man, viz. w, seems to have lost not only its true name, but also, which is of much more importance, even its correct sound.*

If the German pronunciation of w be the correct and original one, either they or the f is a superfluous and unnecessary letter. We think it, therefore, not improbable that in this, as well as in the preceding instance, it is the English language alone which, in spite of a thousand fluctuations and a thousand caprices in orthography and etymology, has preserved the genuine pronunciation of these very important letters: we say very important, for it is only sufficient to reflect on the immense number of words in German, English, and, in short, all the Teutonic languages into the structure of which enter one or the other of these letters, to be convinced that the th, the d, and the w play a most considerable part.

The pronunciation of every language must obviously depend principally upon the sounds assigned to the various vowels, and consequently the learner, when he finds that in English almost all the vowels have a name and a power totally different from what they bear. in all other tongues, is apt to lose all courage, and to despair of using, in the acquisition of English, the most powerful instrument with which he can be armed; namely, the analogy existing between the original and the derived dialects. He finds, for instance, that the English vowels a, e, i, and u, have quite different names and sounds from the same characters in French and German; and his ear, perpetually tantalised by analogies of sound which do not exist, is very apt to become incapable of perceiving those which do. So generally, indeed, is this difficulty experienced, that it may be laid down as an almost universal principle, that in all words derived from a foreign source, and naturalized in the English vocabulary, one of two results is invariably found to take place; viz. either the pronunciation of the original word is changed, or its orthography: in other terms, the word is made to submit either to the pronunciation of the English letters, when its original spelling is retained, or the spelling is altered, so as to make another combination of English letters express the original sound of the word. In the case, however, of derivatives from languages of the Teutonic stock, these changes of orthography ought by no means to be considered as involving such great difficulty as is generally attributed to them; and in a majority of cases they will be found much less capricious than is usually supposed. One considerable portion of the above difficulty arises from the circumstance that there exists in German a much greater number of dipththongal combinations than have been retained, in a written form, in the English; and thus we are frequently obliged to represent such combinations by means of our limited number of vowels, in giving

* The Germans pronounce w as v in English.

to the same vowels a different power, and consequently assigning to each letter a number of distinct and often very dissimilar sounds.

As an example of this, let us take the word Mann, which is so faithfully reflected in the English man, that the identity of meaning in the two cases is instantly and inevitably perceived; in the plural, however, of the English form, the a of the singular is changed into e, forming an exception to the usual manner of expressing the plural of a substantive by the addition of s. Now it is obvious that the e of the plural number of the word men is nothing else nan an attempt to represent in English the somewhat complicated combination of vowels in the German plural Månner, i. e. maenner, of which sound the English e, though not an exact, yet is the best representation of which the case would admit. Of this kind of representation the examples are innumerable, and they will go far to explain, if not to palliate, the alleged caprice of the English pronunciation. Again, in that multitude of words which exist in nearly similar forms (though it must be confessed under great differences in point of pronunciation) in the French and English languages, and which have a common Latin origin, it will be universally found that, however great be the difference of pronunciation, the orthography in the English form is in general so little changed from the original Latin as to be immediately recognizable. Indeed, it is very curious to remark that the orthography of almost the whole of this large class of words is in English absolutely much more correct-that is, much closer to the Latin-than in the French, the Italian, or even than in the Spanish itself; so much so indeed as to induce a linguistic student unacquainted with the history of the language rather to suppose that these words came into modern English either directly from the Latin, or that they were incorporated into our speech through some separate and independent channel, than that they had been (as they undoubtedly were) first filtered, so to speak, through the French and Italian idioms. It is strange that this large stream of words seems to have purified itself from foreign admixtures as it descended from the antique Latin through the various Romanz idioms which have become the several languages of modern Europe; so much so, that the Latin words in our present speech may be said, at least as far as their orthography is concerned, to have reached among us a greater purity than they have in French, Italian, or even in Spanish.

"Nothing can be more difficult," says the judicious and accurate Hallam, "than to determine, except by an arbitrary line, the commencement of the English language; not so much, as in those of the continent, because we are in want of materials, but rather from an opposite reason the possibility of tracing a very gradual succession of verbal changes that ended in a change of denomination. For when we compare the earliest English of the thirteenth century with the Anglo-Saxon of the twelfth, it seems hard to pronounce why it

should pass for a separate language, rather than a modification or simplification of the former. We must conform, however, to usage, and say that the Anglo-Saxon was converted into English-1, by contracting or otherwise modifying the pronunciation and orthography of words; 2, by omitting many inflections, especially of the noun, and consequently making more use of articles and auxiliaries; 3, by the introduction of French derivatives; 4, by using less inversion and ellipsis, especially in poetry. Of these, the second alone, I think, can be considered as sufficient to describe a new form of language; and this was brought about so gradually, that we are not relieved of much of our difficulty, whether some compositions shall pass for the latest offspring of the mother, or the earliest fruits of the fertility of the daughter."

With respect to this excellent and comprehensive judgment, it is only necessary to remark, that in tracing practically the application to the English language of the first of these processes by which Hallam explains the gradual transition from the Anglo-Saxon into English, they are found universally taking place in the transformation of an inflected into an uninflected language, or even into one less completely and regularly inflected: a very long list has been made, nay, an almost complete vocabulary might be compiled, of words in the French language which differ from their Latin roots only in their having lost the final syllable, expressive in the Roman tongue, of case, of gender, or of tense. A very few instances will suffice: if we compare, for example, the old French hom and homs with the Latin hom-o and hom-ines, we shall find that only as much of the Roman inflection has been retained as was indispensable to the required dis'tinction of singular and plural. In other respects the word was truncated—and it is of no consequence whether this contraction took place gradually or suddenly-until nothing remains but the significant or radical syllable hom.

In tracing from the momentous epoch of the Norman invasion the gradual developement of the English language, it will be by no means necessary to enter into any very minute details of philological archæology: our task will be more agreeably, and certainly not less profitably fulfilled, if we content ourselves with accompanying, with due reverence and a natural admiration, the advance of that noble language along the course of centuries: we shall see it, springing from the distant sources of barbarous and unpolished but free and vigorous generations, at one time rolling harshly, like a mountain streamlet, over the rugged bed of Saxon antiquity, then slowly and steadily gliding onward in a calmer and more majestic swell, receiving into its bosom a thousand tributary currents, from the wild mountains of Scandinavia, from the laughing valleys of Provence and Languedoc, from the storied plains of Italy or the haunted shores of Greece, from the sierras of Andalusia and the Moorish vegas of Granada-till,

broadening and strengthening as it rolls, it bears upon its immeasurable breast the solidest treasures of human wisdom and the fairest harvests of poesy and wit.

It is by no means to be supposed that the invasion of the Normans under William was the first point of contact between the Saxon and French races in England, and that it is to that event that we must attribute the first fusion: on the contrary, it is well established that for a long time previous to this epoch the nobles and the court of England had affected to imitate French fashions, and even sent their youth to be partially educated in the latter country. Between the sovereign houses of Great Britain and Normandy, in particular, there were too many relations of blood and alliance of ancient standing to allow us to be surprised at this. This imitation of French customs, dress, and language was not likely to be very palatable to the English of the pure Anglo-Saxon stock, and we accordingly find that a good deal of ridicule was cast by the lower orders on such of their countrymen as showed too great a taste for the manners of the other side of the Strait of Dover. They had a species of proverbial saying with respect to such followers of outlandish fashions, which is not destitute of a certain drollery and salt: "Jacke," they said, "woud be a gentilman if he coud bot speke Frenshe." It is known, too, that in the first part of his English sovereignty William had in vain exhausted his patience and fatigued his ear in the attempt to learn the Anglo-Saxon language; and it was not until after his return from Normandy, after a nine months' absence from England, that he began to employ, for the suppression of the language and nationality. of his new kingdom, those severe measures which have rendered his name so memorable. It would be superfluous to allude to these at any length; the institution of the curfew, the forced employment of the Norman language in all public acts and pleadings, the compulsory teaching of Norman in the schools-all these are well-known measures, and sufficiently prove William's conviction that no hope was left of subduing the national obstinacy by fair or gentle means, and that nothing remained but proscription and violence.

In spite of these ominous proceedings, however, the sacred flame of letters was still kept alive in the monasteries: the superiors of these institutions, it is true, were almost universally changed, the recalcitrant Saxons being displaced to make way for Norman ecclesiastics, but under the monk's gown there often beat the stern Saxon heart, and the labouring brain was often working with patriotic fervour under the unmarked cowl. The chroniclers of this period were in many cases Saxons, and in their rude but picturesque narratives we find the most ineffaceable marks of the hatred felt by the great body of the nation against the haughty conquerors. In these monasteries were taught rhetoric, theology, physic, the civil and canon law; and it is in them also that were nursed the school divinity and

dialectics which form so striking a feature in the intellectual physiognomy of the middle ages.

The year 1150 is generally assigned as the epoch at which the Saxon language began that process of transformation or corruption by which it was ultimately changed into English. This change, as we have specified above, was not the effect of the Norman invasion, for hardly any new accession of French words is perceptible in it for at least a hundred years from this time: it may be remarked that some few French words had crept in before this period, and also a considerable Latinising tendency may be remarked; but the changes of which we are speaking are rather of form than of matter, and are generally referable to one or other of the various causes which have been assigned a few pages back in the clear and emphatic words of Hallam.

In the year 1150 the Saxon Chronicle-that venerable monument of English history-comes to an abrupt conclusion. This chronicle (or rather series of chronicles, for it was evidently continued by a great number of different writers, and exhibits an immense variety of style and language) is intended to give an account of the English aznals from A. D. 1; and though the earlier portion, as might be expected, is filled with trivial and improbable fables, the accuracy and importance of the work, as a historical document, becomes immeasurably greater as it approaches the period when it was discontinued; the description of the more recent events, and the portraits of contemporary personages, bearing in many cases evident marks of being the production of men who had been the eyewitnesses of what they paint.

The French language was still spoken at court; and there is a curious anecdote exemplifying the profound ignorance of our English kings respecting the language and manners of the larger portion of their subjects. We read that Henry II., who ascended the throne in 1154, having been once addressed by a number of his own subjects during a journey into Pembrokeshire, in a harangue commencing with the words "Good Olde Kynge!" he turned to his courtiers for an interpretation of these words, whose meaning was totally unknown to him.

Towards the latter end of this century, viz. in 1180, Layamon wrote his translation of Wace's metrical legendary romance of Brut; and nothing will give a more distinct idea of the difficulty encountered by philologists in fixing the exact period at which the Saxon merged into the English, than the great variety of decisions founded upon the style of this work; some of our most learned antiquarians, among whom is the accomplished George Ellis, deciding that the language of Layamon is "a simple and unmixed, though very barbarous Saxon," while others, who are followed by Campbell, consider it to be the first dawning or daybreak of English. Where so learned