HERKINS how long King Edward lay,
With his men before Tournay.
The singularity of these "Lays" consists in coming down to us in a
written form, evidently with great care and fondness, bearing their
author's unknown name. They might have appropriately been preserved in
Percy's "Reliques of English Poetry."[12]
Three centuries had now passed, and still the national genius languished
in the Norman bondage of the language. But the commonalty were
increasing in number and in weight, and an indignant sense of the
destitution of a national language was not confined to the laity; it was
attracting the attention of those who thought and who wrote. Richard of
Bury, Bishop of Durham, who put forth the first bibliographical treatise
by an Englishman, and may he ranked among the earliest critical
collectors of a private library, in his celebrated treatise on the love
of books, the "Philo-biblion,"[13] breathes all the enthusiasm of study;
but while he directs our attention to the classical writers of
antiquity, he stimulates his contemporaries to emulate them by composing
new books. Although he himself wrote in Latin, he regrets that no
institution for children in the English language existed; and he
complains, that our English youth "first learned the French, and from
the French the Latin." Our youth were sent into France to polish their
nasal Norman. This writer flourished about 1330, and thus ascertains,
that in the beginning of the reign of Edward III. no English was taught.
The "Polychronicon," a Latin chronicle compiled by the monk Higden, was
finished somewhat later, about 1365; and we find the complaint more
bitterly renewed. "There is no nation," wrote this honest monk, "whose
children are compelled to leave their own language, as we have since the
Normans came into England. A gentleman's child must speak French from
the time that he is rocked in a cradle, or plays with a child's breche."
The Latin Chronicle of Higden, twenty years later, was translated into
English by John de Trevisa. On this passage the translator furnishes the
important observation, that, since this was written, a revolution had
occurred through our grammar-schools: the patriotic efforts of one Sir
John Cornewaile, in teaching his pupils to construe their Latin into
English, had been generally adopted; "so that now," proceeds Trevisa,
"the yere of our Lorde 1385, in all the grammere scoles of Engelond,
children leaveth Frensche and construeth and lerneth in Englische." The
innovation had startled our translator, for, like all innovations, there
was loss as well as profit, when, quitting what we are accustomed to,
we launch dubiously into a new acquisition. The disuse of the French
would detriment their intercourse abroad, and, on great occasions, at
home. This was a time when Trevisa himself, in selecting some Scriptural
inscriptions for the chapel of Berkley Castle, where he was chaplain,
had them painted on boards in Norman-French, and Latin, in alternate
lines. They are still visible. English itself was yet too base for the
service of God.
It was still a debateable question, as appears by the prefatory dialogue
between Trevisa and his patron, Lord Berkley, whether any translation of
the Chronicle were at all necessary, Latin being the general language.
It was, however, a noble enterprise, being the first great effort in our
vernacular prose. This mighty volume is a universal history, which, in
its amplitude and miscellaneous character, seemed to contain all that
men could know; and the version long enjoyed the favour of all readers
as the first historical collection in the English language. It bears the
seal of the monkish taste, being equally pious and fabulous. It not only
opens before the days of Adam, but, like the creation, has its seven
divisions; it has monsters, however, which are not found in Genesis. The
monk is doubtful whether they came of Adam or of Noah. They, indeed,
came from the elder Pliny, to whose puerile wonders and hasty
compilation we owe the foundation of our natural history.
It was about the period that Higden concluded his labours, that Sir John
Mandeville deemed it wise, having written his Travels in Latin and
French, to compose them also in the vernacular idiom;--a strong
indication of the rising disposition to cultivate the national tongue.
The policy of our Government now accorded with the general disposition;
and hence originated the noble decision of Edward III., in 1362, to
banish from our courts of law the Norman-French; but so awkward seemed
this great novelty, that the statute is written in the very language it
abolishes,[14] and, indeed, to which our great lawyers, the timid
slaves of precedents, long afterwards clung in their barbarous
law-French phrases mingled with their native English.
A mightier movement even than the royal decree in favour of fostering
the national language was a translation of the Scriptures, by the
intrepid spirit of Wickliffe. This had been done with the pledge of his
life, for that was often in peril while he thus struck the first impulse
of that reformation which not only influenced his own age, but one more
remote. The translation of Wickliffe was a new revelation of the Word of
God in the language of many. The streets were crowded with Lollards, as
his followers were denominated, of which, like similar odious names
attached to a rising party, the origin remains uncertain; Lollardy was,
however, a convenient term to describe treason in the Church and the
State. Wickliffe's translation of the Old Testament still lies in
numerous manuscripts, for our cold neglect of which we have incurred the
censure of the foreigner. The New Testament has happily been
printed.[15]
If we place by the side of the text of Wickliffe our later versions, we
may become familiar with that Saxon-English which our venerable Caxton
subsequently considered was "more like to Dutch than English."
But the picturesque language of our emotions, the creative diction of
poetry, appeared in the courtly style of Chaucer, who nobly designed to
render the national language refined and varied, while his great
contemporaries, the author of Piers Ploughman lingered in a rude
dialect, and Gower was still composing alternately in Latin and in
French.
The emancipation of the national language was subsequently confirmed by
another monarch. A curious anecdote in our literary history has recently
been disclosed of Henry V. To encourage the use of the vernacular
tongue, this monarch, in a letter missive to one of the city companies,
declared that "_the English tongue hath in modern days begun to be
honourably enlarged and adorned, and for the better understanding of the
people_ the common idiom should be exercised in writing:" this was at
once setting aside the Norman-French and the Latin for the daily
business of civil life. By this record it appears that many of the craft
of brewers, to whose company this letter was addressed, had "knowledge
of writing and reading in the English idiom, but Latin and French they
by no means understood." We further learn that now "the LORDS and the
COMMONS BEGAN _to have their proceedings noted down in the mother
tongue_;" and this example was therefore to be followed by the city
companies.[16]
At this advanced age of transition, so unsettled was the language of
ordinary affairs, that the same document bears evidence of three
different idioms. We find the petition of an Irish chieftain, a prisoner
in the Tower, written in the French language, while the endorsed royal
answer is in English, and the order of the council in Latin.[17] The
bulletins of Henry V. to the mayor and aldermen of London are written in
English, but endorsed in French.
As if they designed to hold out a model to their subjects and to
sanction the use of their native English, both this prince, and his
father, Henry IV., left their wills in the national language,[18] at a
time when the nobles employed Latin or French for such purposes.
There has often existed a sympathy between ourselves and our near
neighbours of France, when not disturbed by war. This great movement of
establishing a national language, and freeing themselves from the Roman
bondage, was tried at a later period by the French government, who were
nearly baffled in the attempt. An ordinance of Louis XII. was issued _to
abolish the use of the Latin tongue_; but such was the prejudice in
favour of the ancient language, that notwithstanding that the Latin of
the bar had degenerated into the most ludicrous barbarism, the lawyers
were unwilling to yield to the popular wish. The use of Latin in France
in all legal instruments lasted till the succeeding reign of Francis I.,
who, by two ordinances, declared that THE FRENCH LANGUAGE should be
solely used in all public acts. It was, however, as late as forty years
after, in 1629, that at length the public offices consented to draw
their instruments in their vernacular language.[19] So long has general
improvement to contend with the force of habit and the passion of
prepossession; and such were the difficulties which the vernacular style
of both these great empires had to overcome.
When the learned HICKES, in his patriotic fervour to trace the
legitimacy of the English from its parent language, adjudged that
"nine-tenths of our words were of Saxon origin," he exultingly appealed
to the Lord's Prayer, wherein there are only three words of French or
Latin extraction. This startled TYRWHIT, then busied on his Chaucerian
glossary, and who in that labour had before him a different aspect of
our mottled English. That was not the day when writers would maintain
opinions against authority. Awed by the great Saxonist, the poetical
antiquary compromised, alleging that "though the _form_ of our language
was still Saxon, yet the _matter_ was in a great measure French." His
successor in English philology, GEORGE ELLIS, still further faltered and
arbitrated; suggesting that the great Saxonist, to complete his
favourite scheme, would trace some _old Gaulish_ French to a _Teutonic_
origin. In tracing the formation of the English language, we are
sensible that the broad and solid foundations lie in the Saxon, but the
superstructure has often, with a magical movement, varied in its
architecture. An enamoured Saxonist has recently ventured to assert that
"English is but another term for Saxon;" but an ocular demonstration has
been exhibited in specimens of the _modern English_ of our
master-writers, marking by italics all the words of Saxon derivation. By
these it appears that the translators of the Bible have happily
preserved for us the pristine simplicity of our Saxon-English, like the
light in a cathedral through its storied and saintly window, shedding
its antique hues on hallowed objects. But as we advance, we discover in
our most eminent writers the anglicisms diminish; and SHARON TURNER has
observed that a fifth of the Saxon language has ceased to be used. A
recent critic[20] has curiously calculated that the English language,
now consisting of about 38,000 words, contains 23,000, or nearly
five-eighths, Anglo-Saxon in their origin; that in our most idiomatic
writers, there is about one-tenth _not_ Anglo-Saxon, and in our least
about one-third.[21] A cry of our desertion of our Saxon purity has
been raised by those who have not themselves practised it in their more
elevated compositions; but are we to deem that English corrupted which
recedes from its Saxon character, and compels the daughter to lose the
likeness of her mother? Are we to banish to perpetuity those foreigners
who have already fructified our Saxon soil? In an age of extended
literature, conversant with objects and productive of associations which
never entered into the experience of our forefathers, the ancient
language of the people must necessarily prove inadequate; a new language
must start out of new conceptions. Look into our present "exchequer of
words;" there lies many a refined coinage struck out of the arts and the
philosophies of Europe. Every word which genius creates, and which time
shall consecrate, is a possession of the language which must be
inscribed into that variable doomsday book of words--the English
Dictionary. Devotees of Thor and Woden! the day of your idolatries has
passed, and your remonstrances are vain as your superstitions.