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ANCIENT LANGUAGE OF ENGLAND : 

 WICKLIFF'S BIBLE. 



ON some previous occasions we have expressed our sense of the 

 importance of a knowledge of our original tongue, both for the right 

 understanding of our early literature and history, and enjoyment of 

 purity and nobleness of diction among our contemporaries. We 

 had, however, almost began to despair of seeing any general attention 

 paid to the Anglo-Saxon, or to the mixed dialect which was gradually 

 formed in this country after the Norman Conquest. It seemed as if 

 none but a few professed antiquarians could be brought to pay the 

 homage of patriotic retrospection to the language of our forefathers. 

 We have witnessed the establishment, and we have for years seen the 

 .continuance of a college in London (one of the laudably professed 

 objects of which was to prevent the denationalization of the people), 

 having professorships of the language and of the literature of every 

 country, except that of England, as if her speech, the most variously 

 derived, the most frequently subjected to change, and the most 

 enriched from its use by thousands of powerful and inventive minds, 

 were unworthy of separate and serious study. 



The second university in the kingdom (proh pudor !} possesses not 

 even a lectureship which comprises the slightest portion of instruc- 

 tion rsspecting the vernacular tongue, though its libraries are said to 

 contain many old inedited works of great value and curiosity, by the 

 publication of which a moderate proficient in old English might 

 make for himself a respectable reputation. One of the most distin- 

 guished of our Saxon scholars, Mr. Kemble, the editor of " Beowulf," 

 lately gave lectures at Cambridge to intelligent, admiring, and grate- 

 fully instructed auditors, on the value, interest, and beauty of the 

 remains included in north-derived speech. He has engendered in 

 many minds a conviction that there ought to be regular tuition in 

 this particular that it is a disgrace to the university to be wanting 

 therein. But nothing has yet arisen in consequence of this rational 

 belief; no opulent and munificent worshipper of the reverence- 

 worthy relics of elder times has yet either consecrated a temple for 

 their preservation, or endowed a hierophant whose pleasure and duty 

 would consist in initiating the young and ardent in the Bcrealian 

 mysteries ; but the Mammon science of Political Economy, the off- 

 spring of calculation and cupidity, has found a wealthy patron, and a 

 well paid expositor, within the very walls where neither Bede, 

 Alfred, nor Csedmon receive the honour of due comment and praise. 

 There the writings of Adam Smith and of his cashwise followers, are 

 made text-books of as if the wealth of a nation was wholly pecu- 

 niary as if worth were synonymous with value, and nothing de- 

 served attention which kept alive in the minds of the people of this 

 day the characters, events, and ideas of ancestral ages. But we will 

 not think that these disgraceful deficiencies will remain for ever a 

 matter of just reproach to us, though we are hardly warranted in 

 anticipating any improvement. 



