ENGLISH LITERATURE 



2927 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



survived as such among old- 

 fashioned speakers far into the 

 19th century. 



Weak plurals are more frequent 

 among good writers in Early 

 Modern English than now, e.g. 

 housen, shone, eyen, All Soulen, 

 peason, etc. The old feminine pos- 

 sessive without -s is found com- 

 monly as late as the 16th century 

 Our Lady Mary Grace, the Queen 

 Grace, etc. These survive now in 

 Lady Chapel, Lady Day. The per- 

 sonal pronouns her (possessive) and 

 hem (dative plural) are frequently 

 used in the 15th century by the 

 side of their, them. The former is 

 apparently not found after the 

 early 16th century ; the latter is 

 rare in the 16th and early 17th, 

 but reappears in the 18th century 

 as 'em. " Group inflexion " in the 

 possessive of nouns is found as 

 early as the 15th century the erle 

 of Wiltones wyfby the side of the 

 older construction, the dukys 

 daughter of Northfolke. Such con- 

 structions as for Jesus Christ His 

 sake are veiy common in the 15th 

 and 16th centuries, the pronoun 

 being often detached and written 

 iff, and sometimes joined to the 

 preceding noun as a possessive 

 sufrix, which indeed it originally 

 was in this case. 



Continuity amid Constant Change 



The old Southern present plurals 

 of verbs in -eth linger on in occa- 

 sional literary and colloquial use 

 far into the 16th century, though 

 the form without ending is far 

 commoner. In the 15th century 

 the forms in -en, -in are still often 

 used. The third person present 

 singular ends in -eth, -ith or -th 

 during the whole of the 15th and 

 16th centuries in the best English. 

 The forms in -s come in very gradu- 

 ally, and are at first chiefly used 

 either in poetry for the sake of 

 rhyme or metre, or in fairly collo- 

 quial style. They are by no means 

 universal by the end of the 16th 

 century. Hath and doth survive far 

 into the 18th century both in collo- 

 quial and literary use. In the 18th 

 century Pope and other good 

 writers use was instead of were 

 after you, when one person only is 

 addressed. This practice survived 

 in good colloquial vise well into the 

 19th century. 



A careful study of the history 

 of English from the earliest times 

 to the present day, based on an 

 intelligent interpretation of the 

 written records of the successive 

 ages, leaves an impression of con- 

 tinuity amid perpetual change. 

 The history of standard English 

 during the last 500 years has been 

 largely one of the varying distri- 

 bution of elements drawn first 

 ! from regional, and later from social 



dialects. The standards of what is 

 polite and correct shift from age to 

 age. What is vulgar in one genera- 

 tion becomes the pattern of pro- 

 priety hi the next ; that which was 

 elegant and habitual to the most 

 refined speakers is felt to be slip- 

 shod or worse. There is no doubt 

 that since the early 19th century 

 there has been a great striving 

 after " correctness " in English 

 speech. Our speech to-day is far 

 less untrammelled in its colloquial 

 forms than that of the 17th and 

 18th centuries. Good speakers 

 then seem to have been content to 

 follow the natural tendencies of 

 unstudied utterance, and were less 

 anxious for " correctness " as this 

 was later understood. 



The Future of English 

 This process is still going on, and, 

 with the increased diffusion of 

 education among those who have 

 no traditional knowledge of the 

 best speech, bids fair to alter our 

 language out of all recognition. 

 But other tendencies may arise. 

 It is impossible to foretell the 

 future of English, though we may 

 well believe that it will be no 

 meaner or less splendid than its 

 past. New standards of speech 

 will arise in all probability, with 

 the growth of new centres of cul- 

 ture in this country, and still more 

 in our distant colonies, whose popu- 

 lations are still " mewing their 

 mighty youth," and future his- 

 torians of spoken English will have 

 to take into account the many 

 varieties of our mother tongue, 

 spoken by peoples of very different 

 experiences and modes of life, 

 throughout the Empire. 



H. C. K. Wyld 



Bibliography. History of English, 

 General : A New English Grammar, 

 H. Sweet, 1892-98 : The History of 

 the English Language, O. F. Emer- 

 son, 1894 ; Historical Outlines of 

 English Accidence, R. Morris, rev. 

 ed. 1895; The Making of English, 

 H. Bradley, 1904; Growth and 

 Structure of the English Language, 

 O. Jespersen, 2nd eel. 1912; A 

 Short History of English, H. C. 

 Wyld, 1914 (contains Bibliography 

 with lists of Authorities and Editions 

 of O. and M.E. Texts) ; A History 

 of Modern Colloquial English, H. C. 

 Wyld, 1920. 



English Vocabulary : New English 

 Dictionary, ed. J. A. H. Murray and 

 others, 1884, etc. ; Principles of 

 English Etymology, W. W. Skeat, 

 1887-91 ; A Shakespeare Glossary, 

 C. T. Onions, 2nd ed. 1919. 



Old and Middle English : An 

 Anglo-Saxon Reader, H. Sweet, 8th 

 ed. rev. 1908 ; An Old English 

 Grammar, Joseph and E. M. 

 Wright, 2nd ed. 1914; A Middle 

 English Reading, O. F. Emerson, 

 rev. ed. 1915. 



Texts and Editions. TJi9 chief 

 O. and M.E. works are published 



by the Early English Text Society ; 

 some are in the Camden Society, 

 and the Rolls Series and Percy 

 Society. The English Reprints, ed. 

 Edward Arber, include a number 

 of important Early Modern works, 

 exactly reproduced from the origi- 

 nal editions. 



LITERATURE. Anglo-Saxon litera- 

 ture is interesting rather as a docu- 

 ment illustrating the spirit of the 

 English stock, Angles and Jutes, 

 than as a direct ancestor of English 

 literature as traced from Chaucer. 

 For modern English literature does 

 not derive directly from Old Eng- 

 lish literature. From the llth 

 century, even before the Conquest, 

 to the 14th century, England was 

 a pupil in the school of France. 

 For the greater part of this time 

 Latin was the language of learned, 

 French of polite, literature. For 

 three centuries English and French 

 were jostled together, with the re- 

 sult that when at last in the 14th 

 century English came to its own, 

 it had become the rich composite 

 speech, in vocabulary and syntax, 

 which was to be the medium of 

 English poets from Chaucer to the 

 present time ; and in the same 

 centuries, English poets gradually j 

 assimilated, adapting it to the ' 

 genius of the English language, the 

 syllabic, accentual metre which 

 had been first heard in the Latin 

 hymns of the Church and Proven- 

 ?al and French Song. 



French literature itself was only 

 beginning when the Normans con- 

 quered England, but in the course 

 of the 12th and 13th centuries the 

 French poets of Provence and Gas- 

 cony, of France proper and of 

 England, created the romantic and 

 lyric literature which is the foun- 

 tain-head of all modern European 

 literature. The new love-poetry of 

 Provence, with its courtly and 

 ideal, but also conventional, cult 

 of love, the romances of Charle- 

 magne, of Arthur and his Knights, 

 of Troy, Thebes and Alexander, 

 beast-epic and allegory and fabliau 

 these were made by the French 

 familiar to every country of W. 

 Europe and reproduced in other 

 tongues. In the creation of this 

 courtly literature as such England 

 took no part ; but when English 

 literature began to awaken again 

 it was in the reproduction of French 

 themes and forms. 



The first English poem written 

 after the Conquest which is really a 

 work of literature. Layamon's 

 Brut, is a long and interesting elab- 

 oration of that legendary history of 

 Britain, from Brutus to Arthur, 

 which had first taken the shape of 

 history in the Historia Regum 

 Britanniae of Geoffrey of Mon- 

 mouth, and had been already 

 thrown into verse by the Norman 



