T CHAPTER I THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 'HE following history of English literature will only comprise a sketch of such works as were originally written in English. The Celtic poetry of the early British bards does not come under the heading of English national literature. The national language, both in literature and in public life, has been English: the poetry of the Irishman, Thomas Moore, of the Scotchman, Walter Scott, and of Kipling, the Anglo-Indian, is English poetry. In attempting any historical sketch of the development of the English language, we find at the outset grave difficulties in the fact of the name "Anglo-Saxon" having been given to the earliest form of the language, which has caused English and AngloSaxon to be treated as two different languages. We propose, in the present work, to adopt the term "Early English," as affording a better standpoint from which to review the most ancient period in the history of the English language and literature. On landing in Britain, in the year 55 B.C., Julius Cæsar found a Celtic population, akin to the Celts of Gaul. In the north, in Scotland, were established the Picts, called by the Romans Caledonians; in the south were the Britons; in Ireland the Gaels or Irish. The conquest of the country, commenced under the Roman general Agricola in the year 84 A.D., was not completed till the reign of the emperor Severus (209 A.D.). For two centuries Britain endured the yoke of Rome, until 409 A.D., when the emperor Honorius recalled the Roman troops, or rather until 420, when the last Roman legion left British soil; but in no part of its great western empire did Rome leave less traces of its literary influence than in Britain. It may have been that the number of Roman soldiers and colonists was small in comparison with the hordes of invading Gauls from the borders of the empire, or it may have been due to a stubborn resistance on the parts of the Celts of Britain; at all events, but few isolated traces of Roman elements survive in English from the first four centuries of the Christian era, e.g. the termination -coln (colonia), as in Lincoln; the word street (from strata), also in Stratford; chester (as a separate name, or as in Winchester, Colchester), from castrum; portus in Portsmouth; and again, mile (mille) and wall (vallum). All other Roman words to be found in Early English prior to the Norman invasion in 1066 owe their inclusion in the English vocabulary to the Latin liturgies of the Christian church (about the seventh century) rather than to the Roman dominion. From this we get words like clerk (clericus), candle (candela), preach (praedicare). To the same origin may be assigned the earliest Greek elements in the English language: e.g. priest from peoßúrns, church from кupiaкóv, devil from διάβολος. About the middle of the fifth century began that Germanic immigration into the southern provinces of Britain from the north-west coastlands of Germany, from the country between the Elbe and the Ems, from Schleswig-Holstein and Jutland,—an immigration which gave to country, people, and language their name and character. The Angles, a Frisian tribe, with all the Germanic fondness for wandering, were among the chief of those who left their home by the German Ocean to settle in their thousands in Britain. The story of Hengist and Horsa, the leaders of the Anglo-Saxons at their landing in 449, may be no more than a later attempt to account for the immigration of the Low German tribes; this does not concern our sketch, and the Venerable Bede (674-735), the first to mention these Anglian chieftains, is no trustworthy authority for events so long before his own time. We may readily assume that peaceful transmigration from the sea-board of the German Ocean had been going on for centuries, but that the first signal for the inundation of England with German conquerors had been given by the withdrawal of the Roman legions from Britain at the beginning of the fifth century. According to some accounts, the Britons themselves invoked the assistance of the Anglo-Saxons to resist the attacks of the Picts in the north. Certainly, a wandering people like the Frisians required no invitation. They arrived of their own accord on the departure of the Romans, and stubbornly maintained their ground in their newly conquered territories. Their descendants have remained there to this very day, after having turned to their own advantage the Norman Conquest, the last of the foreign invasions, thanks to their dogged Low German tenacity. After the Anglian invasion came a host of Scandinavians, Norwegians, and Swedes from the north-east, and Danes from the east, all setting sail for the land of promise in the west. The difference in language between the Danes and the Frisians at that time (about the fifth and sixth centuries) can have been but slight, and from thence onwards the oldest Middle English exhibits a number of words which can only be Danish in origin, e.g. ale, ill, sky, are, law, take; "of" is derived from the Scandinavian, as also family names in -son, names of places in -by (Derby, Grimsby, Whitby). We are not in a position to lay down with precision the exact influence of the Germanic origin of the conquerors on the formation of the Early English dialects, of which there were four: the northern, with its main seat in Northumberland, the midland in Mercia, the southern in Wessex, and the south-east in Kent. Literary supremacy went at first to the north, then to the south, and at last, in the fifteenth century, it passed undisputed to the midlands, owing partly to the poetical influence of Chaucer and partly to the English Bible; by the side of this, only the Scottish dialect could at all hold its own. The dialect of the midlands was at once the language of the court and of London. We may compare the supremacy of the dialect of Paris and of the Isle de France, which ousted all other French dialects. To the Saxon invasion can be traced all geographical endings in -sex: Essex, Wessex, Sussex, Middlesex, though the people as a whole were never called "Saxons." The English people spoke of themselves from the first as "Englisc" and then as "English." A united kingdom was not the immediate outcome of the Anglian conquest. The invaders were Germans, and Germans march through a line of numerous small states to national unity. The seven kingdoms or heptarchy of Essex, Wessex, Sussex, Kent, Mercia, Northumberland, and East Anglia were not formed into one powerful kingdom with the name of "Engeland" till 815, under King Egbert of Wessex. In the literature of the English people, we always find its language spoken of as "Englisc," just as the early English called themselves "Englisc folc." The French word "Angleterre" betrays its origin still more plainly-the land of the Angles. The original names Britain and Britons were not long in use, and to-day only appear in the language of the orator or the diplomatist. We first find the word "Anglo-Saxon" employed in the eighth century in the writings of Paulus Diaconus, a Lombard, and later, in a Life of Alfred the Great, which styles him "king of the AngloSaxons" (Angul-Saxonum Rex), but wrongly, for the English were only called Saxons by their Celtic subjects or by other nations, never by their own writers. In the translation of Boethius1 ascribed to King Alfred, he gives the name of "English" more than once to the language spoken by himself and his people, and it has kept this name for more than ten centuries. It is worthy of note, though not without a parallel in history, how 1 Or Boetius. the language of the original Celtic inhabitants has been repressed and overmastered by the language of the Anglian invaders. There are fewer Celtic words left in English than even in French. Out of an entire language some few dozen words survive, such as lad, lass, hog, park, basket, crag, den, wed, knock, plaid, shamrock. The Celtic names of places have had a longer life, such as Kent, Thames, Avon, and many others. The literature and language of England may be conveniently divided into three comprehensive periods down to the Renaissance: Early English (or Anglo-Saxon), Middle English, Modern English. For the first two, the Norman Conquest in 1066 is the dividing line; for the last two, the poetical activity of that great creator of language, Chaucer, in the second half of the fourteenth century. The characteristics of the language of these three steps of development are briefly in Early English, a wealth of inflexions for nouns, adjectives, and verbs; the use of inflexions to replace several of the prepositions; a conciseness of poetical expression often approaching obscurity, and complete freedom from any admixture of the Romance languages: in Middle English, between the Norman Conquest and Chaucer, an invasion of French words; the weakening and impoverishment of all inflexions: in Modern English, subsequent to Chaucer, the influence of French; the inflexional vowels are silent; the inflexions themselves decay, and an almost French arrangement of words prevails. Let us take a specimen of the oldest Early English from the epic of Beowulf (seventh century) : THE BURIAL OF BEOWUlf. Him tha gegiredan Sweart of swic-thole, Swogende gled Prepared. For him then they geared,1 The folk of the Geats, All unweaklike that was, With war-helms behung, And with boards of the battle, And bright byrnies, 2 E'en after the boon that he bade. Laid down then amidmost The warriors to waken: 2 Cuirasses. |