high repute, and that they were jealous of the honour of their station, as belonging to pure gentry, will appear from the subjoined award of the Earl Marshall in 1632.

""

By this it appears that the band took exceptions to the appointment of Master George Baker, on the ground that he was no gentleman. It need hardly be explained that this charge did not then imply the censure understood by such an expression at the present day. It had no reference to the personal qualifications of the individual, but merely implied that he was not a gentleman of blood and coat armour;" or, as the French heralds express it, "un ancien gentelhomme," or gentleman of ancient descent. It is quite evident that Master George Baker was (in the phrase of the present day) "moving in good society," for I find that he was at this time married to Jane, daughter of Sir Robert Hutton, Knt. one of the Justices of the Common Pleas, which, in times when fashion had not supplanted rank, would have been considered a rather high connection. It will be seen that the result of this solemn investigation was favourable to Mr. Baker, and that be established his gentry.

Lansdowne MSS. 873. fo. 69.

"Whereas exceptions hath lately been taken by some of his Majesty's Gentlemen Pensioners, that Mr. George Baker, newly admitted of that Band, was no gentleman, and therefore unfit to serve his Majesty in that place of that nearness, being of that eminence and that credit, upon his Majesty's speciall co'mand given in that behalf, I have, calling unto me, as assistants, the Right Honourable the Lord Chamberlaine of his Majesty's Household, and other Lords, (and certain Officers of Armes being likewise present,) convented the said George Baker before me, who for justification of his gentry, produced several certificates, under the hands and seals of Thomas Baker, of Battle; Thomas Baker, of Mayfield, in the county of Sussex; and John Baker, of Groom-bridge, in the county of Kent, whereby the said parties do testify and acknowlege that the said George Baker is lineally discended from Richard Baker, younger son of Thomas, common auncestor of their family; and that they do and have

MR. URBAN, June 12. In the course of a correspondence which took place in your Magazine between certain anonymous and very virulent opponents of mine, and myself, touching the state of Saxon philology in England, a good deal of stress was laid upon the question of accents. I now redeem the pledge given by me, to explain the system upon which 1 act, in common with the profoundest philologists in Europe. I do this, not because I have any hope of convincing the persons who have done me the hofor their nour to select me as the L abuse, or because ! +

can

ever signify whether they are convinced or not, but for the purpose of giving information to those who desire and deserve it. The facts of the case are few and simple. It is quite certain that in all Saxon, Norse, and German MSS., some marks are placed over the vowels for some purpose or other. Some MSS. have more, some fewer of these marks; and the MSS. even of one period are not always consistent in their use of them. In what I am about to write I shall confine myself to the Saxon MSS., and to a few remarks upon the Norse in connexion with the Saxon. My reason for omitting the German MSS. here, is that they have a double system, one part of which appears to have to do with quantity, the other with tone.

Taking all Saxon MSS. without distinction of time and period, the accentuation seems to denote one of three things:

1o. That the accented vowel is long, i. e. e=e, but én, oo, and ów. 2°, and very rarely, that the vowel is emphatically marked out for the purpose of particular distinction; and this is equivalent to italics with us; thus the Cott. MSS. of Elfric's grammar speaks of a word which ends with a short e, þæt ge-endia on sceortne é.

3o. Some words are accented for the same purpose of peculiar distinction, as under similar circumstances we use either a capital initial or capitals as in speaking of the Almighty or the Saviour by the third personal pronoun, where we should print He, or HF, the Saxon some-, times wrote Hé; but it is quite clear that in these cases it is the word and not the vowel that is accented.

points, at all), is the one to which I shall confine myself. Generally speaking, the older a MS. is, the fewer of these marks are to be found in it: they are then principally used as a distinction between words which, were it not for the difference in the length of their vowels, would be spelled alike. Take, for example, a few such words; ac, sed, ác, quercus; ful, plenus, fûl, sordidus; is, est, ís, glacies; man, homo, mán, nefas; god, deus, gód, bonus; ne, non, né, nec; hof, atrium, hóf, extuli; heoru, ensis, heóru (nom. fem.) mitis; wið, contra, wid, liga; galan, canere, gálan (acc. def.) lascivum, &c. &c. &c.

In all these cases the marks in the

MSS. correspond accurately to the relations borne by these vowels to one another in all the Teutonic languages; and these relations I shall take leave to look at a little more closely by and by, because one of your bungling men without a name has ventured to fall foul of James Grimm for establishing and denoting them.

So much for the theosophic and psychological views of the Saxons, respecting God and man, and good and evil. Those who do not like the

There is some little use, Mr. Urban, in maintaining these distinctions; although it is no doubt a bitter annoyance to your idle and ignorant friends, to be compelled either to give up the point as hopeless for Saxon, or else to study the Teutonic tongues, en masse : but we shall still feel obliged to require this of them, if it be only for the sake of forcing them to spare us the twaddle which they sometimes favour us with, from their ignorance of these distinctions:-for example, it has been gravely asserted, that the Saxons were so deeply impressed with the goodness of God, and the wickedness of man's nature, (in spite of the Teutonic God, and probable Demiurgus, Mannus) as to have but one word for God and good, and one for man and evil. This is pretty and plausible, and has indeed but one fault, viz., the not having a word of truth in it. Mark!

Man.

trouble of studying till they can set themselves right, may stick to the apparent coincidence between the Saxon forms, and reject not only the

distinction of accent, but that on which the distinction rests, viz., the comparison of the cognate tongues.

So far what the earlier MSS. intend.

ed: but did they always stick to this? I answer, that they very seldom took the trouble to do any such thing: they very seldom thought it worth while to make distinctions for the eye, which were made by the voice in speaking, and which the context would always ascertain. But thus much the MSS. did; whenever they accented, they accented the long vowels; and what those long vowels were I will enumerate below. The second and somewhat later class of MSS. sometimes, and most capriciously in general, extended these accentuations to certain vowels, not naturally long, but rendered so by position: this I attribute entirely to Danish influence, certain vowels becoming long in Norse before certain consonants, although naturally short, and remaining short in all the Tuetonic tongues but the Norse. It is here that I think Rask errs ; he followed very often his Norse analogies, and they misled him. It is here that I think Thorpe errs, when he builds upon the class of MSS. I describe as supporting Rask's views. I reject utterly the accentuation of such words as ún, wórd, &c. They are Norse accentuations, but not Saxon. The last class of MSS. are nearly all subsequent to the Conquest, and in addition to all the accumulated errors of other MSS, whether these be errors of ignorance, or the still more frequent errors of carelessness, they accent almost every i, especially where it is possible to confound it with the stroke of a u, an m or n; and some, indeed, go so far as to accent nearly every vowel indiscriminately. But there is yet a word to be said respecting Saxon MSS.: those who are very anxious to save themselves the trouble of learning how the vowels should be accented, make a great parade respecting the authority of the MSS. those who are familiar with Saxon MSS. are equally well aware, that these literateurs à la violette are not familiar with Saxon MSS. or with any MSS. whatever; nay, even that they do not know what is the case with every editor of a Greek or Latin classic. Do these profound in

:

vestigators of languages suppose that Dr. Blomfield would have printed the first line of the Prometheus

Χθωνως μην εις τελουρων εκομην πηδων, even if he had found it so written in every MS.? I rather think that the learned prelate would have thought it necessary to correct the inaccurate Greek of his authorities, by what he knew was and must be right. However, in order to show the result of adhering to MSS. in this case, I shall take the liberty of printing a few lines carefully accented upon such authority, and to that authority being real, I pledge myself. (Alfr. Boeth. Rawl. p. 2).

Dá líóð þé ic wréccá géó lústboe'rlícé sóng, íc scéal nú héófíéndé singan, and mid swi(de) úngérádum wórdúm géséttán, þéah íc géó hwilúm gécóplicé fúndé, ác íc nú wépéndé and gicsiéndé óf gérádrá wórdá mísfó, mé ábléndán þás úngétréówan wórúldsæ'lþá, and mé þá fórlétán swá blindné ón bís dimné hól. Đá béréáfódón æ'lcéré lústbæ'rnéssé þá dá ic hím æ fré bétst trúwódé dá wéndón hí mé héórá bæ'c tó, ánd mé míd éállé frómgéwitáu. Tó hwón scéóldán lá míné friend séggán bæ't ic gésæ'líg món wæ'ré, hú mæ'g sé béón gesælig séðe ón dám gésælþúm ðurhwúníán né mót?

:

we find, that in old Saxon and German, A mostly remains in the same words as took it in Gothic, but that in A. S. it is under different circumstances replaced by, three different vowels before h, l, and r, it becomes ea, thus Goth. gards, alls, mahts, A. S. geard, eall, meaht. When followed in another syllable by i, the Gothic a becomes A. S. e, thus Goth. katils, A. S. cetel, and this is sometimes the case in O.H.D. and O. Sax. When followed by sc, st, sp, or by a single final consonant (except m, n, 1, h, and r) or by any single consonant and the inflections, es, e, the Goth. A becomes æ in A. S. Before m and s it sometimes is replaced by a, sometimes by o. The Gothic 1 sometimes remains in the other tongues unchanged, sometimes becomes dulled into ë, and in A. S. before h and r becomes changed into eo; thus Goth. itan. O. H. D. ezzan O. Sax. and A. S. etan, edere: Goth. haírus (for hirus) ensis. O. H. D. hëru, A. Sax. hëoru. O. Nor. hiörr (=hiarru.) In A. S. this vowel is sometimes wrongly replaced by y. The Gothic u remains as u in the other languages, or is dulled into o, and especially in those cases in which, from standing before h and r, it became aú; thus Goth.waúrd, O.H.D. waort, A.S.word. But if followed by i or its equivalent ë, u in A. S. becomes y, N.H.D. ü or u. Thus Goth. Runi genus. O.H.D. chunni. A.S. cynë, and O.H.D. chuninc. A. S. cyning, rex. The Goth. A'I is represented in O.H.D. M.H.D. and N.H.D. and in O. Nor. by ei, in O. Sax. by é, and in A. S. by á: but in A. S. this á, if followed by i orë, becomes æ'. The Gothic ei is represented by î in all the languages quoted, and only in the N. H. D. and N. E. does ei return in sound, though not in form, in both; thus Goth. weins, O.H.D. O. Sax. A. S. wín, N.H.D. wein, N. E. wine. The Gothic E' becomes in A. S. æ, in O. H. D. á; the Goth. IU remains in all the older languages but the A. S., where it becomes eó,and which is sometimes replaced by y'. The Goth. au, which in O. H. D. and O. Sax. generally remains as ou or ó, becomes eá in A. S. as Ráuds, A. S. Reád, rubes. The Gothic ó remains as ó in O. Sax. and O. Nor. In O. H. D. it becomes uo, and in A. S. it remains as ó, except when followed by i orë, and then it becomes

In order to ascertain the length of the vowel in an A. S. word it is therefore necessary to ascertain what vowel corresponds to it in the other principal Teutonic tongues, and by this process alone can we correct the MSS. themselves. In connection with this method, we may use the etymological means afforded us by the verbal scheme, or the system of relation in which the vowels stand to one another, in the present, præt. sing., præt. pl. and past participle, of those twelve conjugations which it has pleased the same profound scholars, who prefer idleness to inquiry, to nickname irregular, but which are the foundationstones of all Teutonic etymology.

I have but one word to add to what I have said: in spite of the ingenuity made use of to persuade myself and my friends that the ungentlemanlike productions to which I have alluded, proceeded from the University of Oxford, I have come, perhaps rather late, to a different conclusion. That my opinions as a scholar undergo thereby any change, is out of the question but I fairly say, that if, in the expression of those opinions, I have used words which have given pain to any one, I most sincerely regret it. I claim as much excuse as may be granted to a scholar, indignant at the attempt to injure a favourite

pursuit; to a man, filled with scorn at the anonymous abuse not only of his friend, but his friend's countrymen, to whose industry Europe owes so much; and to a gentleman, filled with disgust at, and contempt for, the vulgar tone assumed by assailants, whose incognito alone secured them from a different and severer mode of castigation. To all those, who in the spirit of fair and honourable criticism deal with my remarks, or my editions of books, I am accustomed to listen with such respect as their views deserve; and to all, in whatever school brought up, who seriously put their shoulder to the wheel with me, I hold out the right hand of fellowship; but against all quackery, and all quacks, I hold the old motto-" War to the knife!" Yours, &c.

JOHN KEMBLE.

MR. URBAN,

Gloster Terrace, Hoxton, May 20. IT will be gratifying to your readers to be informed that there is a probability of something like justice, although late justice, being done to the memory of JOHN WICLIF; of whom Southey' has truly said, that "It is a reproach to this country, that no statue has been erected to his honour;" and another writert of some celebrity has observed, Such men are the true heroes, to whom mankind ought to raise statues and trophies, rather than to conquerors, who often waste the lives of their fellow-creatures to gratify their own ambition."

"

Wiclif was a man of rare talents, distinguished learning, persevering industry, and great fortitude, and did more in the cause of the Reformation in this country than any other individual, because he may be truly said to have originated it. The service which he rendered to that cause has this peculiar feature of merit, that he stood alone, and was the first who started in that race of danger and of true glory, in which others could but follow him. His shrewdness, patience, and firmness, were equally conspicuous in his exposure of the unjust usurpations, the errors, and the iniquitous practices of the Church of Rome; and, although the effects of his labours were

* Book of the Church, vol. i. p. 347. + Wakefield's Family Tour.

not immediately perceived, either by friends or enemies, he unquestionably laid the foundation of the Reformation in this country. Of this the enemies to that great measure were afterwards so conscious, that they did him the honour to disinter his mortal remains, and burn them for the alleged heresy of his life.

The plan of a monument for Wiclif originated five years since at Lutterworth in Leicestershire, where it lay dormant for some time; but where about 3001. have since been raised towards its execution. Among other distinguished patrons of this measure, I find the names of the Right Reverend the Lords Bishops of Lincoln, Dublin, Salisbury, and Lichfield and Coventry. The memorial of Wiclif now contemplated is a monumental statue of him in the Church; but it has been suggested, that some more public memorial of him might be adopted: and a writer in the Leamington Chronicle has suggested a statue in or on the new Town Hall about to be erected at Lutterworth.

Will you, Mr. Urban, permit an old correspondent to offer another suggestion, and to propose the erection of a strong airy building in some convenient and central part of the town; which may be used as a TOWN SCHOOL, on the comprehensive principle of being open to receive the children of persons of all religious denominations. This I venture to submit would be an appropriate memorial of a man, who did so much to extend the knowledge of divine truth, and make it accessible to all, by liberating it from the thraldom of Popish proscription.

Another appropriate memorial of Wiclif I would also venture to suggest for the consideration of your literary and antiquarian readers. It is a complete and uniform edition of HIS WORKS; many of which have not yet seen the light, but remain locked up in public or private libraries. There are among them, no doubt, articles which would now be regarded as trifles, and interesting only to the antiquary and philologist; but there are others which would in all probability be found highly interestin the theological student a ⚫riar

and I have no

son of adeq