truth, and thus fail of the suggestiveness and richness of Saxon words. The author who uses them habitually, without any deeper reference, erelong becomes enfeebled, his emotional nature dried up in its fountain-heads.

But more than the loss of intellectual power, there is a loss on the moral side also. Many words are storehouses of moral ideas, if we have but the key to unlock them, and are capable of elevating our habits of thought and observation to higher levels. The word constitution, for instance, is not a parchment, or a paper ordinance simply; in its original sense, it carries our thoughts back to that which is abiding and necessary to the very conception of a state. The English word wrong, derived from the verb wring, reveals its nature as something wrung from a man contrary to his interests and rights; and when pronounced with a full sense of its import, and a full hearty articulation of its consonants, attains its full force. It is worthy of note that the French tort from the Latin torqueo, has a similar sense, and a similar moral lesson. So again the word false, from the Latin fallo, reveals the practised on the honest mind, of man's moral nature.

deception that has been the betrayal and abuse

Words are of no value, save as expressive of thought. Other things being equal, the man who uses the fewest words for his ideas will be sure of a hearing in the end. A score of authors may write on the same theme, but he only will obtain an abiding place in literature who has most fully and perfectly expressed his thoughts. The importance, therefore, of the study of words on the part of the author, or indeed, of any man who hopes to influence by his language the conduct or character of his fellow-men, or to secure himself an honorable place in their remembrance, can hardly be over-estimated.

Italian Literature in the Age of Edward III., of Henry VIII. – Nature of its Influence - Blank Verse - Pastoral Poetry Minor Poets of the Elizabethan Era - Dramatic Literature -Aid to the Saxon portion of the Language

Dramatic Writers Scholars - Vocabulary of Shakspeare as Compared with Milton The Vocabulary of Original Authors Shakspeare in this respect-Shakspeare's Words the fit words Early Dramatists - Spenser Peculiarity of his Poetry, Language - Minor Poets of the Age: Warner, Joseph Hall, Chapman, Daniel, Donne, Quarles, Herbert - Standard Version of the Scriptures Its Dialect -Influence - English Liturgy Writers of the English Church Style - Wants of the Language - Milton's Influence on the Language Lord Bacon Milton's Minor Poems and Prose.

Influence of Italian Literature.

THE influence of Italian literature, which had furnished subject-matter for some of the elder poets, as Chaucer and Gower, was again felt upon some of the more select minds in the reign of Henry VIII., as Wyatt and Surrey. Its influence, however, was confined rather to supplying models of composition, and improving the literary taste of our authors, than to the introduction of new idioms or new words into our vocabulary, and such

continued to be its influence for more than two centuries. In imitation of the Italian poets, Surrey first discarded rhyme, and employed blank verse, in the translation of two books of the Æneid. The attempt was not very successful, but led the way to later successes on the part of Milton and others. Surrey was more successful in his rhymed poems, and but for his untimely death, the victim of tyranny, at the of twenty-seven, age would have acquired a great name in English literature. Both Surrey and Wyatt did much to refine and polish the language, and by their choice of the popular colloquial speech of their time, disseminated their influence over a wide circle of readers.

It was from Italian literature that our poets borrowed the forms of pastoral poetry, so popular in the time of Elizabeth, and for some time later; illustrated by such writers as Sir Philip Sidney, Spenser, Browne, the Fletchers, and others. The ideal world which the pastoral poet created for himself gave a free range to his invention, and was a means of developing new powers in the language. It was a happy artifice by which the poet set himself free from the unpoetic realities around him, and with just enough of actual truth to retain him within the bounds of poetic probability, had the freest opportunity to display his fancy and his imag ination. If this was not a field for the highest order of excellence, it was a valuable discipline for other and nobler labors on the part of such men as Spenser and Milton.

The minor poets of the Elizabethan period show the influence of Italian models quite as much in the substance as in the form of their poems. There is a warmth of coloring, a freedom in the expression of sensual pas

sion, that belong rather to the warm blood of the South, than to the soberer English, and to the purities of home and the domestic affections. In this direction the language may have gained in copiousness and facility, but at the expense of moral sentiment, and so lost in true power. There were, however, at work in other directions influences that more than made up for any deficiency on this side; influences that have had great weight on the course of English poetry; and as the result, we have the high conceptions of the moral duties and influence of the poet that have been set forth by Milton and Wordsworth.

Dramatic Literature.

The most important means of discipline which the language enjoyed in the sixteenth century was, doubtless, through the drama. If the learning and theology and political discussions of the time were of eminent service in developing the Latin elements of the language and adding to its copiousness, like noble service was rendered on the other hand to the Saxon portion by the drama. This was eminently for the people, and in the language of the people. Those who wrote were often learned the earlier writers nearly all such; and they were thus prepared to select with taste and judgment the fittest words from the popular dialect for the expression of their thoughts. The progress of the drama, - from the first rude exhibitions of scriptural scenes, the so-called Mysteries, and the Moral Plays which were devised for the instruction of the people with a mixture of comic and farcical elements in order to retain their attention and amuse, step by step, as the true office

men,

of the drama became more and more revealed and the means provided to realize it, till it was taken up by Shakspeare and his contemporary dramatists, was eminently favorable to the growth of choice and forcible language. The great variety of the characters and scenes gave it a wide range, till the vocabulary of Shakspeare became more than double that of any other writer in the English language. Craik estimates it at 21,000 words, without counting the inflectional forms as distinct words, while that of Milton was but 7000.

ous.

Every original author naturally forms a vocabulary in many respects his own, for the utterance of his own thought and feeling on all subjects, however vari"But Shakspeare has invented twenty styles. He has a style for every one of his great characters, by which that character is distinguished from every other, as much as Pope is distinguished in his style from Dryden, or Milton from Spenser. And yet all the while it is he himself with his own peculiar accent that we hear in every one of them. The style or manner of expression → that is to say, the manner of thinking, of which the expression is always the product is at once both that which belongs to the particular character and that which is equally natural to the poet, the conceiver and creator of the character." 1

Yet the great number of words which he employs are never used carelessly: they are always the fit words, and can rarely be changed for others as expressive in their place. Very many of them are used but once or twice, and then because needed for the character and the situation. The great mass of his ordinary diction is emphatically Saxon, and used, too, with economy. If we were 1 Craik, i. 564.