Johnson pronounced it impossible to ascertain when our speech ceased to
be Saxon and began to be English; and although since his day English
philology has extended its boundaries, the lines of demarcation are very
moveable for the literary antiquary. At whatever point we set out, we
may find that something which preceded has been omitted; a century may
pass away and leave no precise epoch; and transitions of words and
styles, like shades melting into each other, may elude perception. Too
often wanting sufficient data, the toil of the antiquary becomes
baffled, and the microscopic eye of the philologist pores on empty
space. The learned have their theories; but in darkness we are doomed to
grope, and in a circle we can fix on no beginning.
The elegant researches of Ellis, the antiquarian lore of Ritson, the
simplicity of taste of Percy, the poetic fervour of Campbell, the
elaborate diligence of Sharon Turner, and more recent names skilled in
Saxon lore, have given opposite hypotheses, conjectures, and
refutations. "A modification of language is not in reality a change,"
observes a powerful researcher in literary history,[1] who is at a loss
"whether some compositions shall pass for the latest offspring of the
mother, or the earliest fruit of the daughter's fertility"--a shrewd
suspicion which the genealogists of words may entertain concerning the
legitimate and the illegitimate, or the pure and the corrupt.
The Saxon language had been tainted by some Latin terms from the
ecclesiastics, and some fashionable Normanisms from the court of the
Confessor; when the Norman-French, fatal as the arrow which pierced
Harold, by a single blow struck down that venerable form--and never has
it arisen! And now, with all its pomp, such as it was, it lies entombed
and coffined in some scanty manuscripts.
We indeed triumph that the language of our forefathers never did depart
from the land, since it survived among the people. What survived? It
soon ceased to be a written tongue, for no one cared to cultivate an
idiom no longer required, and utterly contemned. After the Conquest, the
miserable Saxons lost their "book-craft." We find nothing written but
the continuation of a meagre chronicle. A few pietists still lingered in
occasional homilies, and a solitary charter has been perpetuated; but
the style was already changed, and as a literary language the
Anglo-Saxon had for ever departed! It had sunk to the people, and they
treated the ancient idiom after their fashion--the language of books
served not simple men; laying aside its inflections, and its inversions,
and its arbitrary construction, they chose a shorter and more direct
conveyance of their thoughts, and only kept to a language fitted to the
business of daily life. This getting free from the encumbrances of the
Anglo-Saxon we may consider formed the obscure beginnings of THE ENGLISH
LANGUAGE. All the gradual changes or the sudden innovations through more
than two centuries may not be perceivable by posterity; but philologists
have marked out how first the inversion was simplified, and then the
inflections dropped; how the final E became mute, and at length was
ejected; how ancient words were changed, and Norman neologisms
introduced. As this English cleared itself of the nebulosity, the
anomalies, and all the complex machinery of the mother idiom, a natural
style was formed, very homely, for this vaunted Saxon now came from the
mouths of the people, and from those friends of the people, the monks,
who only wrote for their humble brother-Saxons. The English writers who
were composing in French, and the more learned who displayed their
clerkship by their Latinity, had a standard of literature which would
regulate or advance their literary workmanship; but there was no
standard in the language of bondage: it had mixed, as Ritson oddly
describes it, "with one knows not what," a disorganization of words and
idioms. Numerous DIALECTS pervaded the land; the east and the west
agreed as ill together as both did with the north and the south; and
they who wrote for the people each chose the dialect of their own
shire.
The "Saxon Chronicle," which closes with the year 1155, had been
continued at progressive intervals by different writers; this authentic
document of the Anglo-Saxon diction exhibits remarkable variations of
style; and a critical Saxonist has detected the corruptions of its
idiom, its inflections, and its orthography--in a word, that through
successive periods it had suffered a material alteration in its
character.[2]
Somewhat more than a century after the Norman invasion, about 1180,
Layamon made an English version of Wace's "Brut"--that French metrical
chronicle which the Anglo-Norman had drawn from the Latin history of
"Geoffry of Monmouth." Here we detect an entire changeableness of style,
or rather a transformation; but what to call it the most skilful have
not agreed. George Ellis drew a copious specimen of a writer unnoticed
by Warton; but, confounded by "its strange orthography," and mournfully
doubtful of his own meritorious glossary, he considered the style,
"though simple and unmixed, yet a very barbarous Saxon." A recent critic
opines that Layamon "seems to have halted between two languages, the
written and the spoken." Mr. Campbell imagines it "the dawn" of our
language; while some Saxonists have branded it as semi-Saxon. It seems a
language thrown into confusion, struggling to adapt itself to a new
state of things; it has no Norman-French, it is saturated with Saxon,
but the sentences are freed from inversions.[3]
About the same period as Layamon's version of Wace, we have a very
original attempt of a writer, in those days of capricious pronunciation,
to convey to the reader the orthoepy by regulating the orthography. As
it is only recently that we have obtained any correct notion of a
writing which has suffered many misconceptions from our earlier English
scholars, the history of this work becomes a bibliographical curiosity.
An ecclesiastic paraphrased the Gospel-histories. He was a critical
writer, projecting a system to which he strictly adhered, warning his
transcribers as punctually to observe, otherwise "they would not write
the word right;" they were therefore "to write those letters twice which
he had written so." The system consisted in doubling the consonant after
a short vowel to regulate the pronunciation. He wrote broth_err_ and
afft_err_; is _iss_, and it _itt_.[4]
It is evident that this critical was also a refined writer; for it
indicated some delicacy, when we find him apologising for certain
additions in his version, which was metrical, not found in the original,
and merely used by him for the convenience of filling up his metre. The
first literary historians to whose lot it fell to record this anomalous
work, among whom were HICKES and WANLEY, judging by appearances, in the
superabundance of the rugged consonants, deemed this refined
Anglo-Saxon's writing as the work of an ignorant scribe, or as a rude
provincial dialect, or harsh enough to be the work of an English Dane;
its metrical form eluded all detection, as the verses were a peculiar
metre of fifteen syllables, all jumbled together as prose: as such they
gave some extracts, but it is evident that this was done with little
intelligence of their author. TYRWHIT, occupied on his "Chaucer," had a
more percipient ear for these Anglo-Saxon metres, and discovered that
this prose was strictly metrical; but he surely advanced no farther--he
did not discover the writer's design that "the Ennglisshe writ" was for
"Ennglisshe menn to lare"--to learn. Indeed, Tyrwhit, who complains that
Hickes in noticing this peculiarity of spelling "has not explained the
author's reason for it," himself so little comprehended the system of
the double consonants, that in his extract, humorously "begging pardon"
of this old and odd reformer whom the critic was not only offending,
but massacring, "for not following his injunctions," he discards "all
the superfluous letters!" not aware that it was the intention of the
writer to preserve the orthoepy. Even our Anglo-Saxon historian missed
the secret; for he has remarked on the words, that they were "needlessly
loaded with double consonants." Yet he was not wholly insensible to the
substantial qualities of the writer, for he discovered in the diction
that "the order of words is uniformly more natural, the inflections are
more unfrequent, and the phrases of our English begin to emerge." And,
finally, our latest authority decides that this work, so long
misinterpreted, is "the oldest, the purest, and by far the most valuable
specimen of our old English dialect that time has left us."[5]
What is "old English" is the question. The title of this work may have
perplexed the first discoverers as much as the double consonants. The
writer was an ecclesiastic of the name of ORM, and he was so fascinated
with his own work for the purity of its diction, and the precision of
its modulated sounds, that in a literary rapture he baptized it with
reference to himself; and _Orm_ fondly called his work the _Ormulum_!
One hardly expected to meet with such a Narcissus of literature in an
old Anglo-Saxon, philologist of the year so far gone by, yet we now find
that Orm might fairly exult in his Ormulum!
Nearly a century after Layamon, in the same part of England, the monk,
ROBERT OF GLOUCESTER, wrote his "Chronicle," about 1280. This honest
monk painfully indited for his brother-Saxons the whole history of
England, in the shape of Alexandrine verse in rhyme; the diction of the
verse approaches so nearly to prose, that it must have been the
colloquial idiom of the west. The "Ingliss," as it was called in the
course of the century between Layamon and Robert of Gloucester, betrays
a striking change; and modern philologists have given the progressive
term of "middle English" to the language from this period to the
Reformation.[6] Our chronicler has fared ill with posterity, of whom
probably he never dreamt. Robert of Gloucester, who is entirely divested
of a poetical character, as are all rhyming chroniclers, has had the
hard hap of being criticised by two merciless poets; and, to render his
uncouthness still more repulsive, the black-letter fanaticism of his
editor has vauntingly arrayed the monk whom he venerated in the sable
Gothic, bristling with the Saxon characters.[7] It has therefore
required something like a physical courage to sit down to Robert of
Gloucester. Yet in the rhymer whom Warton has degraded, Ellis has
discovered a metrical annalist whose orations are almost eloquent, whose
characters of monarchs are energetic, and what he records of his own age
matter worthy of minute history.
Another monk, ROBERT MANNYNG, of Brunne, or Bourne, in Lincolnshire, who
had versified PIERS LANGTOFT'S "Chronicle," has left a translation of
the "Manuel des Peches," ascribed to Bishop Grosteste, who composed it
in politer French. In this "Manual of Sins," or, as he terms it, "A
Handlyng of Sinne," according to monkish morality and the monkish
devices to terrify sinners, our recreative monk has introduced short
tales, some grave, and some he deemed facetious, which convey an idea of
domestic life and domestic language. It is not without curiosity that we
examine these, the earliest attempts at that difficult trifle--the art
of telling a short tale, Robert de Brunne is neither a Mat Prior nor a
La Fontaine, but he is a block which might have been carved into one or
the other, and he shows that without much art a tale may be tolerably
told.[8] His octosyllabic verse is more fluent than the protracted
Alexandrine of his "Chronicle." The words fall together in natural
order, and we seem to have advanced in this rude and artless "Ingliss."
But the most certain evidence that "the English" was engaging the
attention of those writers who professedly were devoting their pens to
those whom they called "the Commonalty," is, that they now began to
criticise; and we find Robert de Brunne continually protesting against
"strange Ingliss." This phrase has rather perplexed our inquirers.
"Strange Ingliss" would seem to apply to certain novelties in diction
used by the tale-reciters and harpers, for so our monk tells us,
"I wrote
In symple speeche as I couthe,
That is _lightest in manne's mouthe_.
I mad (made) nought for no disours (tale-tellers),
Ne for no seggers nor harpours,
Bot for the luf (love) of symple menu
That _strange Inglis_ cann not ken."
It was about this time that the metrical romances, translated from the
French, spread in great number, and introduced many exotic phrases. In
the celebrated romance of "Alisaundre" we find French expressions,
unalloyed by any attempt at Anglicising them, overflowing the page. The
phrase is, however, once applied to certain strange metres which our
monk avoided, for many "that read English would be confounded by them."
Whatever Robert de Brunne might allude to by his "strange Ingliss,"[9]
the same cry and the identical expressions are repeated by a writer not
many years afterwards--RICHARD ROLLE, called "the Hermit of Hampole." He
produced the earliest versions of the Psalms into English prose, with a
commentary on each verse; and a voluminous poem in ten thousand lines,
entitled "The Prikke of Conscience," translated from the Latin for "the
unletterd men of Engelonde who can only understand English." In the
prologue to this first Psalter in English prose he says, "I seke no
_straunge Ynglyss_, bot _lightest_ and _communest_, and wilk (such) that
is most like unto the Latyn; and thos I fine (I find) no proper Inglis I
felough (follow) the wit of the words, so that thai that knowes noght
(not) the Latyne, be (by) the Ynglys may come to many Latyne wordys."
Here we arrive at open corruption! Already a writer appears refined
enough to complain of the poverty of the language in furnishing "proper
Inglis" or synonymes for the Latin; the next step must follow, and that
would be in due time the latinising "the Ynglys."
A great curiosity of the genuine homeliness of our national idiom at
this time has come down to us in a manuscript in the Arundel
Collection, now in our national library. It is a volume written by a
monk of St. Austin's at Canterbury, in the Kentish dialect, about a
century and a half after Layamon, and half a century after Robert of
Gloucester, in 1340. This honest monk, like others of the Saxon
brotherhood, was writing for his humbled countrymen, or, as he expresses
himself, with a rude Doric simplicity,
Vor Vader and for Moder and for other Ken.
I throw into a note what I have transcribed of this specimen of the old
Saxon-English, or, as it is called, "Semi-Saxon."[10] In this specimen
of the language as spoken by the people the barbarism is native, pure in
its impurity, and unalloyed by any spurious exotic. This English spoken
in the Weald of Kent, Caxton tells us, in his time, was "as broad and
rude English as is spoken in any place in England." When contrasted with
the diction of a northern bard, whom a singular accident retrieved for
us,[11] it offers a curious picture of the English language, so
different at precisely the same period. The minstrel's flow of verse
almost anticipates the elegance of a writer of two centuries later.
The poems of LAURENCE MINOT consist of ten narrative ballads on some of
the wars of Edward the Third in Scotland and in France. The events this
bard records show that his writings were completed in 1352. His editor
is surprised that "the great monarch whom he so eloquently and so
earnestly panegyrised was either ignorant of his existence or insensible
of his merit." Minot was probably nothing more than a northern minstrel,
whose celebrity did not extend many leagues. His verses convey to us a
perfect conception of the minstrel character, throwing out his almost
extemporaneous "Lays" on the predominant incidents of his day. All these
narrative poems open by soliciting the attention of the auditors:--
LITHES! and I sall tell you tyll
The bataile of Halidon Hyll.