The year 1150 is generally assigned as the epoch at which the Saxon language began that process of transformation or corruption by which it was ultimately changed into English. This change, as we have specified above, was not the effect of the Norman invasion, for hardly any new accession of French words is perceptible in it for at least a hundred years from this time it may be remarked that some few French words had crept in before this period, and also a considerable Latinising tendency may be remarked; but the changes of which we are speaking are rather of form than of matter, and are generally referable to one or other of the various causes which have been assigned a few pages back in the clear and emphatic words of Hallam.

In the year 1150 the Saxon Chronicle-that venerable monument of English history-comes to an abrupt Saxon Chroconclusion. This chronicle (or rather series of nicle, 1150. chronicles, for it was evidently continued by a great number of different writers, and exhibits an immense variety of style and language) is intended to give an account of the English annals from A.D. 1; and though the earlier portion, as might be expected, is filled with trivial and improbable fables, the accuracy and importance of the work, as a historical document, becomes immeasurably greater as it approaches the period when it was discontinued; the description of the more recent events, and the portraits of contemporary personages, bearing in many cases evident marks of being the production of men who had been the eyewitnesses of what they paint.

The French language was still spoken at court; and there is a curious anecdote exemplifying the profound ignorance of our English kings respecting the language and manners of the larger portion of their subjects. We read that Henry II., who ascended the throne in 1154, having been once addressed by a number of his own subjects during a journey into Pembrokeshire, in a harangue commencing with the words "Good Olde Kynge!" he turned to his courtiers for an interpretation of these words, whose meaning was totally unknown to him.

Towards the latter end of this century, viz. in 1180, Layamon wrote his translation of Wace's metrical legendary

romance of Brut; and nothing will give a more distinct idea of the difficulty encountered by philologists in fixing the exact period at which the Saxon merged into the English, than the great variety of decisions founded upon the style of this work; some of our most learned antiquarians, among whom is the accomplished George Ellis, deciding that the language of Layamon is "a simple and unmixed, though very barbarous Saxon," while others, who are followed by Campbell, consider it to be the first dawning or daybreak of English. Where so learned and accurate a person as Ellis has hesitated, it becomes every one to avoid anything like dogmatism; but the truth probably is, that the language of Layamon is to be considered either as late Saxon or as very early English, according as the philologist is inclined to attribute the change from one language into the other to a modification taking place in the form or in the matter of the Saxon speech.

Thirteenth century.

At the beginning of the reign of Henry III., in 1216, the English language had made considerable progress, though it had not even yet begun to be spoken at court and it must be regarded at this period as a harsh but vigorous and expressive idiom, containing in itself the seeds or capabilities of future perfection. This century, too, is characterised by the circumstance of Latin having begun to fall into disuse; the learned adopting their vernacular language as a medium for their thoughts. The increasing neglect of the Latin is to be attributed to the secret but extensive spread of those doctrines which afterwards took consistency at the Reformation. Recent investigations have assigned to one very curious monument of old English a different and much earlier date than had been previously fixed for it we allude to the beautiful song beginning Sumer ys ycumen in," &c. This venerable relic has been usually attributed to the fifteenth century, but there can be little doubt as to its being really the production of the thirteenth. It was probably composed about the year 1250, and the language, when divested of its ancient and uncouth spelling, differs so little from the English of the present day as to have caused the error to which we have alluded. About 1280 was written

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the work of Robert of Gloucester, and it is extraordinary to observe how great a change had taken place between this time and the appearance of Layamon, a hundred years earlier. We are now rapidly approaching a period when the language may be said to have acquired some solidity; for at the beginning of the following century we find complaints in a great multitude of writers against neologism and innovations in language—an infallible sign that some standard, Fourteenth however imperfect, and some rules, however century. capricious, had begun to be applied to the idiom—now rapidly rising into a written, and consequently regular, language. In the year 1303, Robert Mannyng, in his 'Handlyng of Sinne,' an English translation of Bishop Grosteste's "Manuel des Peschés,' protests repeatedly against foreign and outlandish innovations: "I seke," says this venerable purist, no straunge Ynglyss." In what consisted the innovations against which he desires to guard—whether the "strange English" was corrupted by an admixture of French words, of Latinisms, or of Grecisms-it is obviously very difficult to ascertain. This century is one of the most important in the history of the literature, and consequently in that of the language also. It was in this century that Wickliffe, in popularising religion, tended also so powerfully to popularise language: it was in this century, too, that the Father of English Literature, the immortal Chaucer himself, introduced the elegance, the harmony, the learning, and the taste of the infant Italian muse, assimilating and digesting, by the healthy energy of genius, what he took, not as a plagiarist, but as a conqueror, from Petrarca and from Boccaccio. Gower, too, who was born shortly before the year 1340, mainly helped to polish and refine the language of his country; and though, for want of that vivifying and preserving quality, that sacred particle of flame, which we designate by the word genius, his works are now obsolete, and consulted less for any merit of their own than to illustrate his great contemporary, the smoothness and art of his versification had doubtless a considerable influence in developing and perfecting the language. It was in the reign of Edward III. that the Lombard character was first disused in charters and public acts, and to this reign also must

be assigned the oldest instrument known to exist in the English language. In the middle of this century wrote Richard Rolle, the Hermit of Hampole, in whose dull ethical poem, the 'Prikke of Conscience,' 'Stimulus Conscientiæ'—we find the same dread of innovation that was expressed forty years earlier by Robert Mannyng, or Robert de Brunne, as he was otherwise denominated. The Hermit of Hampole exhibits the strongest desire to make himself intelligible to lewed or unlearned folk: "I seke no straunge Inglyss, bot lightest and communest." We cannot pass this epoch without an allusion to Langlande's Vision of Piers Plowman,' a long and rather confused allegorical poem, containing many striking invectives against the corruptions of the Romish priesthood, and in particular a most singular prophecy of the severities which were afterwards exercised against the monastic orders by Henry VIII. at the suppression of the religious houses. In 1350, or about that year, the character called Old English, or Black Letter, was first used; and though the language of this period was disfigured by the most barbarous and capricious orthography, it is surprising how similar it is, in point of structure and intelligibleness, to the English of the present day.

Twelve years after this, by the wisdom and patriotism of Pleadings in King Edward III., the pleadings before the tri English, 1362. bunals were restored to the vernacular language— an irrefragable proof of the universal prevalence of the native speech, and of the diminished influence of the Norman French. It is curious to remark how absolutely identical has remained the speech of the mob even from so remote a period to the present day. The following is a passage from a species of political pasquinade disseminated in the year 1382, and gives a very fair specimen of the popular language of the day we have modernized the spelling; and, with this precaution, there is not a word or an expression which differs materially from the language of the people in the nineteenth century:—" Jack Carter prays you all that you make a good end of that ye have begun, and do well, and still better and better; for at the even men near the day. If the end be well, then all is well. Let Piers the ploughman dwell at home, and dight

(prepare) us corn. Look that Hobbe the robber be well chastised. Stand manly together in truth, and help the truth, and the truth shall help you."

In 1385 the Latin chronicle of Higden (attributed to the year 1365) was translated into English by John de Trevisa. It appears that, in the interval which had elapsed since the original was written, the custom of making children in grammar-schools translate their Latin into French had been, principally through the patriotic efforts of a certain Sir John Cornewaill, almost universally discontinued: "so that now," to use the words of Trevisa, "the yere of our Lorde 1385, in all the grammere scoles of Engelond, children leaveth Frensche, and construeth and lerneth in Englische."

Another strong proof of the growing spread and importance of the English language at this period is to be found in the circumstance that our earliest traveller, Sir John Mandeville, who had written in Latin and in French the interesting account of his long wanderings, should have thought fit to give to the world an English version of the same curious work.

In his translation of Higden, Trevisa avoids what he calls "the old and ancient Englische;" and the same author gives a most terrifying description of the barbarous dialects and pronunciation prevalent in the remoter parts of the country. "Some use," says he, in words ludicrously responsive to the sounds he describes, "strange wlaffing, chytryng, harring, garring, and grysbytyng. The languages of the Northumbres, and specyally at Yorke, is so sharpe, slytyng, frotyng, and unshape, that we sothern men may unnethe (hardly) undirstonde that language." And even to the present day the inhabitants (even in neighbouring counties) of distant and retired or "uplandish" districts can hardly understand each other's speech. According to the learned Ritson, the year 1388 was signalised by the restoration to the English language of parliamentary proceedings-a great and important advance for the vernacular idiom: and a singular circumstance, bearing a similar tendency, is to be remarked in the fact that both the present king, Henry IV., and his son and successor, Henry V., made their wills in English, a thing