1. THE THREE INTERESTS IN OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE, Contemporary Review,

2 HIS LITTLE SERENE HIGHNESS. Part VI.

lated from the Platt-Deutsch of

8. HEROISM. By C. Kingsley, .

4. SOME CURIOSITIES OF CRITICISM, 5. A SLIP IN THE FENS,

6. PAGANINI. By Rev. H. Haweis, 7. "AN UGLY DOG,"

Trans

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From The Contemporary Review. THE THREE INTERESTS IN OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE.

of them? In answer to these questions I may say, roughly, that these remains of our old English possess, or ought to possess, for us three kinds of interest.

THERE has been a great activity of late in reprinting rare old English books, and in editing for the first time old English reI. In the first place there is the philologimains that have long lain neglected in cal interest. These reprints, and especially manuscript. The Early English Text So- these careful productions of pieces of old ciety of London, thanks to the indefatigable English from the original or the best exand most disinterested exertions of Mr. F. tant MSS., are necessary materials for J. Furnivall, and to the zeal of the schol- that scientific study of the structure and ars who have co-operated with him, has history of our English tongue which has issued, in the course of the last nine years, of late years become so important a branch a series of volumes of old English litera- of scholarship among us, and in which the ture larger and of more curious variety remarkably good advances that have been than had ever been put forth before by made are but a promise of more yet to be any similar society, and has thereby given done. Ideas formerly entertained on the an impulse to the study of old English, subject of the English Language and its the effects of which are visible on all history, have, by this means, been corrected hands. Worthy of being mentioned along and enlarged; new facts have been discovwith this important Society is Mr. Edward ered; altogether the increase of our Arber, of London, who has for some years knowledge has been such that our former past, in a spirit of admirable private enter-English dictionaries and English grammars prise, been reprinting and editing, in a are now in many respects even laughably wonderfully cheap form, select masterpieces and rarities of our early literature, and has already in this manner made accessible to all a large number of interesting and valuable old books that have been known formerly to most readers only by tantalizing hearsay. Mr. Arber's "English Reprints" are to be recommended most emphatically to all students of English literature. Other instances, in other forms, of the same increased attention to our earlier literature are not wanting. The Rev. A. B. Grosart has earned a marked place for himself by the numerous volumes he has edited under the name of the Fuller Worthies Library. In Edinburgh, besides recent or yet forthcoming editions of some of the old Scottish poets, and other remains, by Mr. David Laing and by the University Librarian, Mr. Small, one notes a collective re-issue, already begun, of the series of the. Scottish Historians. From Glasgow also we have had recently several very convenient reprints.

These facts suggest an inquiry. What purposes are served by these reprints of rare old English books, and disinterrings of quaint old English remains from their manuscript obscurities? What tastes do they gratify? What uses are to be made

insufficient, and have been superseded, or require yet to be superseded, by works more worthy of those names. One cannot forget that it is the Germans that have shown us the way in this exact and scientific study of our own speech, and that some of the most thorough and systematic works on the English language yet produced are the works of German scholars. No such collection of those oldest English remains which are known usually by the name of Anglo-Saxon Literature has yet come from the British press as Grein's

Bibliothek der Angelsächsischen Poesie;" we have nothing so complete, in the shape of a collection of specimens of the most important English writings, from the twelfth century to the fifteenth, as Mätzner's "Altenglische Sprachproben," in two volumes; the "Englische Grammatik ” of the same Mätzner is a work so far overpassing, in elaborateness, any English grammar we have of native production, that the forthcoming translation of it is expected with interest; and of another English Grammar by a German, the 66 Historische Grammatik der Englische Sprache of Professor Koch, one of our most competent critics has said that it is "the most orderly and scientific English grammar yet

written." That there has been a rousing, For one thing, we are much better inhowever, among ourselves in this depart-formed than we were recently respecting ment of scholarship, and that we are not what may be called the geographical varilikely to remain dependent on the Ger- ations of English, i.e., respecting the differmans for the profound and exact investi-ent dialects of English that have existed gation of our own speech, is abundantly from time immemorial, and still exist, evident. Dr. Latham's labours in this de- within our islands. The fact of such diapartment, and the valuable and suggestive lects, preceding any standard or book lectures of the American, Mr. Marsh, are English, and co-existing with it after it now not matters of yesterday. Among had been formed, has, of course, always more recent works in the same general been known; the distribution of the diatrack may be mentioned Wedgwood's "Dic- lects into the two general divisions of the tionary of English Etymology," the excel- Northern and Southern, or into the three lent little "Bible Word-Book" of Messrs. general divisions of the Northern, SouthEastwood and Aldis Wright, Mr. Abbott's ern, and Midland, is also of old date; but Shakespearian Grammar," the three vol- it is only of late that the precise differumes of "Specimens of Early English Lit-ences of the dialects from each other (not erature" edited for the Clarendon Press to speak of the differences of local varieby Dr. Morris and Mr. Skeat, Mr. Ellis's ties of the same dialect) have been investigreat treatise on "Early English Pronun- gated, and to some considerable degree ciation," Mr. Earle's " Philology of the ascertained. We know something now of English Tongue," and Dr. Morris's "His- the differences of the dialects in the imtorical Outlines of English Accidence." portant matter of vocabulary, and can esSeveral recent English dictionaries for timate, for example, the larger amount of popular use, and especially those edited for the Messrs. Chambers by Mr. Donald, ought not to pass without notice, making generally accessible as they do the best results of recent etymological researches in English. Nor ought we to forget how much we owe to the editors of some of the individual publications of the Early English Text Society; among whom no one deserves higher praise, both for the worth of his matter and the lucidity of his manner, than Mr. Skeat, the editor of "Piers Plowman." Indeed, it is these publications of the Early English Text Society that have first effectually broken new ground in this study, and have supplied the best new material for the scholars, whether German or English, that have devoted themselves to it.

It is impossible here to give anything like a complete view of the results of all this recent philological research in English; nor perhaps, while so many questions have rather been stirred than answered, and so much consists of a great accumulation of particulars that have yet to be reduced to principle and system, would an attempt at such a complete view be other than tedious. I will, therefore, but glance at the subject.

Celtic words and of properly Scandinavian words in the vocabulary of the Northern dialect; we know so much more of the grammatical differences that we can now write out in parallel columns the declensions of a noun, or parts of the conjugations of a verb, in old Northern or Northumbrian English, old Southern or Wessex English, and old Midland or Mercian English, respectively; and, while we seem bound to conclude that our standard or book English is mainly a development of the Midland dialect, and particularly of that variety of it called the East Midland, we can see the other dialects, and especially the Northern, contending with this dialect in the course of the important formation, and compelling it to accept some of their peculiarities both of vocabulary and of grammar. Interesting particulars on this subject of the dialects and their mutual relations are to be found in several of the works I have mentioned. Let me simply repeat that there is much in the mass of particulars as now accumulated that requires to be further organized by being submitted to the grasp of historical and scientific principles. Questions have been stirred which have not yet been fully janswered. How far were the grammati

which was a development of the most northerly variety of the old Northumbrian, tempered by neighbourly efforts to conform to the great book-English of the South. All these matters require looking into.

cal differences of the dialects bred by mere nation, persevering for a long time, sheerly
differences of conditions within our island, by reason of its political independence, in
and how far were they imported? A a standard or book-English of its own,
question this which would push inquiry
back into the continental origins of the
English people, or of different portions of
it, and so would merge in that controversy
about Jute, Angle, and Saxon, the precise
significance of each term, and the propri-
ety of English as a name for the whole, Not only have we received new light on
which still persists among us, though in a the subject of the dialects or geographical
new form. Then, again, how much of the variations of English; we have received
cause of the differences of the dialects in new light also as to the changes which the
vocabulary and in grammar is to be sought standard English has undergone chronolog-
in varieties of that mixture of the English ically in its course from its earliest state
with the non-English races within the to the present. That the original English
island, and especially with the previously was a nearly pure Teutonic speech, of the
possessing Celtic race, which did certainly Low-German variety, imported into our
take place? A question this which might islands, with a good tough vocabulary
lead to a reconsideration in some quarters and a rather complex grammar; and that
of the idea, otherwise untenable, of an the history of the speech since then has
actual extermination of the Celtic race consisted mainly in two processes continu
within the bounds occupied by the Eng- ously and simultaneously at work-that
lish, and so might help towards a larger of the absorption of non-Teutonic words
estimate of the function of that race in of all kinds into the vocabulary, and that
the formation of the present national of the simplification of the grammar by
organism. What if it should lead to the the gradual abandonment of inflections:-
conclusion that the history of Britain and so much has long been commonplace. But
of the British mind is by no means, as recent research has given wonderful pre-
some fancy, the mere course of one Teu- cision to this information. We can see
tonic stream, but the course of a Teutonic the original English far back in its most
stream affected most powerfully by several purely Teutonic state, and we can watch
subtle and splendid tributaries? Another the two processes in their actual operation
question, hardly discussed yet, relates to at successive selected points through a
the influence exercised upon the history thousand years. We can see the original
of the English tongue by political causes, specch helping itself sparingly and slyly
and especially by the shiftings of the polit- at first to such Celtic words, Latin words
ical ascendancy from one part of the island of ecclesiastical usage, and Scandinavian
to another. There was a time, the whole words, as it needed or found convenient;
time of the so-called Heptarchy, when and we can count these borrowings, and
North England or Northumbria had un- see in each the flash of the moment when
doubtedly the intellectual lead; when the it was made. Then, coming farther on,
political ascendancy was transferred to we can study that extraordinary accelera-
Mercia, and thence to Wessex, the ascend- tion of the two processes which was
ancy in thought and in speech seems to brought about by the Norman Conquest,
have followed it; after the Conquest, the when the English speech openly broke
gradual establishment of the East Midland down its barriers, and let Norman-French
English, with modifications, as the stand- words, and whatever other words the Nor-
ard or book-English for all England, con- man-French brought in its convoy, pour in
nects itself with the dominant power of upon it at a gradually increasing rate,
London as the capital of the whole Eng- adapting itself at the same time to this
lish realm, and the seat of the Norman- vast irruption into its vocabulary by relax-
English Court; and there is the curious ing its grammatical strictness and abolish-
outstanding phenomenon of the Scottish ing all useless punctilios and regulations.