in dates where there is no ground for precision. It is quite as easy to suppose that the English translator finished his work in ten as in twenty years; so that the change from Saxon to English would commence in 1265 [1165?], and thus the forty years' Exodus of our language, supposing it bounded to 1216, would extend to half a century. So difficult is it to fix any definite period for the commencing formation of English. It is easy to speak of a child being born at an express time; but the birthepochs of languages are not to be registered with the same precision and facility.* Again, as to the end of Mr. Ellis's period : it is inferred by him that the formation of the language was either completed or far advanced in 1216, from the facility of rhyming displayed in Robert of Gloucester,† and in pieces belonging to the middle of the thirteenth century, or perhaps to an earlier date. I own that, to me, this theorizing by conjecture seems like stepping in quicksand. Robert of Gloucester wrote in 1280; and surely his rhyming with facility then does not "Layamon's age," says Mr. Hallam, "is uncertain; it must have been after 1155, when the original poem was completed, and can hardly be placed below 1200. His language is accounted rather Anglo-Saxon than English." Lit. Hist. vol. i. p. 59. Since the former editions of this Essay Layamon has been printed by the Society of Antiquaries of London, under the able superintendence of Sir F. Madden.] *[Nothing can be more difficult, except by an arbitrary line, than to determine the commencement of the English language. When we compare the earliest English of the thirteenth century with the Anglo-Saxon of the twelfth, it seems hard to pronounce why it should pass for a separate language, rather than a modification or simplification of the former. We must conform, however, to usage, and say that the Anglo-Saxon was converted into English-1st, by contracting or otherwise modifying the pronunciation and orthography of words; 2ndly, by omitting many inflections, especially of the nouns, and consequently making more use of articles and auxiliaries; 3rdly, by the introduction of French derivatives; 4thly, by using less inversion and ellipsis, especially in poetry. Of these, the second alone I think can be considered as sufficient to describe a new form of language; and this was brought about so gradually, that we are not relieved from much of our difficulty- whether some compositions shall pass for the latest offspring of the mother, or the earliest fruits of the daughter's fertility. It is a proof of this difficulty, that the best masters of our ancient language have lately introduced the word Semi-Saxon, which is to cover everything from 1150 to 1250.-Hallam, Lit. Hist., vol. i. p. 57.] † [Robert of Gloucester, who is placed by the critics in the thirteenth century, seems to have used a kind of intermediate diction, neither Saxon nor English; in his work, therefore, we see the transition exhibited.-Johnson.] [As Robert of Gloucester alludes to the canonisation of St. Louis in 1297, it is obvious, however much he wrote before, he was writing after that event. See Sir F. Madden's Havelok, p. liii.] prove the English language to have been fully formed in 1216. But we have pieces, it seems, which are supposed to have been written early in the thirteenth century. To give any support to Mr. Ellis's theory, such pieces must be proved to have been produced very early in the thirteenth century. Their coming towards the middle of it, and showing facility of rhyming at that late date, will prove little or nothing. But of these poetical fragments supposed to commence either with or early in the thirteenth century, our antiquaries afford us dates which, though often confidently pronounced, are really only conjectural; and in fixing those conjectural dates, they are by no means agreed. Warton speaks of this and that article being certainly not later than the reign of Richard I.; but he takes no pains to authenticate what he affirms. He pronounces the love-song, Blow, northern wind, blow, blow, blow!' to be as old as the year 1200.* Mr. Ellis puts it off only to about half a century later. Hickes places the 'Land of Cokayne' just after the Conquest. Mr. Warton would place it before the Conquest, if he were not deterred by the appearance of a few Norman words, and by the learned authority of Hickes.† Layamon would thus be superseded, as quite a modern. The truth is, respecting the 'Land of Cokayne,' that we are left in total astonishment at the circumstance of men, so well informed as Hickes and Warton, placing it either before or immediately after the Conquest, as its language is comparatively modern. It contains allusions to pinnacles in buildings, which were not introduced till the reign of Henry III.‡ Mr. Ellis is not so rash as to place that production, which Hickes and Warton removed to near the Conquest, earlier than the thirteenth century; and I * [Warton says, "before or about," which is lax enough.-Price's Warton, vol. i. p. 28, ed. 1824.] [It is not of the Land of Cokayne' that Warton says this, but of a religious or moral ode, consisting of one hundred and ninety-one stanzas.Price's Warton, vol. i. p. 7. Of the Land of Cokayne' he has said that it is a satire, which clearly exemplifies the Saxon adulterated by the Norman, and was evidently written soon after the Conquest, at least soon after the reign of Henry II. p. 9. Mr. Price (p. 7) follows Mr. Campbell in the age he would attach to the verse quoted in the first section of Warton, which is, he says, very arbitrary and uncertain.] [So says Gray to Mason (Works by Mitford, vol. iii. p. 305); but this is endeavouring to settle a point by a questionable date-one uncertainty by another.] believe it may be placed even late in that century. In short, where shall we fix upon the first poem that is decidedly English? and how shall we ascertain its date to a certainty within any moderate number of years? Instead of supposing the period of the formation of English to commence at 1180 [1185?], and to end at 1216, we might, without violence to any known fact, extend it back to several years earlier, and bring it down to a great many years later. In the fair idea of English, we surely, in general, understand a considerable mixture of French words.* Now, whatever may have been done in the twelfth century, with regard to that change from Saxon to English which consists in the extinction of Saxon grammatical inflections, it is plain that the other characteristic of English, viz. its Gallicism, was only beginning in the thirteenth century. The English language could not be said to be saturated with French till the days of Chaucer, i. e. it did not, till his time, receive all the French words which it was capable of retaining. Mr. Ellis nevertheless tells us that the vulgar English, not gradually, but suddenly, superseded the legitimate Saxon. When this sudden succession precisely began, it seems to be as difficult to ascertain, as when it ended. The sudden transition, by Mr. Ellis's own theory, occupied about forty years; and, to all appearance, that term might be lengthened, with respect to its commencement and continuance, to fourscore years at least. The Saxon language, we are told, had ceased to be poetically cultivated for some time previous to the Conquest. This might be the case with regard to lofty efforts of composition; but Ingulphus, the secretary of William the Conqueror, speaks of the popular ballads of the English, in praise of their heroes, which were sung about the streets; and William of Malmsbury, in the twelfth century, continues to make mention of them.† The pretensions of these ballads to the name of poetry we are unhappily, from the loss of them, unable to estimate. For a long time after the Conquest, the native minstrelsy, though it probably was never * [In comparing Robert of Gloucester with Layamon, a native of the same county, and a writer on the same subject, it will appear that a great quantity of French had flowed into the language since the loss of Normandy.— Hallam, Lit. Hist., vol. i. p. 61.] William of Malmsbury drew much of his information from those Saxon ballads. altogether extinct, may be supposed to have sunk to the lowest ebb. No human pursuit is more sensible than poetry to national pride or mortification; and a race of peasants, like the Saxons, struggling for bare subsistence, under all the dependence, and without the protection, of the feudal system, were in a state the most ungenial to feelings of poetical enthusiasm. For more than one century after the Conquest, as we are informed, an Englishman was a term of contempt. So much has time altered the associations attached to a name, which we should now employ as the first appeal to the pride or intrepidity of those who bear it. By degrees, however, the Norman and native races began to coalesce, and their patriotism and political interests to be identified. The crown and aristocracy having become during their struggles, to a certain degree, candidates for the favour of the people, and rivals in affording them protection, free burghs and chartered corporations were increased, and commerce and social intercourse began to quicken. Mr. Ellis alludes to an AngloNorman jargon having been spoken in commercial intercourse, from which he conceives our synonymes to have been derived. That individuals, imperfectly understanding each other, might accidentally speak a broken jargon, may be easily conceived; but that such a lingua Franca was ever the distinct dialect, even of a mercantile class, Mr. Ellis proves neither by specimens nor historical evidence. The synonymes in our language may certainly be accounted for by the gradual entrance of French words, without supposing an intermediate jargon. The national speech, it is true, received a vast influx of French words; but it received them by degrees, and subdued them, as they came in, to its own idioms and grammar. Yet, difficult as it may be to pronounce precisely when Saxon can be said to have ceased and English to have begun, it must be supposed that the progress and improvement of the national speech was most considerable at those epochs which tended to restore the importance of the people. The hypothesis of a sudden transmutation of Saxon into English appears, on the whole, not to be distinctly made out. At the same time, some public events might be highly favourable to the progress and cultivation of the language. Of those events, the establishment of municipal governments and of elective magistrates in the towns must have been very important, as they furnished materials and incentives for daily discussion and popular eloquence. As property and security increased among the people, we may also suppose the native minstrelsy to have revived. The minstrels, or those who wrote for them, translated or imitated Norman romances; and, in so doing, enriched the language with many new words, which they borrowed from the originals, either from want of corresponding terms in their own vocabulary, or from the words appearing to be more agreeable. Thus, in a general view, we may say that, amidst the early growth of her commerce, literature, and civilization, England acquired the new form of her language, which was destined to carry to the ends of the earth the blessings from which it sprang. In the formation of English from its Saxon and Norman materials, the genius of the native tongue might be said to prevail, as it subdued to Saxon grammar and construction the numerous French words which found their way into the language.* But it was otherwise with respect to our poetry-in which, after the Conquest, the Norman Muse must be regarded as the earliest preceptress of our own. Mr. Tyrwhitt has even said, and his opinion seems to be generally adopted, that we are indebted for the use of rhyme, and for all the forms of our versification, entirely to the Normans.† Whatever might be the case with * Vide Tyrwhitt's Preface to the 'Canterbury Tales,' where a distinct account is given of the grammatical changes exhibited in the rise and progress of English. † It is likely that the Normans would have taught us the use of rhyme and their own metres, whether these had been known or not to the AngloSaxons before the Conquest. But respecting Mr. Tyrwhitt's position that we owe all our forms of verse and the use of rhyme entirely to the Normans, I trust the reader will pardon me for introducing a mere doubt on a subject which cannot be interesting to many. With respect to rhyme, I might lay some stress on the authority of Mr. Turner, who, in his 'History of the Anglo-Saxons,' says that the Anglo-Saxon versification possessed occasional rhyme; but as he admits that rhyme formed no part of its constituent character, for fear of assuming too much, let it be admitted that we have no extant specimens of rhyme in our language before the Conquest. One stanza of a ballad shall indeed be mentioned, as an exception to this, which may be admitted or rejected at the reader's pleasure. In the mean time let it be recollected, that, if we have not rhyme in the vernacular verse, we have examples of it in the poetry of the Anglo-Saxon churchmen-abundance of it in Bede's and Boniface's Latin verses. We meet also, in the same writers, with lines which resemble modern verse in their trochaic and |