than proved,* the great body of our language has continued, with very few material or intrinsic alterations, from its first formation to the present hour and that, if the study of our early writers be attended with considerable difficulty and embar : rassment, these are principally to be attributed to a cause very distinct from the mere influx of new, or changes in the structure of old words. The Saxon alphabet may be supposed to have been tolerably well suited to its purposes, as it contained five and twenty letters, besides a certain number of points, or accents, which are generally supposed to have been employed for the purpose of fixing the prosody, and distinguishing the short from the long vowels. These accents however, together with those minute delicacies of pronunciation It is well known that the Welsh soldiers who served in our army at the siege of Bellisle (in the war of 1756), found little difficulty in understanding the language of the Bretons. The Sclavonian sailors, employed on board of Venetian ships in the Russian trade, never fail to recognize a kindred dialect on their arrival at St. Petersburgh. Many more examples might be adduced to shew that the language of a country is never destroyed, but by the annihilation of its inhabitants, nor materially changed, but by their amalgamation with some other people. Indeed, all over the world, children endeavour to speak like their parents, and it may be presumed that they seldom fail in the attempt. which they were intended to represent, gradually fell into disuse, when the language became corrupted, first by the Danish, and afterwards by the Norman invasion: and it is to be observed that the many new sounds which, at the latter of these periods, were introduced into the language, were by no means accompanied by a correspondent number of new and distinctive signs, because the French or Latin alphabet was already familiar to the Saxons, who had adopted many of its letters, on account of their superior beauty, as early as the time of Alfred. It has been observed by those writers who have particularly directed their attention to this subject, that, in the present state of our language, we have no less than thirteen distinct vowel sounds, and twenty-one modifications of those sounds, making in all thirty-four, which we express, as well as we can, by six and twenty letters: but at an earlier period of our language, when the spelling of the Norman words was intended to convey the Norman pronunciation, the deficiency of adequate signs must have been still more sensibly felt; so that our ancestors, finding it absolutely impossible to adopt any consistent mode of orthography, fairly left it to the discretion or caprice of the several writers and transcribers. Chaucer, it seems, was perfectly aware of this inconvenience. In his address to his book he "And, for there is so great diversitè says, "In English, and in writing of our tongue, "So pray I to God that none mis-write thee, "Ne thee mis-metre for default of tongue : "And, read whereso thou be, or elles sung, "That thou be understond, God I beseech!" Troilus and Cress. End of Book V. It was easier to prefer a prayer, than to suggest any human means of accomplishing the object of his wishes. The veil which obscures the writings of our early poets cannot now be wholly removed: and perhaps, among the admirers of antiquity, there may be some who would regret its removal; because, like other veils, it leaves much to the imagination. But the present trivial work having been compiled for the convenience of indolent and cursory readers, it appeared necessary to adopt, as generally as possible, in all the extracts which are hereafter given, the orthography of the present day; not as being quite rational (which it certainly is not), but as being in some degree consistent, and fixed by custom and authority. Those obsolete words which, having been long since elbowed out of the language by French, or Latin, or Greek substitutes, were not reducible to any definite mode of spelling;-those which, having undergone a change in their vowel sounds, or in their number of syllables, could not be reformed without disturbing the rhyme or metre;and those which were so far disguised as to offer no certain meaning,-have been left to that fortuitous combination of letters which the original transcribers or printers had assigned to them. Such are printed in italics, for the purpose of more easy reference to the glossarial notes, in which their meaning is explained or conjectured. After these short preliminary observations on the language of our ancestors, it becomes necessary to say a few words concerning their poetry. This, in its spirit and character, seems to have resembled those Runic odes so admirably imitated by Mr. Gray: but its mechanism and scheme of versification, notwithstanding all the pains which Hickes has employed in attempting to investigate them, are still completely inexplicable. Mr. Tyrwhitt has justly observed, that we do not discover in the specimens of Anglo-Saxon poetry preserved by Hickes any very studied attempts at alliteration (a species of ornament probably introduced by the Danes), nor the embellishment of rhyme, nor a metre depending on a fixed and determinate number of syllables, nor that marked attention to their quantity which Hickes supposed to have constituted the distinction between verse and prose. Indeed, it may be observed, in addition to the arguments adduced by Mr. Tyrwhitt, that as the distinctive character of the Greek and Latin prosody was obliterated by the invasion of the northern nations, it is not probable that the original poetry of these nations should have been founded on a similar prosody; particularly, as the harmony of all the modern languages depends much more upon accent and emphasis, that is to say, upon changes in the tone or in the strength of the voice, than upon quantity, by which is meant the length of time employed in pronouncing the syllables. Upon the whole, it must still remain a doubt, whether the Anglo-Saxon verses were strictly metrical, or whether they were only distinguished from prose by some species of rhythm: to a modern reader it will certainly appear, that there is no other criterion but that which is noticed by Mr. Tyrwhitt, namely, "a greater pomp of diction, and a more stately kind of march." The variety of inflection, by which the Anglo-Saxon language was distinguished from the modern English, gave to their poets an almost unlimited power of inversion; and they used it |