essaying to account for the origin of our Standard English. The Danish settlers of 870 gave fresh lifeblood to our race; their pith and manliness have had, I suspect, a far greater share in furthering England's greatness than is commonly acknowledged. Much do we owe to the Scandinavian cross in our breed. They could not, it is true, keep their Kings upon the English throne; but their Norse words by slow degrees made their way into every corner of the land: we have seen how under King John many of the terms, employed by this pushing and enterprising race, took root in distant counties like Worcestershire and Dorset, where there never was a Danish settlement. Often has a Danish word become confused with an Old English word, as in the case of the verbs beita and beatan: often has a Danish word altogether driven out an Old English word, closely akin to Sanscrit. Thus the Scandinavian draumr (somnium), corrupted into dream in Suffolk, has altogether made an end of the older sweven; and the former word has moreover become confounded with the English dream, which of old meant nothing but sonitus or cantus : the sense of these Latin words has long vanished from dream as we now employ it.

It may often be remarked that one form of a great speech drives another form before it. Thus, in our own day, the High German is always encroaching on its Northern neighbour the Low German; and the Low German, in its turn, is always encroaching upon its Northern neighbour the Scandinavian. Something of the like kind might have been seen in England six hundred years ago; but with us the Dano-Anglian speech

of the Midland was working down Southwards towards London and Oxford all through the Thirteenth Century. Its influence may be seen so early as the Essex Homilies of 1180; many years later we find a still clearer token of the change. In some hundred Plural substantives that had been used by Layamon soon after 1200, the Southern ending in en was replaced by the Midland ending in es, when Layamon's work came to be written out afresh after 1250. East Midland works became popular in the South, as may be seen by the transcript of the Havelok and the Harrowing of Hell. In the Horn, a Southern work, we find the Present Plural en of the Midland verb replacing the older Plural in eth. In the Alexander (perhaps a Warwickshire work) the Midland I, she, they, and beon encroach upon the true Southern ich, heo, hi, and beoth. Even in Kent we find marks of change: in the sermons of 1290 the contracted forms lord and made are seen instead of louerd and maked. Already mid (cum) was making way for the Northern with. This was the state of things when the Handlyng Synne was given to England soon after 1303; it was believed, though wrongly, to be the translation of a work of Bishop Robert's, and it seems to have become the great pattern; from it many a friar and parson all over England must have borrowed the weapons wherewith the Seven Deadly Sins (these play a great part in English song) might be assailed. Another work of Robert Manning's is entitled Medytacyuns of the Soper of our Lorde, a translation from Buonaventura, the well-known oracle of Franciscans abroad. The popularity of these works of the Lincoln

1 Why has not this work been printed long ago?

shire bard must have spread the influence of the East Midland further and further. We know not when it made a thorough conquest of Oxford, the great stronghold of the Franciscans; but its triumph over the London speech was most slow, and was not wholly achieved until a hundred and sixty years after Manning's first work was begun. That poet, as may be seen by the Table at the end of the foregoing chapter, heralded the changes in English, alike by his large proportion of French words and by his small proportion of those Teutonic words that were sooner or later to drop.

The following examples will show how the best English of our day follows the East Midland, and eschews the Southern speech that prevailed in London about the year 1300. A is what Manning would have written; B is what was spoken at London in Manning's time.

A. But she and thei are fyled with synnes, and so I have sayd to that lady eche day; answer, men, is hyt nat so?

B. Ac heo and hi beoth ifuled mid sunnen, and so ichabbe iseid to thilke levedy uche day; answereth, men, nis it nought so ?

The last sentence is compiled mainly from the works of Davie, of whom I gave a specimen at page 209, It is interesting to see what the tongue of London was thirty years before her first great poet came into the world.

It may seem strange that England's new Standard speech should have sprung up, not in Edward the First's Court, but in cloisters on the Nen and the Welland. We must bear in mind that the English Muse, as in the tale

S

of the Norfolk bondman, always leaned towards the common folk; it was the French Muse that was the aristocratic lady. As to Edward, he was in the main a truly national King, and what we owe to him is known far and wide; but one thing was wanting to his gloryhe never made English the language of his Court, sore worried though he was by Parisian wiles. Our tongue had to plod on for about forty years after his death, before it could win Royal favour. The nobles still clave to the French: the struggle for mastery between the Romance and the Teutonic lasted for about a hundred and twenty years in all. In 1258 a proclamation in English was put forth, the first Royal acknowledgment of the speech of the lowly; about 1380 the Black Prince, lately dead, was mourned in French poems compiled by Englishmen; and these elegies seem to be almost the last effort of the tongue which had been the fashion at Court for three centuries, and in which Langtoft had sung the deeds of Edward the First. Robert of Gloucester could say in 1300 that England was the only country that held not to her own speech, her 'high men' being foreigners.2 This reproach was taken away fifty years later. By that time it was becoming clearer and clearer that a New Standard of English had arisen, of which Robert Manning was the patriarch; much as Cadmon had been the great light of the Northern Anglian that had fallen

1 The poet of 1220 (Old English Miscellany, p. 77) goes over all the classes of society, and pronounces that the bonde (colonus) has the best chance of escaping the grip of 'Satanas the olde.'

2 Robert might have found the same phænomenon in parts of Hungary. I have quoted his words at page 206.

before the Danes, and as Alfred had been the great light of the Western Saxon that had fallen before the Frenchmen. Throughout the Fourteenth Century the speech of the shires near Rutland was spreading in all directions; it at length took possession of Oxford and London, and more or less influenced such men as Wickliffe and Chaucer. Gower, when a youth, had written in Latin and French; when old, he wrote in English little differing from that of Manning. This dialect moreover made its way into the North: let any one compare the York Mysteries of 1350 with the version of them made forty years later, and he will see the influence of the Midland tongue.1 The Western shires bordering on North Wales had long employed a medley of Southern and Northern forms; these were now settling down into something very like Manning's speech, as may be seen in the romance of William and the Werwolf.2 Kent, Gloucestershire, and Lancashire were not so ready to welcome the dialect compounded in or near Rutland; their resistance seems to have lasted throughout the Fourteenth Century; and Langland, who wrote Piers Ploughman's Vision after the year 1362, holds to the speech of his own Western shire. He was the greatest genius that had as yet employed English, though he was soon to be outdone, perhaps in his own lifetime. Chaucer has given us a most spirited sketch of the

1 Garnett's Essays, p. 192; swylke, alane, and sall are changed into suche, allone, and shalle; and other words in the same way. p is here corrupted into y; yat stands for þat. Many still write ye for the.

2 See Page 205.