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before, commenced those changes, which terminated in the formation of what we must call a new lan

guage--the English. the English. Yet it is not till two centuries after that event (1258), that we possess a document which shows us the transformation almost complete. To this document, and others contemporaneous with it, we shall presently allude. It may be desirable, at the point of view which we have now reached, to make a few concise observations on the probable causes of the change in question, the period during which it was being effected, and its nature and results.

As to the first, there has been much dispute, nor can it be said that there is not still abundant scope for it. One point has been warmly contested; whether any influence, and if any, what, is to be ascribed to the Norman Conquest. In the estimate of many, it used to be considered as almost alone sufficient to account for the perplexing phenomenon ; in that of others, and among them some of the best critics of our time, it would be adjudged to have had very little to do with the matter. Thus Hallam says:It is probable, indeed, that the converse of foreigners might have something to do with those simplifications of the Anglo-Saxon grammar, which appeared about the reign of Henry II., more than a century after the Conquest; though it is also true that languages of a very artificial structure, like that of England before that revolution, often became less complex in their forms, without any such violent process as an amalgamation of two different races.'* Price, in his Preface to Warton's History of English Poetry, says, 'That some change had taken place in the style of composition, and general struc

* Literature of Europe, vol. i. p. 59.

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ture of the language, since the days of Alfred, is a matter beyond dispute; but that these mutations were a consequence of the Norman invasion, or even accelerated by that event, is wholly incapable of proof. . . . Every branch of the Low-German stock from whence the Anglo-Saxon sprang, displays the same simplification of its grammar. Dr. Latham goes so far as to say,- What the present language of England would have been had the Norman Conquest never taken place, the analogy of Holland, Denmark, and of many other countries, enables us to determine. It would have been much as it is at present.

Many plausible arguments may be adduced on both sides,—and the truth, probably, as in so many other cases, lies between the extreme views. Those who think the Conquest had almost everything, and those who think it had next to nothing, to do with the transformation of the language, will find it perhaps equally difficult to maintain their doctrine. There is a sense, indeed, in which both theories may be accepted; namely, that some similar changes would have occurred without the Conquest; and yet that it did, in point of fact, greatly modify, accelerate, and augment them.

Dr. Latham's statement, that if there had been no Norman invasion, the English would have proceeded to develope itself in grammatical forms analogous to those which its actual history presents, may be admitted as probable; for it seems difficult to deny that traces of the approaching revolution-the initial parts of the process-may be discerned in the closing period of the Anglo-Saxon rule; still it may, in our

* Warton's History, vol. i. pp. 109, 110. Preface.

judgment, be also plausibly maintained that those changes were greatly more extensive and rapid in a given time than they would have been except for the Conquest. If it be asked how we shall account for those initial changes in the grammatical structure which we have admitted are not obscurely discernible even before the Conquest, and for those still more striking phenomena, referred to by Mr. Price and Mr. Hallam, in the Platt-Deutsch languages, we must reply that there never has been any satisfactory solution of the problem. It may be worthy of question, however, whether these changes, though not attended by an amalgamation of races,' have not been in part produced by causes somewhat similar to those which. come into play when there is an 'amalgamation of races,' though feebler in their character, and slower in their operation,—we mean by the contact, collision, and (so to speak) interpenetration, of different tribes speaking different dialects of the same languages; or of nations speaking different languages, though of the same stock. Take the Anglo-Saxon; the tribes of original invaders spoke different dialects, though of the same language; and if there be any force in such circumstances to break down the grammatical structure at all, the subsequent invasions, establishments, and at length ascendancy of the Danes, must have tended to produce still further changes in the same direction.* A priori, it certainly

*The Anglo-Saxon,' says Rask, 'appears to have been in its origin a rude mixture of the dialects of the Saxons, the Angles, and the Jutes; but we are not acquainted with it in that state, these dialects having soon coalesced into one language, as the various kindred tribes soon united to form one nation, after they had taken possession of England. With the introduction of Christianity and the Roman Alphabet, their literature began, and con

does appear difficult to attribute such singular phenomena of structural change in a language to some

tinued during all the wars and dreadful devastations which our rugged and warlike forefathers, the Danes, spread over the land; the nation itself, notwithstanding all its revolutions and misfortunes, having preserved a certain degree of unity. Even under the Danish kings all laws and edicts were promulgated in pure Anglo-Saxon, in which, with the exception of a few single words, no striking influence can be traced of the old Scandinavian or Icelandic, spoken by our forefathers at that period. On the contrary, the Anglo-Saxon rather exercised an influence on the old language, spoken in the northern kingdoms, particularly in Denmark. It was not till after the Norman conquest, that French and Latin were introduced as the language of the court, while the Anglo-Saxon was despised, and sank into a dialect of the vulgar; which, not till it had undergone a complete transformation, and been blended with the language of the old northern settlers, and with the French spoken by the conquerors, whereby the ancient structure was almost entirely lost, and after an interval of some centuries, re-appeared as a new tongue, -the Modern English. We thus find here the changes which took place in the languages of Germany and the North, though nowhere was the transition attended with such violence as in England, and nowhere has it left such manifest and indelible traces as in the English language. We have here an ancient, fixed, and regular tongue, which during a space of 500 years preserved itself almost without change; for King Ethelbert adopted Christianity about 593 or 596, and his laws, which we may refer to about the year 600, are perhaps the oldest extant in Anglo-Saxon. In the year 1066, William the Norman conquered England; but the highly-cultivated, deeprooted, ancient national tongue, could not be immediately extirpated, though it was instantly banished from the court. This king's laws were even published in French. A fragment of the Saxon Chronicles, published by Lye, concluding with the year 1079, is still in pretty correct Anglo-Saxon; but, in the continuation of the same chronicle, from 1135 to 1140, almost all the inflections of the language are either changed or regulated, as well as the orthography and most of the old phrases and idioms. We may, therefore, fix the year 1100 as the limit of the Anglo-Saxon tongue. The confusion that prevailed after 1100 belongs to the old English period.'-Rask: Anglo-Saxon Grammar, Preface, p. 46.

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mysterious internal necessity of so developing or rather of so vitiating itself,—a proposition by no means self-evident enough to be received without a more profound philosophy of the fact than has yet been given; and perhaps if we examine history, we shall see that the majority of facts favour the conclusion that changes of this nature are at least accelerated by the operation of some powerful external causes, though they cannot be always historically traced. It is, at all events, incontestable that the permanent occupation of a country by foreigners and the amalgamation of races, have been usually attended with the formation of a new language out of one of those spoken by the two nations; not by the amalgamation of both, but by a simplification of the grammatical structure of the one, and a slender infusion of terms from the other. Which language shall yield will be dependent on circumstances; but where the races have thoroughly amalgamated, one of them has given way. Where the conquerors are few, the conquered have very generally imposed their language on the victors; where very numerous, and the colonies planted have been stable and extensive, (as in the case of the Roman occupation of Gaul,) the victors have succeeded in subduing the language as well as the people. The original Celtic tribes in Gaul and the Spanish Peninsula yielded to the Latin. On the other hand, the Goths who invaded Italy, and the Normans who invaded France, received the language of the conquered territories. But, in either case, the formation of new languages on the Roman stock was the result, and took place, contemporaneously at all events, with the complete amalgamation of the races. It would surely be curious if such a coincidence were merely accidental. In all these cases the bulk of the

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