282 GERMANIC LANGUAGES 



at least to the extent of employing only such material as can endure 

 the test of philological criticism. Philology, the older and prouder 

 sister-science, has on the whole been less eager to comply with the 

 demands which linguistic investigation was forced to establish, and 

 even at this day the number of philologists who, to their own detri- 

 ment, renounce the employment of linguistic aids, or who on general 

 principles regarding it as incompatible with their dignity re- 

 fuse to come to an agreement with the science of language, is not 

 insignificant. Yet in this respect, also, the last few years have 

 witnessed a decided improvement, especially in the field of German 

 philology. 



As we know, German philology rests on the shoulders of Karl 

 Lachmann just as German linguistics rests upon those of Jakob Grimm. 

 For the former, therefore, so far at least as Lachmann 's influence 

 reaches, his conceptions of linguistic matters have remained authori- 

 tative. This is more particularly true of the estimate of the German 

 language and its development from the Middle High German period to 

 the present day, that is, of those very periods of the German language 

 which by reason of their youth and the secondary character of their 

 idioms were of relatively less interest for linguistics. 



Having begun as a disciple of the school of classical philology, 

 Lachmann naturally took It for granted that in the classical works 

 of Middle High German poetry we have an artistic language, which, 

 produced as it was for a definite purpose in a limited circle of the 

 highly cultured, differed essentially from the ordinary language 

 of the common people. Interested in this higher artistic language 

 alone, Lachmann applied the whole force of his incomparable 

 sagacity to its restoration in its original purity and to giving each 

 and every individual Middle High German poet his due. The dialects 

 of the common people had no attraction for him nor for many others : 

 they were regarded as ordinary and crude, and wherever they cropped 

 out occasionally in literature, they were looked upon as disturbing 

 intruders. 



It is scarcely astonishing that in the light of such an attitude the 

 scientific study of German dialects of the middle as well as of the 

 modern period should have been neglected so long, in spite of the 

 brilliant labors with which Johann Andreas Schmeller inaugurated 

 this discipline at an early time. The reaction, however, was bound to 

 come, and it did come, even before Lachmann 's death, from the 

 philological side. For it was discovered that in the poetic literature 

 from Middle German territory, to which but little attention had 

 formerly been paid, dialectical material plays an entirely different role 

 from the one it plays in the classical poetic productions of Upper Ger- 

 many upon which Lachmann based his theories. His doctrine of the 

 unity of the Middle High German language, at least in its strict inter- 



