r.i.ri-. 



SAXON LANGUAGE AND LITERATI!:!'. 



usually dividol iir U, the first cxtrnding to nearly the end 



H"tli ivnliirv, the v.md ii.ntimiim; In 111.- <'..n.|ii.-t, Itut the 



I when 

 n-,1 in lit 1 ' 

 ,,n 1 .v ill be 



li to imlk-at< tractoristica of tl. 



variety. 



No " complete Anglo-Saxon church remains; but frum those which 

 are moat perfect, u Brixworth in Northamptonshire, and from the 

 references in Saxon recorrU ni the drawing* in manuscripts, we tee 

 that the churchw wriv i.;.l. . plain, ami m.i~-:\c in .|.]-arance, and 

 that whether cruciform, or with nave, side-aisles, and a tnwer at the 

 wr*t end, the ehanoel was usually apaidaL [Ar-i-. | < r\ptn appear to 

 hare ben not uncommon in the larger churchm, and a tolerably per- 

 fect one u (till extant beneath the chancel of Itepton church, h.-il,\ 

 hire. Towers were commonly very mauivu, divided into two or threo 

 tari< by the rib-work described below ; the surface being also di\ i.le.l 

 by strip* of nimil.ir rib-work, and having at the angles quoins of long- 

 and-short work. The walls, where surmounted with a spire, or rather 

 spire-roof, seem to have mostly hail a gable-like termination ; of this 

 gable termination a good example remains in the tower of Sompting 

 church, 8u*nx, though the i : u i,. . u !..!..!. of a more 



elaborate tower, Earl's Bart.' liiro, is one of the most 



perfect existing examples. ! : solidity of construction, the 



towers have proved the most luting parts of Saxon churches. 



The walls were usually built of coarse rag-stone, rubble, or flint, 

 having as bonding at the angles oblong quoins set alternately upright 

 .-.n.i horizontal, so as to form what is called long-and-short 

 Narrow ribs or strips composed of alternately long and short pieces of 

 stone, projecting a few inches from the surface, are carried vertically 

 up the face of the wall, and hare been variously supposed to be rude 

 imitations of pilasters or of timWr-work. The piers were low and 

 thick. The arche* are either triangular, as at Brigstock, or, as is more 

 common, semicircular. Windows are small ; mostly, in fact, mere 

 narrow openings. Sometimes, and the belfry-windows commonly, they 

 consul of two semicircular-headed windows, divided by a thick and 

 variously shaped baluster-shaft Occasionally these double windows 

 are enclosed within an arch or hood, formed of the pilaster rib-work 

 above described : engravings of all these varieties will be found in 

 Bloxam (ch. iii.), and other works on English Gothic architecture. 

 The chancel arches ore commonly small and quite plain, or have at 

 most a moulded hood rudely worked on the face. Doorways have 

 either semicircular or triangular arches : the former spring from plain 

 projecting impost*, and are encircled with a hood of long-and-short 

 rib-work which is usually carried down to the ground. 



Mouldings are few and plain. In the later examples semi-cylindrical 

 roll-mouldings are not infrequent. In the older churches sculpture is 

 seldom found ; but later, rudely carved animals and flowers, knot-work, 

 Greek crosses in relief, and other ornaments, are let into the walls. 

 The imposts from which the arches spring ore commonly mere rude 

 massive blocks left square and plain, but they arc sometimes moulded, 

 and are occasionally rudely sculptured, as at Sompting, Sussex. I'laju 

 square string-courses ore often met with ; and inscriptions seem to 

 have been not uncommon. The distinctive features of the style are, 

 however, the long-and-short work of the quoins, the pilaster rib-work, 

 the triangular arches, and the baluster-shafts of the belfry windows : 

 the other particulars are not infrequent in early Norman work 



SAXON BI.I'K. [i 



SAXON I K AND l.ITKIiATl'HE. The terms Saxon 



and Anglo-Saxon are popularly used to designate that dialect of our 

 language which prevailed to the close of the 12th century. ' The use of 

 these terms is, however, comparatively modern, and the men ho 

 spoke this dialect always called it the English. Several of our manu- 

 script chronicles begin thus :" Britain island is eight hundred miles 

 long, and two hundred miles broad. And there are in the island live 

 languages, j&fgKA, and i'.rit-Welnh, and Scottish, and I'ightish, and 

 Book-Latin," &c. Still we may use these terms \\itli some con- 

 :ie, and (thus cautioned) without any danger of being misled. 

 H>ceed to point out the peculiarities which distinguish the Anglo- 

 Saxon from the succeeding dialect* of our language. 



The Anglo-Saxon, like the I-atin and the Greek, often distinguished 

 i of its noun, and the conjugations, numbers, and persons of 



the 



iU verb, by a change in tin- vowel of the final syllable ; in the dialect 

 which succeeded, nnd which has been called the Old English, all 

 these rowels were confounded, and in our modern 

 for the mort part, been lost. Thus the Anglo-Saxon alh has at hat in 

 .<! accusative plural, and aMe* in the genitive singular ; 

 <iot only for iu genitive singular, but also 

 and accusative plural; and in our modern English 

 UMW three ca*es are all represented by the monosyllable oalln. 



the Anglo-Saxon. ,,,/, r was t | 1( . (1 ., tiv ,, K i D g,,i.., ri ,- u ,,j ,. 

 plural ; in the Old English, '.the represented both dative ,-in:>i 



.1; and our present dialect, having lost I 1 vowel, 



left of distinguishing these cases from the nominative 



person singular of // v. 

 thud persons plural /.//a/A; in the Old English. 

 represented both numbers, and l,n't>, j M the third person singular in the 

 poke* language of the present day. 



u, ij " pok n U 



ending of the 



fe," because our grammarian* in ike . l/i the 

 ingiil.tr. Knt in Sol of the 



.leet still lingers, they uniformly 

 lur'tk, kr rnni'lli, Iir ;, c '//i, it rai'n'M , Ac. (J iln. on the 



Dial.') Wo have rery fu "1 17th 



centuries this dialect was gem i ti ; nth of England, 



and we Cud numerous traces of its peculiarities in the literature of 

 that period. Doliuan wrote the following passage, in the 16th cen- 

 tury : 



" So, mid the vale, the ireyhound Keing sicil 



:. irful foe puriii'tk, before she ftrrt'lh, 

 AM! where ithr turn'tlt, he ttirn'th her there to bearf, 

 the one prey prtrli'th, the other saff. 



-. f.ir .l/(/y. Hunting*. 



S|>engcr has melt'i! anil hat' tit, and Sockville Uap'tk. It is probable, 

 that tho inflexion used by the translators of the Bible, and which h 

 found in other contemporary works, was merely an old ionn.tak' 

 the language of books, and adopted chictly with tin: . ing the 



style. The same observation will apply to t >. th- inllexiou of the 

 second person singular, and to some other endings, which are still 

 preserved entire in our grammars, though they have : /..-I in 



the spoken language, for tho last two centuries. 



It is obvious, that either of the changes above noticed must have 

 brought with it a new language. When, in the 1-th e. nn, 

 vowels of the final syllables were confounded, there was at tin 

 time a confusion of case and number, of tense and i>ersou, in 

 of those- grammatical forms to which language owes its pi 

 its clearness. A writer had to seek for new forms of expn 

 he could convey his meaning clearly. As he had lost the m< 

 distinguishing several cases of his noun, he called in 

 to his aid, and to show more clearly the " regimen" of In 

 was obliged to confine within very narrow limits the posit ion of his 

 verb, thus abandoning all that freedom of transposition. wi 

 almost as remarkable in the Anglo-Saxon as in the Greek ainl I. .it in. 

 The confusion introduced into his conjugations and tenses, he sought 

 to remedy by various devices, which have hithert" . little 



investigated, and at taut he had recourse to that general use of the 

 auxiliary verbs, which is at present so marked a feature in 1 1 

 The new dialect which resulted from these changes kept its ^ 

 for nearly two centuries. It exhibits the most striking analogies with 

 the contemporary dialects of Germany and tin Mils, and the 



further changes which converted it into our modern English were 

 rapidly working a like revolution in these sister-tongues, when the 

 invention of printing doubled the influence of their written language, 

 and thus preserved them from further corruption. 



In tracing the causes which melted down the Anglo-Saxon into the 

 Old-English, we have not once alluded to the influences supposed to 

 have been exercised by the French language. The popular notions on 

 this subject are, we believe, most erroneous. Had ll.-uold I, , ,-n the 

 conqueror at Hastings, the Anglo-Saxon must have perished, just as 

 the Old-German perished in Germany, and the Old-Norse in Denmark. 

 The victory of William merely hastened by a few years an event that 

 was inevitable. The use of Noi man- Romance as the court language of 

 England rendered unfashionable a literature already too weak to stem 

 those changes to which the language of a busy ad\cntni. 

 peculiarly liable ; and thus far the Norman conquest i idered 



as having assisted in the destruction of the Anglo-Saxon. But the 

 vulgar notion, that it produced a mixed language, a jarg' 

 half of English and half of French, is wholly at - ii the 



manuscript literature of that period. The Ormulum, in which all th" 

 peculiar features of the Old-Knglish are developed, and not a trace of 

 the Anglo-Saxon con be found, is almost as free n ..i 



of our manuscripts written bit the Nonum 1'iench existed. The 



same may be said of most of the ( H.l- En/Ii.-h manuscripts of the 13th 

 century, and it is not till we approach the latter half of the 1 Ith cen- 

 tury that \ve find i! of r'rciieh word, poured into the 

 language, of which skinner complains so loudly. We mu.-t rein. 

 agree with this writer, in charging upon Chaucer much of the in 

 resulting from these importations not that he first introduced, but 

 that his authority chiclK d them. The learned hut pedantic 

 writers of the Elizabethan era, and, at a later period, Johnson, followed 

 mple. 



Having noticed the changes which converted the Anglo-Saxon into 

 d English, we will now call the reader's attention to a subject of 

 rather diflicult inquiry- -its local dialect*. It is abundantly clear that 

 mans looked upon all the Gothic races as forming but one 

 people, and 08 speaking the same language; but a com] ... 

 Aiiglo-Suxon with the Mo-so-Cothic, as well as the analogy of other 

 languages, may convince us that even thus early there were dialects, 

 and these dialects have now been acted upon by van .. -os for 



nearly ive at lost arranged th. 



. the English, the Low-Dutch, and the 



1 'utch. Now we ha to ample p 1-001 'that the Hexe came h.>m the 

 south-western corner of the Cimbric Chersoneeus, od that the\ 

 only separated by the Elbe from the Netherlands, or Hat alluvial 

 country, where the Low-Dutch was spoken. \Vc know also that the 

 Engle come from the eastern coast, and that they were separate. < 



the Danish, islands merely by a narrow aim of the sea. We might 



