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est manuscript of Layamon, the last important Anglo-Saxon, or rather SemiSaxon work-a manuscript of the early part of the thirteenth century, and probably nearly of the author's time-there are two examples of the use of his as the sign of the possessive of proper names. In another text, written, as is supposed, fifty years later, his is generally substituted for the es of the older manuscript, and is used, in a few cases, even with common nouns; but it is remarkable, that in the two instances where the older text has his, (I. pp. 175, 279,) the corresponding passages in the later have the regular possessive in es. In the Ormulum, which I think must be regarded as English rather than Semi-Saxon, and if so, then the earliest specimen of English, the possessive of nouns, as well as the plural number, is formed by the addition of 8, (or rather, in accordance with the peculiar orthography of the author, of two 88,) without the apostrophe, and the pronoun never supplies its place. In the proclamation of Henry III., (1258,) the possessive is made in 8 or es. In Robert of Gloucester, at least in Hearne's edition of 1724, the possessive is almost invariably formed by the addition of 's or e's to the radical, but there are a very few cases where ys is used as the possessive sign, and printed separately from the noun. Thus, at page 64:

be hauene per he was y slawe, aftur Haym ys name y wys,
Hamptone was y clepud, as he yet y clepud ys.

The pronoun his is printed in this edition, indifferently, his, hys, and ys, and therefore in the example I have cited, ys may possibly be a pronoun, but the mere separation of this syllable from the root in the manuscript does not prove it to be so, for the participial and preterite augment y, as in y slawe, y clepud in the above couplet, the prefix bi, as in bi het, bi leue, bi com, bi gan, the prefix a, (Latin ad,) as in scent for assent, and in a passage from a different manuscript, p. 611, the plural sign is in a peny is, are separated from the root. Besides this example from Robert of Gloucester, I find in that writer two other instances of the separation of the syllable ys from the root in the posses sive case:

The kyng tok Brut ys owne body, in ostage as it were,—p. 13.
And after Brut ys owne nome he clepede it Bretagne,-p. 22.

There are many similar cases in the Continuation of Robert of Gloucester printed in the appendix to Herne's edition, and written apparently about the middle of the fifteenth century. Thus: "Sir John is tyme," p. 589; "In the V. Kyng Henry is tyme," p. 593; "through God is grace,” p. 595; and the use of the pronoun his as a possessive sign is frequent in Hardyng, who is supposed to have finished his chronicle about 1465, though he most usually employs the regular possessive in 8. Thus, reprint of 1812, p. 156: "In the year of Christ his incarnacion." P. 226: "and putte hym whole in God his high mercye." And in the continuation of 1543, p. 436, "Kynge Henry the VI. hys wife."

In Gower, Conf. Am., Pauli., iii. 356, is a passage where his may be a possessive sign:

To holde love his covenaunt;

but it is possible that love may here be used as a dative, to hold to love his covenant, his requirement or stipulation.

No example of this construction has been observed in Piers Ploughman, Chaucer, or the Wycliffite versions, but three apparent instances occur in Torrente of Portugal, at verses 380, 1384, and 1902; the devylle ys hed, But it be for Jhesu is sake, and ffor Jeshu is love. These, however, are inconclusive, for the same reason as those cited from Robert of Gloucester. The ending in ys is often found about this period, in pronouns where it could not have been derived from his or hys, as in one of the Paston Letters, (Vol. I., 46,) written in 1470, in which hers is spelt hyrrys, and ours, howrys, and the plural of nouns very often takes this ending. The form "my Lord Bedford ys godes," in the Paston Letters, I. 122, "to my Maistr ys place," I. 198, are probably mere orthographical errors, as they are contrary to the almost uniform usage in that collection.

In the Morte d'Arthur, first printed in 1485, tenth book, chapter thirty-fifth, I find this passage: "Beware, Kynge Marke, and come not nyghe me, for wete thou wel that I saued Alysander his lyf," and there is a more equivocal instance in the seventh chapter of the fourth book: "This lord of this castel his name is Sir Damas." In general, the possessive is formed in this work as in modern times, but always without the apostrophe.

The earliest examples I have met with of the free and constant use of his as a possessive sign are in the continuation of Fabyan's Chronicle, commencing with the reign of Henry VIII. and printed in 1542, pp. 696, 699, 701, 702, and elsewhere, of Ellis's reprint, but it is remarkable that in the previous parts of that Chronicle, this construction does not occur.

In the Confutacyon of Tyndale's Aunswere, made anno 1532, by Syr Thomas More, p. 343 of the edition of 1557, I find this passage, “him have they sette on saynt Mathie hys even by the name of Saynt Thomas the Martyr"; and on p. 597, "for conclusion of David hys dedes." It is possible that the form of the possessive may, in these instances, have been changed by the editor, so as to accord with the new usage, but if genuine, they date further back than the examples from Fabyan's Chronicle.

An instance of the use of the plural possessive pronoun as the sign of the possessive case of a noun occurs in a letter written in 1528, and printed at page 44 of the Introduction to Bagster's English Hexapla: "I did promys him X 1. sterling to praie for my father & mother there sowles, and al cristen sowles." So in A Breviate Touching the Order and Governmente of a Nobleman's House, 1665, published by the Royal Society of Antiquaries, Vol. XIII., p. 330: “He is to see into the baker and bruer their offices," &c.

Fuller, Worthies, II. 327, has: "Without the help of Ariadne her Clue of silk," &c.

These examples, indeed, prove nothing directly with regard to the origin of the possessive sign 8, but these instances and those cited from Layamon, the Morte d'Arthur, Fabyan, and More, show that the possessive pronoun was, to some extent, regarded as the grammatical equivalent of the possessive sign, before the date of the English Liturgy.

Doubtless the number of such examples might be increased by further research, but they are too few and too much at variance with the almost universal usage of the language before the sixteenth century, and its known historical etymology, to serve as a foundation for a grammatical theory. If they are any thing more than accidental departures from the regular form, they, at

most, only prove that particular English writers confounded the possessive pronoun with the possessive sign. Even this conclusion is rendered less probable by the fact that no instance of the corresponding use of her, or, with the single exception which I have cited from the letter of 1528, of their, is known to occur until about 1560. Palsgrave expressly says that the possessive is formed by adding 8 (or is) to the noun; and he does not himself in any case employ the pronoun for this purpose, nor does Gil in his Logonomia, notice any but the inflected possessive. The apostrophe before the 8 in Robert of Gloucester was probably introduced to make the distinction between the possessive singular and the plural number, a device, which, when the new plural form in & was hardly yet colloquially established, might be a convenience, if not a necessity. Upon the whole, then, I think we are authorized to say that the theory which makes the possessive sign 8 a derivative or contraction of the possessive pronoun his, in English etymology, is without historical evidence or probable analogy to support it.

I regret that I have been unable to consult two articles mentioned by Sir F. Madden, in the Glossarial Remarks to Layamon, Vol. III., p. 451, one in the Critical Review for 1777, vol. XLIII., p. 10, the other in the Cambridge Phil. Museum, Vol. II., as a simple reference to them might perhaps have saved a discussion which the statement of Latham and the opinions of some other grammarians seemed to render necessary.

LECTURE XIX.

THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AS AFFECTED BY THE ART OF PRINTING.

I.

THE material conditions to which the art of book-making in all its branches is subject, have not only been powerfully instrumental in the modification of single words, and in determining those minor questions upon which the ready and commodious use of a written or printed volume depends, but they have exerted an important influence upon the more general forms of literature, and even upon the character and tendency of mental action. Let me illustrate by a comparison between the ancient and modern methods of recording the processes and results of human thought. The oldest manuscripts have scarcely a single point of resemblance to modern books. The Latin word volumen, (whence our volume,) derived from the verb volvo, I turn or roll, indicates the most usual form of the ancient book. It was a long, narrow roll of parchment or papyrus generally divided transversely into pages or columns, the words written closely together without any separation by spaces, without distinctive forms of letters, capitals being employed for all purposes alike, without marks of punctuation, without divisions of chapters, paragraphs, or periods, and frequently made still more illegible by complicated and obscure abbreviations or contractions of whole syllables, or even words, into a single character. The modern book* is an assemblage of leaves,

*It may not be here irrelevant to make a remark or two on the etymology of the Latin and English words for book. Volumen, derived as I have just said from volvo, is a younger and less common Latin name for book than either liber, the generic term for all books, or codex, properly the specific designation of manuscripts composed of leaves of any material, while volumen was the appellation of the roll. The word liber, (whence our library,) originally signifying the inner bark of trees, was applied to books, because bark was one of the earliest materials on which the Latin people

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of convenient form and dimensions, securely united at one edge, with pages regularly numbered, impressed with characters of different but fixed forms, according to their several uses, words separated by spaces, members of the periods, and the periods themselves distinguished by appropriate points, and the whole cut up into paragraphs, sections, and chapters, according to the natural divisions of the subject, or the convenience of the writer, printer, or reader, and, finally, abundantly provided with explanatory notes and references, and ample tables of contents and indexes. Ancient manuscripts were, as a rule, without notes, but copyists or later possessors sometimes introduced in the margin explanatory glosses. Conventional signs or characters were also sometimes made use of by way of notes.

To an unpractised eye, however familiar with the individual characters, an ancient manuscript or inscription presents but a confused and indistinct succession of letters, and no little practice is required to enable us readily to group these letters into syllables, the syllables into words, and to combine the words into separate periods. Indeed, the accidental omission of a space in printing between two successive words in our own language sometimes

wrote. Codex, or caudex, whence our code, signifies the trunk or stem of a tree. Thin tablets of wood, split from the stem and covered with a layer of wax, at a very early period supplied the place of the more modern papyrus, parchment and paper, the writing being inscribed upon the wax with a hard point or style.

The Gothic tribes also used slips of wood for the same purpose, and the wood of the beech being found best adapted for writing-tablets, its primitive name in Anglo-Saxon, boc,) became the designation of the most important object formed from it, and hence our English book, and the German Buch. According to Weigand this was originally Buchslab, because the Runic signs used for lots or prophecies were carved on twigs or slips of nut-bearing trees, and especially of the beech. It is a probable suggestion, that the form now universally adopted for the book owes its origin to the employment of wood or of leaden tablets in this way. Slips of wood could not well make a roll, and if connected at all, they would naturally be gathered like leaves of modern paper. The Upsal copy of the Moso-Gothic translation of the Gospels, generally known as the Codex Argenteus-believed to be of the fifth, or beginning of the sixth century, and one of the oldest parchments existing—is written on leaves of vellum arranged in book-fashion, as are also most of the Greek and Latin manuscripts now extant, the superior convenience of that form having led to its general adoption not far from the commencement of the Christian era, though the Herculanean and Egyptian papyri are all rolls.

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