XIII. In the new circumstances, political and social, in which England was placed by the Norman Conquest, the old literary language of the country perished with the peculiar civilisation of which it formed a part, somewhat as did the classical Latin after the overthrow of the Western empire; but more rapidly, in consequence of the important additional disadvantage of having to encounter the rivalry of a new civilisation, and of another tongue also beginning to be employed in literature. Ceasing to be read or patronised, it ceased to be written; and, no longer written, it soon came to be no longer understood. But there was still left in use as the common or vernacular tongue a species or form of English, differing from the English that was written before the Conquest chiefly by its comparative want or neglect of inflections; and this became the germ of our modern national speech, or at least of so much of it as is of native origin.

THE only considerable composition in the original form of the English language that is known to have been written after the Norman Conquest is the portion of the National (or so called Saxon) Chronicle, extending from that event to the death of King Stephen (in 1154). Before the latter date this Original English had apparently begun to be looked upon as a dead language, and to be only studied as such by a few antiquaries, like the Latin chroniclers Florence of Worcester and Henry of Huntingdon. It is commonly designated Saxon, or Anglo-Saxon.

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The term Anglo-Saxon, whether as applied to the language or to the people by whom it was spoken, must be understood to mean properly Saxon of England as distinguished from Saxon of the Continent; just as AngloNorman means Norman of England, as distinguished from Norman of the Continent. It is a compound formed on the principle of assuming Saxon as the name of the people and of the language, and England as that of the country. The Anglo-Saxon is merely one dialect of Saxon, as the Continental or Old Saxon is another. It cannot mean, as is sometimes supposed, the language of the Angles and Saxons.*

The following are some of the principal grammatical peculiarities in which the Original English (or AngloSaxon) differs from what is now called English:

The nouns, both substantive and adjective, are of three genders-masculine, feminine, and neuter.

* Our ancestors, by whom this language was spoken, usually called their country England (Engla-land or Anglia), and themselves and their language English. These are the terms commonly used in the Chronicle. Beda entitles his Latin History Historia Gentis Anglorum Ecclesiastica, and, in enumerating the languages spoken in Britain, he designates that of the Angles and Saxons generally as lingua Anglorum. Sometimes, however, he has Angli sive Saxones, and Anglica sive Saxonica (lingua). The Latin chroniclers after the Conquest, meaning by the English the then mixed population and language, commonly take advantage of the term Saxon to distinguish the people and the language before that revolution. It may be doubted, perhaps, in what sense exactly we are to understand the Angulsaxones of Asser, the biographer of Alfred the Great, before the Conquest, and the Angulsaxones, Angli-Saxones, and Anglo-Saxones of Florence of Worcester after it,—whether, that is to say, as meaning the Saxons of England or the Angles and Saxons; but in modern philology, at any rate, by Anglo-Saxon we can only be understood to mean, as has been said, the Saxon (or English) of England as distinguished from the Old Saxon of the Continent.

The cases are formed by variations of the termination,

The definite article se, seó, thaet, is also used both as the demonstrative and as the relative pronoun. And the relative pronoun is often expressed by the indeclinable the, which has now come to be used as the definite article. The indefinite article was sometimes expressed by sum (our modern some), and often (as in Greek or Latin) was not expressed at all.

The personal pronouns,—Ic (I), thú (thou), he, heó, hit (he, she, it),—as well as the possessive and interrogative pronouns, are also all declined. He and hit make his in the genitive sing.; heó makes hire: whence evidently our his (down to a comparatively recent date used also as the genitive of the neuter, where we now say its) and her. Our their appears to be the gen. plur. hira (common to all the genders); as our they is the nom. plur. hí. Him, again, is the original dat. sing. masc. and neut., and dat. plur. in all the genders.

In the Original English verb, the infinitive ends in an ; the present participle in ende, the past participle in od, or

ed, or d. The prefix ge is found with all parts of the verb, but most commonly with the parts expressing past time. In the present indicative the termination of the 2d pers. sing. is ast or st, that of the 3d pers. ath or th; that of the plural persons ath. The terminations of the singular persons of the past tense are in the indicative, de, dest, de; in the subjunctive, de throughout; so that both tenses are completely distinguished from the past participle passive. The plural persons in both tenses al. end in don.

The written form of our earliest English, it thus appears, is, like the Greek or the Latin, what may be called an inflectional language. But we do not know that this was the only form of the language in use even before the Conquest. In any country, the standard or literary language of which is highly inflectional, it would seem to be only what might be looked for, that there should exist also an oral dialect of a less artificial character and looser texture; for it is found that, whatever may be the advantages of a certain kind which an elaborate system of inflection gives to a language, all the ordinary purposes of communication can be sufficiently attained with very little inflection, or even with none at all. It is remarkable that the language which is, perhaps, the oldest in the world, the Chinese, is also the least inflected. It is generally held, indeed, that the Chinese has probably never passed through or reached the inflected stage. But still the fact of its actual condition might awaken a suspicion that, perhaps, the latest stage of language may consist in its complete emancipation from inflection and the shackles of grammar. Here, as in other cases, the simplest form of the instrument may be found to be the most perfect. It does not appear that the Chinese language is found by those to whom it

is native to be, in consequence of its scanty or no gram mar, deficient either in distinctness or even in rhetorica. and poetical expressiveness. A few particles and other auxiliary or connecting words are stated to have made their way into the modern form of the language; but it does not appear to have acquired anything of inflection properly so called. Indeed, the acquisition or growth of inflection by a language is probably unknown as an actual phenomenon.

It has been conjectured that the Italian language, or something not very unlike the modern Italian, may have been a spoken dialect among the ancient Romans. It is possible that in the same manner each of the other NeoLatin tongues, as they are called, may have sprung up and acquired in great part its peculiar form before the Western Empire was overthrown, and its provinces overrun, or at least taken possession of, by the northern barbarians. What is called the Romaic, or modern Greek, may be substantially a popular idiom of ancient times. The great literary language of India, the Sanscrit, has its less elaborately artificial form, the Pracrit. So may there have been, even in the best days of the written or classical Anglo-Saxon, or Original English, a spoken dialect of the language which was comparatively uninflectional; and this, preserved on the lips of the people, may have survived the Norman Conquest, when the literary language sunk before its foreign rival.

But if, as is commonly assumed, the irregular English, or Semi-Saxon, as it is commonly called, which we find to have been in use after the Conquest was a new form of speech, which had in some way or other been produced by that catastrophe,-was, in other words, the old national language in ruins,-it may be held as certain that