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.
1 Mr. Hallam.
2 Dr. Bosworth.
3 Of this recondite writer Ellis has said, “probably Layamon never will be printed;” but we live in an age of publication, and Layamon is said to be actually in the press. [Since this was written, the work has been published at the cost of the Society of Antiquaries, under the editorial care of Sir Frederick Madden.]
4 Dr. Bosworth, or Mr. Thorpe, has explained this attempt more fully. “From this idea of doubling the consonant after a short vowel, as in German, we are enabled to form some tolerably accurate notions as to the pronunciation of our forefathers. Thus, Orm (or Ormin) writes min and win with a single n only, and lif with a single f, because the i is long, as in mine, wine, and life. On the other hand, wherever the consonant is doubled, the vowel preceding is sharp and short, as winn, pronounced win, not wine.”—“Origin of the Germanic and Scandinavian Languages,” 24.
5 Guest’s “Hist. of English Rhythms,” ii. 186.
6 During the thirteenth century, the organic change proceeded so rapidly that there is quite as wide a difference between the language of Layamon and that which was written at the beginning of the fourteenth century (about the time of Robert of Gloucester), as there is between the English language of the reign of Edward the Second and the tongue of the present day.—See Mr. Wright’s learned “Essay on the Literature of the Anglo-Saxons,” 107.
7 Hearne, in his preface, exclaims in ecstacy—“This is the first book ever printed in this kingdom, it may be in the whole world, in the black letter, with a mixture of the Saxon characters, which is the very garb that was in vogue in the author’s time, that is, in the thirteenth century.” Hearne often claims our gratitude, while his earnest simplicity will extort a smile. On our ancient Bibles he could not refrain from exclaiming—“Though I have taken so much pleasure in perusing the English Bible of the year 1541, yet ’tis nothing equal to that I should take in turning over that of the year 1539.” His antiquarianism kindled his piety over Cranmer’s Bible.
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.
8 Turner’s “History of England,” v. 217, will furnish the curious reader readily with several of these specimens of the modes of thinking and of acting of the middle ages, when monks only were the preceptors of mankind.
9 This term of “strange Ingliss” has yet been found so obscure as to occasion some strictures, which, like the Interpreter in the Critic, are the most difficult to comprehend. I must refer to Monsieur Thierry’s very delightful “History of the Conquest of England,” ii. 271, for a very refined speculation on our Robert de Brunne’s unlucky obscurity. Monsieur Thierry imagines that the “strange Ingliss” was the refined English which had flown into Scotland, and there become the cultivated language of the minstrels and the court, and which our hapless Saxons on this side of the Tweed had sunk into a dialect only fitted for serfs. This finer and more elevated English could not be understood by a base commonalty; this was “strange Ingliss” to them. A very interesting event in the history of both nations had transplanted the purer English to the Scottish court:—Malcolm, whom the usurpation of Macbeth had driven from the Scottish throne, was expatriated in England during an interval of near twenty years; the affection of the monarch for the English was such, that he adopted their language, and when the royal family of England was expelled by the Conqueror, the king received them and the emigrant Saxons, and married the English princess. This gave rise to that intercourse with the south of Scotland, of which the result in our literary, if not in our civil, history is remarkable. Certain it is that much broad Scotch is good old English, and the noblest minstrelsy cometh “fra the North Countrie.”
10 On the leaf appears, in the handwriting of the author, “This Boc is Dan Michelis of Northgate ywrite an Englis of his ozene hand that hatte Ayenbyte of inwyt, and is of the boc-house of Seynt Austyn’s of Cantorberi.” The writer was seventy years of age; and he tells us that he was not—
| “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 |