between discordant dialects, has come down to us, a struc ture more resembling that of the Romance languages, than we meet in Old-Northern or in German. The arrangement of the period, the whole syntax, had been evidently already influenced, and the native inflections (if, indeed, they ever had been moulded into a harmonious system) diminished in number, variety, and distinctness. The tendencies which have resulted in the formation of modern English had been already impressed upon the Anglo-Saxon before the Norman Conquest; and the more complete establishment of the ecclesiastical domination of Rome had introduced some Latin and French words, and expelled from use a corresponding portion of the native vocabulary. It even appears that the Romance dialect of Normandy had partially supplanted the Saxon as early as the reign of Edward the Confessor, and it is stated to have been a good deal used at that time at court, in judicial proceedings, and in the pulpit.†

*See Lecture ii.

Able philologists have denied that the change which took place in the vernacular in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, was, in any considerable degree, due to the influence of the Norman invaders, and it is argued that the same change would have taken place without the Conquest. It is, I believe, denied by none that the language and literature of England were very powerfully affected by that influence in the fourteenth century, and those who maintain the theory in question, ask us to believe, that though the relations between the immigrant and the indigenous population were still substantially the same, yet the causes which proved so energetic in the reign of Edward III. had been absolutely inert for two hundred and fifty years, and then suddenly and spontaneously sprung into full action. I do not suppose it possible to distinguish between the effects produced by ecclesiastical Latin and by secular Norman, but to refuse to either of them a share in bringing about the change from the Angio Saxon of Alfred to the English of the reign of Henry III. is to ascribe to the Anglican tongue an unsusceptibility to external in'uences, which contrasts strangely with the history of its subsequent mutations.

Price finds confirmation of this theory in alleged corresponding changes of the Low German dialects, and Latham in those of the Danish and Swedish. But the Low German, and the Danish and Swedish, have been exposed, not indeed

The causes which have led to the adoption of so arge a proportion of foreign words, and at the same time produced so important modifications in the signification of many terms originally English, are very various. The most obvious of these are the early Christianization of the English nation, a circumstance not always sufficiently considered in the study of our linguistic history; the Norman conquest; the Crusades; and especially the mechanical industry and commercial enterprise of the British people, the former of which has compelled them to seek both the material for industrial elaboration, and a vent for their manufactures in the markets of the whole earth; the latter has made them the common carriers and brokers of the world. With so many points of external contact, so many conduits for the reception of every species of foreign influence, it would imply a great power of repulsion and resistance in the English tongue if it had not become eminently composite in its substance and in its organization. In fact, it has so completely adapted itself to the uses and wants of Christian society, as exemplified by the Anglo-Saxon race in the highest forms to which associate life has anywhere attained, that it well deserves to be considered the

to precisely the same causes of revolution as the Anglo-Saxon, but to somewhat analogous influences, and in all these cases the nature and amount of change is, not corresponding to that of the Anglo-Saxon, but almost exactly proportioned to the character and amount of extraneous disturbing force. The Latin has operated more or less on all of them. The Icelandic, isolated as it is, has re mained almost the same for seven centuries; the Swedish, and the dialects of secluded districts in Norway, being less exposed to foreign influences than the Danish, retain a very large proportion of the characteristics of the OldNorthern, while the language of Denmark, a country bordering upon Germany, and bound to it by a thousand ties, has become almost half Teutonic. If then we are to refer such changes to inherent tendencies only, how are we to explain these diversities between dialects, which, even after the birth of what is distinctively the English language, were still nearly identical? See Sir N. Madden's Preface to Layamon, p. 1, and the authorities there cited. See also Lecture XVII.

model speech of modern humanity, nearly achieving in language the realization of that great ideal which wise men are everywhere seeking to make the fundamental law of politi cal organization, the union of freedom, stability, and progress.

It is a question of much interest how far the different constituents of English have influenced each other, or in other words, how far each class of them has impressed its own formal characteristics upon those derived from a differ ent source. Let us take the reciprocal influence of the AngloSaxon and the Latin. We shall find it a general rule, that where the English word is made up of a Latin root with new terminal syllables, or suffixes, which modify the signification of the word or determine the grammatical class to which it belongs, those syllables are Saxon, while instances of Saxon radicals with Latin terminations are comparatively rare. With respect to prefixes, however, which, with the root, usually constitute compounds, not derivatives, the case is otherwise, and we have generally employed Latin prefixes with Latin roots,* seldom or never Latin prepositions with Saxon roots. We have indeed taken most of our Latin words entire in some derivative shape, as they were formed and employed by the Latins themselves, or the French after them, and thus the two great classes remain distinct in form, each following its own original law; but neverthless if there is a change, the Latin yields. The Saxon roots with Latin pas

* The Saxon inseparable` privative un-is an exception, a majority of our words beginning with this prefix being of Romance origin. At present, we incline to harmonize our etymology by substituting the Latin in- for the native particle, in words of foreign extraction. For example incapable is now ex

clusively used for the older uncapable.

Palsgrave in his list of verbs, p. 650, gives us I outcept for I except, but I have not met with this anomalous compound elsewhere, though outtake for except is very common in early English.

sive terminations are chiefly adjectives like eatable, bearable, readable, to a few of which custom has reconciled us; but many words of this class employed by old writers, such as doable, are obsolete, and the ear revolts at once at a new application of this ending; whereas we accept, without scruple, Latin and French roots with a Saxon termination.* Motion. less, painful, painless, joyful, joyless, and even ceaseless, almost the only instance of the use of the privative ending with a verbal root,† offend no Englishman's sense of congruity; nor do we hesitate to extend the process, and to say joyless-ness, and the like. Foreign verbs we conjugate according to the Saxon weak form, but I remember scarcely an instance of the application of the strong conjugation, with the

There is a Saxon noun, of rare occurrence, ábal, signifying ability, to which this termination might be referred. Did we not find in Icelandic a corresponding root, abl or afl, which exists in too many forms to be otherwise than indigenous, I should suspect ábal to be itself derived from the Latin adjective habilis. The historical evidence is in favor of deriving our adjectival ending in -ble from the Latin -a bilis, -ibilis, through the French - able, -ible. In early English, this termination had by no means a uniformly passive force, and it formerly ended many words where we have now replaced it by -al and -ful. Thus, in Holland's Pliny, medicinable is always used instead of medicinal; Fisher, in his Sermon had at the Moneth Minde of the noble Prynces Margarete, countesse of Richmonde and Darbye, has vengeable for vengeful, and Hooker (Discourse of Justification) has powerable for powerful. Similar forms often occur in Shakespeare. We still say delectable for delightful, but this is going out of use. Impeccable, however, maintains its ground among theologians, and comfortable is too strongly rooted to be disturbed.

This ending not unfrequently made the adjective a sort of gerundial, and hence "it is considerable," in the literature of the seventeenth century, generally meant "it is to be considered." The adjective reliable, in the sense of worthy of confidence, is altogether unidiomatic.

The termination in -ible is rather more uncertain in its force than that in -able. Milton's use of visible in Paradise Lost, I. 63, is remarkable. "Darkness visible" is not darkness as itself an object of vision, a mere curtain of black impenetrable cloud, but it is a sable gloom, through which, in spite of its profound of scurity, the fearful things it shrouded were supernaturally "visible."

+ Gower (Pauli's edition, II. 211, 214) uses haveless, but I do not know that this word is found elsewhere. Tireless and resistless occur in good writers.

letter-change, to a Romance root.* We compare foreign ad jectives after the Saxon fashion, by the addition of the syllables -er and -est, except that recently, in conformity to a rule which has no foundation in good taste or in the practice of the best writers, we have, in polysyllables, almost exclusively employed the comparison by more and most. The rule I speak of probably originated in a sense of incongruity in the adaptation of the Saxon form of comparison to adjectives borrowed from the French, and ending, as modified by English orthoepy, in -ous. The adjectives with this ending have all two, perhaps most of them three, syllables, and thus a repugnance, which at first belonged only to the termination, was gradually extended to native words resembling the French adjectives in the number of their syllables. Ascham writes inventivest, Bacon honorablest, and ancienter, Fuller eminentest, eloquenter, Hooker learnedest, solemnest, famousest, virtuousest, with the comparative and superlative adverbs wiselier, easilier, hardliest, Sidney even repiningest, Coleridge safeliest, and similar forms occur abundantly in Shakespeare. In fact, the rule never was adopted by thoroughly English authors, and is happily little observed by the best usage of the present day.

To one acquainted with the history of Great Britain, the comparative insignificance of the Celtic element, both as respects the grammar and the vocabulary of English, is a surprising fact, and the want of more distinct traces of Celtic influence in the development of the Continental languages is equally remarkable.

* The participial adjective distraught from distract is a case of this sort, and Spenser (Faerie Queene, B. I. c. VI. St. 43) has raile for rolled, the preterite of roll, but there is some doubt whether roll is not of Anglo-Saxon, or at least Gothic parentage.