216 



Monthly Review of Literature, 



[FEB. 



history of the country. The Saxons, we 

 know, succeeded each other, horde after 

 horde, driving the Britons before them to 

 the north and west ; and this they appear to 

 have done sweepingly leaving, we mean, 

 but a sprinkling of Britons, and certainly 

 not enough to retain long their own lan- 

 guage, for the fact of the intraceability of 

 any Celtic words is undeniable. In what 

 state the language of the Saxons then was 

 we know not no documents exist ; but 

 our Saxon Lexiconists choose to define it as 

 pure Saxon, which was subsequently cor- 

 rupted by successive intermixings of Danish 

 and Norman. This original purity, and this 

 subsequent corruption, Mr. Forby doubts ; 

 he questions not but this pure Saxon had 

 already Greek and Latin mixed up with 

 it, and that thus much of both the latter 

 came to us ' north about.' The intercourse 

 of the Romans with the Germans on the 

 Rhine, from the days of Caesar, or before, 

 and of the Greeks, earlier and later, with 

 those on the Danube, could not fail of in- 

 troducing numerous words, with foreign 

 articles. Even in Tacitus we find some of 

 the chiefs, and others who were not chiefs, 

 acquainted with Latin. Pure Saxon, if there 

 is any meaning in the term, was thus, ap- 

 parently, corrupted before it came to Eng- 

 land, from these sources. Established, 

 however, in England, in this state, what- 

 ever it was, the Danish invasions could 

 have affected it little, for their occupation 

 of any part of the country was no where 

 continuous for any considerable time ; and 

 if it had been, how know we that this 

 Danish differed from the Saxon ? did not 

 both come from the same quarters, and ap- 

 pear to be of the same races ? The Nor- 

 mans again were the same ; they invaded 

 Normandy, from the same regions, about 

 the same time the Danes did England, and 

 probably spoke the same language. Before 

 the Normans, indeed, invaded England, 

 they had become half French, but then 

 Norman-French also seems to have had 

 little influence upon the general language 

 of England. It must be recollected, the 

 Normans, compared with the Saxons, were 

 very few, and that they did not, like the 

 Saxons themselves, in the case of the Bri- 

 tons, cover the country, and expel the mass 

 of the population. Only the nobles and the 

 clergy of the Saxons probably learnt or 

 adopted the Norman language ; the bulk of 

 the people could have little interest in doing 

 so : and the fact is, that Kelham's Norman 

 Dictionary, the very object of which was to 

 collect the Nonnan words in English use, is 

 far from ample ; and the words are chiefly 

 such as were used in the law courts. French, 

 indeed, under the Plantagenets, came in in 

 abundance, and the stream has never ceased 

 to flow from their times to these ; but this 

 was discernible mainly in books, and but 

 slowly made its encroachments on the 

 spoken language of the country, and espe- 

 cially among the illiterate. The Greek and 



Latin of modern importation are, of course, 

 attributable wholly to the writers of books. 



It is only of late years that the subject of 

 Provin nalisms has been at all understood. 

 Sir Thomas Brown, who settled as a phy- 

 sician at Norwich in 1637, in a discourse of 

 his on languages, quotes a sample of Nor- 

 folk words, quite new to him, a stranger, 

 not more than twenty-six, which he re- 

 fers to a Saxon origin. Ray, far better 

 known as a naturalist, never surpass- 

 ed for accuracy and sagacity, made a 

 much more considerable collection. There 

 is also a collection of Suffolk words by 

 Major Moore ; and many county histories 

 furnish lists of words considered as peculiar 

 to districts. Some papers in the Archseo- 

 logia exist of the same kind such as Mr. 

 Drake's comparison of the Mseso-Gothic 

 and the Anglo-Saxon. Dr. William's 

 words, too, may be added, from the West 

 Riding of Yorkshire, in the sixteenth cen- 

 tury, and Mr. Wilbraham's Cheshire words 

 in the nineteenth. Mr. Brockett's book on 

 the dialect of Northumberland, may also be 

 mentioned, and particularly a couple of vo- 

 lumes recently published on the Craven 

 dialect. These are all of a grave cast, but 

 several pieces exist of a burlesque character, 

 equally valuable, for they equally supply 

 words of good origin, such as Timothy Bob- 

 bin, the Lancashireman, and the dialects of 

 Exmoor and Sedgemoor. Of these, Grose, 

 in his provincialisms, made considerable 

 use ; and, finally, Mr. Samuel Pegge made 

 large additions to Grose. The aggregate 

 of all which, exclusive of the Craven dialect, 

 which has been published since his death, 

 Mr. Forby states to be about 3,500. Mr. For- 

 by himself, in the district of East Anglia, 

 meaning only Suffolk and Norfolk, collects 

 2,500, and of these, 600 only had he found 

 in previous collections. Of course he has 

 made an addition of 1,900. 



The Essays on the pronunciation and 

 grammar of East Anglia, though full of 

 information, and shewing a thorough know- 

 ledge of the subject, we cannot now notice 

 they will be found even amusing. 



Bertha's Journal, 3 vols., 18mo. , 1830. 

 Of all the little works contrived of late 

 years, for the purpose of conveying informa- 

 tion to young folks, in an attractive manner, 

 this, we think, will prove by far the most 

 successful. Some link connecting subject 

 and self something in the form of narra- 

 tive is indispensible to arrest attention ; and 

 this form of a journal, keeping up a perpe- 

 tual allusion to personal pursuits and family 

 arrangements, yet without occupying any 

 disproportionate space, very sufficiently and 

 happily effects this purpose. Bertha has 

 spent the first years of her childhood in 

 Brazil, and circumstances still detaining her 

 mother in that country, she is sent to an 

 uncle's to secure an English education and 

 English manners. The tie between parent 

 and child is to be maintained by Bertha's 



