ADVERTISEMENT. THE present volume consists of so much of a larger work The reader will do well to keep in mind, or under his eye, I. 1. Original, Pure, Simple, or First English (commonly called 2. Broken, or Second English (commonly called Semi-Saxon), (vi) II. 1. The Original form, in which the three vowel-endings a, e, and u are employed in the declension of nouns and the conjugation of verbs; 2. The Second form, in which the single termination e represents indiscriminately the three ancient vowel-endings, but still constitutes a distinct syllable; 3. The Third form, in which this termination e of nouns and verbs, though still written, is no longer syllabically pronounced. III. 1. Saxon, or Anglo-Saxon; throughout the period before the Norman Conquest; 2. Semi-Saxon; from about the middle of the eleventh to the middle of the thirteenth century; the period of the Infancy and Childhood of our existing national speech; 3. Old, or rather Early, English; from the middle of the thirteenth to the middle of the fourteenth century; the period of the Boyhood of our existing speech; 4. Middle English; from the middle of the fourteenth to the middle of the sixteenth century; the Youth, or Adolescence of our existing speech; 5. Modern English; since the middle of the sixteenth century ; the Manhood of our existing speech. A.D. IV. 450. Commencement of the conquest and occupation of South Britain by the Angles and Saxons, bringing with them their ancestral Gothic speech; 1066. Conquest of England by the Normans; Establishment of French as the courtly and literary language of the country; Commencement of the reduction of the ancient vernacular tongue to the condition of a patois, and of its conversion from a synthetic to an analytic tongue; 1154. End of the reign of the four Norman kings and accession of the Plantagenet dynasty; Beginning of the connexion with Southern France through the marriage of Henry II. with Eleanor of Poitou; Termination of the National Chronicle, the latest considerable composition in the regular form of the ancient language; Full commencement of the intermixture of the two races; 1272. New age of the Edwards; Commencement of the connexion of the English royal family with that of France by the second marriage of Edward I. with a daughter of Philip III.; Employment, at first occasionally, afterwards habitually, of French instead of English as the language of the Statutes; Commencement of its active intermixture with the vernacular tongue; |