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 distinction 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 development 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, in a former page, in the clear and emphatic words of Hallam.

In the year 1150 the Saxon Chronicle-that venerable monu

ment 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 annals 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, become 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 eye-witnesses 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 and accurate a person as Ellis has hesitated, it becomes every one to avoid anything like dogmatism; but the truth probably is, that the language of Layamon is to be considered either as late Saxon or as very early English, according as the philologist is inclined to attribute the change from one language into the other to a modification taking place in the form or in the matter of the Saxon speech.

At the beginning of the reign of Henry III., in 1216, the English language had made considerable progress, though it had not even yet begun to be spoken at court: and it must be regarded at this period as a harsh but vigorous and expressive idiom, containing in itself the seeds or capabilities of future perfection. This century, too, is characterised by the circumstance of Latin having begun to fall into disuse; the learned adopting their vernacular language as a medium for their thoughts. The increasing neglect

of the Latin is to be attributed to the secret but extensive spread of those doctrines which afterwards took consistency at the Reformation. Recent investigations have assigned to one very curious monument of old English a different and much earlier date than had been previously fixed for it: we allude to the beautiful song beginning" Sumer ys ycumen in," &c. This venerable relic has been usually attributed to the fifteenth century, but there can be little doubt as to its being really the production of the thirteenth. It was probably composed about the year 1250, and the language, when divested of its ancient and uncouth spelling, differs so little from the English of the present day as to have caused the error to which we have alluded. About 1280 was written the work of Robert of Gloucester, and it is extraordinary to observe how great a change had taken place between this time and the appearance of Layamon, a hundred years earlier. We are now rapidly approaching a period when the language may be said to have acquired some solidity; for at the beginning of the following century we find complaints in a great multitude of writers against neologism and innovations in language-an infallible sign that some standard, however imperfect, and some rules, however capricious, had begun to be applied to the idiom-now rapidly rising into a written, and consequently regular, language. In the year 1303, Robert Mannyng, in his 'Handlyng of Sinne,' an English translation of Bishop Grosteste's 'Manuel des Peschés,' protests repeatedly against foreign and outlandish innovations: "I seke," says this venerable purist, "no straunge Ynglyss." In what consisted the innovations against which he desires to guard-whether the "strange English" was corrupted by an admixture of French words, of Latinisms, or of Grecisms-it is obviously very difficult to ascertain. This century is one of the most important in the history of the literature, and consequently in that of the language also. It was in this century that Wickliffe, in popularising religion, tended also so powerfully to popularise language: it was in this century, too, that the Father of English Literature, the immortal Chaucer himself, introduced the elegance, the harmony, the learning, and the taste of the infant Italian muse, assimilating and digesting, by the healthy energy of genius, what he took, not as a plagiarist, but as a conqueror, from Petrarca and from Boccaccio. Gower, too, who was born shortly before the year 1340, mainly helped to polish and refine the language of his country; and though, for want of that vivifying and preserving quality, that sacred particle of flame, which we designate by the word genius, his works are now obsolete, and consulted less for any merit of their own than to illustrate his great contemporary, the smoothness and art of his versification had doubtless a considerable influence in developing and perfecting

the language. It was in the reign of Edward III. that the Lombard character was first disused in charters and public acts, and to this reign also must be assigned the oldest instrument known to exist in the English language. In the middle of this century wrote Richard Rolle, the Hermit of Hampole, in whose dull ethical poem, the 'Prikke of Conscience,' Stimulus Conscientiæwe find the same dread of innovation that was expressed forty years earlier by Robert Mannyng, or Robert de Brunne, as he was otherwise denominated. The Hermit of Hampole exhibits the strongest desire to make himself intelligible to lewed or unlearned folk: "I seek no straunge Inglyss, bot lightest and communest." We cannot pass this epoch without an allusion to Langlande's Vision of Piers Plowman,' a long and rather confused allegorical poem, containing many striking invectives against the corruptions of the Romish priesthood, and in particular a most singular prophecy of the severities which were afterwards exercised against the monastic orders by Henry VIII. at the suppression of the religious houses. In 1350, or about that year, the character called Old English, or Black Letter, was first used; and though the language of this period was disfigured by the most barbarous and capricious orthography, it is surprising how similar it is, in point of structure and intelligibleness, to the English of the present day.

6

Twelve years after this, by the wisdom and patriotism of King Edward III., the pleadings before the tribunals were restored to the vernacular language an irrefragable proof of the universal prevalence of the native speech, and of the diminished influence of the Norman French. It is curious to remark how absolutely identical has remained the speech of the mob even from so remote a period to the present day. The following is a passage from a species of political pasquinade disseminated in the year 1382, and gives a very fair specimen of the popular language of the day: we have modernized the spelling; and, with this precaution, there is not a word or an expression which differs materially from the language of the people in the nineteenth century:-" Jack Carter prays you all that you make a good end of that ye have begun, and do well, and still better and better; for at the even men near the day. If the end be well, then all is well. Let Piers the ploughman dwell at home, and dight (prepare) us corn. Look that Hobbe the robber be well chastised. Stand manly together in truth, and help the truth, and the truth shall help you."

In 1385, the Latin chronicle of Higden (attributed to the year 1365) was translated into English by John de Trevisa. It appears that, in the interval which had elapsed since the original was written, the custom of making children in grammar-schools translate their Latin into French had been, principally through