Amenities of Literature. Disraeli Isaac

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Amenities of Literature - Disraeli Isaac


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the formation of the English language, we are sensible that the broad and solid foundations lie in the Saxon, but the superstructure has often, with a magical movement, varied in its architecture. An enamoured Saxonist has recently ventured to assert that “English is but another term for Saxon;” but an ocular demonstration has been exhibited in specimens of the modern English of our master-writers, marking by italics all the words of Saxon derivation. By these it appears that the translators of the Bible have happily preserved for us the pristine simplicity of our Saxon-English, like the light in a cathedral through its storied and saintly window, shedding its antique hues on hallowed objects. But as we advance, we discover in our most eminent writers the anglicisms diminish; and Sharon Turner has observed that a fifth of the Saxon language has ceased to be used. A recent critic20 has curiously calculated that the English language, now consisting of about 38,000 words, contains 23,000, or nearly five-eighths, Anglo-Saxon in their origin; that in our most idiomatic writers, there is about one-tenth not Anglo-Saxon, and in our least about one-third.21 A cry of our desertion of our Saxon purity has been raised by those who have not themselves practised it in their more elevated compositions; but are we to deem that English corrupted which recedes from its Saxon character, and compels the daughter to lose the likeness of her mother? Are we to banish to perpetuity those foreigners who have already fructified our Saxon soil? In an age of extended literature, conversant with objects and productive of associations which never entered into the experience of our forefathers, the ancient language of the people must necessarily prove inadequate; a new language must start out of new conceptions. Look into our present “exchequer of words;” there lies many a refined coinage struck out of the arts and the philosophies of Europe. Every word which genius creates, and which time shall consecrate, is a possession of the language which must be inscribed into that variable doomsday book of words—the English Dictionary. Devotees of Thor and Woden! the day of your idolatries has passed, and your remonstrances are vain as your superstitions.

      Thomas was haunted by a chimera that whatever was obsolete deserved to be revived. This honest spirit of antiquarianism, working on a most undiscerning intellect, seems to have kindled into a literary bigotry in his sateless delight of “the black-letter of our grandfathers’ days.” Hearne set this unhappy example of printing ancient writers with all their obsolete repulsiveness in orthography and type. He was closely followed by Ritson, and by Whitaker in his edition of “Piers Ploughman;” and these editors assuredly have scared away many a neophyte in our vernacular literature. Ritson printed his “Ancient Songs” with the Saxon characters and abbreviations, which render them often unintelligible. This literary antiquary lived to regret this superstitious antiquarianism. He had prepared a new edition entirely cleared of these offences, but which unfortunately he destroyed at the morbid close of his life.

“Blind, and dyaf, and alsuo dumb, Of zeventy yer al not rond, Ne ssette by draze to the grond, Uor peny nor mark, ne nor pond.”

      At the end the monk tells us for whom he writes—

“Nou ich wille that ye ywite hou hitt is ywent Thet this Boc is ywrite mid Engliss of Kent. This Boc is ymade vor lewede men, Vor Vader and vor Moder and vor other Ken, Ham vor to berze uram alle manyere Zen Thet ine have inwytte
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