Outlines of English literature

Front matter

ENGLISH LITERATURE.

BY

PEOFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE IMPERIAL ALEXANDER LYCEUM OP ST. PETERSBURG.

CHAPTER I. The English Language

PAGE

Britons — Their priental Origin — Caesar's Invasion, b. c. 60 — Traces of the Celtic Speech in Britain — Analysis of English — Saxon Tongue — Disuse of Saxon Inflection — The English Th — The -English W — Pronunciation — Latin Element — Origin of English Language — Norman Conquest — William the Conqueror — Monasteries — Twelfth Century — Saxon Chronicle — Norman French — Layamon — Thirteenth Century — Robert of Gloucester — Neologism — Fourteenth Century — Mannyng — Wickliffe and Chaucer — . Gower — Hermit of Hampole — Pleadings in English — Trevisa, Translation of Higden — Mandeville — Fifteenth Century — Lydgate

— Statutes in English — Sixteenth Century — Reformation — Cheke

— Skelton — Surrey and Wyatt — Berners — Ascham — Spenser — Chaucerism — Euphuism — Seventeenth Century — Protectorate — Gallicism — Restoration — Eighteenth Century — Proportion of Saxon in English 25

CHAPTER IL

Chaucer and his Times.

Age of Chaucer — His Birth and Education — Translation in the Fourteenth Century — His Early Productions — His Career — Imbued •with Proven9al Literature — Character of his Poems — Romaunt of the Rose — Troilus and Cresseide — Anachronism — House of Fame

— Canterbury Tales — Plan of the Work — The Pilgrims — Proposition of the Host — Plan of the Decameron — Superiority of Chaucer's Plan — Dialogue of the Pilgrims — Knight's Tale — Squire's Tale — Story of Griselda — Comic Tales — The two Prose Tales — Rime of Sir Thopas — Parson's Tale — Language of Chaucer — The Flower and the Leaf 45

(vii)

viii

CHAPTER III. Sidney and Spenser

PAGB

Elizabethan Era — Ages of Pericles, Augustus, the Medici, Louis XIV. — Chivalry — Sidney — His Arcadia — His Style — Spenser — Shepherd's Calendar — Pastoral — Spenser at Court — Burleigh and Leicester — Spenser's Settlement in Ireland — The Faery Queen — His Death — Criticism on the Faery Queen — Style, Language, and Versification 65

CHAPTER IV. Bacon

His Birth and Education — View of the State of Europe — His Career

— Impeached for Corruption — His Death — His Character — State of Philosophy in the Sixteenth Century — Its Corruptions and Defects — Bacon's System — Not a Discoverer — The New Philosophy

— Analysis of the Instauratio : 1. De Augmentis ; II. Novum Organum ; III. Sylva Sylvarum ; IV. Scala Intellectus ; V. Prodromi ; VI. Philosophia Secunda — The Baconian Logic — His Style — His Minor Works 77

CHAPTER V. Origin oe the English Drama

Comparison between the Greek and Mediseval Dramas — Similarity of their Origin — Illusion in the Drama — Mysteries or Miracle Plays

— Their Subject and Construction — Moralities — The Vice — Interludes — The Four P.'s — First Regular Dramas — Comedies — Tragedies — Early English Theatres — Scenery — Costume — State

of the Dramatic Profession 95

CHAPTER VL

Marlow and Shakspeare.

Marlow — His Career and Works — His Faustus— His Death — Contemporary Judgments on his Genius — Shakspeare — His Birth, Education, and early Life — Traditions respecting him — His Marriage — Early Studies — Goes to London — His Career — Death and Monument — Order of his Works — Roman Plays — His Diction — Characters

CONTENTS.

ix

CHAPTER VII. The Shakspeaeian Dramatists

PAGE

Ben Jonson — The Humours — His Roman Plays — Comedies — Plots — Beaumont and Fletcher — Massinger — Chapman — Dekker — Webster — Middleton — Marston — Ford — Shirley 127

CHAPTER VIII. The Great Divines

Theological Eloquence of England and France — The Civil War — Persecution of the Clergy — Richard Hooker — His Life and Character — Treatise on Ecclesiastical Polity — Jeremy Taylor — Compared with Hooker — His Life — Liberty of Prophesying — His other Works — The Restoration — Taylor's Sermons — Hallam's Criticism — Taylor's digressive Style — Isaac Barrow — His immense Acquirements — Compared to Pascal — The English Universities 140

CHAPTER IX. John Milton

His Poetical Character — Religious and Political Opinions — Republicanism — His Learning — Travels in Italy — Prose Works — Areopagitica — Prose Style — Treatises on Divorce — His Literary Meditations — Tractate on Education — Passion for Music — Paradise Lost — Dante and Milton compared — Study of Romance — Campbell's Criticism — Paradise Regained — Minor Poems — Samson Agonistes 155

CHAPTER X. Butler anb Dryden

The Commonwealth, and the Restoration — Milton and Butler — Subject and Nature of Hudibras — Hudibras and Don Quixote — State of Society at the Restoration — Butler's Life — John Dryden — French Taste of the Court — Comedies and rhymed Tragedies — Life and Works of Dryden — Dramas — Annus Mirabilis — Absalom and Achitophel — Religio Laici — Hind and Panther — Dryden's later Works — Translation of Virgil — Odes — Fables — Prefaces and Dedications — Juvenal — Mac Flecknoe 172

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XL Clarendon, Bunyan, and Locke.

PAGB

Clarendon's Life — History of the Rebellion — Characters — John Bunyan — The Pilgrim's Progress — Allegory — Style — Life of Bunyan — Locke — The New Philosophy — Practical Character of Locke's Works — Life — Letters on Toleration — Essay on the Human Understanding — Theory of Ideas — Treatises on Government — Essay on Education 193

CHAPTER XII. The Wits op Queen Anne's Reign

Artificial School — Pope's early Studies — Pope compared to Dryden — Essay on Criticism — Rape of the Lock — Mock-heroic Poetry — Temple of Fame, &c. — Translation of Homer — Essay on Man — Miscellanies — The Dunciad — Satires and Epistles — Edward Young — English Melancholy — The Universal Passion — Night Thoughts — Young's Style — His Wit 208

CHAPTER XIIL

Swift and the Essayists.

Coarseness of Manners in the 17th and 18th Centuries — Jonathan S-Vpift — Battle of the Books — Tale of a Tub — Pamphlets — Stella and Vanessa — Drapier's Letters — Voyages of Gulliver — Minor Works — Poems — Steele and Addison — Cato — Tatler — Spectator — Samuel Johnson — Prose Style — Satires — London, and The Vanity of Human Wishes — Rasselas — Journey to the Hebrides — Lives of the Poets — Edition of Shakspeare — Dictionary — Rambler and Idler 229

CHAPTER XIV. The Great Novelists

History of Prose Fiction — Spain, Italy, and France — The Romance and the Novel — Defoe — Robinson Crusoe — Source of its Charm — Defoe's Air of Reality — Minor Works — Richardson — Pamela — Clarissa Harlowe — Female Characters — Sir Charles Grandison — Fielding — Joseph Andrews — Jonathan Wild — Tom Jones — Amelia — Smollett — Roderick Random — Sea Characters — Peregrin©

CONTENTS.

xi

Pickle — Count Fatliom — Humpliry Clinker — Sterne — Tristram Shandy, and the Sentimental Journey — Goldsmith — Chinese Letters — Traveller and Deserted Village — Vicar of Wakefield — Comedies— Histories 251

CHAPTER XV. The Great Historians

David Hume — As Historian — As Moralist and Metaphysician — Attacks on Revealed Religion — William Robertson — Defects of the " Classicist" Historians — Edward Gibbon — The Decline and Fall — His Prejudices against Christianity — Guizot's Judgment on Gibbon 278

CHAPTER XVI. The Transition School

Landscape and Familiar Poetry — James Thomson — The Seasons — Episodes — Castle of Indolence — Minor Works — Lyric Poetry — Thomas Gray — The Bard, and the Elegy — Collins and Shenstone

— The Schoolmistress — Ossian — Chatterton and the Rowley Poems — William Cowper — George Crabbe — The Lowland Scots

— Dialect and Literature — Robert Burns 290

CHAPTER XVII. Scott and Southet

Walter Scott — The Lay of the Last Minstrel — Marmion — Lady of the Lake — Lord of the Isles — Waverley — Guy Mannering — Antiquary — Tales of my Landlord — Ivanhoe — Monastery and Abbot — Kenilworth — Pirate — Fortunes of Nigel — Peveril — Quentin Durward — St. Ronan's Well — Redgauntlet — Tales of the Crusaders — Woodstock — Chronicles of the Canongate — Anne of Geierstein — Robert Southey — Thalaba and Kehama — Madoc

— Legendary Tales — Roderick — Prose Works and Miscellanies.. 315

CHAPTER XVm.

Moore, Byron, and Shelley.

Moore — Translation of Anacreon — Little's Poems — Political Satires — The Fudge Family — Irish Melodies — Lalla Rookh — xii

CONTENTS.

Epicurean — Biographies. Byron : Hours of Idleness, and English Bards — Romantic Poems — The Dramas — Childe Harold — Don Juan — Death of Byron. Shelley: Poems and Philosophy — I Queen Mab, Prometheus Unbound, Alastor, &c. — The Cenci — Minor Poems and Lyrics 341

CHAPTER XIX. The Modeen Novelists

Prose Fiction — The Romance : Walpole, Mrs. Radcliffe, Lewis, Maturin, and Mrs. Shelley — James, Ainsworth, and Bulwer — The Novel : Miss Burney — Godwin — Miss Edgeworth — Local Novels : Gait, Wilson, Banim, &c. — Fashionable Novels : Ward, Lister, &c. — Miss Austen — Hook — Mrs. TroUope — Miss Mitford — Warren — Dickens — Novels of Foreign Life : Beckford, Hope, and Morier — Naval and Military Novels : Marryat and Robert Scott 368

CHAPTER XX. The Stage, Oratory, Politics, Theology, Metaphysics, AND Journalism

Comedy in England — Congreve, Farquhar, &c. — Sheridan — The Modern Romantic Drama — Oratory in England : Burke — Letters of Junius — Modern Theologians : Paley and Butler — Blackstone — Adam Smith — Metaphysics : Stewart — Bentham — Periodicals : the Newspaper, the Magazine, and the Review — The Quarterly, and Blackwood — The Edinburgh, and the New Monthly — The Westminster — Cheap Periodical Literature 397

CHAPTER XXI. Wordsworth, Coleridge, and the New Poetry

Wordsworth and the Lake School — Philosophical and Poetical Theories — The Lyrical Ballads — The Excursion — Sonnets — Coleridge — Poems and Criticisms — Conversational Eloquence — Charles Lamb — The Essays of Elia — Leigh Hunt — Keats — Hood — The Living Poets — Conclusion 413

CONTENTS.

xiii

A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE.

Chapter 1. Page

Literature in the Colonies imitative — Relation of American to English Literature — Gradual Advancement of the United States in Letters — Their first Development theological — Writers in this Department — Jonathan Edwards — Religious Controversy — William E. Channing — Writings of the Clergy — Newspapers and School Books — Domestic Literature — Female Writers — Oratory — Revolutionary Eloquence — American Orators — Alexander Hamilton — Daniel Wehster and others — Edward Everett — American History and Historians — Jared Sparks — David Ramsay — George Bancroft — Hildreth — Elliot Lossing — William H. Prescott — Irving — Wheaton — Cooper — Parkman 433

CHAPTER IL

Belles Lettres — Influence of British Essayists — Franklin — Dennie

— Signs of Literary Improvement — J onathan Oldstyle — Washington Irving — His Knickerbocker — Sketch-Book — His other Works

— Popularity — Tour on the Prairies — Character as an Author — Dana — Wilde — Hudson — Griswold — Lowell — Whipple — Ticknor — Walker — Wayland — James — Emerson — Transcendentalists — Madame Ossoli — Emerson's Essays — Orville Dewey — Humorous Writers — Belles Lettres — Tudor — Wirt — Sands — Fay

— Walsh — Mitchell — Kimball — American Travellers — Causes of their Success as Writers — Fiction — Charles Brockden Brown — His Novels — James Fenimore Cooper — His Novels — Their Popularity and Characteristics — Nathaniel Hawthorne — His Works and Genius — Other American Writers of Fiction 453

CHAPTER HI.

POETRY.

Its essential Conditions — Freneau and the early Metrical Writers — Mumford — Clififton — Allston, and others — Pierpont — Dana — Hillhouse — Sprague — Percival — Halleck — Drake — Hofi"man — Willis — Longfellow — Holmes — Lowell — Boker — Favorite Single Poems — Descriptive Poetry — Street — Whittier, and others — Brainard — Song- Writers — Other Poets — Female Poets — Bryant 468 2

OUTLINES

OP

GENERAL LITERATURE.

CHAPTER 1.

THE ENGLISH LANaUAGE.

Britons — Their Oriental Origin — Csesar's Invasion, B.C. 60 — Traces of the Celtic Speech in English — Analysis of English — Saxon Tongue — Disuse of Saxon Inflections — The English Th — The English W — Pronunciation — Latin Element — Origin of English Language — Norman Conquest — William —Monasteries — Twelfth Century — Saxon Chronicle — Norman French — Layamon — Thirteenth Ceatury — Robert of Gloucester — Neologism — Fourteenth Century — Mannyng — WicklifFe and Chaucer — Gower — Hermit of Hampole — Pleadings in English — Trevisa, Translation of Higden — Mandeville — Fifteenth Century — Lydgate — Statutes in English — Sixteenth Century — Reformation — Cheke — Skelton— Surrey and Wyatt — Berners-^ Ascham — Spenser — Chaucerism — Euphuism — Seventeenth Century — Protectorate — Gallicism — Restoration — Eighteenth Century — Proportion of Saxon in English.

The most ancient inhabitants of the British islands were the Celts, Cymry, or Britons, as they are variously styled. That these rude and savage tribes were offshoots from the mighty race whose roots have struck so deep into the soil of most countries of Western and Southern Europe, there can be no doubt. Antiquaries may be undecided as to the origin of this venerable family of mankind, or as to the period at which it first migrated into Europe ; but it is impossible not to believe that it formed one of the primary divisions of the human race ; and there is very strong probability, from many noteworthy circumstances, that it originally came from the eastern regions of the globe.

In their mysterious and venerable system of theistic philosophy there are to be found so many points of resemblance with various recondite doctrines which we know to have been current from the remotest ages in the interior of India, that it is very difficult to believe such resemblances to be entirely accidental ; particularly when

OUTLINES OP GENERAL LITERATURE.

[chap. I.

we reflect that many of these dogmas — the transmigi'ation of the soul, for instance — were parts of a creed not at all likely to have arisen spontaneously among so rude and savage a people as we know the Ce]t« to have been. The extraordinary reverence paid by the Druids to the oak ; their adoption of the mistletoe as an emblem of the immortality of the soul J the peculiar virtues which they attached to the number three ; the magic powers which they imagined to reside in certain rhythmical and musical combinations ; their addiction to the study of astronomy ; and the singular peculiarity of a religious caste among them — these, among many other coincidences, would seem to claim for the Celts an evident, though perhaps remote, Oriental origin : an opinion further strengthened by the analogies which exist between some of the most ancient Indian dialects and the language of the Britons.

It was with this singular people that the Romans came in contact ; and seldom had Caesar's iron veterans encountered a more desperate and obstinate foe. With the history of that long contest we have nothing to do at present ; it is sufficient for our purpose to sketch, as briefly and rapidly as possible, the results of the struggle. Such of the Britons as were spared by the Homan sword, by the not less fatal influence of Latin corruption, and the fierce intestine convulsions which decimated their ranks, were gradually driven back from the southern and central parts of Britain to take refuge in the inaccessible fastnesses of their mountains. A glance at the map will suffice to explain this; for we shall see the descendants of the ancient British race still occupying those parts of the country to which their ancestors had retired. In all districts of England and Scotland distinguished by any considerable tract of mountains, the Celtic blood has remained more or less pure, the Celtic language unchanged, and strong traces of the Celtic manners, language, and superstitions still prevail. It is, however, singular to remark how invariably the Celtic race has continued to diminish wherever it has been exposed to contact with the Teutonic tribes : thus the once purely Celtic population of Cornwall has gradually lost its individual character, and has almost ceased to exist ; in Wales and in the Highlands of Scotland, two districts in which, and particularly in the former, the British blood has been least exposed to foreign admixture, the ancient race is yet slowly losing its marked peculiarities ; and the day will probably come when the wild mountain fastnesses, which formed an insuperable barrier to the Roman sword and to the Saxon battle-axe, will have ceased to resist the silent spread of Teutonic commerce and Teutonic civilization.

The fate of the Celtic race in Britain has somewhat resembled that of the aboriginal tribes of the American continents : slowly but surely have they retired and contracted before the invading nations ; and possibly in future ages the harp of the Bard and the claymore of the Sennachie will be picturesque but unsubstantial recolleations, such

Chap. I.] Traces Of Celtic Speech In English

as exist of the feathered tunic of the Mexitlan or the chivalric scalpingtuft of the Sioux.

Words are the pictures or reflections of things ; and the genius, character, and capabilities of a nation can in no way be so well studied as in its language. From the earliest periods of our history the Celtic race has existed over the whole or a notable portion of the British islands; the British language, and, in some cases, no other, ' is spoken over a considerable extent of these countries — in Wales, in the Highlands of Scotland, in Ireland, and in the Isle of Man ; some among these tribes possess large collections of very ancient and curious poems written in the respective dialects of the great Celtic speech ; and yet, notwithstanding all this, the number of Celtic words Which have taken root in the English language is so incrediby small that it can hardly be said to have exerted any influence whateyer on the composite speech now used in the country. A large proportion, too, even of these scanty transplantations has taken place at a comparatively recent period, and the words so adopted have generally been transferred by poets and writers of fiction — Scott, for example — who found the Celtic expression either more picturesque and forcible than the equivalent which already existed in English (of Norman or Saxon origin), or else a lively and characteristic image for some object or idea peculiarly Celtic. Of the former kind we may adduce the words " cairn^^ " cromlech^^' and of the latter the word " clan." " Clan," it is evident, expresses an idea so exclusively Celtic that it forms a perfect and untranslatable sign of that idea; while cairn,' ^ though by no means peculiar to the Celts, and defining a mode of honourable burial universal in former ages (as testified by the xo-fJ-^i of the Grreek heroic age, by the tumulus of the Etruscan peoples, and by the barrows of the Teutons), was nevertheless adopted as being a more local and exact image of the same hero-burial among the Celts.

With regard to the paucity of Celtic words which have retained a place in modern English, a Russian would remark something analo^ gous in the history of his own language. The Tartars, in spite of two centuries and a half of complete and universal domination in Russia, have left hardly any traces of their language in the present Slavonic dialect of Russia; and the few words of Tartar origin that might be cited generally express articles of dress, equipment, food, &c., for which the Russians had no proper equivalent. In this case too we may note the difference of circumstances which tended to prevent any fusion between the conquered and conquerors : the abhorrence with which the Russian people — always extremely bigoted — regarded rapacious and haughty oppressors of a different religion, and of utterly barbarous habits. It is to be remarked, too, that the Tartar language is destitute of any literature at all comparable, in point of richness or antiquity, to the Celtic poems— a barrenness which the Russian must have contrasted with his own majestic, flexible; and 9 *

OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE.

[CHAP. I.

abundant idiom. Compare with this scanty and meagre transfusion of Tartar words the immense and permanent influence of the Moors upon the language, sentiment, and character of Spain, during the glorious dominion of the Mahommedans in Granada, and we shall see that, while the Moorish or Arab element forms an integral, permanent, and essential ingredient in the language of the country, the communication between the conquering and conquered nations must be rated, in the case of Britain and of Russia, so much lower as to be considered comparatively insignificant.

During the Koman occupation of the isles of Britain — an occupation which extended over a period of 470 years, i. e. from 60 B.C. to A.D. 410 — there can be no doubt but that a considerable part of the indigenous population submitted to the victorious invaders, and continued to occupy their estates in the Roman provinces of Britain, paying tribute, as was natural, to the Roman government. We know, too, that the officers and soldiers of the Roman legions permanently stationed in Britain freely intermixed, and even allied themselves, by marriage and otherwise, with the now half-civilized British population which surrounded their military posts; and we may consequently speculate upon what would have been the consequence had they continued to maintain their footing in Britain. In the process of time there would have arisen a new mixed population, partaking in some measure of the qualities, of the blood, and perhaps also of the vices, of its double origin ; and, what is of more importance to our present subject, the language spoken at the present day by the descendants of such a Creole race would have resembled the French or the Spanish ; that is to say, it would have been a dialect bearing the physiognomic character of some one of the numerous Romanz languages, all of which are the result of efibrts, more or less successful, of a rude Celtic or Graulish nation to speak the Latin, with which they were only acquainted by practice and by the ear.

In this barbarous, but useful and improvable dialect, some words of the ancient Gaulish or Celtic would remain; and in point of proximity to the Latin — its fundamental element — it would resemble the language of classical Rome to a greater or to a less degree exactly in proportion as the communication with the Romans was closer or more relaxed. Further, if the language of the conquerors happened to be, as was the case with that of Rome, an inflected and highly artificial tongue, the new dialect would be distinguished, like the modern French or the Italian, by an almost universal suppression of all inflected terminations indicating the various modifications of meaning, which modifications would thereafter be expressed by independent particles — by prepositions, by pronouns, by auxiliary verbs.

But the supposition which has just been made was not to be verified in the modern language of the country : such a species of corrupt Latinity was not destined to become in our times the spoken dialect

CHAP. I.] TRACES OF CELTIC SPEECH IN ENGLISH. 2#

of the British islands ; and, small as is the influence npon our present speech of the pure Celtic aboriginal tongue, the corruption of that tongue by the admixture of Latin (or rather the corruption of the Latin by the admixture of Celtic forms) was to be no less completely supplanted by new invasions; and by new languages originating in different and distant regions. It is undoubtedly obvious that a very large part of the modern English vocabulary, and even many forms of English grammar, are to be traced to the llomanz dialect, and therefore must be considered as having arisen from a corrupted Latinity, such as we have been describing as likely to have been employed by Gallic or Celtic tribes imperfectly acquainted with Latin. It would, however, be a fatal mistake to consider that these, or even any part of them, came from any such Romanz dialect or lingua franca ever spoken originally in Britain. They are, and without any exception, 7iot of British growth, but were introduced into the English language after the Norman invasion of the country in 1066.

We have said that the traces existing in the modern English of the aboriginal Celtic are exceeding few and faint : it is, however, proper to except one class of words — we allude to the names of places. In the long period of anarchy and bloodshed which intervened between the departure of the Romans and the arrival of the Saxon hordes in 449, and the gradual foundation in England of the Eight Kingdoms, the country must be conceived to have gone back rather than advanced in the career of civilization. The Saxons, we know, who were during a long period incessantly at war, as the Romans had been before them, with the Picts, the Scots, and the Welsh, strenuously endeavored to obliterate every trace of the ancient language, even from the geography of the regions they had conquered : and it is singular to observe an Anglo-Saxon king, himself the member of a nation not very far removed from its ancient rudeness and ferocity, stigmatising as barbarous the British name of a spot to which he had occasion to allude, as known " harharico nomine Pendyfig," by the barbarous — this was the British — name of Pendyfig. National hatred is perhaps the longest-lived of all things : and it is curious to observe the mutual dislike and contempt still existing between the Celtic and the Saxon race, and the Irish peasant of the present day expressing, in words which 1300 years have not deprived of their original bitterness, his detestation of the Sassenagh — the Saxon. A moment's inspection of the map of England will show the immense number of places which have retained, in whole or in part, their original Celtic form : we may instance the terminating syllable don with which many of these names conclude, and which is the Celtic dun, signifying a fortified rock. The Irish Kil, which begins so many names of places, is nothing more than a corruption of the Celtic Caille, signifying a forest ; and the Caer, frequently found in the beginning of Welsh^ Cornish, and Armorican names, and which the

30 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. I.

Bretons have so often preserved in the initial syllable Ker (as Kerhoet), is evidently nothing but CaeVj the rock or stone.

From what has been suggested, then, upon the subject of the Celtic language, the reader will conclude that, for all practical purposes of analogy or of derivation, it has exerted no appreciable influence on the modern speech of the country. Some few words indeed have been adopted into English frqm the tongue of the aboriginal possessors of the country, but so few in number, and so unimportant in signification, that it will be found to have borrowed as much from the language of Portugal, nay, even from those of China and Hindostan, as it has derived from the ancient indigenous tongue.

The English language, then, viewed with reference to its component elements, must be considered as a mixture of the Saxon and of the Romanz or corrupted Roman of the middle ages : and before we can proceed to investigate the peculiar character, genius, and history of such a composite dialect, it will be essential to establish with some degree of correctness — first, in what proportions these two elements are found in the compound substance under consideration ; and second, what were the periods and what were the influences during and through which the process of amalgamation took place.

In examining the relative proportions of two or more elements forming together a new dialect, it would certainly be a very simple and unphilosophical analysis which should consist of simply counting the various vocables in a dictionary and arranging them under the various languages from which they are derived, then striking a balance between them, and assigning as the true origin of the language the dialect to which the greater number should be found to belong. No; we must pay some attention to the nature and significance of the vocables themselves, and also to the degree of primitiveness and antiquity of their meaning ; nor must we neglect, in particular, to take into the account the general form and analogies of the composite language viewed as a whole. It is evident that that dialect must be the primitive or radical one from which are derived the greatest number of vocables expressing the simpler ideas and the most universally known objects — such objects and ideas, in short, as cannot but possess equivalents in every human speech, however rude its state or imperfect its development.

Following this important rule, we shall find that all the primary ideas, and all the simpler objects, natural and artificial, are expressed in English by words so evidently of Teutonic origin — nay, so slightly varied from Teutonic forms — that a knowledge of the German will render them instantly intelligible and recognizable. Such for instance, are the words "man," "woman'^ (wif-man; i. e. female man), "sun," "moon," "earth;'' the names of the simpler colours, as "green," "red," "yellow" (note that "purple" — a compound colour — is derived from the Greek), "brown,'' &c. ; the commoner and simpler

SAXON TONGUE.

acts of life, "to run/^ "to fly," " to eat," " to sing," &c. ; the primary and fundamental passions of our nature, and the verbs which express those passions as in activity, "love,'^ "fear,^' "hate," &c. ; the names of the ordinary animals and their cries, as "horse," "hound," "sheep,'' "to neigh," "to bark," "to bleat,'' "to low," &c. ; the arts and employments, the trades and dignities of life, "to read," "to write," "seamen,'' "king," "miller," "earl," "queen," &c. ; and the most generally known among artificial objects, as "house," "boat," " door." It is worthy of remark how universally applicable is this principle of antiquity or primitiveness : thus, those religious objects and ideas which are of the simplest and most obvious character are represented in English by words derived from the Teutonic dialects, while the more complicated and artificial — what we may call the scientific or technic — portion of the religious vocabulary, is almost in every case of Latin or Grreek derivation : thus, "Grod," "fiend," "wicked," "righteous," "hell," "faith," "hope," &c., are all pure Saxon words; while "predestination," "justification," "baptism," &c., will generally be found to come from other sources. So generally, indeed, is this principle observable in the English language, that we may in most cases decide, d priori, whether the equivalent for a given object or idea be a Saxon or a Latin word, by observing whether that object be a primitive and simple or a complex and artificial one.