MANDEVILLE, WICLIFFE AND CHAUCER.

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in the successive MS. copies that were made during the lifetime of the author, and thus show how, within the limits of one generation, the language was improved and developed.

As literature revived in England, and authors employed the vernacular for purposes of science as well as in poetry, the language became purer and purer; so that the works of the latter part of the fourteenth century already present much fewer and less striking differences from the English of our day. This was the age of the great masters, to whom the present form of that language may fairly be ascribed. A series of political and satirical songs and poems in the vernacular, which belong to the time from Henry III. to Chaucer, form, as it were, the background upon which the works of men like Mandeville, Trevisa, Wicliffe, and Chaucer himself, stand forth prominently. Even Scotland, whose language in those days differed but slightly from that of the sister kingdom, could boast of her Barbour, whose biographical romance, "The Bruce," procured him a pension from David Bruce, and from posterity the renown of having adorned the English language by a strain of versification, expression, and poetical imagery, far superior to his age, and admirably calculated to aid it in its onward course. Another Scot, Andrew of Wyntown, long prior of a convent on St. Serf's Island, in Loch Levin-one of the most ancient religious establishments in Scotland-has left behind him, in his "Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland," a more curious than important specimen of the language of his time. Still his language is pure, his Alexandrines flow easily, though not over correct, and his history was in his day generally read and admired. It is, however, to English authors like Gower that we must look for evidences of

the gradual change wrought in the language of those days, and to Chaucer, the father of English poetry, for the final and triumphal result of such efforts. Trevisa's English version of Higden's Polychronicon, an absurd farrago of all events he had read or heard of since the creation of the world; the small portion of Wicliffe's Bible that alone was printed, and which is characterized by a liberal and almost instinctive adoption of vernacular diction; and Sir John Mandeville's English writings—the first prose work in the new language-were no doubt powerful aids in the steadily progressing development of the English tongue. They show clearly how it gradually absorbed the Norman elements with which it had been first mechanically and forcibly united, to assume in the hands and by the genius of great authors a complete and finished existence. The English language appeared now, thanks to such assistance, no longer overawed and ruled by the French; but enriched by new elements, and endowed with new powers which it had adopted and naturalized, thus overcoming the fatal effects of a proximity so close and a contact so continual as to threaten the complete subjugation of the weaker idiom. Literature had, in fact, rescued the Saxon element from utter destruction, through a process of absorption and amalgamation, directed by the genius of poets, the tact and judgment of scholars, and a happy instinct in those who wrote for the people. The greatest merit in this great work is due to Geffray Chaucere, as he calls himself, of whom already Occleve speaks as of "the great finder of our language; " whilst modern critics claim for him, as the founder of modern English, the same honor that Germany gives to her Luther. That he was of Norman descent, as the frequent mention of his name in the

Battel Abbey Roll and his personal appearance seem to indicate, but adds to his claims on the gratitude of his countrymen. It is true that his early familiarity with metrical romances, and his extensive translations from that rich mine of poetry, led him to introduce a large number of foreign words, and even to attempt, for the sake of harmony, a new accent and new pronunciation in many cases, which have earned him the title of "French Brewer." But he deserves this blame as little as Spenser's praise, that his English was "a well of English undefiled." Careful comparisons have proved, that in no part of his work, not even in his Romaunt of the Rose, are less than two-thirds pure Anglo-Saxon: his Canterbury Tales are even purer, as in the well-known words of the jovial monk:

"When he rode, men might his bridle hear
Jingling in a whistling wind, as clear

And eke as loud as doth his chapel bell."

And further on

"That Cristes love, and his apostles twelve,
He taught; but first he followed himselve❞—

probably the most touching description of a true minister of Christ which English poetry possesses, and as superior in its simple force and vividness to Dryden's imitation as to similar verses of Goldsmith and Cowper.

In selecting the language of his day for his romances, and even for the most remarkable of his works--the "Conclusions of Astrolabie" for "lytel Lowis in lith Englyshe "-he showed that superior tact and judgment which gave him such unsur

passed influence on the formation of the national tongue. His language is, in form, as old as the reign of Edward the Confessor, with only those flectional modifications and new words which the intervening three centuries had gradually introduced and made English. He altered not, nor did he attempt to improve the English of his time: he simply chose its most modern form, sometimes preferring a Norman word because perhaps it rhymed better or sounded softer, but still always considering the French as a foreign tongue; for he said, "lette Frenchmen in French also enditen their queint termes, for it is kindly to their mouthes, and let us shew our fantasies in such wordes as we learnden of our dames tongue." He would not, therefore, reject a useful word or a striking expression merely because they were of foreign birth, but always kept in view the noble aim of improving his mother-tongue, and thus contributed largely to its progress. For this he deserves the more thanks, as he had to contend with great difficulties. He found the foreign element, the French, not quite blended nor harmonized with the native Saxon: it had as yet passed but very partially through the amalgamating process of common usage. Hence arose a most unsettled state of pronunciation, or, rather, accentuation, as the letters and syllables which afterwards became mute then still retained their proper sound, as in French. this he complains himself in his Troilus and Cressus, where he says:

"And for there is so great diversité,

In English and in writing of our tongue,
So pray I to God that none miswrite thee,
Ne thee mismetre for default of tongue,]
And read whereso thou be or elles sung,
That thou be understood, God I beseeche."

Of

This great diversity of spelling, and the absence of all fixed rules of orthography and pronunciation, are, as is well known, defects under which the English labors to the present day. They were the almost unavoidable result of the gradual amalgamation of so different elements. Much, however, was done by Chaucer to establish greater uniformity; and the power of the poet in improving his language in mere matters of form, also, may be measured by the simple fact that it is to him, mainly, that the English owes its infinitives without the former n, its participles in ing, its single article the, and its contracted forms of the participle past. It remains true of him what Lydgate said, that he

Occleve and Lydgate-James I.-Charles of Orleans-Caxton and Contemporaries-Sir Thomas More.

THIS great work of Chaucer was supported and continued by men like Occleve and Lydgate, whose writings, though feeble as compositions, still contributed to propagate and establish those improvements in the language of their land which were now beginning to prevail at large. That Occleve, as well as Gower and Chaucer, had originally been bred to the law, led Watson