Chapter I: Front Matter (1)

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Transcriber's notes:

(1) Numbers following letters (without space) like C2 were originally
printed in subscript. Letter subscripts are preceded by an
underscore, like C_n.

(2) Characters following a carat (^) were printed in superscript.

(3) Side-notes were relocated to function as titles of their respective
paragraphs.

(4) Macrons and breves above letters and dots below letters were not
inserted.

(5) Small and capital EZH letters are subtituted with [gh] and [Gh]
respectively. Thorn is subtituted with th or Th, and eth is
subtituted with dh.

(6) [root] stands for the root symbol; [alpha], [beta], etc. for greek
letters.

(7) The following typographical errors have been corrected:

ARTICLE ENGLISH LANGUAGE: "The writers of each district wrote in
the dialect familiar to them; and between extreme forms the
difference was so great as to amount to unintelligibility ..."
'familiar' amended from 'familar'.

ARTICLE ENGLISH LITERATURE: "Even more portentous in its superhuman
dignity was the style of Edward Gibbon, who combined with the
unspiritual optimism of Hume and Robertson a far more concentrated
devotion to his subject ..." 'combined' amended from 'conbined'.

ARTICLE ENTERITIS: "The chief symptom is diarrhoea. The term
"enteric fever" has recently come into use instead of "typhoid" for
the latter disease; but see Typhoid Fever." 'symptom' amended from
'sympton'.

ARTICLE ENTRE MINHO E DOURO: "The methods and implements of the
farmers are, however, most primitive, and at the beginning of the
20th century it was not unusual to see a mule, or even a woman,
harnessed with the team of oxen to an old-fashioned wooden plough."
'it' amended from 'is'.

ARTICLE ENTRE RIOS: "... a province of the eastern Argentine
Republic, forming the southern part of a region sometimes described
as the Argentine Mesopotamia ..." 'southern' amended from
'sourthern'.

ARTICLE EPHRAIM: "... and Ephraim's proud and ambitious character
is indicated in its demands as narrated in Josh. xvii. 14; Judg.
viii. 1-3, xii. 1-6. throughout, Ephraim played a distinctive and
prominent part; it probably excelled Manasseh in numerical strength
..." 'throughout' amended from 'thoughout'.

ARTICLE EPIC POETRY: "... and Teofilo Folengo (1491-1544),
ridiculed the whole school in an Orlandino of 1526." 'Folengo'
amended from 'Folango'.

ARTICLE EPIDAURUS: "It was abandoned during the middle ages; its
inhabitants took possession of the promontory of Minoa ..."
'possession' amended from 'posession'.

ARTICLE EPILOGUE: "... and then explained to the audience what an
extremely interesting play it had been. In the second case, when
the author was less confident ..." 'extremely' amended from
'exremely'.

ARTICLE EPITHELIAL, ENDOTHELIAL: "It will be sufficient here to
give the more general characters possessed by these cells."
'sufficient' amended from 'sufficent'.

ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA

A DICTIONARY OF ARTS, SCIENCES, LITERATURE
AND GENERAL INFORMATION

ELEVENTH EDITION

VOLUME IX, SLICE VI

English Language to Epsom Salts

ARTICLES IN THIS SLICE:

ENGLISH LANGUAGE EPHEBI
ENGLISH LAW EPHEMERIS
ENGLISH LITERATURE EPHESIANS, EPISTLE TO THE
ENGLISHRY EPHESUS
ENGRAVING EPHESUS, COUNCIL OF
ENGROSSING EPHOD
ENGYON EPHOR
ENID EPHORUS
ENIGMA EPHRAEM SYRUS
ENKHUIZEN EPHRAIM
ENNEKING, JOHN JOSEPH EPHTHALITES
ENNIS EPI
ENNISCORTHY EPICENE
ENNISKILLEN, WILLIAM COLE EPICHARMUS
ENNISKILLEN EPIC POETRY
ENNIUS, QUINTUS EPICTETUS
ENNODIUS, MAGNUS FELIX EPICURUS
ENNS EPICYCLE
ENOCH EPICYCLOID
ENOCH, BOOK OF EPIDAURUS
ENOMOTO, BUYO EPIDIORITE
ENOS EPIDOSITE
ENRIQUEZ GOMEZ, ANTONIO EPIDOTE
ENSCHEDE EPIGONI
ENSENADA, CENON DE SOMODEVILLA EPIGONION
ENSIGN EPIGRAM
ENSILAGE EPIGRAPHY
ENSTATITE EPILEPSY
ENTABLATURE EPILOGUE
ENTADA EPIMENIDES
ENTAIL EPINAL
ENTASIS EPINAOS
ENTERITIS EPINAY, LOUISE D'ESCLAVELLES D'
ENTHUSIASM EPIPHANIUS, SAINT
ENTHYMEME EPIPHANY, FEAST OF
ENTOMOLOGY EPIRUS
ENTOMOSTRACA EPISCOPACY
ENTRAGUES, CATHERINE DE BALZAC D' EPISCOPIUS, SIMON
ENTRECASTEAUX, BRUNI D' EPISODE
ENTRE MINHO E DOURO EPISTAXIS
ENTREPOT EPISTEMOLOGY
ENTRE RIOS EPISTLE
ENVOY EPISTYLE
ENZIO EPISTYLIS
ENZYME EPITAPH
EOCENE EPITHALAMIUM
EON DE BEAUMONT EPITHELIAL and GLANDULAR TISSUES
EOTVOS, JOZSEF EPITOME
EPAMINONDAS EPOCH
EPARCH EPODE
EPAULETTE EPONA
EPEE, CHARLES-MICHEL EPONYMOUS
EPEE-DE-COMBAT EPPING
EPERJES EPPS
EPERNAY EPREMESNIL, JEAN JACQUES DUVAL D'
EPERNON EPSOM
EPHEBEUM EPSOM SALTS

ENGLISH LANGUAGE. In its historical sense, the name _English_ is now conveniently used to comprehend the language of the English people from their settlement in Britain to the present day, the various stages through which it has passed being distinguished as Old, Middle, and New or Modern English. In works yet recent, and even in some still current, the term is confined to the third, or at most extended to the second and third of these stages, since the language assumed in the main the vocabulary and grammatical forms which it now presents, the oldest or inflected stage being treated as a separate language, under the title of _Anglo-Saxon_, while the transition period which connects the two has been called _Semi-Saxon_. This view had the justification that, looked upon by themselves, either as vehicles of thought or as objects of study and analysis, Old English or Anglo-Saxon and Modern English are, for all practical ends, distinct languages,--as much so, for example, as Latin and Spanish. No amount of familiarity with Modern English, including its local dialects, would enable the student to read Anglo-Saxon, three-fourths of the vocabulary of which have perished and been reconstructed within 900 years;[1] nor would a knowledge even of these lost words give him the power, since the grammatical system, alike in accidence and syntax, would be entirely strange to him. Indeed, it is probable that a modern Englishman would acquire the power of reading and writing French in less time than it would cost him to attain to the same proficiency in Old English; so that if the test of distinct languages be their degree of practical difference from each other, it cannot be denied that "Anglo-Saxon" is a distinct language from Modern English. But when we view the subject historically, recognizing the fact that living speech is subject to continuous change in certain definite directions, determined by the constitution and circumstances of mankind, as an evolution or development of which we can trace the steps, and that, owing to the abundance of written materials, this evolution appears so gradual in English that we can nowhere draw distinct lines separating its successive stages, we recognize these stages as merely temporary phases of an individual whole, and speak of the English language as used alike by Cynewulf, by Chaucer, by Shakespeare and by Tennyson.[2] It must not be forgotten, however, that in this wide sense the English language includes, not only the literary or courtly forms of speech used at successive periods, but also the popular and, it may be, altogether unwritten dialects that exist by their side. Only on this basis, indeed, can we speak of Old, Middle and Modern English as the same _language_, since in actual fact the precise _dialect_ which is now the cultivated language, or "Standard English," is not the descendant of that dialect which was the cultivated language or "Englisc" of Alfred, but of a sister dialect then sunk in comparative obscurity,--even as the direct descendant of Alfred's Englisc is now to be found in the non-literary rustic speech of Wiltshire and Somersetshire. Causes which, linguistically considered, are external and accidental, have shifted the political and intellectual centre of England, and along with it transferred literary and official patronage from one form of English to another; if the centre of influence had happened to be fixed at York or on the banks of the Forth, both would probably have been neglected for a third.

The English language, thus defined, is not "native" to Britain, that is, it was not found there at the dawn of history, but was introduced by foreign immigrants at a date many centuries later. At the Roman Conquest of the island the languages spoken by the natives belonged all (so far as is known) to the Celtic branch of the Indo-European or Indo-Germanic family, modern forms of which still survive in Wales, Ireland, the Scottish Highlands, Isle of Man and Brittany, while one has at no distant date become extinct in Cornwall (see CELT: Language). Brythonic dialects, allied to Welsh and Cornish, were apparently spoken over the greater part of Britain, as far north as the firths of Forth and Clyde; beyond these estuaries and in the isles to the west, including Ireland and Man, Goidelic dialects, akin to Irish and Scottish Gaelic, prevailed. The long occupation of south Britain by the Romans (A.D. 43-409)--a period, it must not be forgotten, equal to that from the Reformation to the present day, or nearly as long as the whole duration of modern English--familiarized the provincial inhabitants with Latin, which was probably the ordinary speech of the towns. Gildas, writing nearly a century and a half after the renunciation of Honorius in 410, addressed the British princes in that language;[3] and the linguistic history of Britain might have been not different from that of Gaul, Spain and the other provinces of the Western Empire, in which a local type of Latin, giving birth to a neo-Latinic language, finally superseded the native tongue except in remote and mountainous districts,[4] had not the course of events been entirely changed by the Teutonic conquests of the 5th and 6th centuries.

The Angles, Saxons, and their allies came of the Teutonic stock, and spoke a tongue belonging to the Teutonic or Germanic branch of the Indo-Germanic (Indo-European) family, the same race and form of speech being represented in modern times by the people and languages of Holland, Germany, Denmark, the Scandinavian peninsula and Iceland, as well as by those of England and her colonies. Of the original home of the so-called primitive Aryan race (q.v.), whose language was the parent Indo-European, nothing is certainly known, though the subject has called forth many conjectures; the present tendency is to seek it in Europe itself. The tribe can hardly have occupied an extensive area at first, but its language came by degrees to be diffused over the greater part of Europe and some portion of Asia. Among those whose Aryan descent is generally recognized as beyond dispute are the Teutons, to whom the Angles and Saxons belonged.

The Teutonic or Germanic people, after dwelling together in a body, appear to have scattered in various directions, their language gradually breaking up into three main groups, which can be already clearly distinguished in the 4th century A.D., North Germanic or Scandinavian, West Germanic or Low and High German, and East Germanic, of which the only important representative is Gothic. Gothic, often called Moeso-Gothic, was the language of a people of the Teutonic stock, who, passing down the Danube, invaded the borders of the Empire, and obtained settlements in the province of Moesia, where their language was committed to writing in the 4th century; its literary remains are of peculiar value as the oldest specimens, by several centuries, of Germanic speech. The dialects of the invaders of Britain belonged to the West Germanic branch, and within this to the Low German group, represented at the present day by Dutch, Frisian, and the various "Platt-Deutsch" dialects of North Germany. At the dawn of history the forefathers of the English appear to have been dwelling between and about the estuaries and lower courses of the Rhine and the Weser, and the adjacent coasts and isles; at the present day the most English or Angli-form dialects of the European continent are held to be those of the North Frisian islands of Amrum and Sylt, on the west coast of Schleswig. It is well known that the greater part of the ancient Friesland has been swept away by the encroachments of the North Sea, and the _disjecta membra_ of the Frisian race, pressed by the sea in front and more powerful nationalities behind, are found only in isolated fragments from the Zuider Zee to the coasts of Denmark. Many Frisians accompanied the Angles and Saxons to Britain, and Old English was in many respects more closely connected with Old Frisian than with any other Low German dialect. Of the Geatas, Eotas or "Jutes," who, according to Bede, occupied Kent and the Isle of Wight, and formed a third tribe along with the Angles and Saxons, it is difficult to speak linguistically. The speech of Kent certainly formed a distinct dialect in both the Old English and the Middle English periods, but it has tended to be assimilated more and more to neighbouring southern dialects, and is at the present day identical with that of Sussex, one of the old Saxon kingdoms. Whether the speech of the Isle of Wight ever showed the same characteristic differences as that of Kent cannot now be ascertained, but its modern dialect differs in no respect from that of Hampshire, and shows no special connexion with that of Kent. It is at least entirely doubtful whether Bede's Geatas came from Jutland; on linguistic grounds we should expect that they occupied a district lying not to the north of the Angles, but between these and the old Saxons.

The earliest specimens of the language of the Germanic invaders of Britain that exist point to three well-marked dialect groups: the Anglian (in which a further distinction may be made between the Northumbrian and the Mercian, or South-Humbrian); the Saxon, generally called West-Saxon from the almost total lack of sources outside the West-Saxon domain; and the Kentish. The Kentish and West-Saxon are sometimes, especially in later times, grouped together as southern dialects as opposed to midland and northern. These three groups were distinguished from each other by characteristic points of phonology and inflection. Speaking generally, the Anglian dialects may be distinguished by the absence of certain normal West-Saxon vowel-changes, and the presence of others not found in West-Saxon, and also by a strong tendency to confuse and simplify inflections, in all which points, moreover, Northumbrian tended to deviate more widely than Mercian. Kentish, on the other hand, occupied a position intermediate between Anglian and West-Saxon, early Kentish approaching more nearly to Mercian, owing perhaps to early historical connexion between the two, and late Kentish tending to conform to West-Saxon characteristics, while retaining several points in common with Anglian. Though we cannot be certain that these dialectal divergences date from a period previous to the occupation of Britain, such evidence as can be deduced points to the existence of differences already on the continent, the three dialects corresponding in all likelihood to Bede's three tribes, the Angles, Saxons and Geatas.

As it was amongst the _Engle_ or Angles of Northumbria that literary culture first appeared, and as an Angle or _Englisc_ dialect was the first to be used for vernacular literature, _Englisc_ came eventually to be a general name for all forms of the vernacular as opposed to Latin, &c.; and even when the West-Saxon of Alfred became in its turn the literary or classical form of speech, it was still called Englisc or _English_. The origin of the name _Angul-Seaxan_ (Anglo-Saxons) has been disputed, some maintaining that it means a union of Angles and Saxons, others (with better foundation) that it meant _English Saxons_, or Saxons of England or of the Angel-cynn as distinguished from Saxons of the Continent (see _New English Dictionary_, s.v.). Its modern use is mainly due to the little band of scholars who in the 16th and 17th centuries turned their attention to the long-forgotten language of Alfred and Aelfric, which, as it differed so greatly from the English of their own day, they found it convenient to distinguish by a name which was applied to themselves by those who spoke it.[5] To these scholars "Anglo-Saxon" and "English" were separated by a gulf which it was reserved for later scholarship to bridge across, and show the historical continuity of the English of all ages.

As already hinted, the English language, in the wide sense, presents three main stages of development--Old, Middle and Modern--distinguished by their inflectional characteristics. The latter can be best summarized in the words of Dr Henry Sweet in his _History of English Sounds_:[6] "Old English is the period of _full_ inflections (_nama_, _gifan_, _caru_), Middle English of _levelled_ inflections (_naame_, _given_, _caare_), and Modern English of _lost_ inflections (_name_, _give_, _care_ = _nam_, _giv_, _car_). We have besides two periods of transition, one in which _nama_ and _name_ exist side by side, and another in which final e [with other endings] is beginning to drop." By _lost_ inflections it is meant that only very few remain, and those mostly non-syllabic, as the _-s_ in stones and loves, the _-ed_ in loved, the _-r_ in their, as contrasted with the Old English stan_-as_, lufadh, luf_-od-e_ and luf_-od-on_, tha_-ra_. Each of these periods may also be divided into two or three; but from the want of materials it is difficult to make any such division for all dialects alike in the first.

As to the chronology of the successive stages, it is of course impossible to lay down any exclusive series of dates, since the linguistic changes were inevitably gradual, and also made themselves felt in some parts of the country much earlier than in others, the north being always in advance of the midland, and the south much later in its changes. It is easy to point to periods at which Old, Middle and Modern English were fully developed, but much less easy to draw lines separating these stages; and even if we recognize between each part a "transition" period or stage, the determination of the beginning and end of this will to a certain extent be a matter of opinion. But bearing these considerations in mind, and having special reference to the midland dialect from which literary English is mainly descended, the following may be given as approximate dates, which if they do not demarcate the successive stages, at least include them:--

Old English or Anglo-Saxon to 1100
Transition Old English ("Semi-Saxon") 1100 to 1150
Early Middle English 1150 to 1250
(Normal) Middle English 1250 to 1400
Late and Transition Middle English 1400 to 1485
Early Modern or Tudor English 1485 to 1611
Seventeenth century transition 1611 to 1688
Modern or current English 1689 onward

Dr Sweet has reckoned Transition Old English (Old Transition) from 1050 to 1150, Middle English thence to 1450, and Late or Transition Middle English (Middle Transition) 1450 to 1500. As to the Old Transition see further below.

The OLD ENGLISH or Anglo-Saxon tongue, as introduced into Britain, was highly inflectional, though its inflections at the date when it becomes known to us were not so full as those of the earlier Gothic, and considerably less so than those of Greek and Latin during their classical periods. They corresponded more closely to those of modern literary German, though both in nouns and verbs the forms were more numerous and distinct; for example, the German _guten_ answers to _three_ Old English forms,--_godne_, _godum_, _godan_; _guter_ to _two_--_godre_, _godra_; _liebten_ to _two_,--_lufodon_ and _lufeden_. Nouns had four cases. _Nominative_, _Accusative_ (only sometimes distinct), _Genitive_, _Dative_, the latter used also with prepositions to express locative, instrumental, and most ablative relations; of a distinct _instrumental_ case only vestiges occur. There were several declensions of nouns, the main division being that known in Germanic languages generally as strong and weak,--a distinction also extending to adjectives in such wise that every adjective assumed either the strong or the weak inflection as determined by associated grammatical forms. The first and second personal pronouns possessed a dual number = _we two_, _ye two_; the third person had a complete declension of the stem he, instead of being made up as now of the three stems seen in _he_, _she_, _they_. The verb distinguished the subjunctive from the indicative mood, but had only two inflected tenses, present and past (more accurately, that of incomplete and that of completed or "perfect" action)--the former also used for the future, the latter for all the shades of past time. The order of the sentence corresponded generally to that of German. Thus from King Alfred's additions to his translation of Orosius: "Donne thy ylcan daege hi hine to thaem ade beran wylladh thonne todaeladh hi his feoh thaet thaer to lafe bidh aefter thaem gedrynce and thaem plegan, on fif odhdhe syx, hwilum on ma, swa swa thaes feos andefn bidh" ("Then on the same day [that] they him to the pile bear will, then divide they his property that there to remainder shall be after the drinking and the sports, into five or six, at times into more, according as the property's value is").

The poetry was distinguished by alliteration, and the abundant use of figurative and metaphorical expressions, of bold compounds and archaic words never found in prose. Thus in the following lines from Beowulf (ed. Thorpe, l. 645, Zupitza 320):--

Straet waes stan-fah, stig wisode
Gumum aetgaedere. gudh-byrne scan
Heard hond-locen. hring-iren scir
Song in searwum, tha hie to sele furdhum
In hyra gry're geatwum gangan cwomon.

Trans.:--

The street was stone-variegated, the path guided
(The) men together; the war-mailcoat shone,
Hard hand-locked. Ring-iron sheer (bright ring-mail)
Sang in (their) cunning-trappings, as they to hall forth
In their horror-accoutrements going came.

The Old English was a homogeneous language, having very few foreign elements in it, and forming its compounds and derivatives entirely from its own resources. A few Latin appellatives learned from the Romans in the German wars had been adopted into the common West Germanic tongue, and are found in English as in the allied dialects. Such were _straete_ (street, _via strata_), _camp_ (battle), _casere_ (Caesar), _mil_ (mile), _pin_ (punishment), _mynet_ (money), _pund_ (pound), _win_ (wine); probably also _cyrice_ (church), _biscop_ (bishop), _laeden_ (Latin language), _cese_ (cheese), _butor_ (butter), _pipor_ (pepper), _olfend_ (camel, elephantus), _ynce_ (inch, uncia), and a few others. The relations of the first invaders to the Britons were to a great extent those of destroyers; and with the exception of the proper names of places and prominent natural features, which as is usual were retained by the new population, few British words found their way into the Old English. Among these are named _broc_ (a badger), _brec_ (breeches), _clut_ (clout), _pul_ (pool), and a few words relating to the employment of field or household menials. Still fewer words seem to have been adopted from the provincial Latin, almost the only certain ones being castra, applied to the Roman towns, which appeared in English as _caestre_, _ceaster_, now found in composition as -_caster_, -_chester_, -_cester_, and _culina_ (kitchen), which gave _cylen_ (kiln). The introduction and gradual adoption of Christianity, brought a new series of Latin words connected with the offices of the church, the accompaniments of higher civilization, the foreign productions either actually made known, or mentioned in the Scriptures and devotional books. Such were _mynster_ (monasterium), _munuc_ (monk), _nunne_ (nun), _maesse_ (mass), _schol_ (school), _oelmesse_ (eleemosyna), _candel_ (candela), _turtle_ (turtur), _fic_ (ficus), _cedar_ (cedrus). These words, whose number increased from the 7th to the 10th century, are commonly called _Latin of the second period_, the Latin of the first period including the Latin words brought by the English from the continent, as well as those picked up in Britain either from the Roman provincials or the Welsh. The Danish invasions of the 8th and 10th centuries resulted in the establishment of extensive Danish and Norwegian populations, about the basin of the Humber and its tributaries, and above Morecambe Bay. Although these Scandinavian settlers must have greatly affected the language of their own localities, but few traces of their influence are to be found in the literature of the Old English period. As with the greater part of the words adopted from the Celtic, it was not until after the dominion of the Norman had overlaid all preceding conquests, and the new English began to emerge from the ruins of the old, that Danish words in any number made their appearance in books, as equally "native" with the Anglo-Saxon.

The earliest specimens we have of English date to the end of the 7th century, and belong to the Anglian dialect, and particularly to Northumbrian, which, under the political eminence of the early Northumbrian kings from Edwin to Ecgfridh, aided perhaps by the learning of the scholars of Ireland and Iona, first attained to literary distinction. Of this literature in its original form mere fragments exist, one of the most interesting of which consists of the verses uttered by Bede on his deathbed, and preserved in a nearly contemporary MS.:--

Fore there neid faerae . naenig uuiurthit
thonc snotturra . than him tharf sie,
to ymb-hycggannae . aer his hin-iongae,
huaet his gastae . godaes aeththa yflaes,
aefter deoth-daege . doemid uueorthae.

Trans.:--

Before the inevitable journey becomes not any
Thought more wise than (that) it is needful for him,
To consider, ere his hence-going,
What, to his ghost, of good or ill,
After death-day, doomed may be.

But our chief acquaintance with Old English is in its West-Saxon form, the earliest literary remains of which date to the 9th century, when under the political supremacy of Wessex and the scholarship of King Alfred it became the literary language of the English nation, the classical "Anglo-Saxon." If our materials were more extensive, it would probably be necessary to divide the Old English into several periods; as it is, considerable differences have been shown to exist between the "early West-Saxon" of King Alfred and the later language of the 11th century, the earlier language having numerous phonetic and inflectional distinctions which are "levelled" in the later, the inflectional changes showing that the tendency to pass from the synthetical to the analytical stage existed quite independently of the Norman Conquest. The northern dialect, whose literary career had been cut short in the 8th century by the Danish invasions, reappears in the 10th in the form of glosses to the Latin gospels and a service-book, often called the _Ritual of Durham_, where we find that, owing to the confusion which had so long reigned in the north, and to special Northumbrian tendencies, e.g. the dropping of the inflectional n in both verbs and nouns, this dialect had advanced in the process of inflection-levelling far beyond the sister dialects of Mercian and the south, so as already to anticipate the forms of Early Middle English.

Among the literary remains of the Old English may be mentioned the epic poem of Beowulf, the original nucleus of which has been supposed to date to heathen and even continental times, though we now possess it only in a later form; the poetical works of Cynewulf; those formerly ascribed to Caedmon; several works of Alfred, two of which, his translation of Orosius and of _The Pastoral Care_ of St Gregory, are contemporary specimens of his language; the Old English or Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; the theological works of Aelfric (including translations of the Pentateuch and the gospels) and of Wulfstan; and many works both in prose and verse, of which the authors are unknown.

The earliest specimens, the inscriptions on the Ruthwell and Bewcastle crosses, are in a Runic character; but the letters used in the manuscripts generally are a British variety of the Roman alphabet which the Anglo-Saxons found in the island, and which was also used by the Welsh and Irish.[7] Several of the Roman letters had in Britain developed forms, and retained or acquired values, unlike those used on the continent, in particular [glyphs] (d f g r s t). The letters _q_ and _z_ were not used, _q_ being represented by _cw_, and _k_ was a rare alternative to _c_; _u_ or _v_ was only a vowel, the consonantal power of _v_ being represented as in Welsh by _f_. The Runes called _thorn_ and _wen_, having the consonantal values now expressed by _th_ and _w_, for which the Roman alphabet had no character, were at first expressed by _th_, dh (a contraction for [g][g] or [g]h), and _v_ or _u_; but at a later period the characters th and [p] were revived from the old Runic alphabet. Contrary to Continental usage, the letters _c_ and [g] (_g_) had originally only their hard or guttural powers, as in the neighbouring Celtic languages; so that words which, when the Continental Roman alphabet came to be used for Germanic languages, had to be written with _k_, were in Old English written with _c_, as _cene_ = keen, _cynd_ = kind.[8] The key to the values of the letters, and thus to the pronunciation of Old English, is also to be found in the Celtic tongues whence the letters were taken.

The Old English period is usually considered as terminating 1120, with the death of the generation who saw the Norman Conquest. The Conquest established in England a foreign court, a foreign aristocracy and a foreign hierarchy.[9] The French language, in its Norman dialect, became the only polite medium of intercourse. The native tongue, despised not only as unknown but as the language of a subject race, was left to the use of boors and serfs, and except in a few stray cases ceased to be written at all. The natural results followed.[10] When the educated generation that saw the arrival of the Norman died out, the language, ceasing to be read and written, lost all its literary words. The words of ordinary life whose preservation is independent of books lived on as vigorously as ever, but the literary terms, those that related to science, art and higher culture, the bold artistic compounds, the figurative terms of poetry, were speedily forgotten. The practical vocabulary shrank to a fraction of its former extent. And when, generations later, English began to be used for general literature, the only terms at hand to express ideas above those of every-day life were to be found in the French of the privileged classes, of whom alone art, science, law and theology had been for generations the inheritance. Hence each successive literary effort of the reviving English tongue showed a larger adoption of French words to supply the place of the forgotten native ones, till by the days of Chaucer they constituted a notable part of the vocabulary. Nor was it for the time being only that the French words affected the English vocabulary. The Norman French words introduced by the Conquest, as well as the Central or Parisian French words which followed under the early Plantagenets, were mainly Latin words which had lived on among the people of Gaul, and, modified in the mouths of succeeding generations, had reached forms more or less remote from their originals. In being now adopted as English, they supplied precedents in accordance with which other Latin words might be converted into English ones, whenever required; and long before the Renascence of classical learning, though in much greater numbers after that epoch, these precedents were freely followed.

While the eventual though distant result of the Norman Conquest was thus a large reconstruction of the English vocabulary, the grammar of the language was not directly affected by it. There was no reason why it should--we might almost add, no way by which it could. While the English used their own _words_, they could not forget their own _way_ of using them, the inflections and constructions by which alone the words expressed ideas--in other words, their grammar; when one by one French words were introduced into the sentence they became English by the very act of admission, and were at once subjected to all the duties and liabilities of English words in the same position. This is of course precisely what happens at the present day: _telegraph_ and _telegram_ make participle _telegraphing_ and plural _telegrams_, and _naive_ the adverb _naively_, precisely as if they had been in the language for ages.

But indirectly the grammar was affected very quickly. In languages in the inflected or synthetic stage the terminations must be pronounced with marked distinctness, as these contain the correlation of ideas; it is all-important to hear whether a word is _bonus_ or _bonis_ or _bonas_ or _bonos_. This implies a measured and distinct pronunciation, against which the effort for ease and rapidity of utterance is continually struggling, while indolence and carelessness continually compromise it. In the Germanic languages, as a whole, the main stress-accent falls on the radical syllable, or on the prefix of a nominal compound, and thus at or near the beginning of the word; and the result of this in English has been a growing tendency to suffer the concluding syllables to fall into obscurity. We are familiar with the cockney _winder_, _sofer_, _holler_, _Sarer_, _Sunder_, _would yer_, for wind_ow_, sof_a_, holl_a_, Sar_ah_, Sund_ay_, would y_ou_, the various final vowels sinking into an obscure neutral one now conventionally spelt _er_, but formerly represented by final _e_. Already before the Conquest, forms originally _hatu_, _sello_, _tunga_, appeared as _hate_, _selle_, _tunge_, with the terminations levelled to obscure e; but during the illiterate period of the language after the Conquest this careless obscuring of terminal vowels became universal, all unaccented vowels in the final syllable (except _i_) sinking into e. During the 12th century, while this change was going on, we see a great confusion of grammatical forms, the full inflections of Old English standing side by side in the same sentence with the levelled ones of Middle English. It is to this state of the language that the names _Transition_ and _Period of Confusion_ (Dr Abbott's appellation) point; its appearance, as that of Anglo-Saxon broken down in its endings, had previously given to it the suggestive if not logical appellation of Semi-Saxon.

Although the written remains of the transition stage are few, sufficient exist to enable us to trace the course of linguistic change in some of the dialects. Within three generations after the Conquest, faithful pens were at work transliterating the old homilies of Aelfric, and other lights of the Anglo-Saxon Church, into the current idiom of their posterity.[11] Twice during the period, in the reigns of Stephen and Henry II., Aelfric's gospels were similarly modernized so as to be "understanded of the people."[12] Homilies and other religious works of the end of the 12th century[13] show us the change still further advanced, and the language passing into Early Middle English in its southern form. While these southern remains carry on in unbroken sequence the history of the Old English of Alfred and Aelfric, the history of the northern English is an entire blank from the 11th to the 13th century. The stubborn resistance of the north, and the terrible retaliation inflicted by William, apparently effaced northern English culture for centuries. If anything was written in the vernacular in the kingdom of Scotland during the same period, it probably perished during the calamities to which that country was subjected during the half-century of struggle for independence. In reality, however, the northern English had entered upon its transition stage two centuries earlier; the glosses of the 10th century show that the Danish inroads had there anticipated the results hastened by the Norman Conquest in the south.

Meanwhile a dialect was making its appearance in another quarter of England, destined to overshadow the old literary dialects of north and south alike, and become the English of the future. The Mercian kingdom, which, as its name imports, lay along the _marches_ of the earlier states, and was really a congeries of the outlying members of many tribes, must have presented from the beginning a linguistic mixture and transition; and it is evident that more than one intermediate form of speech arose within its confines, between Lancashire and the Thames. The specimens of early Mercian now in existence consist mainly of glosses, in a mixed Mercian and southern dialect, dating from the 8th century; but, in a 9th-century gloss, the so-called Vespasian Psalter, representing what is generally held to be pure Mercian. Towards the close of the Old English period we find some portions of a gloss to the Rushworth Gospels, namely St Matthew and a few verses of St John xviii., to be in Mercian. These glosses, with a few charters and one or two small fragments, represent a form of Anglian which in many respects stands midway between Northumbrian and Kentish, approaching the one or the other more nearly as we have to do with North Mercian or South Mercian. And soon after the Conquest we find an undoubted midland dialect in the transition stage from Old to Middle English, in the eastern part of ancient Mercia, in a district bounded on the south and south-east by the Saxon Middlesex and Essex, and on the east and north by the East Anglian Norfolk and Suffolk and the Danish settlements on the Trent and Humber. In this district, and in the monastery of Peterborough, one of the copies of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, transcribed about 1120, was continued by two succeeding hands to the death of Stephen in 1154. The section from 1122 to 1131, probably written in the latter year, shows a notable confusion between Old English forms and those of a Middle English, impatient to rid itself of the inflectional trammels which were still, though in weakened forms, so faithfully retained south of the Thames. And in the concluding section, containing the annals from 1132 to 1154, and written somewhere about the latter year, we find Middle English fairly started on its career. A specimen of this new tongue will best show the change that had taken place:

1140 A.D.--_And_[14] te eorl of Angaeu waerd ded, and his sune Henri
toc to the rice. And te cuen of France to-daelde fra the king, and
scae co_m_ to the iunge eorl Henri. _and_ he toc hire to wiue, _and_
al Peitou mid hire. tha ferde he mid micel faerd into Engleland _and_
wan castles--_and_ te king ferde agenes hi_m_ mid micel mare ferd.
thothwaethere fuhtten hi noht. oc ferden the aerceb_iscop and_ te wise
men betwux heo_m_, and makede _that_ sahte _that_ te king sculde ben
lauerd _and_ king wile he liuede. _and_ aeft_er_ his daei ware Henri
king. _and_ he helde hi_m_ for fader, _and_ he hi_m_ for sune, _and_
sib and saehte sculde ben betwyx heo_m_, 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. 46[16]):

Da cwaedh Maria: Min saule mersed drihten, and min gast geblissode on
gode minen haelende. For tham the he geseah his thinene eadmodnysse.
Sodhlice henen-fordh me eadige seggedh alle cneornesse; for tham the
me mychele thing dyde se the mihtyg ys; _and_ his name is halig. _And_
his mildheortnysse of cneornisse on cneornesse hine ondraedende. He
worhte maegne on hys earme; he to-daelde tha ofermode, on moda heora
heortan. He warp tha rice of setlle, and tha eadmode he up-an-hof.
Hyngriende he mid gode ge-felde, _and_ tha ofermode ydele for-let. He
afeng israel his cniht, and gemynde his mildheortnysse; Swa he spraec
to ure faederen, Abrahame _and_ his saede 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 French _Brut_ of 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 ... the king wes inne Bruttene, com a thissen
middel aerde ... anes maidenes sune, iboren wes in Bethleem ... of
bezste alre burden. He is ihaten Jesu Crist ... thurh thene halie
gost, alre worulde wunne ... walden englenne; faeder he is on heuenen
... froure moncunnes; sune he is on eordhen ... of sele thon maeidene,
& thene halie gost ... haldedh mid him seoluen.

The MIDDLE ENGLISH was pre-eminently the _Dialectal_ period 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 dialect familiar to 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 awin
Langage of the 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's _Polychronicon_ completed in 1387:--

"Also Englysche men ... hadde fram the bygynnynge thre maner speche,
Southeron, Northeron _and_ Myddel speche (in the myddel of the lond)
as hy come of thre maner people of Germania.... Also of the forseyde
Saxon tonge, that ys deled a thre, and ys abyde scarslyche with feaw
uplondysche men _and_ ys gret wondur, for men of the est with men of
the west, as hyt were under the same part of heyvene, acordeth more in
sounynge of stheche than men of the north with men of the south;
therfore hyt ys that Mercii, that buth men of myddel Engelond, as hyt
were parteners of the endes, undurstondeth betre the syde longages
Northeron and Southeron, than Northern _and_ Southern undurstondeth
oyther other."

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:---

_Southern._

Ich singe. We singeth.
Thou singest. [Gh]e singeth.
He singeth. Hy singeth.

_Midland._

Ich, I, singe. We singen.
Thou singest. [Gh]e singen.
He singeth. Hy, thei, singen.

_Northern._

Ic. I, sing(e) (I that singes). We sing(e). We that synges.
Thu singes. [Gh]e sing(e), [Gh]e foules synges.
He singes. Thay sing(e). Men synges.

Of these the southern is simply the old West-Saxon, with the vowels levelled to _e_. The northern second person in _-es_ preserves an older form than the southern and West-Saxon _-est_; but the _-es_ of the third person and plural is derived from an older _-eth_, the change of _-th_ into _-s_ being 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 _-en_ plural in the midland dialect, unknown to Old English, is probably an instance of _form-levelling_, the inflection of the present indicative being assimilated to that of the past, and the present and past subjunctive, in all of which _-en_ was 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 of _k_, _g_, _sc_, these were in the two other dialects palatalized before front vowels into _ch_, _j_ and _sh_. _Kirk_, _chirche_ or _church_, _bryg_, _bridge_; _scryke_, _shriek_, are examples. Old English _hw_ was written in the north _qu_(h), but elsewhere _wh_, often sinking into _w_. The original long _a_ in _stan_, _mar_, preserved in the northern _stane_, _mare_, became _o_ elsewhere, as in _stone_, _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,[17] copied during the reign of Edward II. from an original of the previous century. The gigantic versified paraphrase of Scripture history called the _Cursor Mundi_,[18] is 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 the _Ancren Riwle_ or "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 of _v_ for _f_, as _valle_ fall, _vordonne_ fordo, _vorto_ for to, _veder_ father, _vrom_ from. Not till later do we find a recognition of the parallel use of _z_ for _s_. Among the writings which succeed, _The Owl and the Nightingale_ of Nicholas de Guildford, of Portesham in Dorsetshire, before 1250, the _Chronicle_ of 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's _Piers Ploughman_, 1362, as preserved in the Vernon MS., appears to be in an intermediate dialect between southern and midland.[19] The 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 the _Ayenbite of Inwyt_ (Remorse of Conscience), 1340,[20] a translation from the French by Dan Michel of Northgate, Kent, who tells us--

"Thet this boc is y-write mid engliss of Kent;
This boc is y-mad uor lewede men,
Vor uader, and uor moder, and uor other ken,
Ham uor to ber[gh]e uram alle manyere zen,
Thet ine hare inwytte ne bleue no uoul wen."

In its use of _v_ (_u_) and _z_ for [s] and _s_, 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 the Peterborough _Chronicle_ of 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 the _Ormulum_, 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:--

"The Judewisshe folkess boc
hemm se[gh][gh]de, thatt hemm birrde
Twa bukkes samenn to the preost
att kirrke-dure brinngenn;
_And_ te[gh][gh] tha didenn blitheli[gh],
swa summ the boc hemm tahhte,
And brohhtenn twe[gh][gh]enn bukkess thaer
Drihhtin thaerwithth to lakenn.
And att[21] te kirrke-dure toc
the preost ta twe[gh][gh]enn bukkess,
_And_ o thatt an he le[gh][gh]de thaer
all the[gh][gh]re sake _and_ sinne,
_And_ let itt eornenn for thwithth all
ut inntill wilde wesste;
_And_ toc _and_ snath thatt otherr bucc
Drihhtin thaerwithth to lakenn.
All thiss wass don forr here ned,
_and_ ec forr ure nede;
For hemm itt hallp biforenn Godd
to clennssenn hemm of sinne;
_And_ all swa ma[gh][gh] itt hellpenn the
[gh]iff thatt tu willt [itt] foll[gh]henn.
[Gh]iff thatt tu willt full innwarrdli[gh]
withth fulle trowwthe lefenn
All thatt tatt wass bitacnedd taer,
to lefenn _and_ to trowwenn."

_Ormulum_, ed. White, l. 1324.

The author of the _Ormulum_ was a phonetist, and employed a special spelling of his own to represent not only the quality but the _quantities_ of 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 the _Ormulum_, the east midland rhymed _Story of Genesis and Exodus_[22] shows 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 midland _Bestiary_.

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, as _nama_, _over_, _mete_; but by 1250 or 1260 they had been lengthened to _na-me_, _o-ver_, _me-te_, a change which has also taken place at a particular period in all the Germanic, and even the Romanic languages, as in _buo-no_ for _bo-num_, _pa-dre_ for _pa-trem_, &c. The lengthening of the penult left the final syllable by contrast shortened or weakened, and paved the way for the disappearance of final e in the century following, through the stages _na-me_, _na-me_, _na-m'_, _nam_, the one long syllable in _nam(e)_ being the quantitative equivalent of the two short syllables in _na-me_; hence the notion that mute _e_ makes a preceding vowel long, the truth being that the lengthening of the vowel led to the e becoming mute.

After 1250 we have the _Lay 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 like _Piers Plowman_ elude 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_, the _Pearl_, _Cleanness_ and _Patience_, 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 thoughte that his herte wolde breke,

in Old English--

Him thuhte thaet his heorte wolde brecan,

which may be compared with the modern German--

Ihm dauchte dass sein Herze wollte brechen.

In nouns the -_es_ of 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 final _e_. Adjectives retain so much of the old declension as to have -_e_ in the definite form and in the plural--

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