A remarkable instance of the gross impropriety of composing an English history in Latin, and of the obstinate prejudice of the learned, who imagined that the ancient idiom conferred dignity on a theme wholly vernacular, appeared when the delegates of Oxford purchasedAnthony Wood’selaborate work on “The History and Antiquitiesof the University of Oxford.†Our honest antiquary, with a true vernacular feeling, had written the history of an English university, during an uninterrupted labour of ten years, in his artless but natural idiom. The learned delegates opined that it was humiliating the Oxford press, to have its history pass through it in the language of the country; and Dr. Fell, with others, was chosen to dignify it into Latin. What was the result of this pompous and inane labour? The author was sorely hurt at the sight of his fair offspring disguised in its foreign and fantastic dress. What was clear in English, was obscure in the circumlocution of rotund periods and affected phraseologies; the circumstantial narrative and the local descriptions, so interesting to an English reader, were not only superfluous, but repulsive to the foreigner.Anthony Woodindignantly re-transcribed the whole of his English copy, and left the fair volumes to the care of the university itself, not without the hope which has been realized, that his work should be delivered to posterity stamped by its author’s native genius.7
Such was the crisis, and such the difficulties and the obstructions of that native literature in whose prosperous state every European people now exults. Homogeneous with their habitual associations, moulded by their customs and manners, and everywhere stamped by the peculiar organization of each distinct race, we see the vernacular literature ever imbued with the qualities of the soil whence it springs, diversified, yet ever true to nature. Had the native genius of the great luminaries of literature not found a vein which could reach to the humblest of their compatriots, they who are now the creators of our vernacular literature had remained but pompous plagiarists or frigid babblers, and the moderns might still have been pacing in the trammels of a mimetic antiquity.
1Sidonius Apollinaris.2An ingenious literary antiquary has given us a copious vocabulary, as complete evidence of Latin words merely abbreviated by omitting their terminations, whence originated those numerous monosyllables which impoverish the French language. In the following instances the Gauls only used the first syllable for the entire word, damnum—damn; aureum—or; malum—mal; nudum—nud; amicus—ami: vinum—vin; homo—hom, as anciently written; curtus—court; sonus—son; bonus—bon: and thus made many others.The nasal sound of our neighbours still prevails; thus Gracchus sinks intoGracque; Titus Livius is butTite Live; and the historian of Alexander the Great, the dignified Quintus Curtius, is the ludicrousQuinte Curce!—Auguis, “Du Génie de la Langue Françoise.â€3Turner’s “History of England.â€4See “Curiosities of Literature,†article Recovery of Manuscripts.5Erasmuscomposed a satirical dialogue between two vindictive Ciceronians; it is said that a duel has been occasioned by the intrepidity of maintaining the purity of a writer’s latinity. The pedantry of mixing Greek and Latin terms in the vernacular language is ridiculed byRabelaisin his encounter with the Limousin student, whom he terrified till the youngster ended in delivering himself in plain French, and left off “Pindarising†all the rest of his days.—“Pantagruel,†lib. ii. c. 6.6Collier’s “History of Dramatic Poetry,†ii. 463.7We now possess this valued literary history, which none, perhaps, but Anthony à Wood could have so fervently pursued: “The History and Antiquities of the University of Oxford,†in five volumes, quarto. Edited by John Gutch. It is a distinct work from the far-known “Athenæ Oxonienses.†Why did this great work, as well as some others, come forth with a Latin title? This absurdity was a remaining taint of the ancient prejudice. But an English work was not the more classical for bearing a Latin title.
1Sidonius Apollinaris.
2An ingenious literary antiquary has given us a copious vocabulary, as complete evidence of Latin words merely abbreviated by omitting their terminations, whence originated those numerous monosyllables which impoverish the French language. In the following instances the Gauls only used the first syllable for the entire word, damnum—damn; aureum—or; malum—mal; nudum—nud; amicus—ami: vinum—vin; homo—hom, as anciently written; curtus—court; sonus—son; bonus—bon: and thus made many others.
The nasal sound of our neighbours still prevails; thus Gracchus sinks intoGracque; Titus Livius is butTite Live; and the historian of Alexander the Great, the dignified Quintus Curtius, is the ludicrousQuinte Curce!—Auguis, “Du Génie de la Langue Françoise.â€
3Turner’s “History of England.â€
4See “Curiosities of Literature,†article Recovery of Manuscripts.
5Erasmuscomposed a satirical dialogue between two vindictive Ciceronians; it is said that a duel has been occasioned by the intrepidity of maintaining the purity of a writer’s latinity. The pedantry of mixing Greek and Latin terms in the vernacular language is ridiculed byRabelaisin his encounter with the Limousin student, whom he terrified till the youngster ended in delivering himself in plain French, and left off “Pindarising†all the rest of his days.—“Pantagruel,†lib. ii. c. 6.
6Collier’s “History of Dramatic Poetry,†ii. 463.
7We now possess this valued literary history, which none, perhaps, but Anthony à Wood could have so fervently pursued: “The History and Antiquities of the University of Oxford,†in five volumes, quarto. Edited by John Gutch. It is a distinct work from the far-known “Athenæ Oxonienses.†Why did this great work, as well as some others, come forth with a Latin title? This absurdity was a remaining taint of the ancient prejudice. But an English work was not the more classical for bearing a Latin title.
ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.
Johnsonpronounced it impossible to ascertain when our speech ceased to be Saxon and began to be English; and although since his day English philology has extended its boundaries, the lines of demarcation are very moveable for the literary antiquary. At whatever point we set out, we may find that something which preceded has been omitted; a century may pass away and leave no precise epoch; and transitions of words and styles, like shades melting into each other, may elude perception. Too often wanting sufficient data, the toil of the antiquary becomes baffled, and the microscopic eye of the philologist pores on empty space. The learned have their theories; but in darkness we are doomed to grope, and in a circle we can fix on no beginning.
The elegant researches of Ellis, the antiquarian lore of Ritson, the simplicity of taste of Percy, the poetic fervour of Campbell, the elaborate diligence of Sharon Turner, and more recent names skilled in Saxon lore, have given opposite hypotheses, conjectures, and refutations. “A modification of language is not in reality a change,†observes a powerful researcher in literary history,1who is at a loss “whether some compositions shall pass for the latest offspring of the mother, or the earliest fruit of the daughter’s fertilityâ€â€”a shrewd suspicion which the genealogists of words may entertain concerning the legitimate and the illegitimate, or the pure and the corrupt.
The Saxon language had been tainted by some Latin terms from the ecclesiastics, and some fashionable Normanisms from the court of the Confessor; when the Norman-French, fatal as the arrow which pierced Harold, by a single blow struck down that venerable form—and never has it arisen! And now, with all its pomp, such as it was, it lies entombed and coffined in some scanty manuscripts.
We indeed triumph that the language of our forefathersnever did depart from the land, since it survived among the people. What survived? It soon ceased to be a written tongue, for no one cared to cultivate an idiom no longer required, and utterly contemned. After the Conquest, the miserable Saxons lost their “book-craft.†We find nothing written but the continuation of a meagre chronicle. A few pietists still lingered in occasional homilies, and a solitary charter has been perpetuated; but the style was already changed, and as a literary language the Anglo-Saxon had for ever departed! It had sunk to the people, and they treated the ancient idiom after their fashion—the language of books served not simple men; laying aside its inflections, and its inversions, and its arbitrary construction, they chose a shorter and more direct conveyance of their thoughts, and only kept to a language fitted to the business of daily life. This getting free from the encumbrances of the Anglo-Saxon we may consider formed the obscure beginnings ofthe English Language. All the gradual changes or the sudden innovations through more than two centuries may not be perceivable by posterity; but philologists have marked out how first the inversion was simplified, and then the inflections dropped; how the final E became mute, and at length was ejected; how ancient words were changed, and Norman neologisms introduced. As this English cleared itself of the nebulosity, the anomalies, and all the complex machinery of the mother idiom, a natural style was formed, very homely, for this vaunted Saxon now came from the mouths of the people, and from those friends of the people, the monks, who only wrote for their humble brother-Saxons. The English writers who were composing in French, and the more learned who displayed their clerkship by their Latinity, had a standard of literature which would regulate or advance their literary workmanship; but there was no standard in the language of bondage: it had mixed, as Ritson oddly describes it, “with one knows not what,†a disorganization of words and idioms. NumerousDIALECTSpervaded the land; the east and the west agreed as ill together as both did with the north and the south; and they who wrote for the people each chose the dialect of their own shire.
The “Saxon Chronicle,†which closes with the year 1155, had been continued at progressive intervals by different writers; this authentic document of the Anglo-Saxon diction exhibits remarkable variations of style; and a critical Saxonist has detected the corruptions of its idiom, its inflections, and its orthography—in a word, that through successive periods it had suffered a material alteration in its character.2
Somewhat more than a century after the Norman invasion, about 1180, Layamon made an English version of Wace’s “Brutâ€â€”that French metrical chronicle which the Anglo-Norman had drawn from the Latin history of “Geoffry of Monmouth.†Here we detect an entire changeableness of style, or rather a transformation; but what to call it the most skilful have not agreed. George Ellis drew a copious specimen of a writer unnoticed by Warton; but, confounded by “its strange orthography,†and mournfully doubtful of his own meritorious glossary, he considered the style, “though simple and unmixed, yet a very barbarous Saxon.†A recent critic opines that Layamon “seems to have halted between two languages, the written and the spoken.†Mr. Campbell imagines it “the dawn†of our language; while some Saxonists have branded it as semi-Saxon. It seems a language thrown into confusion, struggling to adapt itself to a new state of things; it has no Norman-French, it is saturated with Saxon, but the sentences are freed from inversions.3
About the same period as Layamon’s version of Wace, we have a very original attempt of a writer, in those days of capricious pronunciation, to convey to the reader the orthoepy by regulating the orthography. As it is only recently that we have obtained any correct notion of a writing which has suffered many misconceptions from our earlier English scholars, the history of this work becomes a bibliographical curiosity.
An ecclesiastic paraphrased the Gospel-histories. Hewas a critical writer, projecting a system to which he strictly adhered, warning his transcribers as punctually to observe, otherwise “they would not write the word right;†they were therefore “to write those letters twice which he had written so.†The system consisted in doubling the consonant after a short vowel to regulate the pronunciation. He wrote brotherrand affterr; isiss, and ititt.4
It is evident that this critical was also a refined writer; for it indicated some delicacy, when we find him apologising for certain additions in his version, which was metrical, not found in the original, and merely used by him for the convenience of filling up his metre. The first literary historians to whose lot it fell to record this anomalous work, among whom wereHickesandWanley, judging by appearances, in the superabundance of the rugged consonants, deemed this refined Anglo-Saxon’s writing as the work of an ignorant scribe, or as a rude provincial dialect, or harsh enough to be the work of an English Dane; its metrical form eluded all detection, as the verses were a peculiar metre of fifteen syllables, all jumbled together as prose: as such they gave some extracts, but it is evident that this was done with little intelligence of their author.Tyrwhit, occupied on his “Chaucer,†had a more percipient ear for these Anglo-Saxon metres, and discovered that this prose was strictly metrical; but he surely advanced no farther—he did not discover the writer’s design that “the Ennglisshe writ†was for “Ennglisshe menn to lareâ€â€”to learn. Indeed, Tyrwhit, who complains that Hickes in noticing this peculiarity of spelling “has not explained the author’s reason for it,†himself so little comprehended the system of the double consonants, that in his extract, humorously “begging pardon†of this old and odd reformer whom thecritic was not only offending, but massacring, “for not following his injunctions,†he discards “all the superfluous letters!†not aware that it was the intention of the writer to preserve the orthoepy. Even our Anglo-Saxon historian missed the secret; for he has remarked on the words, that they were “needlessly loaded with double consonants.†Yet he was not wholly insensible to the substantial qualities of the writer, for he discovered in the diction that “the order of words is uniformly more natural, the inflections are more unfrequent, and the phrases of our English begin to emerge.†And, finally, our latest authority decides that this work, so long misinterpreted, is “the oldest, the purest, and by far the most valuable specimen of our old English dialect that time has left us.â€5
What is “old English†is the question. The title of this work may have perplexed the first discoverers as much as the double consonants. The writer was an ecclesiastic of the name ofOrm, and he was so fascinated with his own work for the purity of its diction, and the precision of its modulated sounds, that in a literary rapture he baptized it with reference to himself; andOrmfondly called his work theOrmulum! One hardly expected to meet with such a Narcissus of literature in an old Anglo-Saxon, philologist of the year so far gone by, yet we now find that Orm might fairly exult in his Ormulum!
Nearly a century after Layamon, in the same part of England, the monk,Robert of Gloucester, wrote his “Chronicle,†about 1280. This honest monk painfully indited for his brother-Saxons the whole history of England, in the shape of Alexandrine verse in rhyme; the diction of the verse approaches so nearly to prose, that it must have been the colloquial idiom of the west. The “Ingliss,†as it was called in the course of the century between Layamon and Robert of Gloucester, betrays a striking change; and modern philologists have given the progressive term of “middle English†to the language from this period to the Reformation.6Our chroniclerhas fared ill with posterity, of whom probably he never dreamt. Robert of Gloucester, who is entirely divested of a poetical character, as are all rhyming chroniclers, has had the hard hap of being criticised by two merciless poets; and, to render his uncouthness still more repulsive, the black-letter fanaticism of his editor has vauntingly arrayed the monk whom he venerated in the sable Gothic, bristling with the Saxon characters.7It has therefore required something like a physical courage to sit down to Robert of Gloucester. Yet in the rhymer whom Warton has degraded, Ellis has discovered a metrical annalist whose orations are almost eloquent, whose characters of monarchs are energetic, and what he records of his own age matter worthy of minute history.
Another monk,Robert Mannyng, of Brunne, or Bourne, in Lincolnshire, who had versifiedPiers Langtoft’s“Chronicle,†has left a translation of the “Manuel des Péchés,†ascribed to Bishop Grosteste, who composedit in politer French. In this “Manual of Sins,†or, as he terms it, “A Handlyng of Sinne,†according to monkish morality and the monkish devices to terrify sinners, our recreative monk has introduced short tales, some grave, and some he deemed facetious, which convey an idea of domestic life and domestic language. It is not without curiosity that we examine these, the earliest attempts at that difficult trifle—the art of telling a short tale, Robert de Brunne is neither a Mat Prior nor a La Fontaine, but he is a block which might have been carved into one or the other, and he shows that without much art a tale may be tolerably told.8His octosyllabic verse is more fluent than the protracted Alexandrine of his “Chronicle.†The words fall together in natural order, and we seem to have advanced in this rude and artless “Ingliss.†But the most certain evidence that “the English†was engaging the attention of those writers who professedly were devoting their pens to those whom they called “the Commonalty,†is, that they now began to criticise; and we find Robert de Brunne continually protesting against “strange Ingliss.†This phrase has rather perplexed our inquirers. “Strange Ingliss†would seem to apply to certain novelties in diction used by the tale-reciters and harpers, for so our monk tells us,
“I wroteIn symple speeche as I couthe,That islightest in manne’s mouthe.I mad (made) nought for no disoúrs (tale-tellers),Ne for no seggers nor harpoúrs,Bot for the luf (love) of symple menuThatstrange Ingliscann not ken.â€
“I wrote
In symple speeche as I couthe,
That islightest in manne’s mouthe.
I mad (made) nought for no disoúrs (tale-tellers),
Ne for no seggers nor harpoúrs,
Bot for the luf (love) of symple menu
Thatstrange Ingliscann not ken.â€
It was about this time that the metrical romances, translated from the French, spread in great number, and introduced many exotic phrases. In the celebrated romance of “Alisaundre†we find French expressions, unalloyed by any attempt at Anglicising them, overflowing the page. The phrase is, however, once applied to certain strange metres which our monk avoided, for many “that read English would be confounded by them.â€
Whatever Robert de Brunne might allude to by his “strange Ingliss,â€9the same cry and the identical expressions are repeated by a writer not many years afterwards—Richard Rolle, called “the Hermit of Hampole.†He produced the earliest versions of the Psalms into English prose, with a commentary on each verse; and a voluminous poem in ten thousand lines, entitled “The Prikke of Conscience,†translated from the Latin for “the unletterd men of Engelonde who can only understand English.†In the prologue to this first Psalter in English prose he says, “I seke nostraunge Ynglyss, botlightestandcommunest, and wilk (such) that is most like unto the Latyn; and thos I fine (I find) no proper Inglis I felough (follow) the wit of the words, so that thai that knowes noght (not) the Latyne, be (by) the Ynglys may come to many Latyne wordys.†Here we arrive at open corruption! Already a writer appears refined enough to complain of the poverty of the language in furnishing “proper Inglis†or synonymes for the Latin; the next step must follow, and that would be in due time the latinising “the Ynglys.â€
A great curiosity of the genuine homeliness of our national idiom at this time has come down to us in amanuscript in the Arundel Collection, now in our national library. It is a volume written by a monk of St. Austin’s at Canterbury, in the Kentish dialect, about a century and a half after Layamon, and half a century after Robert of Gloucester, in 1340. This honest monk, like others of the Saxon brotherhood, was writing for his humbled countrymen, or, as he expresses himself, with a rude Doric simplicity,
Vor Vader and for Moder and for other Ken.
I throw into a note what I have transcribed of this specimen of the old Saxon-English, or, as it is called, “Semi-Saxon.â€10In this specimen of the language as spoken by the people the barbarism is native, pure in its impurity, and unalloyed by any spurious exotic. This English spoken in the Weald of Kent, Caxton tells us, in his time, was “as broad and rude English as is spoken in any place in England.†When contrasted with the diction of a northern bard, whom a singular accident retrieved for us,11it offers a curious picture of the Englishlanguage, so different at precisely the same period. The minstrel’s flow of verse almost anticipates the elegance of a writer of two centuries later.
The poems ofLaurence Minotconsist of ten narrative ballads on some of the wars of Edward the Third in Scotland and in France. The events this bard records show that his writings were completed in 1352. His editor is surprised that “the great monarch whom he so eloquently and so earnestly panegyrised was either ignorant of his existence or insensible of his merit.†Minot was probably nothing more than a northern minstrel, whose celebrity did not extend many leagues. His verses convey to us a perfect conception of the minstrel character, throwing out his almost extemporaneous “Lays†on the predominant incidents of his day. All these narrative poems open by soliciting the attention of the auditors:—
Lithes! and I sall tell you tyllThe bataile of Halidon Hyll.
Lithes! and I sall tell you tyll
The bataile of Halidon Hyll.
And in another,—
Herkinshow long King Edward lay,With his men before Tournay.
Herkinshow long King Edward lay,
With his men before Tournay.
The singularity of these “Lays†consists in coming down to us in a written form, evidently with great care and fondness, bearing their author’s unknown name. They might have appropriately been preserved in Percy’s “Reliques of English Poetry.â€12
Three centuries had now passed, and still the national genius languished in the Norman bondage of the language. But the commonalty were increasing in number and in weight, and an indignant sense of the destitution of a national language was not confined to the laity; it wasattracting the attention of those who thought and who wrote. Richard of Bury, Bishop of Durham, who put forth the first bibliographical treatise by an Englishman, and may he ranked among the earliest critical collectors of a private library, in his celebrated treatise on the love of books, the “Philo-biblion,â€13breathes all the enthusiasm of study; but while he directs our attention to the classical writers of antiquity, he stimulates his contemporaries to emulate them by composing new books. Although he himself wrote in Latin, he regrets that no institution for children in the English language existed; and he complains, that our English youth “first learned the French, and from the French the Latin.†Our youth were sent into France to polish their nasal Norman. This writer flourished about 1330, and thus ascertains, that in the beginning of the reign of Edward III. no English was taught. The “Polychronicon,†a Latin chronicle compiled by the monk Higden, was finished somewhat later, about 1365; and we find the complaint more bitterly renewed. “There is no nation,†wrote this honest monk, “whose children are compelled to leave their own language, as we have since the Normans came into England. A gentleman’s child must speak French from the time that he is rocked in a cradle, or plays with a child’s breche.â€
The Latin Chronicle of Higden, twenty years later, was translated into English by John de Trevisa. On this passage the translator furnishes the important observation, that, since this was written, a revolution had occurred through our grammar-schools: the patriotic efforts of one Sir John Cornewaile, in teaching his pupils to construe their Latin into English, had been generally adopted; “so that now,†proceeds Trevisa, “the yere of our Lorde 1385, in all the grammere scoles of Engelond, children leaveth Frensche and construeth and lerneth in Englische.†The innovation had startled our translator, for, like all innovations, there was loss as well as profit,when, quitting what we are accustomed to, we launch dubiously into a new acquisition. The disuse of the French would detriment their intercourse abroad, and, on great occasions, at home. This was a time when Trevisa himself, in selecting some Scriptural inscriptions for the chapel of Berkley Castle, where he was chaplain, had them painted on boards in Norman-French, and Latin, in alternate lines. They are still visible. English itself was yet too base for the service of God.
It was still a debateable question, as appears by the prefatory dialogue between Trevisa and his patron, Lord Berkley, whether any translation of the Chronicle were at all necessary, Latin being the general language. It was, however, a noble enterprise, being the first great effort in our vernacular prose. This mighty volume is a universal history, which, in its amplitude and miscellaneous character, seemed to contain all that men could know; and the version long enjoyed the favour of all readers as the first historical collection in the English language. It bears the seal of the monkish taste, being equally pious and fabulous. It not only opens before the days of Adam, but, like the creation, has its seven divisions; it has monsters, however, which are not found in Genesis. The monk is doubtful whether they came of Adam or of Noah. They, indeed, came from the elder Pliny, to whose puerile wonders and hasty compilation we owe the foundation of our natural history.
It was about the period that Higden concluded his labours, that Sir John Mandeville deemed it wise, having written his Travels in Latin and French, to compose them also in the vernacular idiom;—a strong indication of the rising disposition to cultivate the national tongue. The policy of our Government now accorded with the general disposition; and hence originated the noble decision of Edward III., in 1362, to banish from our courts of law the Norman-French; but so awkward seemed this great novelty, that the statute is written in the very language it abolishes,14and, indeed, to which our great lawyers, thetimid slaves of precedents, long afterwards clung in their barbarous law-French phrases mingled with their native English.
A mightier movement even than the royal decree in favour of fostering the national language was a translation of the Scriptures, by the intrepid spirit of Wickliffe. This had been done with the pledge of his life, for that was often in peril while he thus struck the first impulse of that reformation which not only influenced his own age, but one more remote. The translation of Wickliffe was a new revelation of the Word of God in the language of many. The streets were crowded with Lollards, as his followers were denominated, of which, like similar odious names attached to a rising party, the origin remains uncertain; Lollardy was, however, a convenient term to describe treason in the Church and the State. Wickliffe’s translation of the Old Testament still lies in numerous manuscripts, for our cold neglect of which we have incurred the censure of the foreigner. The New Testament has happily been printed.15
If we place by the side of the text of Wickliffe our later versions, we may become familiar with that Saxon-English which our venerable Caxton subsequently considered was “more like to Dutch than English.â€
But the picturesque language of our emotions, the creative diction of poetry, appeared in the courtly style of Chaucer, who nobly designed to render the national language refined and varied, while his great contemporaries, the author of Piers Ploughman lingered in a rude dialect, and Gower was still composing alternately in Latin and in French.
The emancipation of the national language was subsequently confirmed by another monarch. A curious anecdote in our literary history has recently been disclosed of Henry V. To encourage the use of the vernacular tongue, this monarch, in a letter missive to one of the city companies, declared that “the English tongue hath in modern days begun to be honourably enlarged and adorned, and for the better understanding of the peoplethe common idiom should be exercised in writing:†this was at once setting aside the Norman-French and the Latin for the daily business of civil life. By this record it appears that many of the craft of brewers, to whose company this letter was addressed, had “knowledge of writing and reading in the English idiom, but Latin and French they by no means understood.†We further learn that now “theLordsand theCommons beganto have their proceedings noted down in the mother tongue;†and this example was therefore to be followed by the city companies.16
At this advanced age of transition, so unsettled was the language of ordinary affairs, that the same document bears evidence of three different idioms. We find the petition of an Irish chieftain, a prisoner in the Tower,written in the French language, while the endorsed royal answer is in English, and the order of the council in Latin.17The bulletins of Henry V. to the mayor and aldermen of London are written in English, but endorsed in French.
As if they designed to hold out a model to their subjects and to sanction the use of their native English, both this prince, and his father, Henry IV., left their wills in the national language,18at a time when the nobles employed Latin or French for such purposes.
There has often existed a sympathy between ourselves and our near neighbours of France, when not disturbed by war. This great movement of establishing a national language, and freeing themselves from the Roman bondage, was tried at a later period by the French government, who were nearly baffled in the attempt. An ordinance of Louis XII. was issuedto abolish the use of the Latin tongue; but such was the prejudice in favour of the ancient language, that notwithstanding that the Latin of the bar had degenerated into the most ludicrous barbarism, the lawyers were unwilling to yield to the popular wish. The use of Latin in France in all legal instruments lasted till the succeeding reign of Francis I., who, by two ordinances, declared thatThe French Languageshould be solely used in all public acts. It was, however, as late as forty years after, in 1629, that at length the public offices consented to draw their instruments in their vernacular language.19So long has general improvement to contend with the force of habit and the passion of prepossession; and such were the difficulties which the vernacular style of both these great empires had to overcome.
When the learnedHickes, in his patriotic fervour to trace the legitimacy of the English from its parent language, adjudged that “nine-tenths of our words were of Saxon origin,†he exultingly appealed to the Lord’s Prayer, wherein there are only three words of French orLatin extraction. This startledTyrwhit, then busied on his Chaucerian glossary, and who in that labour had before him a different aspect of our mottled English. That was not the day when writers would maintain opinions against authority. Awed by the great Saxonist, the poetical antiquary compromised, alleging that “though theformof our language was still Saxon, yet thematterwas in a great measure French.†His successor in English philology,George Ellis, still further faltered and arbitrated; suggesting that the great Saxonist, to complete his favourite scheme, would trace someold GaulishFrench to aTeutonicorigin. In tracing the formation of the English language, we are sensible that the broad and solid foundations lie in the Saxon, but the superstructure has often, with a magical movement, varied in its architecture. An enamoured Saxonist has recently ventured to assert that “English is but another term for Saxon;†but an ocular demonstration has been exhibited in specimens of themodern Englishof our master-writers, marking by italics all the words of Saxon derivation. By these it appears that the translators of the Bible have happily preserved for us the pristine simplicity of our Saxon-English, like the light in a cathedral through its storied and saintly window, shedding its antique hues on hallowed objects. But as we advance, we discover in our most eminent writers the anglicisms diminish; andSharon Turnerhas observed that a fifth of the Saxon language has ceased to be used. A recent critic20has curiously calculated that the English language, now consisting of about 38,000 words, contains 23,000, or nearly five-eighths, Anglo-Saxon in their origin; that in our most idiomatic writers, there is about one-tenthnotAnglo-Saxon, and in our least about one-third.21A cry of ourdesertion of our Saxon purity has been raised by those who have not themselves practised it in their more elevated compositions; but are we to deem that English corrupted which recedes from its Saxon character, and compels the daughter to lose the likeness of her mother? Are we to banish to perpetuity those foreigners who have already fructified our Saxon soil? In an age of extended literature, conversant with objects and productive of associations which never entered into the experience of our forefathers, the ancient language of the people must necessarily prove inadequate; a new language must start out of new conceptions. Look into our present “exchequer of words;†there lies many a refined coinage struck out of the arts and the philosophies of Europe. Every word which genius creates, and which time shall consecrate, is a possession of the language which must be inscribed into that variable doomsday book of words—the English Dictionary. Devotees of Thor and Woden! the day of your idolatries has passed, and your remonstrances are vain as your superstitions.
1Mr. Hallam.2Dr. Bosworth.3Of this recondite writer Ellis has said, “probably Layamon never will be printed;†but we live in an age of publication, and Layamon is said to be actually in the press. [Since this was written, the work has been published at the cost of the Society of Antiquaries, under the editorial care of Sir Frederick Madden.]4Dr. Bosworth, or Mr. Thorpe, has explained this attempt more fully. “From this idea of doubling the consonant after a short vowel, as in German, we are enabled to form some tolerably accurate notions as to the pronunciation of our forefathers. Thus, Orm (or Ormin) writesminandwinwith a singlenonly, andlifwith a single f, because the i is long, as inmine,wine, andlife. On the other hand, wherever the consonant is doubled, the vowel preceding is sharp and short, aswinn, pronouncedwin, notwine.â€â€”“Origin of the Germanic and Scandinavian Languages,†24.5Guest’s “Hist. of English Rhythms,†ii. 186.6During the thirteenth century, the organic change proceeded so rapidly that there is quite as wide a difference between the language of Layamon and that which was written at the beginning of the fourteenth century (about the time of Robert of Gloucester), as there is between the English language of the reign of Edward the Second and the tongue of the present day.—See Mr. Wright’s learned “Essay on the Literature of the Anglo-Saxons,†107.7Hearne, in his preface, exclaims in ecstacy—“This is thefirst bookever printed in this kingdom, it may be inthe whole world, in the black letter, with a mixture ofthe Saxon characters, which is the very garb that was in vogue in the author’s time, that is, in the thirteenth century.†Hearne often claims our gratitude, while his earnest simplicity will extort a smile. On our ancient Bibles he could not refrain from exclaiming—“Though I have taken so much pleasure in perusing the English Bible of the year 1541, yet ’tis nothing equal to that I should take in turning over that of the year 1539.†His antiquarianism kindled his piety over Cranmer’s Bible.Thomas was haunted by a chimera that whatever was obsolete deserved to be revived. This honest spirit of antiquarianism, working on a most undiscerning intellect, seems to have kindled into a literary bigotry in his sateless delight of “the black-letter of our grandfathers’ days.†Hearne set this unhappy example of printing ancient writers with all their obsolete repulsiveness in orthography and type. He was closely followed byRitson, and byWhitakerin his edition of “Piers Ploughman;†and these editors assuredly have scared away many a neophyte in our vernacular literature.Ritsonprinted his “Ancient Songs†with the Saxon characters and abbreviations, which render them often unintelligible. This literary antiquary lived to regret this superstitious antiquarianism. He had prepared a new edition entirely cleared of these offences, but which unfortunately he destroyed at the morbid close of his life.8Turner’s “History of England,†v. 217, will furnish the curious reader readily with several of these specimens of the modes of thinking and of acting of the middle ages, when monks only were the preceptors of mankind.9This term of “strange Ingliss†has yet been found so obscure as to occasion some strictures, which, like the Interpreter in the Critic, are the most difficult to comprehend. I must refer to Monsieur Thierry’s very delightful “History of the Conquest of England,†ii. 271, for a very refined speculation on our Robert de Brunne’s unlucky obscurity. Monsieur Thierry imagines that the “strange Ingliss†was the refined English which had flown into Scotland, and there become the cultivated language of the minstrels and the court, and which our hapless Saxons onthis side of the Tweedhad sunk into a dialect only fitted for serfs. This finer and more elevated English could not be understood by a base commonalty; this was “strange Ingliss†to them. A very interesting event in the history of both nations had transplanted the purer English to the Scottish court:—Malcolm, whom the usurpation of Macbeth had driven from the Scottish throne, was expatriated in England during an interval of near twenty years; the affection of the monarch for the English was such, that he adopted their language, and when the royal family of England was expelled by the Conqueror, the king received them and the emigrant Saxons, and married the English princess. This gave rise to that intercourse with the south of Scotland, of which the result in our literary, if not in our civil, history is remarkable. Certain it is that much broad Scotch is good old English, and the noblest minstrelsy cometh “fra the North Countrie.â€10On the leaf appears, in the handwriting of the author, “This Boc is Dan Michelis of Northgate ywrite an Englis of his ozene hand that hatteAyenbyte of inwyt, and is of the boc-house of Seynt Austyn’s of Cantorberi.†The writer was seventy years of age; and he tells us that he was not—“Blind, and dyaf, and alsuo dumb,Of zeventy yer al not rond,Ne ssette by draze to the grond,Uor peny nor mark, ne nor pond.â€At the end the monk tells us for whom he writes—“Nou ich wille that ye ywite hou hitt is ywentThet this Boc is ywrite mid Engliss of Kent.This Boc is ymade vor lewede men,Vor Vader and vor Moder and vor other Ken,Ham vor to berze uram alle manyere ZenThet ine have inwytte ne bleue no uoul wen.Huo ase God is his name yzedThet this Boc made God him yeue that breadOf Angles of Hauene and thereto his red,And underuongè his Zoule, huanne that is dyad.â€11While Tyrwhit was busied on the “Canterbury Tales†his attention was excited by the old cataloguer of the Cottonian manuscripts to aChaucer exemplar emendate scriptum. On a spare leaf the name of Richard Chawfer had been scrawled, which might have been that of some former possessor. There are two fatalities which hang over the pen of a slumbering cataloguer—ignorance and indolence. Our present one caught an immortal name and never travelled onwards; and, struck by the fairness of the writing, inferred that it was a copy of Chaucer critically accurate. It turned out to be the compositions of an unknown poet who not willingly relinquished his claim on posterity, for he has subscribed his name,Laurence Minot. [The manuscript is marked Galba, E. IX.; specimens were first published from it by Tyrwhit and Warton, and the entire series ultimately by Ritson.]12Ritson’s first edition (1795) of Minot having become very difficult to procure, an elegant re-impression, and apparently a correct one, was published in 1825.13“Philobiblion, sive de Amore Librorum et Institutione Bibliothecæ,†ascribed to Richard of Bury, Bishop of Durham; but Fabricius says it was written by Robert Holcot, a learned friar, at his desire.—Fab. “Bib. Med. Ævi,†vol. i. It is the bishop, however, who was the collector, and always speaks in his own person. It has been recently translated by Mr. Inglis.14Barrington on the Statutes.In Blackstone’s “Commentaries,†book iii. chap. 21, we find much curious information, and some philosophical reflections. The use of the technical law-Latin is adroitly defended. Under Cromwell the records were turned into English; at the Restoration the practisers declared they could not express themselves so significantly in English, and they returned to their Latin. In 1730, a statute ordered that the proceedings at law should be done into English, that the common people might understand the process, &c. But after many years’ experience the people are as ignorant in matters of law as before, and suffer the inconveniences of increasingthe expense of all legal proceedingsby being bound by the stamp-duties to write only a stated number of words in a sheet,and the English language, through the multitude of its particles, is so much more verbose than the Latin, that the number of sheets is much augmented. Two years subsequently it was necessary to make a new act to allow all technical terms to continue Latin, which were too ridiculous to be translated, such asnisi prius, fieri facias, habeas corpus. This last act, in 1732, has defeated every beneficial purpose intended by the preceding statute of 1730.One hardly expected to find philological acumen in the dry discussion of law-Latin, but when thethreewords, “secundum formam statuti,†requiresevenin English, “according to the form of the statute,†one easily comprehends the heavy weight of thestamp-dutyforwriting English. The Saxons, who made no use of particles of speech, had more merit than we were aware of.15By the Rev.John Lewis, 1731, fo., and republished by the Rev.H. H. Baber, 1810, 4to.The censure of Fabricius deserves our notice. After mention of Wickliffe’s version of the Bible, he adds, “Mirum est Anglos eam (versionem) tam diu neglexisse quum vel linguæ causa ipsis in pretio esse debeat.â€â€”“Bib. Lat.,†v. 321.It is provoking to be reminded of our neglected duties by a foreigner. We might assuredly be curious to learn how the sublimity and the colloquial and narrative parts of this vast treasure of our ancient language were produced under the primitive pen of Wickliffe. A fine copy of Wickliffe’s Bible was in the library of Mr. Douce, and I have heard, with great satisfaction, that it will probably be edited by Sir Francis Madden.16Herbert’s “History of the City Companies.â€17I derive this curious fact from Mr. Tyler’s “History of Henry of Monmouth,†ii. 245.18These wills are preserved in Mr. Nichols’ “Collection of Royal Wills.â€19Le Comte de Neufchateau, “Essay on French Literature,†prefixed to the late edition of Pascal’s works.20“Edinburgh Review,†Oct., 1839.21See “Quarterly Rev.,†lix. 34.—The critic is deeply imbued with his delight of Saxon-English. “The first bursts in our literature (probably the noblest are meant) are in almost pure Saxon.†The critic particularly appeals to Milton for two instances; yet surely the Greekised, the Latinised, and even the Italianised Milton will not serve to assert the pre-eminence of our venerable dialect. “A country congregation†is its more certain test; where the language of the people is the only language required. Cobbett’s writings throughout are Saxon-English. Coleridge considered Asgill and De Foe the most idiomatic writers.
1Mr. Hallam.
2Dr. Bosworth.
3Of this recondite writer Ellis has said, “probably Layamon never will be printed;†but we live in an age of publication, and Layamon is said to be actually in the press. [Since this was written, the work has been published at the cost of the Society of Antiquaries, under the editorial care of Sir Frederick Madden.]
4Dr. Bosworth, or Mr. Thorpe, has explained this attempt more fully. “From this idea of doubling the consonant after a short vowel, as in German, we are enabled to form some tolerably accurate notions as to the pronunciation of our forefathers. Thus, Orm (or Ormin) writesminandwinwith a singlenonly, andlifwith a single f, because the i is long, as inmine,wine, andlife. On the other hand, wherever the consonant is doubled, the vowel preceding is sharp and short, aswinn, pronouncedwin, notwine.â€â€”“Origin of the Germanic and Scandinavian Languages,†24.
5Guest’s “Hist. of English Rhythms,†ii. 186.
6During the thirteenth century, the organic change proceeded so rapidly that there is quite as wide a difference between the language of Layamon and that which was written at the beginning of the fourteenth century (about the time of Robert of Gloucester), as there is between the English language of the reign of Edward the Second and the tongue of the present day.—See Mr. Wright’s learned “Essay on the Literature of the Anglo-Saxons,†107.
7Hearne, in his preface, exclaims in ecstacy—“This is thefirst bookever printed in this kingdom, it may be inthe whole world, in the black letter, with a mixture ofthe Saxon characters, which is the very garb that was in vogue in the author’s time, that is, in the thirteenth century.†Hearne often claims our gratitude, while his earnest simplicity will extort a smile. On our ancient Bibles he could not refrain from exclaiming—“Though I have taken so much pleasure in perusing the English Bible of the year 1541, yet ’tis nothing equal to that I should take in turning over that of the year 1539.†His antiquarianism kindled his piety over Cranmer’s Bible.
Thomas was haunted by a chimera that whatever was obsolete deserved to be revived. This honest spirit of antiquarianism, working on a most undiscerning intellect, seems to have kindled into a literary bigotry in his sateless delight of “the black-letter of our grandfathers’ days.†Hearne set this unhappy example of printing ancient writers with all their obsolete repulsiveness in orthography and type. He was closely followed byRitson, and byWhitakerin his edition of “Piers Ploughman;†and these editors assuredly have scared away many a neophyte in our vernacular literature.Ritsonprinted his “Ancient Songs†with the Saxon characters and abbreviations, which render them often unintelligible. This literary antiquary lived to regret this superstitious antiquarianism. He had prepared a new edition entirely cleared of these offences, but which unfortunately he destroyed at the morbid close of his life.
8Turner’s “History of England,†v. 217, will furnish the curious reader readily with several of these specimens of the modes of thinking and of acting of the middle ages, when monks only were the preceptors of mankind.
9This term of “strange Ingliss†has yet been found so obscure as to occasion some strictures, which, like the Interpreter in the Critic, are the most difficult to comprehend. I must refer to Monsieur Thierry’s very delightful “History of the Conquest of England,†ii. 271, for a very refined speculation on our Robert de Brunne’s unlucky obscurity. Monsieur Thierry imagines that the “strange Ingliss†was the refined English which had flown into Scotland, and there become the cultivated language of the minstrels and the court, and which our hapless Saxons onthis side of the Tweedhad sunk into a dialect only fitted for serfs. This finer and more elevated English could not be understood by a base commonalty; this was “strange Ingliss†to them. A very interesting event in the history of both nations had transplanted the purer English to the Scottish court:—Malcolm, whom the usurpation of Macbeth had driven from the Scottish throne, was expatriated in England during an interval of near twenty years; the affection of the monarch for the English was such, that he adopted their language, and when the royal family of England was expelled by the Conqueror, the king received them and the emigrant Saxons, and married the English princess. This gave rise to that intercourse with the south of Scotland, of which the result in our literary, if not in our civil, history is remarkable. Certain it is that much broad Scotch is good old English, and the noblest minstrelsy cometh “fra the North Countrie.â€
10On the leaf appears, in the handwriting of the author, “This Boc is Dan Michelis of Northgate ywrite an Englis of his ozene hand that hatteAyenbyte of inwyt, and is of the boc-house of Seynt Austyn’s of Cantorberi.†The writer was seventy years of age; and he tells us that he was not—
“Blind, and dyaf, and alsuo dumb,Of zeventy yer al not rond,Ne ssette by draze to the grond,Uor peny nor mark, ne nor pond.â€
“Blind, and dyaf, and alsuo dumb,
Of zeventy yer al not rond,
Ne ssette by draze to the grond,
Uor peny nor mark, ne nor pond.â€
At the end the monk tells us for whom he writes—
“Nou ich wille that ye ywite hou hitt is ywentThet this Boc is ywrite mid Engliss of Kent.This Boc is ymade vor lewede men,Vor Vader and vor Moder and vor other Ken,Ham vor to berze uram alle manyere ZenThet ine have inwytte ne bleue no uoul wen.Huo ase God is his name yzedThet this Boc made God him yeue that breadOf Angles of Hauene and thereto his red,And underuongè his Zoule, huanne that is dyad.â€
“Nou ich wille that ye ywite hou hitt is ywent
Thet this Boc is ywrite mid Engliss of Kent.
This Boc is ymade vor lewede men,
Vor Vader and vor Moder and vor other Ken,
Ham vor to berze uram alle manyere Zen
Thet ine have inwytte ne bleue no uoul wen.
Huo ase God is his name yzed
Thet this Boc made God him yeue that bread
Of Angles of Hauene and thereto his red,
And underuongè his Zoule, huanne that is dyad.â€
11While Tyrwhit was busied on the “Canterbury Tales†his attention was excited by the old cataloguer of the Cottonian manuscripts to aChaucer exemplar emendate scriptum. On a spare leaf the name of Richard Chawfer had been scrawled, which might have been that of some former possessor. There are two fatalities which hang over the pen of a slumbering cataloguer—ignorance and indolence. Our present one caught an immortal name and never travelled onwards; and, struck by the fairness of the writing, inferred that it was a copy of Chaucer critically accurate. It turned out to be the compositions of an unknown poet who not willingly relinquished his claim on posterity, for he has subscribed his name,Laurence Minot. [The manuscript is marked Galba, E. IX.; specimens were first published from it by Tyrwhit and Warton, and the entire series ultimately by Ritson.]
12Ritson’s first edition (1795) of Minot having become very difficult to procure, an elegant re-impression, and apparently a correct one, was published in 1825.
13“Philobiblion, sive de Amore Librorum et Institutione Bibliothecæ,†ascribed to Richard of Bury, Bishop of Durham; but Fabricius says it was written by Robert Holcot, a learned friar, at his desire.—Fab. “Bib. Med. Ævi,†vol. i. It is the bishop, however, who was the collector, and always speaks in his own person. It has been recently translated by Mr. Inglis.
14Barrington on the Statutes.
In Blackstone’s “Commentaries,†book iii. chap. 21, we find much curious information, and some philosophical reflections. The use of the technical law-Latin is adroitly defended. Under Cromwell the records were turned into English; at the Restoration the practisers declared they could not express themselves so significantly in English, and they returned to their Latin. In 1730, a statute ordered that the proceedings at law should be done into English, that the common people might understand the process, &c. But after many years’ experience the people are as ignorant in matters of law as before, and suffer the inconveniences of increasingthe expense of all legal proceedingsby being bound by the stamp-duties to write only a stated number of words in a sheet,and the English language, through the multitude of its particles, is so much more verbose than the Latin, that the number of sheets is much augmented. Two years subsequently it was necessary to make a new act to allow all technical terms to continue Latin, which were too ridiculous to be translated, such asnisi prius, fieri facias, habeas corpus. This last act, in 1732, has defeated every beneficial purpose intended by the preceding statute of 1730.
One hardly expected to find philological acumen in the dry discussion of law-Latin, but when thethreewords, “secundum formam statuti,†requiresevenin English, “according to the form of the statute,†one easily comprehends the heavy weight of thestamp-dutyforwriting English. The Saxons, who made no use of particles of speech, had more merit than we were aware of.
15By the Rev.John Lewis, 1731, fo., and republished by the Rev.H. H. Baber, 1810, 4to.
The censure of Fabricius deserves our notice. After mention of Wickliffe’s version of the Bible, he adds, “Mirum est Anglos eam (versionem) tam diu neglexisse quum vel linguæ causa ipsis in pretio esse debeat.â€â€”“Bib. Lat.,†v. 321.
It is provoking to be reminded of our neglected duties by a foreigner. We might assuredly be curious to learn how the sublimity and the colloquial and narrative parts of this vast treasure of our ancient language were produced under the primitive pen of Wickliffe. A fine copy of Wickliffe’s Bible was in the library of Mr. Douce, and I have heard, with great satisfaction, that it will probably be edited by Sir Francis Madden.
16Herbert’s “History of the City Companies.â€
17I derive this curious fact from Mr. Tyler’s “History of Henry of Monmouth,†ii. 245.
18These wills are preserved in Mr. Nichols’ “Collection of Royal Wills.â€
19Le Comte de Neufchateau, “Essay on French Literature,†prefixed to the late edition of Pascal’s works.
20“Edinburgh Review,†Oct., 1839.
21See “Quarterly Rev.,†lix. 34.—The critic is deeply imbued with his delight of Saxon-English. “The first bursts in our literature (probably the noblest are meant) are in almost pure Saxon.†The critic particularly appeals to Milton for two instances; yet surely the Greekised, the Latinised, and even the Italianised Milton will not serve to assert the pre-eminence of our venerable dialect. “A country congregation†is its more certain test; where the language of the people is the only language required. Cobbett’s writings throughout are Saxon-English. Coleridge considered Asgill and De Foe the most idiomatic writers.