IN ENGLISH PROSE: CONSISTING OF SPECIMENS OF THE LANGUAGE IN ITS EARLIEST, SUCCEEDING, AND LATEST STAGES, WITH NOTES EXPLANATORY AND CRITICAL. TOGETHER WITH A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, AND A CONCISE ANGLO-SAXON GRAMMAR. Intended as a Text-Book for Schools and Colleges. BY JOSEPH PAYNE, Vice-President of the Council of the College of Preceptors, and one of the Council of the Philological Society; Editor of "Studies in English Poetry," "Select Poetry for Children," Author of "The Curriculum of Modern Education," etc. LONDON: VIRTUE AND CO., 26, IVY LANE. ·BIB PREFACE. THE editor of this little volume claims to be the first who has presented to the public specimens of the entire English language with a commentary of illustrative notes, pointing out the various changes effected in it from age to age. His appreciation of the term "English" is that of Palgrave, Craik, Cockayne, Freeman, and others who have proved decisively that the language of Ethelbert, Beda, Ælfred, and Ælfric was "English," that the people who spoke it was the "English" people, and that the land which they occupied was Engla-land, the land of the Angles or English. The epithet Anglo-Saxon, so frequently applied to our forefathers who lived before the Norman conquest, is a misnomer of modern invention. There never was, strictly speaking, either an Anglo-Saxon nation or an Anglo-Saxon language. The use of this term has led to the disconnection, in popular estimation, of modern Englishmen from their true and noble ancestors, and to forgetfulness of the fact that our present national character, our most valued institutions, our tone, spirit, and language, are but developments of germs which began growing in this soil thirteen hundred years ago. We are too prone to speak of the Norman conquest as the beginning of our national life, whereas that event, all-important as it was, was only an episode in our history. The Norman conquest did indeed threaten the entire English nation with destruction, but the result, as we know, was, that the spirit of the native population proved to be indomitable, that the conquerors were themselves made captive, that they adopted the English name and language as their own, |