question would certainly be found in far less proportion and that for very obvious reasons-in his 'Canterbury Tales,' in Sir John Mandeville's Travels, or in Wickliffe's Bible. All the writings of the last, rude in style though they be, are characterised (as are those of all popular reformers) by a liberal and, so to speak, instinctive adoption of the vernacular diction.

If we take specimens of Chaucer's original compositions the products of his maturer genius-then he will more than bear the former test. Excepting a very few passages in which he makes a large demand on general and abstract nouns (as of ethical qualities), or of terms of art (as of physic or alchemy,) his diction is more purely Saxon than that of Swift. In his most graphic descriptions of character and incident, it will be found that all the more vivid and expressive words and phrases those which are most poetical in their effect-are Anglo-Saxon; as, for example, in his picture of the jovial monk of whom he says that

When he rode, men might his bridle hear
Gingling in a whistling wind, as clear
And eke as loud as doth his chapel bell;'

and of the poor parson, of whom he writes

That Cristes lore and his apostles twelve

He taught but first he followed it himselve.'* That in the translations of the French romances many French words should have been adopted was natural, for very many of the terms connected with chi

*The beautiful imitation by Dryden of Chaucer's description of the genuine minister of Christ is decidedly inferior, in simple force and vividness, to the original. Nor has Goldsmith or Cowper, in treating the same theme, equalled the graphic touches of our antique poet.

valry were wanting in our own language. It was also natural that this species of literature should, to a certain extent, colour the diction of those who employed themselves in translating it. The great pest of speech,' says Johnson, 'is frequency of translation. No book was ever turned from one language into another without imparting something of its native idiom.' But the extent to which this importation of French words was carried in the translations of the metrical romances, affords no criterion whatever of the extent to which it generally prevailed, or any proof that an equal number of foreign terms had found their way into ordinary language. The moment we break away from these 'translations' to our original poetry and its appropriate themes, and still more when we come to plain prose, the proportion of the foreign element is at once seen to be much smaller and as to colloquial language, it would be nearly as absurd to suppose the Frenchisms of Chaucer equally prevalent there, as to take the diction of Hume for a specimen of the extent to which Latin and French derivatives characterised the ordinary Scotch of his day. The number of such words was at no period greater than that of Latin words after the revival of classical literature-nor so great; and we have, therefore, just as little reason to represent the language as having derived its principal riches (as Hume affirms) from French derivatives, as there would be in attaching similar importance to the yet more abundant subsequent importations from the Latin.*

* Ample facilities are now given to every student, curious in the history of our language, of studying its earlier phases and peculiarities, and of verifying and impressing on the mind the generalised statements of Dr. Latham and other philologists. Among the chief, are the large and often valuable publications

The writers, to whom reference has been made, flourished in the latter half of the fourteenth century. Our language was now fully formed; and in substance, whatever modification it may have undergone, it has never altered. We proceed briefly to trace the principal changes to which it has been since subjected. The language, as the nation made progress in knowledge and civilisation, became cultivated, and began to be written with some approach to uniformity. But it was still rude and unpolished; and such it long remained. A language may be fully formed; its grammar uniform, and even highly artificial, like that of the old Latin or of the Anglo-Saxons; and yet be extremely clumsy and uncouth. A long series of efforts and improvements is required to render it compact, energetic, and harmonious; to give composition either the requisite grace, or the requisite condensation. Nor can this be done till the language is much written till there is a literature. It is not till then

of the Camden Society' and of other learned confederacies actuated by a similar spirit. The sedulous preservation of the older forms of orthography and inflection gives all such publications a peculiar value, and constitutes them a museum of philological specimens and curiosities. Those who have not access to these can consult Warton's History of English Poetry, Ellis's Specimens, both of Poetry and Romance, Weber's Romances, the Paston Letters, and the two series of Letters (from the fifteenth century downwards) published by Sir Henry Ellis from the original documents in the British Museum. They were designed to be illustrative of English history, but are certainly as strongly illustrative of the English language. Being the familiar letters of the parties whose names they bear, they are excellently well adapted to disclose to us the condition of the language of common life at the periods when they were composed;-of its vocabulary and grammar at all events, though they afford no adequate indications of what were even then the capabilities of the language as a vehicle of literature. This can never be estimated except by inspecting the deliberate compositions of writers of acknowledged genius.

that men become aware of the necessity of having an instrument which not only fulfils the first condition of a language—that of conveying thought with perspicuity; but of fulfilling the next great conditionthat of conveying it with brevity and elegance. It is not likely that men will see the desirableness of compactness in the forms of words and in the modes. of combining them, half so soon when they merely speak as when they write a language, unless it be in single phrases, which (like the 'ogh clo' of Coleridge's Jew) are to be repeated some scores of times in as many minutes. When a language is generally written, the saving of labour to the writer, the gradual generation of a feeling of taste, and the desire to impart and enjoy the appropriate pleasures of it, suggest at once manifold improvements. The necessity of dispatch, indeed, even in speech, has in all languages, from time immemorial, led to the formation of those ἔπεα πτερόεντα — those conjunctions and prepositions, to the office and origin of which Horne Tooke first called due attention, though it must be admitted that his criticisms are far from being always worthy of his original conception. But there are other winged words' to which similar impulses and exigencies equally prompt an author, when language is generally written, and especially when it lives and breathes through a national literature. This second class of contrivances Horne Tooke half promised to investigate, but never did.

The slightest inspection of the English of the age of Mandeville and Chaucer will serve to show how much was required to be done in this direction. Many large classes of abbreviations were still requisite; such as contractions in the forms of nouns and verbs, and the rejection of useless or unmusical consonants and syllables; more refined and elliptical

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idioms; the suppression or amputation of sundry compound prepositions and conjunctions; the curtailment of many other superfluous or polysyllabic particles, as well as of some of the most prolix, yet most frequent constructions. Those brief formulæ, those refined ellipses, which give so much trouble and perplexity to the grammarian in his analysis-more especially in relation to Syntax-are very generally among these secondary formations in language. Anomalous enough they often are to him, and resolutely refuse the proffered place in his laboriously invented classifications; but they were resorted to because people felt the convenience of them, and were adopted with a very natural indifference about the amount of trouble which they might give to grammarians.*

* There are few examples of over-refined grammatical speculalation more absurd than some of those in which Horne Tooke himself indulges; speculations which almost expose him to the condemnation of grammarians which he quotes from Athenæus; 'Grammarians would be the greatest fools in existence, if there were no physicians'—ei μǹ iarpoì hoav. Such is his explanation μὴ of the meaning and origin of the word to as the sign of the infinitive mood. First, 'to' is equivalent to 'do,' though no similarity of meaning can be imagined; and as to form, the correspondent words in all the Teutonic languages will serve to show that they are from totally distinct roots. It is more droll still to find a sensible man like Crombie adopting the so-called explanation a generation afterwards, and even refining upon it; talking as if the English were an aboriginal language, and had no historical connexion with pre-existing dialects; in a word, as if it had been formed by a set of languageless savages, and as if he had had the whole process revealed to him. 'I have remarked that the first care of men in a rude and infant state would be to assign names to surrounding objects, and that the noun, in the natural order of things, must have been the first part of speech. Thus I shall suppose that they assigned the word plant as the name of a vegetable set in the ground. To express the act of setting it they would say do plant, that is act plant.' (p. 100.) A little history sets all this refined metaphysics at rest. The Anglo