjective, or neuter verb can be used as an active verb. You can ‘happy’ your friend, ‘malice’ or ‘fool’ your enemy, or ‘fall’ an axe upon his neck.” Even in modern English, almost any noun can be used as a verb. Thus we can say, “to paper a room”; “to water the horses”; “to black-ball a candidate”; to “iron a shirt” or “a prisoner”; “to toe the line.” On the other hand, verbs may be used as nouns; for we can speak of a work, of a beautiful print, of a long walk, and so on.
250CHAPTER IV.
SPECIMENS OF ENGLISH OF DIFFERENT PERIODS.
1. Vocabulary and Grammar.—The oldest English or Anglo-Saxon differs from modern English both in vocabulary and in grammar—in the words it uses and in the inflexions it employs. The difference is often startling. And yet, if we look closely at the words and their dress, we shall most often find that the words which look so strange are the very words with which we are most familiar—words that we are in the habit of using every day; and that it is their dress alone that is strange and antiquated. The effect is the same as if we were to dress a modern man in the clothes worn a thousand years ago: the chances are that we should not be able to recognise even our dearest friend.
2. A Specimen from Anglo-Saxon.—Let us take as an example a verse from the Anglo-Saxon version of one of the Gospels. The well-known verse, Luke ii. 40, runs thus in our oldest English version:—
Sóþlíce ðaet cild weox, and waes gestrangod, wisdómes full; and Godes gyfu waes on him.
Now this looks like an extract from a foreign language; but it is not: it is our own veritable mother-tongue. Every word is pure ordinary English; it is the dress—the spelling and the inflexions—that is quaint and old-fashioned. This will be plain from a literal translation:—
Soothly that child waxed, and was strengthened, wisdoms full (= full of wisdom); and God’s gift was on him.
2513. A Comparison.—This will become plainer if we compare the English of the Gospels as it was written in different periods of our language. The alteration in the meanings of words, the changes in the application of them, the variation in the use of phrases, the falling away of the inflexions—all these things become plain to the eye and to the mind as soon as we thoughtfully compare the different versions. The following are extracts from the Anglo-Saxon version (995), the version of Wycliffe (1389) and of Tyndale (1526), of the passage in Luke ii. 44, 45:—
| Anglo-Saxon. | Wycliffe. | Tyndale. |
|---|---|---|
| Wéndon ðaet he on heora gefére wáere, ðá comon hig ánes daeges faer, and hine sóhton betweox his magas and his cúðan. | Forsothe thei gessinge him to be in the felowschipe, camen the wey of á day, and souȝten him among his cosyns and knowen. | For they supposed he had bene in the company, they cam a days iorney, and sought hym amonge their kynsfolke and acquayntaunce. |
| Ða hig hyne ne fúndon, hig gewendon to Hierusalem, hine sécende. | And thei not fyndinge, wenten aȝen to Jerusalem, sekynge him. | And founde hym not, they went backe agayne to Hierusalem, and sought hym. |
The literal translation of the Anglo-Saxon version is as follows:—
(They) weened that he on their companionship were (= was), when came they one day’s faring, and him sought betwixt his relations and his couth (folk = acquaintances).
When they him not found, they turned to Jerusalem, him seeking.
4. The Lord’s Prayer.—The same plan of comparison may be applied to the different versions of the Lord’s Prayer that have come down to us; and it will be seen from this comparison that the greatest changes have taken place in the grammar, and especially in that part of the grammar which contains the inflexions.
252THE LORD’S PRAYER.
| 1130. | 1250. | 1380. | 1526. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reign of Stephen. | Reign of Henry III. | Wycliffe’s Version. | Tyndale’s Version. |
| Fader ure, þe art on heofone. | Fadir ur, that es in hevene, | Our Fadir, that art in hevenys, | Our Father which art in heaven; |
| Sy gebletsod name þin, | Halud thi nam to nevene; | Halewid be thi name; | Halowed be thy name; |
| Cume þin rike. | Thou do as thi rich rike; | Thi kingdom come to; | Let thy kingdom come; |
| Si þin wil swa swa on heofone and on eorþan. | Thi will on erd be wrought, eek as it is wrought in heven ay. | Be thi wil done in erthe, as in hevene. | Thy will be fulfilled as well in earth as it is in heven. |
| Breod ure degwamlich geof us to daeg. | Ur ilk day brede give us to day. | Give to us this day oure breed ovir othir substaunce, | Geve us this day ur dayly bred, |
| And forgeof us ageltes ura swa swa we forgeofen agiltendum urum. | Forgive thou all us dettes urs, als we forgive till ur detturs. | And forgive to us our dettis, as we forgiven to oure dettouris. | And forgeve us oure dettes as we forgeve ur detters. |
| And ne led us on costunge. | And lede us not into temptacioun; | And ledde us in na fandung. | And leade us not into temptation, |
| Ac alys us fram yfele. Swa beo hit. | But sculd us fra ivel thing. Amen. | But delyvere us from yvel. Amen. | But delyver us from evyll. For thyne is the kyngdom, and the power, and the glorye, for ever. Amen. |
It will be observed that Wycliffe’s version contains five Romance terms—substaunce, dettis, dettouris, temptacioun, and delyvere.
5. Oldest English and Early English.—The following is a short passage from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, under date 1137: first, in the Anglo-Saxon form; second, in Early English, or—as it has sometimes been called—Broken Saxon; 253 third, in modern English. The breaking-down of the grammar becomes still more strikingly evident from this close juxtaposition.
| (i) | Hí | swencton | Þá | wreccan | menn |
| (ii) | Hí | swencten | the | wrecce | men |
| (iii) | They | swinked (harassed) | the | wretched | men |
| (i) | Þaes landes | mid | castel-weorcum. |
| (ii) | Of-the-land | mid | castel-weorces. |
| (iii) | Of the land | with | castle-works. |
| (i) | Ða | Þá | castelas | waeron | gemacod, |
| (ii) | Tha | the | castles | waren | maked, |
| (iii) | When | the | castles | were | made, |
| (i) | Þá | fyldon | hí | hí | mid | yfelum | mannum. |
| (ii) | thá | fylden | hi | hi | mid | yvele | men. |
| (iii) | then | filled | they | them | with | evil | men. |
6. Comparisons of Words and Inflexions.—Let us take a few of the most prominent words in our language, and observe the changes that have fallen upon them since they made their appearance in our island in the fifth century. These changes will be best seen by displaying them in columns:—
| Anglo-Saxon. | Early English. | Middle English. | Modern English. |
|---|---|---|---|
| heom. | to heom. | to hem. | to them. |
| seó. | heó. | ho, scho. | she. |
| sweostrum. | to the swestres. | to the swistren. | to the sisters. |
| geboren. | gebore. | iboré. | born. |
| lufigende. | lufigend. | lovand. | loving. |
| weoxon. | woxen. | wexide. | waxed. |
7. Conclusions from the above Comparisons.—We can now draw several conclusions from the comparisons we have made of the passages given from different periods of the language. These conclusions relate chiefly to verbs and nouns; and they 254 may become useful as a KEY to enable us to judge to what period in the history of our language a passage presented to us must belong. If we find such and such marks, the language is Anglo-Saxon; if other marks, it is Early English; and so on.
| I.—MARKS OF ANGLO-SAXON. | II.—MARKS OF EARLY ENGLISH (1100-1250). | III.—MARKS OF MIDDLE ENGLISH (1250-1485). |
|---|---|---|
| Verbs. | Verbs. | Verbs. |
|
Infinitive in an. Pres. part. in ende. Past part. with ge. 3d plural pres. in ath. 3d plural past in on. Plural of imperatives in ath. |
Infin. in en or e. Pres. part. in ind. ge of past part. turned into i or y. 3d plural in en. |
Infin. with to (the en was dropped about 1400). Pres. part. in inge. 3d plural in en. Imperative in eth. |
| Nouns. | Nouns. | Nouns. |
|
Plurals in an, as, or a. Dative plural in um. |
Plural in es. Dative plural in es. |
Plurals in es (separate syllable). Possessives in es (separate syllable). |
8. The English of the Thirteenth Century.—In this century there was a great breaking-down and stripping-off of inflexions. This is seen in the Ormulum of Orm, a canon of the Order of St Augustine, whose English is nearly as flexionless as that of Chaucer, although about a century and a half before him. Orm has also the peculiarity of always doubling a consonant after a short vowel. Thus, in his introduction, he says:—
“Þiss boc iss nemmnedd Orrmulum
Forr þi þatt Orrm itt wrohhte.”
That is, “This book is named Ormulum, for the (reason) that Orm wrought it.” The absence of inflexions is probably due to the fact that the book is written in the East-Midland dialect. But, in a song called “The Story of Genesis and Exodus,” written about 1250, we find a greater number of inflexions. Thus we read:—
“Hunger wex in lond Chanaan;
And his x sunes Jacob for-ðan
255Sente in to Egypt to bringen coren;
He bilefe at hom ðe was gungest boren.”
That is, “Hunger waxed (increased) in the land of Canaan; and Jacob for that (reason) sent his ten sons into Egypt to bring corn: he remained at home that was youngest born.”
9. The English of the Fourteenth Century.—The four greatest writers of the fourteenth century are—in verse, Chaucer and Langlande; and in prose, Mandeville and Wycliffe. The inflexions continue to drop off; and, in Chaucer at least, a larger number of French words appear. Chaucer also writes in an elaborate verse-measure that forms a striking contrast to the homely rhythms of Langlande. Thus, in the “Man of Lawes Tale,” we have the verse:—
“O queenës, lyvynge in prosperitée,
Duchessës, and ladyës everichone,
Haveth som routhe on hir adversitée;
An emperourës doughter stant allone;
She hath no wight to whom to make hir mone.
O blood roial! that stondest in this dredë
Fer ben thy frendës at thy gretë nedë!”
Here, with the exception of the imperative in Haveth som routhe (= have some pity), stant, and ben (= are), the grammar of Chaucer is very near the grammar of to-day. How different this is from the simple English of Langlande! He is speaking of the great storm of wind that blew on January 15, 1362:—
“Piries and Plomtres weore passchet to þe grounde,
In ensaumple to Men þat we scholde do þe bettre,
Beches and brode okes weore blowen to þe eorþe.”
Here it is the spelling of Langlande’s English that differs most from modern English, and not the grammar.—Much the same may be said of the style of Wycliffe (1324-1384) and of Mandeville (1300-1372). In Wycliffe’s version of the Gospel of Mark, v. 26, he speaks of a woman “that hadde suffride many thingis of ful many lechis (doctors), and spendid alle hir thingis; and no-thing profitide.” Sir John Mandeville’s English keeps many old inflexions and spellings; but is, in other respects, modern enough. Speaking of Mahomet, he says: “And ȝee 256 schulle understonds that Machamete was born in Arabye, that was first a pore knave that kept cameles, that wenten with marchantes for marchandise.” Knave for boy, and wenten for went are the two chief differences—the one in the use of words, the other in grammar—that distinguish this piece of Mandeville’s English from our modern speech.
10. The English of the Sixteenth Century.—This, which is also called Tudor-English, differs as regards grammar hardly at all from the English of the nineteenth century. This becomes plain from a passage from one of Latimer’s sermons (1490-1555), “a book which gives a faithful picture of the manners, thoughts, and events of the period.” “My father,” he writes, “was a yeoman, and had no lands of his own, only he had a farm of three or four pound a year at the uttermost, and hereupon he tilled so much as kept half a dozen men. He had walk for a hundred sheep; and my mother milked thirty kine.” In this passage, it is only the old-fashionedness, homeliness, and quaintness of the English—not its grammar—that makes us feel that it was not written in our own times. When Ridley, the fellow-martyr of Latimer, stood at the stake, he said, “I commit our cause to Almighty God, which shall indifferently judge all.” Here he used indifferently in the sense of impartially—that is, in the sense of making no difference between parties; and this is one among a very large number of instances of Latin words, when they had not been long in our language, still retaining the older Latin meaning.
11. The English of the Bible (i).—The version of the Bible which we at present use was made in 1611; and we might therefore suppose that it is written in seventeenth-century English. But this is not the case. The translators were commanded by James I. to “follow the Bishops’ Bible”; and the Bishops’ Bible was itself founded on the “Great Bible,” which was published in 1539. But the Great Bible is itself only a revision of Tyndale’s, part of which appeared as early as 1526. When we are reading the Bible, therefore, we are reading English of the sixteenth century, and, to a large extent, of the early part of that century. It is true that successive generations of 257 printers have, of their own accord, altered the spelling, and even, to a slight extent, modified the grammar. Thus we have fetched for the older fet, more for moe, sown for sowen, brittle for brickle (which gives the connection with break), jaws for chaws, sixth for sixt, and so on. But we still find such participles as shined and understanded; and such phrases as “they can skill to hew timber” (1 Kings v. 6), “abjects” for abject persons, “three days agone” for ago, the “captivated Hebrews” for “the captive Hebrews,” and others.
12. The English of the Bible (ii).—We have, again, old words retained, or used in the older meaning. Thus we find, in Psalm v. 6, the phrase “them that speak leasing,” which reminds us of King Alfred’s expression about “leasum spellum” (lying stories). Trow and ween are often found; the “champaign over against Gilgal” (Deut. xi. 30) means the plain; and a publican in the New Testament is a tax-gatherer, who sent to the Roman Treasury or Publicum the taxes he had collected from the Jews. An “ill-favoured person” is an ill-looking person; and “bravery” (Isa. iii. 18) is used in the sense of finery in dress.—Some of the oldest grammar, too, remains, as in Esther viii. 8, “Write ye, as it liketh you,” where the you is a dative. Again, in Ezek. xxx. 2, we find “Howl ye, Woe worth the day!” where the imperative worth governs day in the dative case. This idiom is still found in modern verse, as in the well-known lines in the first canto of the “Lady of the Lake”:—
“Woe worth the chase, woe worth the day
That cost thy life, my gallant grey!”
CHAPTER V.
MODERN ENGLISH.
1. Grammar Fixed.—From the date of 1485—that is, from the beginning of the reign of Henry VII.—the changes in the grammar or constitution of our language are so extremely small, that they are hardly noticeable. Any Englishman of ordinary education can read a book belonging to the latter part of the fifteenth or to the sixteenth century without difficulty. Since that time the grammar of our language has hardly changed at all, though we have altered and enlarged our vocabulary, and have adopted thousands of new words. The introduction of Printing, the Revival of Learning, the Translation of the Bible, the growth and spread of the power to read and write—these and other influences tended to fix the language and to keep it as it is to-day. It is true that we have dropped a few old-fashioned endings, like the n or en in silvern and golden; but, so far as form or grammar is concerned, the English of the sixteenth and the English of the nineteenth centuries are substantially the same.
2. New Words.—But, while the grammar of English has remained the same, the vocabulary of English has been growing, and growing rapidly, not merely with each century, but with each generation. The discovery of the New World in 1492 gave an impetus to maritime enterprise in England, which it never lost, brought us into connection with the Spaniards, and hence contributed to our language several Spanish words. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Italian literature 259 was largely read; Wyatt and Surrey show its influence in their poems; and Italian words began to come in in considerable numbers. Commerce, too, has done much for us in this way; and along with the article imported, we have in general introduced also the name it bore in its own native country. In later times, Science has been making rapid strides—has been bringing to light new discoveries and new inventions almost every week; and along with these new discoveries, the language has been enriched with new names and new terms. Let us look a little more closely at the character of these foreign contributions to the vocabulary of our tongue.
3. Spanish Words.—The words we have received from the Spanish language are not numerous, but they are important. In addition to the ill-fated word armada, we have the Spanish for Mr, which is Don (from Lat. dominus, a lord), with its feminine Duenna. They gave us also alligator, which is our English way of writing el lagarto, the lizard. They also presented us with a large number of words that end in o—such as buffalo, cargo, desperado, guano, indigo, mosquito, mulatto, negro, potato, tornado, and others. The following is a tolerably full list:—
|
Alligator. Armada. Barricade. Battledore. Bravado. Buffalo. Cargo. Cigar. Cochineal. |
Cork. Creole. Desperado. Don. Duenna. Eldorado. Embargo. Filibuster. Flotilla. |
Galleon (a ship). Grandee. Grenade. Guerilla. Indigo. Jennet. Matador. Merino. Mosquito. |
Mulatto. Negro. Octoroon. Quadroon. Renegade. Savannah. Sherry (= Xeres). Tornado. Vanilla. |
4. Italian Words.—Italian literature has been read and cultivated in England since the time of Chaucer—since the fourteenth century; and the arts and artists of Italy have for many centuries exerted a great deal of influence on those of England. Hence it is that we owe to the Italian language a large number of words. These relate to poetry, such as canto, sonnet, stanza; to music, as pianoforte, opera, oratorio, soprano, alto, contralto; to architecture and sculpture, as 260 portico, piazza, cupola, torso; and to painting, as studio, fresco (an open-air painting), and others. The following is a complete list:—
|
Alarm. Alert. Alto. Arcade. Balcony. Balustrade. Bandit. Bankrupt. Bravo. Brigade. Brigand. Broccoli. Burlesque. Bust. Cameo. Canteen. Canto. Caprice. Caricature. Carnival. Cartoon. Cascade. Cavalcade. |
Charlatan. Citadel. Colonnade. Concert. Contralto. Conversazione. Cornice. Corridor. Cupola. Curvet. Dilettante. Ditto. Doge. Domino. Extravaganza. Fiasco. Folio. Fresco. Gazette. Gondola. Granite. Grotto. Guitar. |
Incognito. Influenza. Lagoon. Lava. Lazaretto. Macaroni. Madonna. Madrigal. Malaria. Manifesto. Motto. Moustache. Niche. Opera. Oratorio. Palette. Pantaloon. Parapet. Pedant. Pianoforte. Piazza. Pistol. Portico. |
Proviso. Quarto. Regatta. Ruffian. Serenade. Sonnet. Soprano. Stanza. Stiletto. Stucco. Studio. Tenor. Terra-cotta. Tirade. Torso. Trombone. Umbrella. Vermilion. Vertu. Virtuoso. Vista. Volcano. Zany. |
5. Dutch Words.—We have had for many centuries commercial dealings with the Dutch; and as they, like ourselves, are a great seafaring people, they have given us a number of words relating to the management of ships. In the fourteenth century, the southern part of the German Ocean was the most frequented sea in the world; and the chances of plunder were so great that ships of war had to keep cruising up and down to protect the trading vessels that sailed between England and the Low Countries. The following are the words which we owe to the Netherlands:—
|
Ballast. Boom. Boor. Burgomaster. Hoy. |
Luff. Reef. Schiedam (gin). Skates. Skipper. |
Sloop. Smack. Smuggle. Stiver. Taffrail. |
Trigger. Wear (said of a ship). Yacht.Yawl. |
6. French Words.—Besides the large additions to our language made by the Norman-French, we have from time to time imported direct from France a number of French words, without change in the spelling, and with little change in the pronunciation. The French have been for centuries the most polished nation in Europe; from France the changing fashions in dress spread over all the countries of the Continent; French literature has been much read in England since the time of Charles II.; and for a long time all diplomatic correspondence between foreign countries and England was carried on in French. Words relating to manners and customs are common, such as soirée, etiquette, séance, élite; and we have also the names of things which were invented in France, such as mitrailleuse, carte-de-visite, coup d’état, and others. Some of these words are, in spelling, exactly like English; and advantage of this has been taken in a well-known epigram:—
The French have taste in all they do,
Which we are quite without;
For Nature, which to them gave goût,15
To us gave only gout.
The following is a list of French words which have been imported in comparatively recent times:—
|
Aide-de-camp. Belle. Bivouac. Blonde. Bouquet. Brochure. Brunette. Brusque. |
Carte-de-visite. Coup-d’état. Débris. Début. Déjeûner. Depot. Éclat. Ennui. |
Etiquette. Façade. Goût. Naïve. Naïveté. Nonchalance. Outré. Penchant. |
Personnel. Précis. Programme. Protégé. Recherché. Séance. Soirée. Trousseau. |
The Scotch have always had a closer connection with the French nation than England; and hence we find in the Scottish dialect of English a number of French words that are not used in South Britain at all. A leg of mutton is called in Scotland a gigot; the dish on which it is laid is an ashet (from assiette); a cup for tea or for wine is a tassie (from tasse); the gate of a town is 262 called the port; and a stubborn person is dour (Fr. dur, from Lat. durus); while a gentle and amiable person is douce (Fr. douce, Lat. dulcis).
7. German Words.—It must not be forgotten that English is a Low-German dialect, while the German of books is New High-German. We have never borrowed directly from High-German, because we have never needed to borrow. Those modern German words that have come into our language in recent times are chiefly the names of minerals, with a few striking exceptions, such as loafer, which came to us from the German immigrants to the United States, and plunder, which seems to have been brought from Germany by English soldiers who had served under Gustavus Adolphus. The following are the German words which we have received in recent times:—
|
Cobalt. Felspar. Hornblende. |
Landgrave. Loafer. Margrave. |
Meerschaum. Nickel. Plunder. |
Poodle. Quartz. Zinc. |
8. Hebrew Words.—These, with very few exceptions, have come to us from the translation of the Bible, which is now in use in our homes and churches. Abbot and abbey come from the Hebrew word abba, father; and such words as cabal and Talmud, though not found in the Old Testament, have been contributed by Jewish literature. The following is a tolerably complete list:—
|
Abbey. Abbot. Amen. Behemoth. Cabal. Cherub. |
Cinnamon. Hallelujah. Hosannah. Jehovah. Jubilee. Gehenna. |
Leviathan. Manna. Paschal. Pharisee. Pharisaical. Rabbi. |
Sabbath. Sadducees. Satan. Seraph. Shibboleth. Talmud. |
9. Other Foreign Words.—The English have always been the greatest travellers in the world; and our sailors always the most daring, intelligent, and enterprising. There is hardly a port or a country in the world into which an English ship has not penetrated; and our commerce has now been maintained for centuries with every people on the face of the globe. We exchange goods with almost every nation and tribe under the 263 sun. When we import articles or produce from abroad, we in general import the native name along with the thing. Hence it is that we have guano, maize, and tomato from the two Americas; coffee, cotton, and tamarind from Arabia; tea, congou, and nankeen from China; calico, chintz, and rupee from Hindostan; bamboo, gamboge, and sago from the Malay Peninsula; lemon, musk, and orange from Persia; boomerang and kangaroo from Australia; chibouk, ottoman, and tulip from Turkey. The following are lists of these foreign words; and they are worth examining with the greatest minuteness:—
| African Dialects. | |||
|---|---|---|---|
|
Baobab. Canary. Chimpanzee. |
Gnu. Gorilla. Guinea. |
Karoo. Kraal. Oasis. |
Quagga. Zebra. |
| American Tongues. | |||
|
Alpaca. Buccaneer. Cacique. Cannibal. Canoe. Caoutchouc. Cayman. Chocolate. |
Condor. Guano. Hammock. Jaguar. Jalap. Jerked (beef). Llama. Mahogany. |
Maize. Manioc. Moccasin. Mustang. Opossum. Pampas. Pemmican. Potato. |
Racoon. Skunk. Squaw. Tapioca. Tobacco. Tomahawk. Tomato. Wigwam. |
|
Arabic. (The word al means the. Thus alcohol = the spirit.) |
|||
|
Admiral (Milton writes ammiral). Alcohol.Alcove. Alembic. Algebra. Alkali. Amber. Arrack. Arsenal. Artichoke. Assassin. Assegai. Attar. Azimuth. |
Azure. Caliph. Carat. Chemistry. Cipher. Civet. Coffee. Cotton. Crimson. Dragoman. Elixir. Emir. Fakir. Felucca. Gazelle. Giraffe. |
Harem. Hookah. Koran (or Alcoran). Lute. Magazine. Mattress. Minaret. Mohair. Monsoon. Mosque. Mufti. Nabob. Nadir. Naphtha. Saffron. |
Salaam. Senna. Sherbet. Shrub (the drink). Simoom. Sirocco. Sofa. Sultan. Syrup. Talisman. Tamarind. Tariff. Vizier. Zenith. Zero. |
| 264 Chinese. | |||
|
Bohea. China. Congou. |
Hyson. Joss. Junk. |
Nankeen. Pekoe. Silk. |
Souchong. Tea. Typhoon. |
| Hindu. | |||
|
Avatar. Banyan. Brahmin. Bungalow. Calico. Chintz. Coolie. |
Cowrie. Durbar. Jungle. Lac (of rupees). Loot. Mulligatawny. Musk. |
Pagoda. Palanquin. Pariah. Punch. Pundit. Rajah. Rupee. |
Ryot. Sepoy. Shampoo. Sugar. Suttee. Thug. Toddy. |
| Hungarian. | |||
|
Hussar. |
Sabre. |
Shako. |
Tokay. |
| Malay. | |||
|
Amuck. Bamboo. Bantam. Caddy. |
Cassowary. Cockatoo. Dugong. Gamboge. |
Gong. Gutta-percha. Mandarin. Mango. |
Orang-outang. Rattan. Sago. Upas. |
| Persian. | |||
|
Awning. Bazaar. Bashaw. Caravan. Check. Checkmate. Chess. Curry. |
Dervish. Divan. Firman. Hazard. Horde. Houri. Jar. Jackal. |
Jasmine. Lac (a gum). Lemon. Lilac. Lime (the fruit). Musk. Orange. Paradise. |
Pasha. Rook. Saraband. Sash. Scimitar. Shawl. Taffeta. Turban. |
| Polynesian Dialects. | |||
|
Boomerang. |
Kangaroo. |
Taboo. |
Tattoo. |
| Portuguese. | |||
|
Albatross. Caste. Cobra. |
Cocoa-nut. Commodore. Fetish. |
Lasso. Marmalade. Moidore. |
Molasses. Palaver. Port (= Oporto). |
| Russian. | |||
|
Czar. Drosky. |
Knout. Morse. |
Rouble. Steppe. |
Ukase. Verst. |
| Tartar. | |||
|
Khan. |
|||
| Turkish. | |||
|
Bey. Caftan. Chibouk. |
Chouse. Dey. Janissary. |
Kiosk. Odalisque. Ottoman. |
Tulip. Yashmak. Yataghan. |
10. Scientific Terms.—A very large number of discoveries in science have been made in this century; and a large number of inventions have introduced these discoveries to the people, and made them useful in daily life. Thus we have telegraph and telegram; photograph; telephone and even photophone. The word dynamite is also modern; and the unhappy employment of it has made it too widely known. Then passing fashions have given us such words as athlete and æsthete. In general, it may be said that, when we wish to give a name to a new thing—a new discovery, invention, or fashion—we have recourse not to our own stores of English, but to the vocabularies of the Latin and Greek languages.
266
LANDMARKS IN THE HISTORY OF THE
ENGLISH LANGUAGE.
| A.D. | |
1. The Beowulf, an old English epic, “written on the mainland” |
450 |
2. Christianity introduced by St Augustine (and with it many Latin and a few Greek words) |
597 |
3. Caedmon—‘Paraphrase of the Scriptures,’—first English poem |
670 |
4. Baeda—“The Venerable Bede”—translated into English part of St John’s Gospel |
735 |
5. King Alfred translated several Latin works into English, among others, Bede’s ‘Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation’ (851) |
901 |
6. Aelfric, Archbishop of York, turned into English most of the historical books of the Old Testament |
1000 |
7. The Norman Conquest, which introduced Norman French words |
1066 |
8. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, said to have been begun by King Alfred, and brought to a close in |
1160 |
9. Orm or Orrmin’s Ormulum, a poem written in the East Midland dialect, about |
1200 |
10. Normandy lost under King John. Norman-English now have their only home in England, and use our English speech more and more |
1204 |
11. Layamon translates the ‘Brut’ from the French of Robert Wace. This is the first English book (written in Southern English) after the stoppage of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle |
1205 |
12. The Ancren Riwle (“Rules for Anchorites”) written in the Dorsetshire dialect. “It is the forerunner of a wondrous change in our speech.” “It swarms with French words” |
1220 |
13. First Royal Proclamation in English, issued by Henry III. |
1258 |
14. Robert of Gloucester’s Chronicle (swarms with foreign terms) |
1300 |
267 15. Robert Manning, “Robert of Brunn,” compiles the ‘Handlyng Synne.’ “It contains a most copious proportion of French words” |
1303 |
16. Ayenbite of Inwit (= “Remorse of Conscience”) |
1340 |
17. The Great Plague. After this it becomes less and less the fashion to speak French |
1349 |
18. Sir John Mandeville, first writer of the newer English Prose—in his ‘Travels,’ which contained a large admixture of French words. “His English is the speech spoken at Court in the latter days of King Edward III.” |
1356 |
19. English becomes the language of the Law Courts |
1362 |
20. Wickliffe’s Bible |
1380 |
21. Geoffrey Chaucer, the first great English poet, author of the ‘Canterbury Tales’; born in 1340, died |
1400 |
22. William Caxton, the first English printer, brings out (in the Low Countries) the first English book ever printed, the ‘Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye,’—“not written with pen and ink, as other books are, to the end that every man may have them at once” |
1471 |
23. First English Book printed in England (by Caxton) the ‘Game and Playe of the Chesse’ |
1474 |
24. Lord Berners’ translation of Froissart’s Chronicle |
1523 |
25. William Tyndale, by his translation of the Bible “fixed our tongue once for all.” “His New Testament has become the standard of our tongue: the first ten verses of the Fourth Gospel are a good sample of his manly Teutonic pith” |
1526-30 |
26. Edmund Spenser publishes his ‘Faerie Queene.’ “Now began the golden age of England’s literature; and this age was to last for about fourscore years” |
1590 |
27. Our English Bible, based chiefly on Tyndale’s translation. “Those who revised the English Bible in 1611 were bidden to keep as near as they could to the old versions, such as Tyndale’s” |
1611 |
28. William Shakespeare carried the use of the English language to the greatest height of which it was capable. He employed 15,000 words. “The last act of ‘Othello’ is a rare specimen of Shakespeare’s diction: of every five nouns, verbs, and adverbs, four are Teutonic” (Born 1564) |
1616 |
29. John Milton, “the most learned of English poets,” publishes his ‘Paradise Lost,’—“a poem in which Latin words are introduced with great skill” |
1667 |
086 + 182 30. The Prayer-Book revised and issued in its final form. “Are was substituted for be in forty-three places. This was a great victory of the North over the South” |
1661 |
31. John Bunyan writes his ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’—a book full of pithy English idiom. “The common folk had the wit at once to see the worth of Bunyan’s masterpiece, and the learned long afterwards followed in the wake of the common folk” (Born 1628) |
1688 |
32. Sir Thomas Browne, the author of ‘Urn-Burial’ and other works written in a highly Latinised diction, such as the ‘Religio Medici,’ written |
1642 |
33. Dr Samuel Johnson was the chief supporter of the use of “long-tailed words in osity and ation,” such as his novel called ‘Rasselas,’ published |
1759 |
34. Tennyson, Poet-Laureate, a writer of the best English—“a countryman of Robert Manning’s, and a careful student of old Malory, has done much for the revival of pure English among us” (Born 1809) |
269
PART IV.
OUTLINE OF THE HISTORY OF
ENGLISH LITERATURE
271
CHAPTER I.
OUR OLDEST ENGLISH LITERATURE.
1. Literature.—The history of English Literature is, in its external aspect, an account of the best books in prose and in verse that have been written by English men and English women; and this account begins with a poem brought over from the Continent by our countrymen in the fifth century, and comes down to the time in which we live. It covers, therefore, a period of nearly fourteen hundred years.
2. The Distribution of Literature.—We must not suppose that literature has always existed in the form of printed books. Literature is a living thing—a living outcome of the living mind; and there are many ways in which it has been distributed to other human beings. The oldest way is, of course, by one person repeating a poem or other literary composition he has made to another; and thus literature is stored away, not upon book-shelves, but in the memory of living men. Homer’s poems are said to have been preserved in this way to the Greeks for five hundred years. Father chanted them to son; the sons to their sons; and so on from generation to generation. The next way of distributing literature is by the aid of signs called letters made upon leaves, flattened reeds, parchment, or the inner bark of trees. The next is by the help of writing upon paper. The last is by the aid of type upon paper. This has existed in England for more than four hundred years—since the year 1474; and thus it is that our libraries contain many hundreds of thousands of valuable books. 272 For the same reason is it, most probably, that as our power of retaining the substance and multiplying the copies of books has grown stronger, our living memories have grown weaker. This defect can be remedied only by education—that is, by training the memories of the young. While we possess so many printed books, it must not be forgotten that many valuable works exist still in manuscript—written either upon paper or on parchment.
3. Verse, the earliest form of Literature.—It is a remarkable fact that the earliest kind of composition in all languages is in the form of Verse. The oldest books, too, are those which are written in verse. Thus Homer’s poems are the oldest literary work of Greece; the Sagas are the oldest productions of Scandinavian literature; and the Beowulf is the oldest piece of literature produced by the Anglo-Saxon race. It is also from the strong creative power and the lively inventions of poets that we are even now supplied with new thoughts and new language—that the most vivid words and phrases come into the language; just as it is the ranges of high mountains that send down to the plains the ever fresh soil that gives to them their unending fertility. And thus it happens that our present English speech is full of words and phrases that have found their way into the most ordinary conversation from the writings of our great poets—and especially from the writings of our greatest poet, Shakespeare. The fact that the life of prose depends for its supplies on the creative minds of poets has been well expressed by an American writer:—
“I looked upon a plain of green,
Which some one called the Land of Prose,
Where many living things were seen
In movement or repose.
I looked upon a stately hill
That well was named the Mount of Song,
Where golden shadows dwelt at will,
The woods and streams among.
But most this fact my wonder bred
(Though known by all the nobly wise),
It was the mountain stream that fed
That fair green plain’s amenities.”
4. Our oldest English Poetry.—The verse written by our old English writers was very different in form from the verse that appears now from the hands of Tennyson, or Browning, or Matthew Arnold. The old English or Anglo-Saxon writers used a kind of rhyme called head-rhyme or alliteration; while, from the fourteenth century downwards, our poets have always employed end-rhyme in their verses.
“Lightly down leaping he loosened his helmet.”
Such was the rough old English form. At least three words in each long line were alliterative—two in the first half, and one in the second. Metaphorical phrases were common, such as war-adder for arrow, war-shirts for armour, whale’s-path or swan-road for the sea, wave-horse for a ship, tree-wright for carpenter. Different statements of the same fact, different phrases for the same thing—what are called parallelisms in Hebrew poetry—as in the line—
“Then saw they the sea head-lands—the windy walls,”
were also in common use among our oldest English poets.
5. Beowulf.—The Beowulf is the oldest poem in the English language. It is our “old English epic”; and, like much of our ancient verse, it is a war poem. The author of it is unknown. It was probably composed in the fifth century—not in England, but on the Continent—and brought over to this island—not on paper or on parchment—but in the memories of the old Jutish or Saxon vikings or warriors. It was not written down at all, even in England, till the end of the ninth century, and then, probably, by a monk of Northumbria. It tells among other things the story of how Beowulf sailed from Sweden to the help of Hrothgar, a king in Jutland, whose life was made miserable by a monster—half man, half fiend—named Grendel. For about twelve years this monster had been in the habit of creeping up to the banqueting-hall of King Hrothgar, seizing upon his thanes, carrying them off, and devouring them. Beowulf attacks and overcomes the dragon, which is mortally wounded, and flees away to die. The 274 poem belongs both to the German and to the English literature; for it is written in a Continental English, which is somewhat different from the English of our own island. But its literary shape is, as has been said, due to a Christian writer of Northumbria; and therefore its written or printed form—as it exists at present—is not German, but English. Parts of this poem were often chanted at the feasts of warriors, where all sang in turn as they sat after dinner over their cups of mead round the massive oaken table. The poem consists of 3184 lines, the rhymes of which are solely alliterative.
6. The First Native English Poem.—The Beowulf came to us from the Continent; the first native English poem was produced in Yorkshire. On the dark wind-swept cliff which rises above the little land-locked harbour of Whitby, stand the ruins of an ancient and once famous abbey. The head of this religious house was the Abbess Hild or Hilda: and there was a secular priest in it,—a very shy retiring man, who looked after the cattle of the monks, and whose name was Caedmon. To this man came the gift of song, but somewhat late in life. And it came in this wise. One night, after a feast, singing began, and each of those seated at the table was to sing in his turn. Caedmon was very nervous—felt he could not sing. Fear overcame his heart, and he stole quietly away from the table before the turn could come to him. He crept off to the cowshed, lay down on the straw and fell asleep. He dreamed a dream; and, in his dream, there came to him a voice: “Caedmon, sing me a song!” But Caedmon answered: “I cannot sing; it was for this cause that I had to leave the feast.” “But you must and shall sing!” “What must I sing, then?” he replied. “Sing the beginning of created things!” said the vision; and forthwith Caedmon sang some lines in his sleep, about God and the creation of the world. When he awoke, he remembered some of the lines that had come to him in sleep, and, being brought before Hilda, he recited them to her. The Abbess thought that this wonderful gift, which had come to him so suddenly, must have come from God, received him into the monastery, made him a monk, and 275 had him taught sacred history. “All this Caedmon, by remembering, and, like a clean animal, ruminating, turned into sweetest verse.” His poetical works consist of a metrical paraphrase of the Old and the New Testament. It was written about the year 670; and he died in 680. It was read and re-read in manuscript for many centuries, but it was not printed in a book until the year 1655.
7. The War-Poetry of England.—There were many poems about battles, written both in Northumbria and in the south of England; but it was only in the south that these war-songs were committed to writing; and of these written songs there are only two that survive up to the present day. These are the Song of Brunanburg, and the Song of the Fight at Maldon. The first belongs to the date 938; the second to 991. The Song of Brunanburg was inscribed in the Saxon Chronicle—a current narrative of events, written chiefly by monks, from the ninth century to the end of the reign of Stephen. The song tells the story of the fight of King Athelstan with Anlaf the Dane. It tells how five young kings and seven earls of Anlaf’s host fell on the field of battle, and lay there “quieted by swords,” while their fellow-Northmen fled, and left their friends and comrades to “the screamers of war—the black raven, the eagle, the greedy battle-hawk, and the grey wolf in the wood.” The Song of the Fight at Maldon tells us of the heroic deeds and death of Byrhtnoth, an ealdorman of Northumbria, in battle against the Danes at Maldon, in Essex. The speeches of the chiefs are given; the single combats between heroes described; and, as in Homer, the names and genealogies of the foremost men are brought into the verse.
8. The First English Prose.—The first writer of English prose was Baeda, or, as he is generally called, the Venerable Bede. He was born in the year 672 at Monkwearmouth, a small town at the mouth of the river Wear, and was, like Caedmon, a native of the kingdom of Northumbria. He spent most of his life at the famous monastery of Jarrow-on-Tyne. He spent his life in writing. His works, which were written in Latin, rose to the number of forty-five; his chief 276 work being an Ecclesiastical History. But though Latin was the tongue in which he wrote his books, he wrote one book in English; and he may therefore be fairly considered the first writer of English prose. This book was a Translation of the Gospel of St John—a work which he laboured at until the very moment of his death. His disciple Cuthbert tells the story of his last hours. “Write quickly!” said Baeda to his scribe, for he felt that his end could not be far off. When the last day came, all his scholars stood around his bed. “There is still one chapter wanting, Master,” said the scribe; “it is hard for thee to think and to speak.” “It must be done,” said Baeda; “take thy pen and write quickly.” So through the long day they wrote—scribe succeeding scribe; and when the shades of evening were coming on, the young writer looked up from his task and said, “There is yet one sentence to write, dear Master.” “Write it quickly!” Presently the writer, looking up with joy, said, “It is finished!” “Thou sayest truth,” replied the weary old man; “it is finished: all is finished.” Quietly he sank back upon his pillow, and, with a psalm of praise upon his lips, gently yielded up to God his latest breath. It is a great pity that this translation—the first piece of prose in our language—is utterly lost. No MS. of it is at present known to be in existence.
9. The Father of English Prose.—For several centuries, up to the year 866, the valleys and shores of Northumbria were the homes of learning and literature. But a change was not long in coming. Horde after horde of Danes swept down upon the coasts, ravaged the monasteries, burnt the books—after stripping the beautiful bindings of the gold, silver, and precious stones which decorated them—killed or drove away the monks, and made life, property, and thought insecure all along that once peaceful and industrious coast. Literature, then, was forced to desert the monasteries of Northumbria, and to seek for a home in the south—in Wessex, the kingdom over which Alfred the Great reigned for more than thirty years. The capital of Wessex was Winchester; and an able writer says: “As 277 Whitby is the cradle of English poetry, so is Winchester of English prose.” King Alfred founded colleges, invited to England men of learning from abroad, and presided over a school for the sons of his nobles in his own Court. He himself wrote many books, or rather, he translated the most famous Latin books of his time into English. He translated into the English of Wessex, for example, the ‘Ecclesiastical History’ of Baeda; the ‘History of Orosius,’ into which he inserted geographical chapters of his own; and the ‘Consolations of Philosophy,’ by the famous Roman writer, Boëthius. In these books he gave to his people, in their own tongue, the best existing works on history, geography, and philosophy.
10. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.—The greatest prose-work of the oldest English, or purely Saxon, literature, is a work—not by one person, but by several authors. It is the historical work which is known as The Saxon Chronicle. It seems to have been begun about the middle of the ninth century; and it was continued, with breaks now and then, down to 1154—the year of the death of Stephen and the accession of Henry II. It was written by a series of successive writers, all of whom were monks; but Alfred himself is said to have contributed to it a narrative of his own wars with the Danes. The Chronicle is found in seven separate forms, each named after the monastery in which it was written. It was the newspaper, the annals, and the history of the nation. “It is the first history of any Teutonic people in their own language; it is the earliest and most venerable monument of English prose.” This Chronicle possesses for us a twofold value. It is a valuable storehouse of historical facts; and it is also a storehouse of specimens of the different states of the English language—as regards both words and grammar—from the eighth down to the twelfth century.
11. Layamon’s Brut.—Layamon was a native of Worcestershire, and a priest of Ernley on the Severn. He translated, about the year 1205, a poem called Brut, from the French of a monkish writer named Master Wace. Wace’s work itself is 278 little more than a translation of parts of a famous “Chronicle or History of the Britons,” written in Latin by Geoffrey of Monmouth, who was Bishop of St Asaph in 1152. But Geoffrey himself professed only to have translated from a chronicle in the British or Celtic tongue, called the “Chronicle of the Kings of Britain,” which was found in Brittany—long the home of most of the stories, traditions, and fables about the old British Kings and their great deeds. Layamon’s poem called the “Brut” is a metrical chronicle of Britain from the landing of Brutus to the death of King Cadwallader, about the end of the seventh century. Brutus was supposed to be a great-grandson of Æneas, who sailed west and west till he came to Great Britain, where he settled with his followers.—This metrical chronicle is written in the dialect of the West of England; and it shows everywhere a breaking down of the grammatical forms of the oldest English, as we find it in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. In fact, between the landing of the Normans and the fourteenth century, two things may be noted: first, that during this time—that is, for three centuries—the inflections of the oldest English are gradually and surely stripped off; and, secondly, that there is little or no original English literature given to the country, but that by far the greater part consists chiefly of translations from French or from Latin.
12. Orm’s Ormulum.—Less than half a century after Layamon’s Brut appeared a poem called the Ormulum, by a monk of the name of Orm or Ormin. It was probably written about the year 1215. Orm was a monk of the order of St Augustine, and his book consists of a series of religious poems. It is the oldest, purest, and most valuable specimen of thirteenth-century English, and it is also remarkable for its peculiar spelling. It is written in the purest English, and not five French words are to be found in the whole poem of twenty thousand short lines. Orm, in his spelling, doubles every consonant that has a short vowel before it; and he writes pann for pan, but pan for pane. The following is a specimen of his poem:—
279Ice hafe wennd inntill Ennglissh |
I have wended (turned) into English |
Goddspelless hallghe lare, |
Gospel’s holy lore, |
Affterr thatt little witt tatt me |
After the little wit that me |
Min Drihhtin hafethth lenedd. |
My Lord hath lent. |
Other famous writers of English between this time and the appearance of Chaucer were Robert of Gloucester and Robert of Brunne, both of whom wrote Chronicles of England in verse.
280CHAPTER II.
THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.
1. The opening of the fourteenth century saw the death of the great and able king, Edward I., the “Hammer of the Scots,” the “Keeper of his word.” The century itself—a most eventful period—witnessed the feeble and disastrous reign of Edward II.; the long and prosperous rule—for fifty years—of Edward III.; the troubled times of Richard II., who exhibited almost a repetition of the faults of Edward II.; and the appearance of a new and powerful dynasty—the House of Lancaster—in the person of the able and ambitious Henry IV. This century saw also many striking events, and many still more striking changes. It beheld the welding of the Saxon and the Norman elements into one—chiefly through the French wars; the final triumph of the English language over French in 1362; the frequent coming of the Black Death; the victories of Crecy and Poitiers; it learned the universal use of the mariner’s compass; it witnessed two kings—of France and of Scotland—prisoners in London; great changes in the condition of labourers; the invention of gunpowder in 1340; the rise of English commerce under Edward III.; and everywhere in England the rising up of new powers and new ideas.
2. The first prose-writer in this century is Sir John Mandeville (who has been called the “Father of English Prose”). King Alfred has also been called by this name; but as the English written by Alfred was very different from that written 281 by Mandeville,—the latter containing a large admixture of French and of Latin words, both writers are deserving of the epithet. The most influential prose-writer was John Wyclif, who was, in fact, the first English Reformer of the Church. In poetry, two writers stand opposite each other in striking contrast—Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langlande, the first writing in courtly “King’s English” in end-rhyme, and with the fullest inspirations from the literatures of France and Italy, the latter writing in head-rhyme, and—though using more French words than Chaucer—with a style that was always homely, plain, and pedestrian. John Gower, in Kent, and John Barbour, in Scotland, are also noteworthy poets in this century. The English language reached a high state of polish, power, and freedom in this period; and the sweetness and music of Chaucer’s verse are still unsurpassed by modern poets. The sentences of the prose-writers of this century are long, clumsy, and somewhat helpless; but the sweet homely English rhythm exists in many of them, and was continued, through Wyclif’s version, down into our translation of the Bible in 1611.
282“A voice loud in that light · to Lucifer criëd,
‘Princes of this palace · prest16 undo the gatës,
For here cometh with crown · the king of all glory!’”
“Dan Chaucer, the first warbler, whose sweet breath
Preluded those melodious bursts that fill
The spacious times of great Elizabeth,
With sounds that echo still.”
CHAPTER III.
THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.
1. The fifteenth century, a remarkable period in many ways, saw three royal dynasties established in England—the Houses of Lancaster, York, and Tudor. Five successful French campaigns of Henry V., and the battle of Agincourt; and, on the other side, the loss of all our large possessions in France, with the exception of Calais, under the rule of the weak Henry VI., were among the chief events of the fifteenth century. The Wars of the Roses did not contribute anything to the prosperity of the century, nor could so unsettled and quarrelsome a time encourage the cultivation of literature. For this among other reasons, we find no great compositions in prose or verse; but a considerable activity in the making and distribution of ballads. The best of these are Sir Patrick Spens, Edom o’ Gordon, The Nut-Brown Mayde, and some of those written about Robin Hood and his exploits. The ballad was everywhere popular; and minstrels sang them in every city and village through the length and breadth of England. The famous ballad of Chevy Chase is generally placed after the year 1460, though it did not take its present form till the seventeenth century. It tells the story of the Battle of Otterburn, which was fought in 1388. This century was also witness to the short struggle of Richard III., followed by the rise of the House of Tudor. And, in 1498, just at its close, the wonderful apparition of a new world—of The New World— 287 rose on the horizon of the English mind, for England then first heard of the discovery of America. But, as regards thinking and writing, the fifteenth century is the most barren in our literature. It is the most barren in the production of original literature; but, on the other hand, it is, compared with all the centuries that preceded it, the most fertile in the dissemination and distribution of the literature that already existed. For England saw, in the memorable year of 1474, the establishment of the first printing-press in the Almonry at Westminster, by William Caxton. The first book printed by him in this country was called ‘The Game and Playe of the Chesse.’ When Edward IV. and his friends visited Caxton’s house and looked at his printing-press, they spoke of it as a pretty toy; they could not foresee that it was destined to be a more powerful engine of good government and the spread of thought and education than the Crown, Parliaments, and courts of law all put together. The two greatest names in literature in the fifteenth century are those of James I. (of Scotland) and William Caxton himself. Two followers of Chaucer, Occleve and Lydgate are also generally mentioned. Put shortly, one might say that the chief poetical productions of this century were its ballads; and the chief prose productions, translations from Latin or from foreign works.
288 289CHAPTER IV.
THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
1. The Wars of the Roses ended in 1485, with the victory of Bosworth Field. A new dynasty—the House of Tudor—sat upon the throne of England; and with it a new reign of peace and order existed in the country, for the power of the king was paramount, and the power of the nobles had been gradually destroyed in the numerous battles of the fifteenth century. Like the fifteenth, this century also is famous for its ballads, the authors of which are not known, but which seem to have been composed “by the people for the people.” They were sung everywhere, at fairs and feasts, in town and country, at going to and coming home from work; and many of them were set to popular dance-tunes.
“When Tom came home from labour,
And Cis from milking rose,
Merrily went the tabor,
And merrily went their toes.”
The ballads of King Lear and The Babes in the Wood are perhaps to be referred to this period.
2. The first half of the sixteenth century saw the beginning of a new era in poetry; and the last half saw the full meridian splendour of this new era. The beginning of this era was marked by the appearance of Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542), and of the Earl of Surrey (1517-1547). These two eminent 290 writers have been called the “twin-stars of the dawn,” the “founders of English lyrical poetry”; and it is worthy of especial note, that it is to Wyatt that we owe the introduction of the Sonnet into our literature, and to Surrey that is due the introduction of Blank Verse. The most important prose-writers of the first half of the century were Sir Thomas More, the great lawyer and statesman, and William Tyndale, who translated the New Testament into English. In the latter half of the century, the great poets are Spenser and Shakespeare; the great prose-writers, Richard Hooker and Francis Bacon.
“In woods, in waves, in wars, she wont to dwell.
Gay without good is good heart’s greatest loathing.”
“Death, courage, honour, make thy soul to live!—
Thy soul in heaven, thy name in tongues of men!”
CHAPTER V.
THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
1. The First Half.—Under the wise and able rule of Queen Elizabeth, this country had enjoyed a long term of peace. The Spanish Armada had been defeated in 1588; the Spanish power had gradually waned before the growing might of England; and it could be said with perfect truth, in the words of Shakespeare:—
“In her days every man doth eat in safety
Under his own vine what he plants, and sing
The merry songs of peace to all his neighbours.”
The country was at peace; and every peaceful art and pursuit prospered. As one sign of the great prosperity and outstretching enterprise of commerce, we should note the foundation of the East India Company on the last day of the year 1600. The reign of James I. (1603-1625) was also peaceful; and the country made steady progress in industries, in commerce, and in the arts and sciences. The two greatest prose-writers of the first half of the seventeenth century were Raleigh and Bacon; the two greatest poets were Shakespeare and Ben Jonson.
“Yet æmuling18 my song, he took in hand
My pipe, before that æmulëd of many,
And played thereon (for well that skill he conn’d),
Himself as skilful in that art as any.”
“Even such is time, that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust;
Who, in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days:
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
The Lord shall raise me up, I trust!”
“O eloquent, just, and mighty Death! whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised; thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words Hic jacet.”
“That that is Forced is not Forcible.”
“No Man loveth his Fetters though they be of Gold.”
“Clear and Round Dealing is the Honour of Man’s Nature.”
“The Arch-flatterer, with whom all the petty Flatterers have intelligence, is a Man’s Self.”
301 “If Things be not tossed upon the Arguments of Counsell, they will be tossed upon the Waves of Fortune.”
“Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set.”
“A man’s nature runs either to herbs or weeds; therefore, let him seasonably water the one, and destroy the other.”
“A crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, when there is no love.”
“Jewels, five words long,
That on the stretched forefinger of all time
Sparkle for ever.”
6. The Second Half.—The second half of the great and unique seventeenth century was of a character very different indeed from that of the first half. The Englishmen born into it had to face a new world! New thoughts in religion, new forces in politics, new powers in social matters had been slowly, steadily, and irresistibly rising into supremacy ever since the Scottish King James came to take his seat upon the throne of England in 1603. These new forces had, in fact, become so 302 strong that they led a king to the scaffold, and handed over the government of England to a section of Republicans. Charles I. was executed in 1649; and, though his son came back to the throne in 1660, the face, the manners, the thoughts of England and of Englishmen had undergone a complete internal and external change. The Puritan party was everywhere the ruling party; and its views and convictions, in religion, in politics, and in literature, held unquestioned sway in almost every part of England. In the Puritan party, the strongest section was formed by the Independents—the “root and branch men”—as they were called; and the greatest man among the Independents was Oliver Cromwell, in whose government John Milton was Foreign Secretary. Milton was certainly by far the greatest and most powerful writer, both in prose and in verse, on the side of the Puritan party. The ablest verse-writer on the Royalist or Court side was Samuel Butler, the unrivalled satirist—the Hogarth of language,—the author of Hudibras. The greatest prose-writer on the Royalist and Church side was Jeremy Taylor, Bishop of Down, in Ireland, and the author of Holy Living, Holy Dying, and many other works written with a wonderful eloquence. The greatest philosophical writer was Thomas Hobbes, the author of the Leviathan. The most powerful writer for the people was John Bunyan, the immortal author of The Pilgrim’s Progress. When, however, we come to the reigns of Charles II. and James II., and the new influences which their rule and presence imparted, we find the greatest poet to be John Dryden, and the most important prose-writer, John Locke.
7. The Poetry of the Second Half.—The poetry of the second half of the seventeenth century was not an outgrowth or lineal descendant of the poetry of the first half. No trace of the strong Elizabethan poetical emotion remained; no writer of this half-century can claim kinship with the great authors of the Elizabethan period. The three most remarkable poets in the latter half of this century are John Milton, Samuel Butler, and John Dryden. But Milton’s culture was derived chiefly from the great Greek and Latin writers; and his poems show 303 few or no signs of belonging to any age or generation in particular of English literature. Butler’s poem, the Hudibras, is the only one of its kind; and if its author owes anything to other writers, it is to France and not to England that we must look for its sources. Dryden, again, shows no sign of being related to Shakespeare or the dramatic writers of the early part of the century; he is separated from them by a great gulf; he owes most, when he owes anything, to the French school of poetry.
“Eyeless, in Gaza, at the mill with slaves.”
“While Butler, needy wretch, was yet alive,
No generous patron would a dinner give;
See him, when starved to death, and turned to dust,
Presented with a monumental bust.
The poet’s fate is here in emblem shown,—
He asked for bread, and he received a stone.”
“He never ate, nor drank, nor slept,
But Hudibras still near him kept”—
“And, like a lobster boil’d, the morn
From black to red began to turn.”
“For loyalty is still the same,
Whether it win or lose the game:
True as the dial to the sun,
Altho’ it be not shin’d upon.”
“He that complies against his will,
Is of his own opinion still.”
“Men are but children of a larger growth.”
“Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow;
He that would search for pearls must dive below.”
“The greatest argument for love is love.”
“The secret pleasure of the generous act,
Is the great mind’s great bribe.”
“These are the thoughts of mortals, this is the end and sum of all their designs. A dark night and an ill guide, a boisterous sea and a broken cable, a hard rock and a rough wind, dash in pieces the fortune of a whole family; and they that shall weep loudest for the accident are not yet entered into the storm, and yet have suffered shipwreck.”
“No man is poor that does not think himself so.”
“He that spends his time in sport and calls it recreation, is like him whose garment is all made of fringe, and his meat nothing but sauce..”
“A good man is as much in awe of himself as of a whole assembly.”
“And like a star upon her bosom lay
His beautiful and shining golden head.”
CHAPTER VI.
THE FIRST HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
1. The Age of Prose.—The eighteenth century was an age of prose in two senses. In the first place, it was a prosaic age; and, in the second place, better prose than poetry was produced by its writers. One remarkable fact may also be noted about the chief prose-writers of this century—and that is, that they were, most of them, not merely able writers, not merely distinguished literary men, but also men of affairs—men well versed in the world and in matters of the highest practical moment, while some were also statesmen holding high office. Thus, in the first half of the century, we find Addison, Swift, and Defoe either holding office or influencing and guiding those who held office; while, in the latter half, we have men like Burke, Hume, and Gibbon, of whom the same, or nearly the same, can be said. The poets, on the contrary, of this eighteenth century, are all of them—with the very slightest exceptions—men who devoted most of their lives to poetry, and had little or nothing to do with practical matters. It may also be noted here that the character of the eighteenth century becomes more and more prosaic as it goes on—less and less under the influence of the spirit of poetry, until, about the close, a great reaction makes itself felt in the persons of Cowper, Chatterton, and Burns, of Crabbe and Wordsworth.
2. The First Half.—The great prose-writers of the first half of the eighteenth century are Addison and Steele, Swift and 312 Defoe. All of these men had some more or less close connection with the rise of journalism in England; and one of them, Defoe, was indeed the founder of the modern newspaper. By far the most powerful intellect of these four was Swift. The greatest poets of the first half of the eighteenth century were Pope, Thomson, Collins, and Gray. Pope towers above all of them by a head and shoulders, because he was much more fertile than any, and because he worked so hard and so untiringly at the labour of the file—at the task of polishing and improving his verses. But the vein of poetry in the three others—and more especially in Collins—was much more pure and genuine than it was in Pope at any time of his life—at any period of his writing. Let us look at each of these writers a little more closely.
315“So when an Angel by divine command
With rising tempests shakes a guilty land,
Such as of late o’er pale Britannia passed,
Calm and serene he drives the furious blast;
And, pleased the Almighty’s orders to perform,
Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm.”
“He married discord in a noble wife.”
“As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame,
I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came.”
“Never elated, while one man’s oppressed;
Never dejected, whilst another’s blessed,”—
“True wit is nature to advantage dressed,
What oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed.”
“Good-nature and good-sense must ever join.
To err is human, to forgive divine.”
“All seems infected that the infected spy,
As all looks yellow to the jaundic’d eye.”
“Fear not the anger of the wise to raise;
Those best can bear reproof who merit praise.”
“A vile encomium doubly ridicules:
There’s nothing blackens like the ink of fools.”
“And not a vanity is given in vain.”
“Would ye be blest? despise low joys, low gains,
Disdain whatever Cornbury disdains,
Be virtuous, and be happy for your pains.”
“But Pope—his musical finesse was such,
So nice his ear, so delicate his touch,—
Made poetry a mere mechanic art,
And every warbler has his tune by heart.”
“There scattered oft, the earliest of the year,
By hands unseen, are showers of violets found;
The red-breast loves to build and warble there,
And little footsteps lightly print the ground.”
“In yonder grave a Druid lies”—
“How sleep the brave, who sink to rest
By all their country’s wishes blessed!”
CHAPTER VII.
THE SECOND HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
1. Prose-Writers.—The four greatest prose-writers of the latter half of the eighteenth century are Johnson, Goldsmith, Burke, and Gibbon. Dr Johnson was the most prominent literary figure in London at this period; and filled in his own time much the same position that Carlyle lately held in literary circles. He wrote on many subjects—but chiefly on literature and morals; and hence he was called “The Great Moralist.” Goldsmith stands out clearly as the writer of the most pleasant and easy prose; his pen was ready for any subject; and it has been said of him with perfect truth, that he touched nothing that he did not adorn. Burke was the most eloquent writer of his time, and by far the greatest political thinker that England has ever produced. He is known by an essay he wrote when a very young man—on “The Sublime and Beautiful”; but it is to his speeches and political writings that we must look for his noblest thoughts and most eloquent language. Gibbon is one of the greatest historians and most powerful writers the world has ever seen.
“Of all the griefs that harass the distressed,
Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest;
Fate never wounds more deep the generous heart,
Than when a blockhead’s insult points the dart.”
“A man he was to all the country dear,
And passing rich with forty pounds a-year.”
“Here lies our good Edmund, whose genius was such
We scarcely can praise it or blame it too much;
Who, born for the universe, narrowed his mind,
And to party gave up what was meant for mankind;
Who, too deep for his hearers, still went on refining,
And thought of convincing while they thought of dining.”
10. Poets.—The chief poets of the latter half of the eighteenth century belong to a new world, and show very little trace in their writings of eighteenth-century culture, ideas, or prejudices. Most of the best poets who were born in this half of the eighteenth century and began to write in it—such as Crabbe and Wordsworth—are true denizens, in the character of their minds and feelings, of the nineteenth. The greatest poets of the 329 period are Cowper, Crabbe, and Burns; and along with these may be mentioned as little inferior, Chatterton and Blake, two of the most original poets that have appeared in any literature.
“No voice divine the storm allayed,
No light propitious shone,
When, far from all effectual aid,
We perished—each alone—
But I beneath a rougher sea,
And whelmed in blacker gulfs than he.”
“God made the country, and man made the town.”
“Variety’s the very spice of life
That gives it all its flavour.”
“The heart
May give a useful lesson to the head,
And Learning wiser grow without his books.”
“Beware of desperate steps. The darkest day,
Live till to-morrow, will have passed away.”
“the wild amphibious race
With sullen woe displayed in every face.”
“Auburn and Eden can be found no more;”
“Nature’s sternest painter, yet the best.”
“Thou lingering star, with lessening ray,
That lov’st to greet the early morn,
Again thou usher’st in the day
My Mary from my soul was torn.
O Mary! dear departed shade!
Where is thy place of blissful rest?
See’st thou thy lover lowly laid?
Hear’st thou the groans that rend his breast?”
“O sing unto my roundelay,
O drop the briny tear with me,
Dance no more on holy-day,
Like a running river be.
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow-tree.
“Black his hair as the winter night,
White his skin as the summer snow,
Red his face as the morning light,
Cold he lies in the grave below.
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow-tree.”
“The sun descending in the west,
The evening star does shine;
The birds are silent in their nest,
And I must seek for mine.
The moon, like a flower
In heaven’s high bower,
With silent delight
Sits and smiles on the night.
“Farewell, green fields and happy grove,
Where flocks have ta’en delight;
Where lambs have nibbled, silent move
The feet of angels bright:
Unseen they pour blessing,
And joy without ceasing,
On each bud and blossom,
On each sleeping bosom.”
CHAPTER VIII.
THE FIRST HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
1. New Ideas.—The end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century are alike remarkable for the new powers, new ideas, and new life thrown into society. The coming up of a high flood-tide of new forces seems to coincide with the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789, when the overthrow of the Bastille marked the downfall of the old ways of thinking and acting, and announced to the world of Europe and America that the old régime—the ancient mode of governing—was over. Wordsworth, then a lad of nineteen, was excited by the event almost beyond the bounds of self-control. He says in his “Excursion”—
“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very Heaven!”
It was, indeed, the dawn of a new day for the peoples of Europe. The ideas of freedom and equality—of respect for man as man—were thrown into popular form by France; they became living powers in Europe; and in England they animated and inspired the best minds of the time—Burns, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley, and Byron. Along with this high tide of hope and emotion, there was such an outburst of talent and genius in every kind of human endeavour in England, as was never seen before except in the Elizabethan period. Great events produced great powers; and great powers in their turn 337 brought about great events. The war with America, the long struggle with Napoleon, the new political ideas, great victories by sea and land,—all these were to be found in the beginning of the nineteenth century. The English race produced great men in numbers—almost, it might be said, in groups. We had great leaders, like Nelson and Wellington; brilliant generals, like Sir Charles Napier and Sir John Moore; great statesmen, like Fox and Pitt, like Washington and Franklin; great engineers, like Stephenson and Brunel; and great poets, like Wordsworth and Byron. And as regards literature, an able critic remarks: “We have recovered in this century the Elizabethan magic and passion, a more than Elizabethan sense of the beauty and complexity of nature, the Elizabethan music of language.”
2. Great Poets.—The greatest poets of the first half of the nineteenth century may be best arranged in groups. There were Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey—commonly, but unnecessarily, described as the Lake Poets. In their poetic thought and expression they had little in common; and the fact that two of them lived most of their lives in the Lake country, is not a sufficient justification for the use of the term. There were Scott and Campbell—both of them Scotchmen. There were Byron and Shelley—both Englishmen, both brought up at the great public schools and the universities, but both carried away by the influence of the new revolutionary ideas. Lastly, there were Moore, an Irishman, and young Keats, the splendid promise of whose youth went out in an early death. Let us learn a little more about each, and in the order of the dates of their birth.
“Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair,
Like Twilight’s, too, her dusky hair;
But all things else about her drawn
From May-time and the cheerful dawn.”
“The moving accident is not my trade,
To freeze the blood I have no ready arts;
’Tis my delight, alone, in summer shade,
To pipe a simple song for thinking hearts.”
“Love had he found in huts where poor men lie,
His daily teachers had been woods and rills,—
The silence that is in the starry sky,
The sleep that is among the lonely hills.”
“Dear Harp of my Country! in darkness I found thee,
The cold chain of silence had hung o’er thee long,
When proudly, my own Island Harp, I unbound thee,
And gave all thy chords to light, freedom, and song.”
“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.”
346“Silent, upon a peak in Darien.”
“Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken.”
“Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn.”
22. Prose-Writers.—We have now to consider the greatest prose-writers of the first half of the nineteenth century. First comes Walter Scott, one of the greatest novelists that ever lived, and who won the name of “The Wizard of the North” from the marvellous power he possessed of enchaining the attention and fascinating the minds of his readers. Two other great writers of prose were Charles Lamb and Walter Savage Landor, each in styles essentially different. Jane Austen, a young English lady, has become a classic in prose, because her work is true and perfect within its own sphere. De Quincey is perhaps the writer of the most ornate and elaborate English prose of this period. Thomas Carlyle, a great Scotsman, with a style of overwhelming power, but of occasional grotesqueness, like a great prophet and teacher of the nation, compelled statesmen and philanthropists to think, while he also gained for himself a high place in the rank of historians. Macaulay, also of Scottish descent, was one of the greatest essayists and ablest writers on history that Great Britain has produced. A short survey of each of these great men may be useful. Scott has been already treated of.
“Ah! what avails the sceptred race!
Ah! what the form divine!
What every virtue, every grace!
Rose Aylmer, all were thine!
“Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes
Shall weep, but never see!
A night of memories and sighs
I consecrate to thee.”
“Genius is an immense capacity for taking pains.”
“Do the duty which lies nearest thee! Thy second duty will already have become clearer.”
351 “History is a mighty drama, enacted upon the theatre of time, with suns for lamps, and eternity for a background.”
“All true work is sacred. In all true work, were it but true hand-labour, there is something of divineness. Labour, wide as the earth, has its summit in heaven.”
“Remember now and always that Life is no idle dream, but a solemn reality based upon Eternity, and encompassed by Eternity. Find out your task: stand to it: the night cometh when no man can work.”
“Cranmer could vindicate himself from the charge of being a heretic only by arguments which made him out to be a murderer.”
“The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.”
353CHAPTER IX.
THE SECOND HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
1. Science.—The second half of the nineteenth century is distinguished by the enormous advance made in science, and in the application of science to the industries and occupations of the people. Chemistry and electricity have more especially made enormous strides. Within the last twenty years, chemistry has remade itself into a new science; and electricity has taken a very large part of the labour of mankind upon itself. It carries our messages round the world—under the deepest seas, over the highest mountains, to every continent, and to every great city; it lights up our streets and public halls; it drives our engines and propels our trains. But the powers of imagination, the great literary powers of poetry, and of eloquent prose,—especially in the domain of fiction,—have not decreased because science has grown. They have rather shown stronger developments. We must, at the same time, remember that a great deal of the literary work published by the writers who lived, or are still living, in the latter half of this century, was written in the former half. Thus, Longfellow was a man of forty-three, and Tennyson was forty-one, in the year 1850; and both had by that time done a great deal of their best work. The same is true of the prose-writers, Thackeray, Dickens, and Ruskin.
2. Poets and Prose-Writers.—The six greatest poets of the latter half of this century are Longfellow, a distinguished American poet, Tennyson, Mrs Browning, Robert Browning, 354 William Morris, and Matthew Arnold. Of these, Mrs Browning and Longfellow are dead—Mrs Browning having died in 1861, and Longfellow in 1882.—The four greatest writers of prose are Thackeray, Dickens, George Eliot, and Ruskin. Of these, only Ruskin is alive.
“His gracious presence upon earth
Was as a fire upon a hearth;
As pleasant songs, at morning sung,
The words that dropped from his sweet tongue
Strengthened our hearts, or—heard at night—
Made all our slumbers soft and light.”
“Fair was she and young, when in hope began the long journey;
Faded was she and old, when in disappointment it ended.”
“‘Farewell!’ said he, ‘Minnehaha,
Farewell, O my laughing water!
All my heart is buried with you,
All´ my | thou´ghts go | on´ward | wi´th you!’”
“Fair is her cottage in its place,
Where yon broad water sweetly slowly glides:
It sees itself from thatch to base
Dream in the sliding tides.
“And fairer she: but, ah! how soon to die!
Her quiet dream of life this hour may cease:
Her peaceful being slowly passes by
To some more perfect peace.”
“He rose at dawn and, fired with hope,
Shot o’er the seething harbour-bar,
And reached the ship and caught the rope
And whistled to the morning-star.”
“A land of streams! Some, like a downward smoke,
Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go.”
“Phantom sound of blows descending, moan of an enemy massacred,
Phantom wail of women and children, multitudinous agonies.”
“But oh for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!”
“Clothed with his breath, and looking as he walked,
Larger than human on the frozen hills.”
“Tis better to have loved and lost,
Than never to have loved at all.”
“For words, like Nature, half reveal,
And half conceal, the soul within.”
“Kind hearts are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood.”
Transcriber’s Note:
The above paragraph is given as printed. Elizabeth Barrett Browning was
born Elizabeth Barrett Moulton, later Moulton-Barrett, in 1806. Her year
of birth was universally given as 1809 until some time after Robert
Browning’s death. Her brother’s fatal accident took place in 1840.
“So, hush,—I will give you this leaf to keep—
See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand,
There! that is our secret! go to sleep;
You will wake, and remember, and understand.”
“We cannot kindle when we will
The fire that in the heart resides:
The spirit bloweth and is still
In mystery our soul abides:
But tasks in hours of insight willed
Can be through hours of gloom fulfilled.
With aching hands and bleeding feet
We dig and heap, lay stone on stone;
We bear the burden and the heat
Of the long day, and wish ’twere done.
Not till the hours of light return,
All we have built do we discern.”
“Thou, my Master still,
Whatever feet have climbed Parnassus’ hill.”
“O fair midspring, besung so oft and oft,
How can I praise thy loveliness enow?
Thy sun that burns not, and thy breezes soft
That o’er the blossoms of the orchard blow,
The thousand things that ’neath the young leaves grow
The hopes and chances of the growing year,
Winter forgotten long, and summer near.”
“Broad-browed he was, hook-nosed, with wide grey eyes
No longer eager for the coming prize,
361But keen and steadfast: many an ageing line,
Half-hidden by his sweeping beard and fine,
Ploughed his thin cheeks; his hair was more than grey,
And like to one he seemed whose better day
Is over to himself, though foolish fame
Shouts louder year by year his empty name.
Unarmed he was, nor clad upon that morn
Much like a king: an ivory hunting-horn
Was slung about him, rich with gems and gold,
And a great white ger-falcon did he hold
Upon his fist; before his feet there sat
A scrivener making notes of this and that
As the King bade him, and behind his chair
His captains stood in armour rich and fair.”
“Every act, every impulse, of virtue and vice, affects in any creature, face, voice, nervous power, and vigour and harmony of invention, at once. Perseverance in rightness of human conduct renders, after a certain number of generations, human art possible; every sin clouds it, be it ever so little a one; and persistent vicious living and following of pleasure render, after a certain number of generations, all art impossible.”
“In mortals, there is a care for trifles, which proceeds from love and conscience, and is most holy; and a care for trifles, which comes of idleness and frivolity, and is most base. And so, also, there is a gravity proceeding from dulness and mere incapability of enjoyment, which is most base.”
“The noonday sun came slanting down the rocky slopes of La Riccia, and its masses of enlarged and tall foliage, whose autumnal tints were mixed with the wet verdure of a thousand evergreens, were penetrated with it as with rain. I cannot call it colour; it was conflagration. Purple, and crimson, and scarlet, like the curtains of God’s tabernacle, the rejoicing trees sank into the valley in showers of light, every separate leaf quivered with buoyant and burning life; each, as it turned to reflect or to transmit the sunbeam, first a torch and then an emerald.”
“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”
“It is easy finding reasons why other people should be patient.”
“Genius, at first, is little more than a great capacity for receiving discipline.”
“Things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
“Nature never makes men who are at once energetically sympathetic and minutely calculating.”
“To the far woods he wandered, listening,
And heard the birds their little stories sing
In notes whose rise and fall seem melted speech—
Melted with tears, smiles, glances—that can reach
More quickly through our frame’s deep-winding night,
And without thought raise thought’s best fruit, delight.”