LECTURE V.

STUDY OF EARLY ENGLISH.

THE systematic study of the mother-tongue, like that of all branches of knowledge which we acquire, to a sufficient extent for ordinary practical purposes, without study, is nat urally very generally neglected. It is but lately that the English language has formed a part of the regular course of instruction at any of our higher seminaries, nor has it been made the subject of as zealous and thorough philological investigation by professed scholars, as the German, the French, or some other living languages. It is a matter of doubt how far we are aided in acquiring the mastery of any spoken tongue by the study of scientific treatises; but however this may be, it is only very recently that we have had any really scientific treatises on the subject, any grammar which has attempted to serve at once as a philosophical exposition of the principles, and a guide to the actual employment of the English tongue. The complete history of the language, the characterization of its periods, the critical elucidation of its successive changes, the full exhibition of its immediate and certain foreign relations, as distinguished from its remote and

presumptive affinities, has never, to my knowledge, been undertaken.* While, therefore, for class instruction, and for many purposes of private study, there is no lack of text-books and other critical helps, yet a historical knowledge of English must be acquired by observing its use and action, as the living speech of the Anglican race in different centuries, not as its organization is demonstrated in the dissecting-room of the grammarian.

English is generally reputed to be among the more difficult of the great European languages, but it is hard for a native to say how far this opinion is well founded. The comparison of our own tongue with a foreign speech is attended with a good deal of difficulty. Particular phrases and constructions, of course, are easily enough set off against each other, but the general movement of our maternal language is too much a matter of unconscious, spontaneous action to be easily made objective, and, on the other hand, in foreign tongues we are too much absorbed in the individual phenomena to be able to grasp the whole field. The enginery of the one is too near, the idiomatic motive power of the other too distant, for distinct vision. But I am inclined to the belief, that English is more difficult than most of the Continental languages, at least as a spoken tongue, for I think it is certain that fewer natives speak it with elegance and accuracy, if indeed violations of grammatical propriety are not more frequent among the best English writers, and it sometimes

I am certainly not blind to the great importance and utility of the works of Latham, Fowler, Brown, and other learned and laborious inquirers into the facts and theory of English Grammar, but the consideration of their merits does not come within the scope of these lectures, the object of which is to recommend and enforce the study of English, not at second hand or through the medium of precept, but by a direct acquaintance with the great monuments of its literature.

happens that persons exact in the use of individual words are lax in the application of rules of syntactical construction. A distinguished British scholar of the last century said he had known but three of his countrymen who spoke their native language with uniform grammatical accuracy, and the observation of most persons widely acquainted with English and American society confirms the general truth implied in this declaration. Courier is equally severe upon the French. "There are,” says that lively writer, "five or six persons in Europe who know Greek; those who know French are much fewer." Primâ facie, irregular as English is, we should expect it to be at least as correctly spoken as French, because the number of unrelated philological facts, of exceptions to what are said to be general rules, of anomalous and conventional phrases, is greater in the latter than in the former; but the proportion of good speakers, or rather of good talkers, is tertainly larger among the French than among the English or Americans. It is interesting to observe how much value has been attached to purity of dialect in some of the less known countries of Europe. The grand old Catalan chronicler, Ramon Muntaner, who wrote about the year 1325, himself no book-worm, but a veteran warrior, often concludes his eulogiums of his heroes with a compliment to the propriety and elegance with which they spoke his native tongue, and he gives an interesting account of the means by which two of the nobility arrived at such perfection of speech. "And this same Syr Corral Llança became one of the fayrest menne in the world, and best langaged and sagest, insomuch that as at that tyme menne saide, the finest Cathalan in the worlde was hys and Syr Roger de Luria's; and no mervaile, for as yee have harde before, they came ryght yonge into

Cathalonye and were norysshed there, and in alle the good townes of Cathalonie and of the reaume of Valence whatso ever seemed to them choyce and faire langage, they dyd their endeavoure to learne the same. And so eche of hem was a more parfyt Cathalonian than alle other, and spake the fayrest Cathalan."*

The systematic cultivation of the modern Continental languages began much earlier than that of English. They had generally advanced to a high degree of development, and acquired the characteristic grammatical features which now distinguish them, at a period when even the most polished of the English dialects was but a patois. Several of them indeed had produced original works in both poetry and prose, which still rank among the master-pieces of modern genius, before Anglo-Norman England had given birth to a single composition which yet maintains an acknowledged place in the literature of the nation. Although the Icelandic can hardly be called a modern language, yet it possesses, besides the poems and traditions of the heathen era, an original modern literature modified by the same general Christian influences which have colored all the recent mental efforts of Europe. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries produced in that remote island poems of remarkable merit, and prose compositions which have no superiors in the narrative literature of any age. The Nibelungen Lied, the great epic of Ger

*

"E aquest en Corral Llança exi hu dells bells homens del mon, e mills parlant e pus saui, si que en aquell temps se deya, quel pus bell cathalanesch del mon era dell e del dit en Roger de Luria; e no era marauella, que ells, axi com dauant vos he dit, vengren molt fadrins en Cathalunya, e nudrirense de cascun lloch de Cathalunya e del regne de Valencia tot ço que bo ne bell parlar los paria ells aprengueren. E axi cascu dells fo lo pus perfet Cathala que negun altre, e ab pus bell cathalanesch."-Ramon Muntaner, 1562, cap. xviii.

many, dates probably as far back as the year twelve hundred. Castilian, Catalan, Provenzal and French genius had already embodied themselves in poetic forms, which determined the character of the subsequent literatures of those languages, before the close of the thirteenth century, and the commencement of the fourteenth was marked by the appearance of Dante's great work, which still stands almost alone in the poetry, not of Italy only, but of modern Europe.

The later origin of English literature is to be ascribed partly to the fact that England, from its insular position, was less open to the exciting causes which roused to action the intellect of the continent, but chiefly, no doubt, to the condition of the language itself. The tongues of Iceland, of Germany, of Italy, of Spain, and in a less degree of France also, were substantially homogeneous in their etymology and structure, and the separate dialects of each stock, Gothic and Romance, were closely enough allied to facilitate the study of all of them to those to whom any one was vernacular, and thus to secure to them a great reciprocal philological and literary influence. The countries to which they belonged were also territorially and politically more or less connected, and thus an unbroken chain of social and literary action and reaction extended from the Arctic ocean to the Mediterranean,

English, on the contrary, was not only a composite speech, but built up of very discordant ingredients, and spoken in an isolated locality. The British islands had no relations of commerce or politics with any country but Northern and Western France, and the comparatively unimportant Netherland provinces. A longer period was naturally required for the assimilation of the constituents of the language, and for the action of the influences which, before that assimilation