it for service; just as in Latin and Greek, rhyme was not used, because, through a surfeit of like terminations, rhyming would have been easy. But any abridgment of freedom of position puts a price upon what remains, and makes position a valuable factor in expression. In a language like ours, then, where the place of words is by no means rigidly fixed, nor yet wholly without restriction, a word or a phrase, depending for its force upon those with which it is immediately yoked, can have its force brought out to the full; and the point of a sentence, resting in great measure upon the arrangement of its parts, can be perfectly secured. In such a language, the art of proper placing is hardly secondary to that of apt selection; and the skill and success of our literary commanders largely lie in the happy marshalling of their verbal hosts.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE DIALECTS IN ENGLISH.

XXX. The Differences between the Dialects.-As we saw, the Teutonic invaders of the island were not one people, but three, and they settled in different portions of Britain. Their linguistic differences, aggravated by the settlement of the Danes in the north, by the more active communication kept up between this portion of Britain and the continent, and by the flocking of the Normans to the north in greater numbers than elsewhere-these original differences, thus intensified, could not but show themselves in differences of speech persisting even after these peoples blended with the NormanFrench, and the English language began. At all events, the grammatical changes of which we have been speaking, changes in the noun and the verb particularly, changes which it took centuries to make, did not take place throughout England at the same uniform rate. The consequence was, that during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the language of England was not univocal; dialects prevailed, dialects differing essentially from each other.

The geographical boundaries between these ran east and west; the men of these parts, "as it were under the same portion of heaven, agreeing more in the sound of their speech than men of the north with men of the south." That spoken north of the Humber, and as far as to the Firth of Forth, was called the Northern Dialect; that spoken between the

Humber and. the Thames was called the Midland Dialect; and that between the Thames and the southern coast, the The two differing most were those widest

Southern Dialect.

apart geographically.

In the matter of grammar, the Northern was radical, and abandoned its inflections without reluctance, attaining, by the beginning of the fourteenth century, the simplicity of modern English. The Southern was conservative, and held to the old inflections with great tenacity. And, in the mat ter of sounds, the Northern generally retained the hard, guttural sounds of the Anglo-Saxon; the Southern softened these into palatals.

1. The Noun.-The Northern dialect led the way in dropping the plural en (Anglo-Saxon an) ending, and in giving to nouns the plural ending es or s (Anglo-Saxon masculine as of the vowel declension). The s of the genitive they often dropped. The Southern clung tenaciously to the plural en, and even extended it to nouns which in AngloSaxon were of the vowel declension.

2. The Pronoun.-In the Northern, the double genitive oures, youres, hires, and heres occur side by side with oure, youre, hire, and here. These double genitives we keep in ours, yours, hers, and theirs. The Southern added n instead of s, and said ouren, youren, hiren, heren (their'n), which, somewhat changed, survive in provincial English now.

3. The Verb.—The Northern (1) led in exchanging for s the th of the third person singular indicative present eth; (2) used es in place of est in the second person; (3) at times made the first person end in s; and (4) made the present plural in s. It often dropped (1) the ending of the third singular; (2) the plural ending throughout; (3) the ed of the preterite; and (4) hardly ever used the prefix y or i in its

participles. The Southern dialect held fast to the th of the third singular and to the th of the plural throughout, and imitated the Northern in none of the changes initiated by it.

4. Orthography.-Anglo-Saxon cyrice, cernan, cist, retaining the k sound of c, became kirk, kern, and kist, in the Northern, but church, churn, and chest in the Southern. Anglo-Saxon fox remained fox in the Northern, became vox in the Southern. Anglo-Saxon brycg was bryg in the North and bridge in the South. Stān, mār, are stane and mare in the North, and stone and more in the South.

We may add that some Scandinavian words in the North are absent from the dialect of the South.

The Midland dialect mediated between these two. Having over both the Northern and the Southern the advantages of London, the Court, the two Universities, and great authors like Chaucer, it took what it chose from each; or, as in the case of the present plural in en, it rejected the authority of both, crowded them to the wall, and in the end became the national language. Still, for a long while it felt the influence of both. Shakespeare has more than two hundred plurals of verbs in s, Lounsbury says; one hundred and sixtyeight, according to March. Even after the modernization of Shakespeare's plays by his editors, four verbs with plurals in s-iies, aches, fares, and falls-are found in The Tempest,

it is said.

CHAPTER IX.

THE ANGLO-SAXON AND THE LATIN IN OUR VOCABULARY.

The Norman words, properly Latin, came into English (1) to supply the demands of the blended peoples for terms to denote things and express thoughts which the Saxons never had, and so had no words to denote. They came (2) to fill the gap caused by the loss of words which the AngloSaxons before the Conquest did have. They came (3) as contestants for the places already filled by the Anglo-Saxon. In this contest the Latin (a) sometimes dislodged the AngloSaxon. Labor and toil do duty now instead of swincan, and voice has supplanted stefen. Often in the struggle the Latin (6) divided the ground with the Anglo-Saxon. Color exists side by side with hiw, or hue, and joy with bliss. But oftener, perhaps, the Anglo-Saxon (c) held their positions, and the Latin words never secured the coveted footing in the language.

Latin words have come in, in great numbers, since, to satisfy the demands of our ever-increasing knowledge and higher development. For little attempt has been made to meet these insatiable requirements by any effort to compound into new vocables the old Anglo-Saxon material preserved.

These, too, have entered into contest with the AngloSaxon for the places occupied by them.

XXXI. What Words belong to Each Element. We may