many works on religion had been put forth both in the North and the West.1

Having spoken of Cambridge, I next turn to Oxford, which had been lately roused by the preaching of Wickliffe ; she was now glowing with a fiery heat unknown to her since the days of the earlier Franciscans. The questions at this time in debate had the healthiest effect upon the English tongue, though they might jar upon Roman interests. Wickliffe, during his long residence in the South, seems to have unlearned the old dialect he must have spoken when a bairn on the banks of the Tees. His first childish lessons in Scripture were most likely drawn from the legends of the Cursor Mundi.2 He was now bestowing a far greater blessing upon his countrymen, and was stamping his impress upon England's religious dialect, framed long before in the Ancren Riwle and the Handlyng Synne. In reading Wickliffe's version of the Bible, of which so many scores of manuscripts have been happily snatched from Roman fires, we are struck by various peculiarities of speech in which he differs from Mandeville and Chaucer. In these we have followed him. The greatest is the Dano-Anglian custom of clipping the prefix to the Past Participle, as founden instead of yfounden. He sometimes, although most seldom, clips the ending of the Plural of the Imperative, as in Herod's request to the wise men:

'Whan yee han founden, telle ayein to me.'

1 The Editors of Wickliffe's Bible give specimens of many of these treatises.

2 This most popular work (about 1290) exists both in Northern and other forms of English.

We see our well

If he has now and then the Northern theire (illorum), he employs thilke (iste), and has both ill and same; whiche, eche, suche, and myche, all occur in his writings. He still uses the old sum man for quidam, but this was soon to drop, and to be replaced by a certain man. He has one peculiarity that may be still found in Yorkshire; the Old English butan (nisi) is not enough for him, but he turns it into no but. In Mark xvi. 5, he has a zong oon, instead of the old Accusative anne geongne; the oon (one) seems to stand for wight; the phrase is common enough with us. He corrupts Orrmin's pu wass into thou wast (Mark xiv. 67); the old form was kept by Roy 150 years later. He also corrupts a Strong Perfect now and then, as, 'thou betokist' (Mat. xxv. 20). He speaks of 'thi almes,' not 'thine alms' (Mat. vi. 4). known yea, yea; nay, nay (the Gothic ya and ne). Wickliffe has both the old windewe and the new winewe, our winnow. He has shipbreche, which had not yet become shipwreck, a strange corruption. We find also debreke (Mark i. 26), one of the first instances of a French preposition being prefixed to an English root; renew and dislike were to come long afterwards. A remnant of the older speech lingers in his nyle ye drede (fear not); we still say willy, nilly. Hys efen-peowas was in 1380 turned into his even servauntis; but this most useful prefix, answering to the Latin con, was soon to drop. To express forsitan, he uses by hap and happily (our haply). The Old English reafung is with him raveyn (our ravening).

The great English Reformer clave far too closely to the idioms of the Latin Vulgate, whence he was trans

lating; he therefore produced English by no means equal to that of the year 1000. Thus he will not say, that 'it thundered,' as the English writer of the Tenth Century wrote; but puts, 'the cumpany seide thundir to be maad.' One of his most un-Teutonic idioms is, 'he seith, I a vois of the crying in desert.' Again, Wickliffe writes, Jhesu convertid, and seynge hem suwynge him.' Tyndale handles this far better: 'Jesus turned about, and sawe them folowe.' We now happily keep sue to the law courts; and we may also rejoice that the earlier Reformer's diction was improved upon in other respects a hundred and fifty years later; we have thus been saved from such phrases as, 'I am sent to evangelise to thee thes thingis; "1 'to gyve the science of helthe to his peple; if I schal be enhaunsid (lifted up) fro the erthe;' it pertegnede to him of nedy men;' 'Jhesus envyraunyde (went about) al Galilee;' 'Fadir, clarifie thi name;' he hath endurid (hardened) the herte;' 'my volatilis (fatlings) ben slayn;' 'he that hath a spousesse (bride).' On the other hand, we have preferred Wickliffe to Tyndale in sundry passages.

WICKLIFFE.

Sone of perdicioun.

It is good us to be here.
Entre thou in to the joye of

thi lord.

I shulde have resceyved with usuris.

Thou saverist nat tho thingis, &c.

TYNDALE.
That lost chylde.

Here is good beinge for us.
Go in into thy master's joye.

Shulde I have receaved with vauntage.

Thou perceavest nott godly thynges.

This first brought in the Greek ending ize, of which we have become so fond. What a mongrel word is proctorize!

Purvey, after referring to Bede and Alfred as translators of the Bible into Saxon, that was English, either comoun langage of this lond,' writes thus: 'Frenshe men, Beemers, and Britons han the bible, and othere bokis of devocioun and of exposicioun, translatid in here modir langage; whi shulden not English men have the same in here modir langage, I can not wite, no but for falsenesse and necgligence of clerkis, either for oure puple is not worthi to have so greet grace and gifte of God, in peyne of here olde synnes. God for his merci amende these evele causis, and make our puple to have and kunne and kepe truli holi writ, to liif and deth!'1 Purvey and his friends stand out prominently among the writers, who settled England's religious dialect; few of the words used in the Wickliffite version have become obsolete within the last five hundred years. The holy torch was to be handed on to a still greater scholar in 1525; for all that, Wickliffe is remarkable as the one Englishman who in the last eleven hundred years has been able to mould Christian thought on the Continent; Cranmer and Wesley have had small influence but on English-speaking men.

Wickliffe had much help from Purvey and Hereford. The latter of these, who translated much of the Old Testament, strove hard to uphold the Southern dialect, and among other things wrote daunster, syngster, after the Old English way. But the other two translators leant to the New Standard, the East Midland, which was making steady inroads on the Southern speech. They write daunseresse, dwelleresse, &c., following Robert

1 Wickliffite Versions (Forshall and Madden), p. 59.

of Brunne, who first led the way to French endings fastened to English roots. They also write ing for the Active Participle, where Hereford writes the old ende; they do not follow him in employing the Southern Imperative Plural. In the Apology for the Lollards (Camden Society) there is a strong dash of the Northern dialect. If Wickliffe were the writer, he must have here gone back to the speech of his childhood far more than in his Scriptural translations. In this Apology there are 94 obsolete English words.

The last half of the Fourteenth Century employed many of the phrases that live for ever in the English Bible and Prayer Book. We find such expressions as albeit, surely, passing rich, during, on this condition that, considering this, as to this, with one accord, to that ende that, touching these things, enter in, under colour of, that is interpreted, if so be that, oft time, according as, in regard of, upon a time, ensaumple, rebuke, she-wolf, outrely (utterly), go a begging, whereas, because. The Lord's Prayer took its shape much as we have it now, Wickliffe employing in its latter part the French words dettours, temptacioun, delyvere. I pass on to the Belief, that other stronghold of wholesome English; and I give a few other forms of this age, now embodied in our Prayer Book. I take the following from a Primer of the year 1400.1 We see that the speech of Religion was being moulded into the shape which has come down to us in the Anglican Prayer Book; little remained to

1 Blunt's Key to the Prayer Book, Edition of 1868, page 4. The first piece seems to be East Anglian.