SPECIMENS OF EARLY ENGLISH.*

THE book before us is the second volume of Specimens of Early English, edited by the Rev. R. Morris and the Rev. W. W. Skeet, and issued by the Clarendon Press. It ranges over nearly a cen- tury of English literature, the earliest "Specimen," part of Robert of Gloucester's "Reign of William the Conqueror" having been written about the year 1298, while the last specimen, the " Tale of the Coffers," by John of Gower, was not penned until about the year 1893.

• Specimens qf Early English. By Rev. R. Morrie, LLD., and Roe. W. W. Skaat, M.A. Clarendon Press. In the introduction to the present edition it is said, " An inti- mate knowledge and thorough acquaintance with its language is only to be acquired by an attentive study of its literature." It may further be added that the beat key to the character of a people is to be found, not in its records of State events, but in its litera- ture and traditional lore. An acquaintance with modern writings is easily obtained, the means are ready at hand ; not so the litera- ture of the Middle Ages. These records of past thought lie for the most part in libraries belonging to academical corpora- tions, or in places of national biblical wealth, such as the British Museum, accessible but to few, not from any indisposition on the part of the guardians of these treasures to afford every fkility for examining them, but because it is not all who have time and opportunity requisite for paying a visit to a library in a dis- tant city. Moreover, original MSS. of the middle ages are not facile reading to those who have not made them a study, and it is to those who have the inclination, but who lack the opportunity of studying the original MSS., that this volume will be especially welcome.

" Specimens " from twenty different sources are presented to the reader ; a short biographical notice of each writer is prefixed to each extract, followed by copious notes, and a glossary of obso- lete words and phrases. The Introduction contains grammatical and orthographical instructions, which will afford much help to the novice in understanding these old writings.

Books such as the one before us address themselves to the few, rather than to the many ; they are not likely to become popular in the sense of being food for the million, but for the few, who like to dwell on the writings, to listen to the voices, of genera- tions long past away, whose very names are unknown to the mul- titude, for such as these, this volume will possess much interest, and will be like the wand of the magician, which raises from the tomb of the past, bygone scenes with all the vividness of life, together with the actors who have played their busy part in them. Those who may study this book will find, that they can obtain a considerable insight into the manner of thought and writing of our forefathers of the fourteenth century, and the works issued from time to time by the Early English Text Society, and by order of the Master of the Rolls, will afford them the means of increasing this knowledge, without a long journey to disinter dusty and scarcely legible MSS. from a museum library.

We learn from this book that there were three dialects spoken in Medimval England ; the same fact is mentioned by John of Trevisa (p. 241). 1. The Northern Dialect, spoken through the Lowlands of Scotland, Northumberland, Durham, and nearly the whole of Yorkshire—the Humber and the Ouse, roughly speaking, forming the southern boundary, the Penine chain terminating its limits on the west. 2. The Midland, spoken in counties west of the Penine chain, the East-Anglian, and the whole of the Midland Counties, the Thames forming the southern boundary. 3. The Southern, spoken in all counties south of the Thames, in Somer- setshire, Gloucestershire, and portions of Herefordshire and Wor- cestershire ; but they merged into each other in the counties near the boundaries. These dialects are distinguished by certain gram- matical inflexions, an index to which may be found in the Intro- duction. The pronouns also vary according to the dialect—thus, the personal pronoun I is /c or /7c in the Northern dialect, while in the Southern it is Ich, the same in spelling as in modern Ger- man. She in the Northern is See or Sho, in the Southern Heo, hi, hue, ho. Our ancestors also made some distinctions which the friction of our nineteenth century has rubbed away. In the comparative of adjectives they have, bad, badder, —the positive of worse and worst being evil, or as the old spelling has it, vuel, uvel, peel. The alphabet contains also two additional letters, no longer in use, p and g; the first signifies th. In the fourteenth century we find a distinction made in the use of p and th,—p was employed when the sound was hard, as in that, th when it was soft, as in thin ; g had three sounds, according to its position in the word,—at the begin- ning of a word it was used as y, Bard, yard; in the middle it had a guttural sound, as of gh, list, light, and at the end of a word it was sounded as z. There is another noticeable difference in some, though not all the old MSS., the transposition of the letters w h. We write why, some of the old MSS. have it hwi.

One difficulty which presents itself to the unskilled decipherer of ancient MSS. is the numerous abbreviations employed ; books in those days, being laboriously transcribed, were costly, it there- fore became necessary to spare labour where practicable, hence these abbreviations and contractions. In the " Specimens " given in the present volume the editors have supplied in italics the letters omitted in the original MS., and in the Introduction they have ,given an index to the signs used in these abbreviations,

which, together with the whole of the introductory remarks, will be of much use to the student. We are told that pronunciation has greatly changed, that vowels were sounded more as they are on the Continent ; it is likely, however, that though the thoughts of our ancestors may remain to ua in their writings, the sound of their voices is lost to us, and that to our fourteenth-century forefathers, our attempts at rendering their language would seem like a foreign tongue.

Old writers are by no means always reliable authorities ; never- theless their writings are characterised by intense earnestness and (if we may venture to use such a paradox) truthfulness,—what they wrote, that they believed ; they might be misinformed, and as events, the scenes of which lay at a distance, only came to them by word of mouth, they were liable to believe false and misstated accounts. Again, in the stillness of the cell (and many of the mediaeval writers belonged to religious houses), men saw visions and dreamed dreams, and believed them to be realities, and re- corded them as such. The legend of St. Dunstan vanquishing the Evil One, recorded by Robert of Gloucester, and found in p. 19, gives us the impression that it was believed by the narrator, and as a necessary consequence by his hearers.

According to John of Trevisa (pp. 240, 241), the language spoken was very composite. A remarkable feature of the language of the present day, in common with that of the four- teenth century, is the large amount of Saxon element contained in it. Romans, Saxons, Danes, Normans successively invaded Britain, each bringing with them a different language. Duke William was crowned King, he founded a dynasty, he caused Doomsday Book to be written, an inventory, as it may be styled, of his English possessions. Robert of Gloucester tells us, speaking of the French language :- " pat heiemen of pis loud • Pat of hor blod come,

HoldeP elle Pulke apache • Pat hii of hom nome. Vor bote a man comic Frenes • me telP of him lute ; Ac lowe men holdeP to Engliss & to hor owe speche 5ute."—(P. 9.) John of Trevisa also says :—

" Also gentil men children bill, ytant for to spoke Froynsch tram tyme Pat a buP yrokked in here credal & coney spoke & plays nip a child hys brouch ; & oplondysch men wol lykne hamaylf to gentil men, & fondep wfp Bret bysynes for to spoke Freynsch, for to be more ytold of."—(P. 241.) Nevertheless, Norman French did not take root sufficiently to flourish ; it is the Saxon tongue which has over-ridden all other, and the most vigorous forms of speech of the present day are Saxon.

Those who have much intercourse with our peasantry will know that the older language still lingers among us ; for example, nobut meaning only, may still be heard in the Midland counties ; in the South the final e is retained in the infinitive, as it was when the originals of the " Specimens" were written. A village child will say to knitte, to worke, and the plural is invari- ably made in en, housen, in place of houses ; the Education movement will scarcely be able to drive from the face of the country these dialects, so interesting to the antiquary. There will also be found a great similarity between many fourteenth- century forms and modern German, for example OLD Eaeusn.—Pres., binde ; pret., band ; prat. plural, bunden past part., ibunden. GERAL&N.—Pros., binde ; pret., band ; pret. plural, banden ; past part., gebunden.

And there exists also a similarity between many forms of speech used by our peasantry and German, relies doubtless of our Saxon forefathers, which the changes brought by the roll of centuries have been unable to exterminate.

It is not possible in a short notice to give an elaborate critique. We can but give specimens of the specimens. "The Proverbs of Hendyng " are, we are informed, " illustrations of Proverbial _Philosophy in the thirteenth century." Probably those before us were collected then, but are in their substance much older. We give one stanza to show what they are, a paraphrase of the well-known axiom, " Spare the rod, spoil the child :"— " Ne bue Pi child never so duere, Ant hit wells vnPewes lerne, Bet hit oiler-whyle; Mote hit al habben is wale, Welton, nultou, hit wol spine, Ant bicome a fah).

Lnet child lore byhoneP ;

QuoP Hendyng."

We also give one quotation from the specimens of " Lyric Poetry," from a sonnet called " Spring-Time " :— " Lenten ys come wiP lone to tonne, WiP bloamen & wiP briddes roune, pat al Pis blimp bryngek, ;

Dayes-eges in Pis dales, Notes suete of nyhtegales, Vch foul song sing* pe Prestelcoc him preteP oo, Away is huere wynter wo, When woderoue springeP ; is follies singeP ferly fele, Ant wlyteP on huere wynter weld, Pat al pe wode ryngeP."

We are not told who was the writer of these lines, probably his name has long been forgotten, but we think he must have been a man of pure heart and elegant thought, to whom the -country scenes around him were as sweet music. Sir John Man- sieville records his travels in the Midland dialect about 1356 ; and there are examples of "Alliterative Poetry" in the West Midland dialect dated about 1360. With one specimen of the theological writings of the day we must conclude. It is taken from the sermon on Matthew xxiv. 43, translated into Kentish dialect by Dan Michel, of Northgate, and though it belongs to the South- -ern dialect, it is wholly different in character to the Chronicle -of Robert of Gloucester, or any other Southern specimens to be found in this work. The theologians of the middle ages tried to make the world good, not by telling people of God's love and the beauty of holiness, but by frightening them with a vivid descrip- tion of the horrors endured by the condemned. Ain Michel speaks tkus

"Hello is wyd wyp-onto metinge, dyep wyP-oute botme. Vol of brene on-Polyinde. Vol of stenche wyP-oute comparisoun. Per is zorge. Per is Pyesternesse, per ne is non ordre, per is groniynge wyp-onto ende, Por no is non hope of geode, non wantrokiynge of kueade. Ech Pet Perinne is; hateP him nine; and alle °Pron. per ich yzeg able manyere tormons; pe leste of alle is more Panne allo Pe pynon Pet mega by y-do ine Pise 'wordle. per is wop, and grindinge of teP, Per me gel, uram chola in to 'great° hate of nera, and buope crnpolyinde. pore allo be intro ssolle by norbernd and myd wermes ssolle by y-wasted, and nagt ne ssolle wasti. Hire wermes ne ssolle nagt sterue, and hare vet' ne ssel neure by yknenct."

The translation, still used in many churches during Lent, of the old Latin hymn beginning "Dies Irm" is much of the same kind. Popular literature, in the present sense of the word, there was Rene, since in the Middle Ages reading and writing were the accomplishments but of the few. But the substance of many of these specimens probably floated traditionally among the people, were repeated by firesides wherever a few were gathered together, and therefore may, in a measure, be regarded as an index of the taste of the people. We can imagine that some who are pressing on in a race which is yearly becoming faster and more engrossing may, when they hear of reprints of these old writers, say, " Cui bono?"—" Let the dead past bury its dead ; " but we think that anything which may cause some to pause for a moment, and give a retrospective glance, may not be without its use; and there is a wisdom in the following two lines from Robert of Gloucester, the truth of which all will acknowledge :—

"Ac web me wot uor to tonne bole wel it is,

Vor Pe more Pat a mon can Pe more wurpe ho is."