Chapter 2

1140A.D.—And14te eorl of Angæu wærd ded, and his sune Henri toc to þe rice. And te cuen of France to-dælde fra þe king, and scæ comto þe iunge eorl Henri.andhe toc hire to wiue,andal Peitou mid hire. þa ferde he mid micel færd into Englelandandwan castles—andte king ferde agenes himmid micel mare ferd. þoþwæthere fuhtten hi noht. oc ferden þe ærcebiscopandte wise men betwux heom, and makedethatsahtethatte king sculde ben lauerdandking wile he liuede.andæfterhis dæi ware Henri king.andhe helde himfor fader,andhe himfor sune,andsibandsæhte sculde ben betwyx heom, and on al Engleland.15

With this may be contrasted a specimen of southern English, from 10 to 20 years later (Hatton Gospels, Luke i. 4616):

Da cwæð Maria: Min saule mersed drihten, and min gast geblissode on gode minen hælende. For þam þe he geseah his þinene eadmodnysse. Soðlice henen-forð me eadige seggeð alle cneornesse; for þam þe me mychele þing dyde se þe mihtyg ys;andhis name is halig.Andhis mildheortnysse of cneornisse on cneornesse hine ondraedende. He worhte maegne on hys earme; he to-daelde þa ofermode, on moda heora heortan. He warp þa rice of setlle, and þa eadmode he up-an-hof. Hyngriende he mid gode ge-felde,andþa ofermode ydele for-let. He afeng israel his cniht, and gemynde his mildheortnysse; Swa he spræc to ure fæderen, Abrahameandhis sæde on a weorlde.

To a still later date, apparently close upon 1200, belongs the versified chronicle of Layamon or Laweman, a priest of Ernely on the Severn, who, using as his basis the FrenchBrutof Wace, expanded it by additions from other sources to more than twice the extent: his work of 32,250 lines is a mine of illustration for the language of his time and locality. The latter was intermediate between midland and southern, and the language, though forty years later than the specimen from the Chronicle, is much more archaic in structure, and can scarcely be considered even as Early Middle English. The following is a specimen (lines 9064-9079):

On Kinbelines daeie ... þe king wes inne Bruttene, com a þissen middel aerde ... anes maidenes sune, iboren wes in Beþleem ... of bezste alre burden. He is ihaten Jesu Crist ... þurh þene halie gost, alre worulde wunne ... walden englenne; faeder he is on heuenen ... froure moncunnes; sune he is on eorðen ... of sele þon maeidene, & þene halie gost ... haldeð mid him seoluen.

TheMiddle Englishwas pre-eminently theDialectalperiod of the language. It was not till after the middle of the 14th century that English obtained official recognition. For three centuries, therefore, there was no standard form of speech which claimed any pre-eminence over the others. The writers of each district wrote in the dialectfamiliarto them; and between extreme forms the difference was so great as to amount to unintelligibility; works written for southern Englishmen had to be translated for the benefit of the men of the north:—

“In sotherin Inglis was it drawin,And turnid ic haue it till ur awinLangage of þe northin ledeThat can na nothir Inglis rede.”Cursor Mundi, 20,064.

“In sotherin Inglis was it drawin,

And turnid ic haue it till ur awin

Langage of þe northin lede

That can na nothir Inglis rede.”

Cursor Mundi, 20,064.

Three main dialects were distinguished by contemporary writers, as in the often-quoted passage from Trevisa’s translation of Higden’sPolychroniconcompleted in 1387:—

“Also Englysche men ... hadde fram þe bygynnynge þre maner speche, Souþeron, NorþeronandMyddel speche (in þe myddel of þe lond) as hy come of þre maner people of Germania.... Also of þe forseyde Saxon tonge, þat ys deled a þre,andys abyde scarslyche wiþ feaw uplondysche menandys gret wondur, for men of þe est wiþ men of þe west, as hyt were under þe same part of heyvene, acordeþ more in sounynge of sþeche þan men of þe norþ wiþ men of þe souþ; þerfore hyt ys þat Mercii, þat buþ men of myddel Engelond, as hyt were parteners of þe endes, undurstondeþ betre þe syde longages Norþeron and Souþeron, þan NorþernandSouþern undurstondeþ oyþer oþer.”

The modern study of these Middle English dialects, initiated by the elder Richard Garnett, scientifically pursued by Dr Richard Morris, and elaborated by many later scholars, both English and German, has shown that they were readily distinguished by the conjugation of the present tense of the verb, which in typical specimens was as follows:—-

Of these the southern is simply the old West-Saxon, with the vowels levelled toe. The northern second person in-espreserves an older form than the southern and West-Saxon-est; but the-esof the third person and plural is derived from an older-eth, the change of-thinto-sbeing found in progress in the Durham glosses of the 10th century. In the plural, when accompanied by the pronoun subject, the verb had already dropped the inflections entirely as in Modern English. The origin of the-enplural in the midland dialect, unknown to Old English, is probably an instance ofform-levelling, the inflection of the present indicative being assimilated to that of the past, and the present and past subjunctive, in all of which-enwas the plural termination. In the declension of nouns, adjectives and pronouns, the northern dialect had attained before the end of the 13th century to the simplicity of Modern English, while the southern dialect still retained a large number of inflections, and the midland a considerable number. The dialects differed also in phonology, for while the northern generally retained the hard or guttural values ofk,g,sc, these were in the two other dialects palatalized before front vowels intoch,jandsh.Kirk,chircheorchurch,bryg,bridge;scryke,shriek, are examples. Old Englishhwwas written in the northqu(h), but elsewherewh, often sinking intow. The original longáinstán,már, preserved in the northernstane,mare, becameōelsewhere, as instone,more. So that the north presented a general aspect of conservation of old sounds with the most thorough-going dissolution of old inflections; the south, a tenacious retention of the inflections, with an extensive evolution in the sounds. In one important respect, however, phonetic decay was far ahead in the north: the final e to which all the old vowels had been levelled during the transition stage, and which is a distinguishing feature of Middle English in the midland and southern dialects, became mute,i.e., disappeared, in the northern dialect before that dialect emerged from its three centuries of obscuration, shortly before 1300. So thoroughly modern had its form consequently become that we might almost call it Modern English, and say that the Middle English stage of the northern dialect is lost. For comparison with the other dialects, however, the same nomenclature may be used, and we may class as Middle English the extensive literature which northern England produced during the 14th century. The earliest specimen is probably the Metrical Psalter in the Cotton Library,17copied during the reign of Edward II. from an original of the previous century. The gigantic versified paraphrase of Scripture history called theCursor Mundi,18is held also to have been composed before 1300. The dates of the numerous alliterative romances in this dialect have not been determined with exactness, as all survive in later copies, but it is probable that some of them were written before 1300. In the 14th century appeared the theological and devotional works of Richard Rolle the anchorite of Hampole, Dan Jon Gaytrigg, William of Nassington, and other writers whose names are unknown; and towards the close of the century, specimens of the language also appear from Scotland both in official documents and in the poetical works of John Barbour, whose language, barring minute points of orthography, is identical with that of the contemporary northern English writers. From 1400 onward, the distinction between northern English and Lowland Scottish becomes clearly marked.

In the southern dialect one version of the work called theAncren Riwleor “Rule of Nuns,” adapted about 1225 for a small sisterhood at Tarrant-Kaines, in Dorsetshire, exhibits a dialectal characteristic which had probably long prevailed in the south, though concealed by the spelling, in the use ofvforf, asvallefall,vordonnefordo,vortofor to,vederfather,vromfrom. Not till later do we find a recognition of the parallel use ofzfors. Among the writings which succeed,The Owl and the Nightingaleof Nicholas de Guildford, of Portesham in Dorsetshire, before 1250, theChronicleof Robert of Gloucester, 1298, and Trevisa’s translation of Higden, 1387, are of special importance in illustrating the history of southern English. The earliest form of Langland’sPiers Ploughman, 1362, as preserved in the Vernon MS., appears to be in an intermediate dialect between southern and midland.19The Kentish form of southern English seems to have retained specially archaic features; five short sermons in it of the middle of the 13th century were edited by Dr Morris (1866); but the great work illustrating it is theAyenbite of Inwyt(Remorse of Conscience), 1340,20a translation from the French by Dan Michel of Northgate, Kent, who tells us—

“Þet þis boc is y-write mid engliss of Kent;Þis boc is y-mad uor lewede men,Vor uader, and uor moder, and uor oþer ken,Ham uor to berȝe uram alle manyere zen,Þet ine hare inwytte ne bleue no uoul wen.”

“Þet þis boc is y-write mid engliss of Kent;

Þis boc is y-mad uor lewede men,

Vor uader, and uor moder, and uor oþer ken,

Ham uor to berȝe uram alle manyere zen,

Þet ine hare inwytte ne bleue no uoul wen.”

In its use ofv(u) andzfor ƒ ands, and its grammatical inflections, it presents an extreme type of southern speech, with peculiarities specially Kentish; and in comparison with contemporary Midland English works, it looks like a fossil of two centuries earlier.

Turning from the dialectal extremes of the Middle English to the midland speech, which we left at the closing leaves of thePeterboroughChronicleof 1154, we find a rapid development of this dialect, which was before long to become the national literary language. In this, the first great work is theOrmulum, or metrical Scripture paraphrase of Orm or Ormin, written about 1200, somewhere near the northern frontier of the midland area. The dialect has a decided smack of the north, and shows for the first time in English literature a large percentage of Scandinavian words, derived from the Danish settlers, who, in adopting English, had preserved a vast number of their ancestral forms of speech, which were in time to pass into the common language, of which they now constitute some of the most familiar words.Blunt,bull,die,dwell,ill,kid,raise,same,thrive,wand,wing, are words from this source, which appear first in the work of Orm, of which the following lines may be quoted:—

“Þe Judewisshe folkess bochemm seȝȝde, þatt hemm birrdeTwa bukkes samenn to þe preostatt kirrke-dure brinngenn;Andteȝȝ þa didenn bliþeliȝ,swa summ þe boc hemm tahhte,And brohhtenn tweȝȝenn bukkess þærDrihhtin þærwiþþ to lakenn.And att21te kirrke-dure tocþe preost ta tweȝȝenn bukkess,Ando þatt an he leȝȝde þærall þeȝȝre sakeandsinne,Andlét itt eornenn for þwiþþ allút inntill wilde wesste;Andtocandsnaþ þatt oþerr buccDrihhtin þaerwiþþ to lakenn.All þiss wass don forr here ned,andec forr ure nede;For hemm itt hallp biforenn Goddto clennssenn hemm of sinne;Andall swa maȝȝ itt hellpenn þeȝiff þatt tu willt [itt] follȝhenn.Ȝiff þatt tu willt full innwarrdliȝwiþþ fulle trowwþe lefennAll þatt tatt wass bitacnedd tær,to lefennandto trowwenn.”Ormulum, ed. White, l. 1324.

“Þe Judewisshe folkess boc

hemm seȝȝde, þatt hemm birrde

Twa bukkes samenn to þe preost

att kirrke-dure brinngenn;

Andteȝȝ þa didenn bliþeliȝ,

swa summ þe boc hemm tahhte,

And brohhtenn tweȝȝenn bukkess þær

Drihhtin þærwiþþ to lakenn.

And att21te kirrke-dure toc

þe preost ta tweȝȝenn bukkess,

Ando þatt an he leȝȝde þær

all þeȝȝre sakeandsinne,

Andlét itt eornenn for þwiþþ all

út inntill wilde wesste;

Andtocandsnaþ þatt oþerr bucc

Drihhtin þaerwiþþ to lakenn.

All þiss wass don forr here ned,

andec forr ure nede;

For hemm itt hallp biforenn Godd

to clennssenn hemm of sinne;

Andall swa maȝȝ itt hellpenn þe

ȝiff þatt tu willt [itt] follȝhenn.

Ȝiff þatt tu willt full innwarrdliȝ

wiþþ fulle trowwþe lefenn

All þatt tatt wass bitacnedd tær,

to lefennandto trowwenn.”

Ormulum, ed. White, l. 1324.

The author of theOrmulumwas a phonetist, and employed a special spelling of his own to represent not only the quality but thequantitiesof vowels and consonants—a circumstance which gives his work a peculiar value to the investigator. He is generally assumed to have been a native of Lincolnshire or Notts, but the point is a disputed one, and there is somewhat to be said for the neighbourhood of Ormskirk in Lancashire.

It is customary to differentiate between east and west midland, and to subdivide these again into north and south. As was natural in a tract of country which stretched from Lancaster to Essex, a very considerable variety is found in the documents which agree in presenting the leading midland features, those of Lancashire and Lincolnshire approaching the northern dialect both in vocabulary, phonetic character and greater neglect of inflections. But this diversity diminishes as we advance.

Thirty years after theOrmulum, the east midland rhymedStory of Genesis and Exodus22shows us the dialect in a more southern form, with the vowels of modern English, and from about the same date, with rather more northern characteristics, we have an east midlandBestiary.

Different tests and different dates have been proposed for subdividing the Middle English period, but the most important is that of Henry Nicol, based on the observation that in the early 13th century, as in Ormin, the Old English short vowels in an open syllable still retained their short quantity, asnăma,ŏver,mĕte; but by 1250 or 1260 they had been lengthened tonā-me,ō-ver,mē-te, a change which has also taken place at a particular period in all the Germanic, and even the Romanic languages, as inbuō-noforbŏ-num,pā-dreforpă-trem, &c. The lengthening of the penult left the final syllable by contrast shortened or weakened, and paved the way for the disappearance of finalein the century following, through the stagesnă-me,nā-mĕ,nā-m’,nām, the one long syllable innām(e) being the quantitative equivalent of the two short syllables innă-mĕ; hence the notion that muteemakes a preceding vowel long, the truth being that the lengthening of the vowel led to the e becoming mute.

After 1250 we have theLay of Havelok, and about 1300 the writings of Robert of Brunne in South Lincolnshire. In the 14th century we find a number of texts belonging to the western part of the district. South-west midland is hardly to be distinguished from southern in its south-western form, and hence texts likePiers Plowmanelude any satisfactory classification, but several metrical romances exhibit what are generally considered to be west midland characteristics, and a little group of poems,Sir Gawayne and the Grene Knighte, thePearl,CleannessandPatience, thought to be the work of a north-west midland writer of the 14th century, bear a striking resemblance to the modern Lancashire dialect. The end of the century witnessed the prose of Wycliff and Mandeville, and the poetry of Chaucer, with whom Middle English may be said to have culminated, and in whose writings its main characteristics as distinct from Old and Modern English may be studied. Thus, we find final e in full use representing numerous original vowels and terminations as

Him thoughtè that his hertè woldè brekè,

in Old English—

Him þuhte þæt his heorte wolde brecan,

which may be compared with the modern German—

Ihm däuchte dass sein Herze wollte brechen.

In nouns the -esof the plural and genitive case is still syllabic—

Reede as the berstl-es of a sow-es eer-es.

Several old genitives and plural forms continued to exist, and the dative or prepositional case has usually a finale. Adjectives retain so much of the old declension as to have -ein the definite form and in the plural—

The tend-re cropp-es and the yong-e sonne.And smal-e fowl-es maken melodie.

The tend-re cropp-es and the yong-e sonne.

And smal-e fowl-es maken melodie.

Numerous old forms of comparison were in use, which have not come down to Modern English, asherre,ferre,lenger,hext= higher, farther, longer, highest. In the pronouns,ichlingered alongside ofI;yewas only nominative, andyouobjective; the northerntheihad dispossessed the southernhy, butherandhem(the modern ’em) stood their ground againsttheirandthem. The verb isI lov-e,thou lov-est,he lov-eth; but, in the plural,lov-enis interchanged withlov-e, as rhyme or euphony requires. So in the plural of the pastwe love-denorlove-de. The infinitive also ends inen, oftene, always syllabic. The present participle, in Old English -ende, passing through -inde, has been confounded with the verbal noun in -ynge, -yng, as in Modern English. The past participle largely retains the prefixy- ori-, representing the Old Englishge-, as ini-ronne,y-don, Old Englishzerunnen,zedón, run, done. Many old verb forms still continued in existence. The adoption of French words, not only those of Norman introduction, but those subsequently introduced under the Angevin kings, to supply obsolete and obsolescent English ones, which had kept pace with the growth of literature since the beginning of the Middle English period, had now reached its climax; later times added many more, but they also dropped some that were in regular use with Chaucer and his contemporaries.

Chaucer’s great contemporary, William Langland, in hisVision of William concerning Piers the Ploughman, and his imitator the author ofPierce the Ploughman’s Crede(about 1400) used the Old English alliterative versification for the last time in the south. Rhyme had made its appearance in the language shortly after the Conquest—if not already known before; and in the south and midlands it became decidedly more popular than alliteration; the latter retained its hold much longer in the north, where it was written even after 1500: many of the northern romances are either simply alliterative, or have both alliteration and rhyme. To these characteristics of northern and southern verse respectively Chaucer alludes in the prologue of the “Persone,” who, when called upon for his tale said:—

“But trusteth wel; I am a sotherne man,I cannot gesterom,ram,ruf, by my letter.And, God wote, rime hold I but litel better:And therefore, if you list, I wol not glose,I wol you tell a litel tale in prose.”

“But trusteth wel; I am a sotherne man,

I cannot gesterom,ram,ruf, by my letter.

And, God wote, rime hold I but litel better:

And therefore, if you list, I wol not glose,

I wol you tell a litel tale in prose.”

The changes from Old to Middle English may be summed up thus: Loss of a large part of the native vocabulary, and adoption of French words to fill their place; not infrequent adoption of French words as synonyms of existing native ones; modernization of the English words preserved, by vowel change in a definite direction from back to front, and from open to close,ā,becomingō,, originalē,ōtending toee,oo, monophthongization of the old diphthongseo,ea, and development of new diphthongs in connexion withg,h, andw; adoption of French orthographic symbols,e.g.ouforū,,qu,v,ch, and gradual loss of the symbols ɔ, þ, ð, Þ; obscuration of vowels after the accent, and especially of finala,o,utoĕ; consequent confusion and loss of old inflections, and their replacement by prepositions, auxiliary verbs and rules of position; abandonment of alliteration for rhyme; and great development of dialects, in consequence of there being no standard or recognized type of English.

But the recognition came at length. Already in 1258 was issued the celebrated English proclamation of Henry III., or rather of Simon de Montfort in his name, which, as the only public recognition of the native tongue between William the Conqueror and Edward III., has sometimes been spoken of as the first specimen of English. It runs:—

“Henriþurȝ godes fultume king on Engleneloande Lhoauerd on Yrloande. Duk on Normandieon Aquitaine and eorl on Aniow. Send igretinge to alle hise holde ilærde and ileawede on Huntendoneschire. þæt witen ȝe wel alle þætwewillen and vnnenþæt þæt vre rædesmen alle oþer þe moare dæl of heom þæt beoþ ichosen þurȝ us and þurȝ þæt loandes folk on vre kuneriche. habbeþ idon and schullen don in þe worþnesse of gode and on vre treowþe. for þe freme of þe loande. þurȝ þe besiȝte of þan to-foren-iseide redesmen. beo stedefæst and ilestinde in alle þinge a buten ænde. And we hoaten alle vre treowe in þe treowþe þæt heo vs oȝen. þæt heo stedefæstliche healden and swerien to healden and to werien þo isetnesses þæt ben imakede and beon to makien þurȝ þan to-foren iseide rædesmen. oþer þurȝ þe moare dæl of heom alswo alse hit is biforen iseid. And þæt æhc oþer helpe þæt for to done bi þan ilche oþe aȝenes alle men. Riȝt for to done and to foangen. And noan ne nime of loande ne of eȝte. wherþurȝ þis besiȝte muȝe beon ilet oþer iwersed on onie wise.’ And ȝif oni oþer onie cumen her onȝenes; we willen and hoaten þæt alle vre treowe heom healden deadliche ifoan. And for þæt we willen þæt þis beo stedefæst and lestinde; we senden ȝew þis writ open iseined wiþ vre seel. to halden amanges ȝew ine hord. Witnesse vs seluen æt Lundene. þane Eȝtetenþe day. on þe Monþe of OctobreIn þe Two-and-fowertiȝþe ȝeare of vre cruninge. And þis wes idon ætforen vre isworene redesmen....“And al on þo ilche worden is isend in to æurihce oþre shcire ouer al þære kuneriche on Engleneloande. and ek in tel Irelonde.”

“And al on þo ilche worden is isend in to æurihce oþre shcire ouer al þære kuneriche on Engleneloande. and ek in tel Irelonde.”

The dialect of this document is more southern than anything else, with a slight midland admixture. It is much more archaic inflectionally than theGenesis and ExodusorOrmulum; but it closely resembles the old Kentish sermons andProverbs of Alfredin the southern dialect of 1250. It represents no doubt the London speech of the day. London being in a Saxon county, and contiguous to Kent and Surrey, had certainly at first a southern dialect; but its position as the capital, as well as its proximity to the midland district, made its dialect more and more midland. Contemporary London documents show that Chaucer’s language, which is distinctly more southern than standard English eventually became, is behind the London dialect of the day in this respect, and is at once more archaic and consequently more southern.

During the next hundred years English gained ground steadily, and by the reign of Edward III. French was so little known in England, even in the families of the great, that about 1350 “John Cornwal, a maystere of gramere, chaungede þe lore (= teaching) in gramere scoleandconstruccion of [i.e.from] Freynsch into Englysch”;23and in 1362-1363 English by statute took the place of French in the pleadings in courts of law. Every reason conspired that this “English” should be the midland dialect. It was the intermediate dialect, intelligible, as Trevisa has told us, to both extremes, even when these failed to be intelligible to each other; in its south-eastern form, it was the language of London, where the supreme law courts were, the centre of political and commercial life; it was the language in which the Wycliffite versions had given the Holy Scriptures to the people; the language in which Chaucer had raised English poetry to a height of excellence admired and imitated by contemporaries and followers. And accordingly after the end of the 14th century, all Englishmen who thought they had anything to say to their countrymen generally said it in the midland speech. Trevisa’s own work was almost the last literary effort of the southern dialect; henceforth it was but a rustic patois, which the dramatist might use to give local colouring to his creations, as Shakespeare uses it to complete Edgar’s peasant disguise inLear, or which 19th century research might disinter to illustrate obscure chapters in the history of language. And though the northern English proved a little more stubborn, it disappeared also from literature in England; but in Scotland, which had now become politically and socially estranged from England, it continued its course as the national language of the country, attaining in the 15th and 16th centuries a distinct development and high literary culture, for the details of which readers are referred to the article onScottish Language.

The 15th century of English history, with its bloody French war abroad and Wars of the Roses at home, was a barren period in literature, and a transition one in language, witnessing the decay and disappearance of the finale, and most of the syllabic inflections of Middle English. Already by 1420, in Chaucer’s disciple Hoccleve, finalewas quite uncertain; in Lydgate it was practically gone. In 1450 the writings of Pecock against the Wycliffites show the verbal inflections in-enin a state of obsolescence; he has still the southern pronounsherandhemfor the northerntheir,them:—

“And here-aȝens holi scripture wole þat men schulden lacke þe coueryng which wommen schulden haue, & thei schulden so lacke bi þat þe heeris of her heedis schulden be schorne, & schulde not growe in lengþe doun as wommanys heer schulde growe....“Also here-wiþal into þe open siȝt of ymagis in open chirchis, alle peple, men & wommen & children mowe come whanne euere þei wolen in ech tyme of þe day, but so mowe þei not come in-to þe vce of bokis to be delyuered to hem neiþer to be red bifore hem; & þerfore, as for to soone & ofte come into remembraunce of a long mater bi ech oon persoon, and also as forto make þat þe mo persoones come into remembraunce of a mater, ymagis & picturis serven in a specialer maner þan bokis doon, þouȝ in an oþer maner ful substanciali bokis seruen better into remembrauncing of þo same materis þan ymagis & picturis doon; & þerfore, þouȝ writing is seruen weel into remembrauncing upon þe bifore seid þingis, ȝit not at þe ful: Forwhi þe bokis han not þe avail of remembrauncing now seid whiche ymagis han.”24

“Also here-wiþal into þe open siȝt of ymagis in open chirchis, alle peple, men & wommen & children mowe come whanne euere þei wolen in ech tyme of þe day, but so mowe þei not come in-to þe vce of bokis to be delyuered to hem neiþer to be red bifore hem; & þerfore, as for to soone & ofte come into remembraunce of a long mater bi ech oon persoon, and also as forto make þat þe mo persoones come into remembraunce of a mater, ymagis & picturis serven in a specialer maner þan bokis doon, þouȝ in an oþer maner ful substanciali bokis seruen better into remembrauncing of þo same materis þan ymagis & picturis doon; & þerfore, þouȝ writing is seruen weel into remembrauncing upon þe bifore seid þingis, ȝit not at þe ful: Forwhi þe bokis han not þe avail of remembrauncing now seid whiche ymagis han.”24

The change of the language during the second period of Transition, as well as the extent of dialectal differences, is quaintly expressed a generation later by Caxton, who in the prologue to one of the last of his works, his translation of Virgil’sEneydos(1490), speaks of the difficulty he had in pleasing all readers:—

“I doubted that it sholde not please some gentylmen, whiche late blamed me, sayeng, ytin my translacyons I had ouer curyous termes, whiche coud not be vnderstande of comyn peple, and desired me to vse olde and homely termes in my translacyons. And fayn wolde I satysfy euery man; and so to doo, toke an olde boke and redde therein; and certaynly the englysshe was so rude and brood that I coude not wele vnderstande it. And also my lorde abbot of Westmynster ded do shewe to me late certayn euydences wryton in olde englysshe for to reduce it in to our englysshe now vsid. And certaynly it was wreton in suche wyse that it was more lyke to dutche than englysshe; I coude not reduce ne brynge it to be vnderstonden. And certaynly, our langage now vsed varyeth ferre from that whiche was vsed and spoken whan I was borne. For we englysshemen ben borne vnder the domynacyon of the mone, whiche is neuer stedfaste, but euer wauerynge, wexynge one season, and waneth and dycreaseth another season. And that comyn englysshe that is spoken in one shyre varyeth from a nother. In so much that in my days happened that certayn marchauntes were in a shipein tamyse, for to haue sayled ouer the sea into zelande, and for lacke of wynde thei taryed atte forlond, and wente to lande for to refreshe them. And one of theym named sheffelde, a mercer, cam in to an hows and axed for mete, and specyally he axyd after eggys, And the goode wyf answerde, that she coude speke no frenshe. And the marchaunt was angry,for he also coulde speke no frenshe, but wolde haue hadde egges; and she vnderstode hym not. And thenne at laste a nother sayd that he wolde haue eyren; then the good wyf sayd that she vnderstod hym wel. Loo! what sholde a man in thyse dayes now wryte, egges or eyren? certaynly, it is harde to playse euery man, by cause of dyuersite & chaunge of langage. For in these dayes, euery man that is in ony reputacyon in his countre wyll vtter his comynycacyon and maters in suche maners & termes that fewe men shall vnderstonde theym. And som honest and grete clerkes haue ben wyth me, and desired me to wryte the moste curyous termes that I coude fynde. And thus bytwene playn, rude and curyous, I stande abasshed; but in my Iudgemente, the comyn termes that be dayli vsed ben lyghter to be vnderstonde than the olde and auncyent englysshe.”

In the productions of Caxton’s press we see the passage from Middle to Early Modern English completed. The earlier of these have still an occasional verbal plural in-n, especially in the wordthey ben; the southernherandhemof Middle English vary with the northern and Modern Englishtheir,them. In the late works, the older forms have been practically ousted, and the year 1485, which witnessed the establishment of the Tudor dynasty, may be conveniently put as that which closed the Middle English transition, and introduced Modern English. Both in the completion of this result, and in its comparative permanence, the printing press had an important share. By its exclusive patronage of the midland speech, it raised it still higher above the sister dialects, and secured its abiding victory. As books were multiplied and found their way into every corner of the land, and the art of reading became a more common acquirement, the man of Northumberland or of Somersetshire had forced upon his attention the book-English in which alone these were printed. This became in turn the model for his own writings, and by-and-by, if he made any pretensions to education, of his own speech. The writtenformof the language also tended to uniformity. In previous periods the scribe made his own spelling with a primary aim at expressing his own speech, according to the particular values attached by himself or his contemporaries to the letters and combinations of the alphabet, though liable to disturbance in the most common words and combinations by his ocular recollections of the spelling of others. But after the introduction of printing, this ocular recognition of words became ever more and more an aim; the book addressed the mind directly through the eye, instead of circuitously through eye and ear; and thus there was a continuous tendency for written words and parts of words to be reduced to a single form, and that the most usual, or through some accident the best known, but not necessarily that which would have been chosen had theearbeen called in as umpire. Modern English spelling, with its rigid uniformity as to individual results and whimsical caprice as to principles, is the creation of the printing-office, the victory which, after a century and a half of struggle, mechanical convenience won over natural habits. Besides eventually creating a uniformity in writing, the introduction of printing made or at least ratified some important changes. The British and Old English form of the Roman alphabet has already been referred to. This at the Norman Conquest was superseded by an alphabet with the French forms and values of the letters. Thusktook the place of the oldercbeforeeandi;qureplacedcw; the Normanwtook the place of thewén(Þ), &c.; and hence it has often been said that Middle English stands nearer to Old English in pronunciation, but to Modern English in spelling. But there were certain sounds in English for which Norman writing had no provision; and for these, in writing English, the native characters were retained. Thus the Old English g (), beside the sound ingo, had a guttural sound as in German tag, Irish magh, and in certain positions a palatalized form of this approachingyas inyou (if pronounced with aspirationhyou orghyou). These sounds continued to be written with the native form of the letter asburȝ, ȝour, while the French form was used for the sounds ingo,age,—one original letter being thus represented by two. So for the sounds ofth, especially the sound inthat, the Old Englishthorn(þ) continued to be used. But as these characters were not used for French and Latin, their use even in English became disturbed towards the 15th century, and when printing was introduced, the founts, cast for continental languages, had no characters for them, so that they were dropped entirely, being replaced, ȝ bygh,yh,y, andþbyth. This was a real loss to the English alphabet. In the north it is curious that the printers tried to express theformsrather than the powers of these letters, and consequently ȝ was represented byz, the black letter form of which was confounded with it, while the þ was expressed byy, which its MS. form had come to approach or in some cases simulate. So in early Scotch books we findzellow,ze,yat,yem=yellow,ye,that,them; and in Modern Scottish, such names asMenzies,Dalziel,Cockenzie, and the wordgaberlunzie, in which thezstands fory.

Modern Englishthus dates from Caxton. The language had at length reached the all but flectionless state which it now presents. A single older verbal form, the southern-ethof the third person singular, continued to be the literary prose form throughout the 16th century, but the northern form in-swas intermixed with it in poetry (where it saved a syllable), and must ere long, as we see from Shakespeare, have taken its place in familiar speech. The fulleran,none,mine,thine, in the early part of the 16th century at least, were used in positions where their shortened formsa,no,my,thyare now found (none other,mine own=no other,my own). But with such minute exceptions, the accidence of the 16th century was the accidence of the 19th. While, however, the older inflections had disappeared, there was as yet no general agreement as to the mode of their replacement. Hence the 16th century shows a syntactic licence and freedom which distinguishes it strikingly from that of later times. The language seems to be in a plastic, unformed state, and its writers, as it were, experiment with it, bending it to constructions which now seem indefensible. Old distinctions of case and mood have disappeared from noun and verb, without custom having yet decided what prepositions or auxiliary verbs shall most fittingly convey their meaning. The laxity of word-order which was permitted in older states of the language by theformalexpression of relations was often continued though the inflections which expressed the relations had disappeared. Partial analogy was followed in allowing forms to be identified in one case, because, in another, such identification was accidentally produced, as for instance the past participles ofwriteandtakewere often madewroteandtook, because the contracted participles ofbindandbreakwereboundandbroke. Finally, because, in dropping inflections, the former distinctions even between parts of speech had disappeared, so thatiron,e.g., was at once noun, adjective and verb,clean, adjective, verb and adverb, it appeared as if any word whatever might be used in any grammatical relation, where it conveyed the idea of the speaker. Thus, as has been pointed out by Dr Abbott, “you canhappyyour friend,maliceorfootyour enemy, orfallan axe on his neck. You can speak and acteasy,free,excellent, you can talk offairinstead of beauty (fairness), and apaleinstead of apaleness. Aheis used for a man, and a lady is described by a gentleman as ‘the fairestshehe has yet beheld.’ An adverb can be used as a verb, as ’theyaskancetheir eyes’; as a noun, ‘thebackwardand abyss of time’; or as an adjective, a ‘seldompleasure.’”25For, as he also says, “clearness was preferred to grammatical correctness, and brevity both to correctness and clearness. Hence it was common to place words in the order in which they came uppermost in the mind without much regard to syntax, and the result was a forcible and perfectly unambiguous but ungrammatical sentence, such as

The prince that feeds great natures they will slay him.Ben Jonson.

The prince that feeds great natures they will slay him.

Ben Jonson.

or, as instances of brevity,

Be guilty of my death since of my crime.Shakespeare.

Be guilty of my death since of my crime.

Shakespeare.

It cost more to get than to lose in a day.Ben Jonson.”

It cost more to get than to lose in a day.

Ben Jonson.”

These characteristics, together with the presence of words now obsolete or archaic, and the use of existing words in sensesdifferent from our own, as general for specific, literal for metaphorical, and vice versa, which are so apparent to every reader of the 16th-century literature, make it useful to separateEarly ModernorTudorEnglish from the subsequent and still existing stage, since the consensus of usage has declared in favour of individual senses and constructions which are alone admissible in ordinary language.

The beginning of the Tudor period was contemporaneous with the Renaissance in art and literature, and the dawn of modern discoveries in geography and science. The revival of the study of the classical writers of Greece and Rome, and the translation of their works into the vernacular, led to the introduction of an immense number of new words derived from these languages, either to express new ideas and objects or to indicate new distinctions in or grouping of old ideas. Often also it seemed as if scholars were so pervaded with the form as well as the spirit of the old, that it came more natural to them to express themselves in words borrowed from the old than in their native tongue, and thus words of Latin origin were introduced even when English already possessed perfectly good equivalents. As has already been stated, the French words of Norman and Angevin introduction, being principally Latin words in an altered form, when used as English supplied models whereby other Latin words could be converted into English ones, and it is after these models that the Latin words introduced during and since the 16th century have been fashioned. There is nothing in theformof the wordsprocessionandprogressionto show that the one was used in England in the 11th, the other not till the 16th century. Moreover, as the formation of new words from Latin had gone on in French as well as in English since the Renaissance, we often cannot tell whether such words,e.g.aspersuadeandpersuasion, were borrowed from their French equivalents or formed from Latin in England independently. With some words indeed it is impossible to say whether they were formed in England directly from Latin, borrowed from contemporary late French, or had been in England since the Norman period, evenphotograph,geologyandtelephonehave the form that they would have had if they had been living words in the mouths of Greeks, Latins, French and English from the beginning, instead of formations of the 19th century.26While every writer was thus introducing new words according to his notion of their being needed, it naturally happened that a large number were not accepted by contemporaries or posterity; a long list might be formed of these mintages of the 16th and 17th centuries, which either never became current coin, or circulated only as it were for a moment. The revived study of Latin and Greek also led to modifications in the spelling of some words which had entered Middle English in the French form. So Middle Englishdoute,dette, were changed todoubt,debt, to show a more immediate connexion with Latindubitum,debitum; the actual derivation from the French being ignored. Similarly, words containing a Latin and Frencht, which might be traced back to an original Greek θ, were remodelled upon the Greek,e.g.theme,throne, for Middle Englishteme,trone, and, by false association with Greek,anthem, Old Englishantefne, Latinantiphona;Anthony, LatinAntonius;Thames, LatinTamesis, apparently afterThomas.

The voyages of English navigators in the latter part of the 16th century introduced a considerable number of Spanish words, and American words in Spanish forms, of whichnegro,potato,tobacco,cargo,armadillo,alligator,galleonmay serve as examples.

The date of 1611, which nearly coincides with the end of Shakespeare’s literary work, and marks the appearance of the Authorized Version of the Bible (a compilation from the various 16th-century versions), may be taken as marking the close of Tudor English. The language was thenceforth Modern in structure, style and expression, although the spelling did not settle down to present usage till about the revolution of 1688. The latter date also marks the disappearance from literature of a large number of words, chiefly of such as were derived from Latin during the 16th and 17th centuries. Of these nearly all that survived 1688 are still in use; but a long list might be made out of those that appear for the last time before that date. This sifting of the literary vocabulary and gradual fixing of the literary spelling, which went on between 1611, when the language became modern in structure, and 1689, when it became modern also in form, suggests for this period the name of Seventeenth-Century Transition. The distinctive features of Modern English have already been anticipated by way of contrast with preceding stages of the language. It is only necessary to refer to the fact that the vocabulary is now much more composite than at any previous period. The immense development of the physical sciences has called for a corresponding extension of terminology which has been supplied from Latin and especially Greek; and although these terms are in the first instancetechnical, yet, with the spread of education and general diffusion of the rudiments and appliances of science, the boundary line betweentechnicalandgeneral, indefinite at the best, tends more and more to melt away—this in addition to the fact that words still technical become general in figurative or metonymic senses.Ache,diamond,stomach,comet,organ,tone,ball,carte, are none the less familiar because once technical words. Commercial, social, artistic or literary contact has also led to the adoption of numerous words from modern European languages, especially French, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch (these two at a less recent period): thus from Frenchsoirée,séance,dépôt,débris,programme,prestige; from Italianbust,canto,folio,cartoon,concert,regatta,ruffian; from Portuguesecaste,palaver; from Dutchyacht,skipper,schooner,sloop. Commercial intercourse and colonization have extended far beyond Europe, and given us words more or fewer from Hindostani, Persian, Arabic, Turkish, Malay, Chinese, and from American, Australian, Polynesian and African languages.27More important even than these, perhaps, are the dialect words that from time to time obtain literary recognition, restoring to us obsolete Old English forms, and not seldom words of Celtic or Danish origin, which have been preserved in local dialects, and thus at length find their way into the standard language.

As to the actual proportion of the various elements of the language, it is probable that original English words do not now form more than a fourth or perhaps a fifth of the total entries in a full English dictionary; and it may seem strange, therefore, that we still identify the language with that of the 9th century, and class it as a member of theLow Germandivision. But this explains itself, when we consider that of the total words in a dictionary only a small portion are used by any one individual in speaking or even in writing; that this portion includes the great majority of the Anglo-Saxon words, and but a minority of the others. The latter are in fact almost allnames—the vast majority names ofthings(nouns), a smaller number names ofattributesandactions(adjectives and verbs), and, from their very nature, names of the things, attributes and actions which come less usually or, it may be, very rarely under our notice. Thus in an ordinary book, a novel or story, the foreign elements will amount to from 10 to 15% of the whole; as the subject becomes more recondite or technical their number will increase; till in a work on chemistry or abstruse mathematics the proportion may be 40%. But after all, it is not the question whence wordsmayhave been taken, buthow they are usedin a language that settles its character. If new words when adopted conform themselves to the manner and usage of the adopting language, it makes absolutely no difference whether they are taken over from some other language, or invented off at the ground. In either case they arenewwords to begin with; in either case also, if they are needed, they will become as thoroughly native,i.e.familiar from childhood to those who use them, as those that possess the longest native pedigree. In this respect English is still the same language it was in the days of Alfred; and, comparing its history with that of other Low German tongues, there is no reason to believe thatits grammar or structure would have been very different, however different its vocabulary might have been, if the Norman Conquest had never taken place.

A general broad view of the sources of the English vocabulary and of the dates at which the various foreign elements flowed into the language, as well as of the great change produced in it by the Norman Conquest, and consequent influx of French and Latin elements, is given in the accompanying chart. The transverse lines represent centuries, and it will be seen how limited a period after all is occupied by modern English, how long the language had been in the country before the Norman Conquest, and how much of this is prehistoric and without any literary remains. Judging by what has happened during the historic period, great changes may and indeedmusthave taken place between the first arrival of the Saxons and the days of King Alfred, when literature practically begins. The chart also illustrates the continuity of the main stock of the vocabulary, the body of primary “words of common life,” which, notwithstanding numerous losses and more numerous additions, has preserved its corporate identity through all the periods. But the “poetic and rhetorical,” as well as the “scientific” terms of Old English have died out, and a new vocabulary of “abstract and general terms” has arisen from French, Latin and Greek, while a still newer “technical, commercial and scientific” vocabulary is composed of words not only from these, but from every civilized and many uncivilized languages.

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