CHAPTERS ERRATA. Page 55, pure well-head of poetry did swell; for swell read dwell. 70, for the Knight's and the Manne of Lawe's Tale, read the Squier's and the Manne of Lawe's Tale. 83 and 84, for Speight read Speght. 103, note, for Walter Masser read Walter Mapes. 162 and 179, note, for Hendy Nicholas read hendy Nicholas. regulated by any general standard, is broken into dialects. These dialects, as the range of letters Trevisa, writing in the middle of the fourteenth century, divided the dialects of England into three principal branches-northern, middle, and southern.-Burnett's Specimens, vol. i. 39. B history of THE language of literature differs, in all ages, General principles from the oral discourse of the uneducated. Beyond in the the circle of those who read, there is always a language. class, large in proportion to the rudeness of the time*, whose language, from not being fixed or regulated by any general standard, is broken into dialects. These dialects, as the range of letters Trevisa, writing in the middle of the fourteenth century, divided the dialects of England into three principal branches-northern, middle, and southern.-Burnett's Specimens, vol. i. 39. B widens, are concentrated, and rendered uniform, by the language of books. Thus, a fixed standard for the common discourse of a nation, is both formed and diffused by the means of literature. In inquiring, therefore, into the origin and progress of any language, it is to literature, as to the master-source and controller of a national tongue, that the attention should be directed. Yet, plain as this subject appears to be, one of the most popular and able writers on the early history of the English tongue, has represented the change, (as it is usually called) from Saxon to English, as taking place, rather from an oral communication between the Saxons and Normans, than from the gradual introduction into the Saxon literature of the French syntax and derivatives. The influence, indeed, of oral communication in the formation of compound languages, has been usually overrated. The effect of conquest, or of colonization, has been to substitute one dialect for another, by the destruction, or expulsion, of the great mass of the original inhabitants; or if these latter have continued to form the bulk of the population, the conquerors, from being compara *Ellis's Specimens, vol. i. p. 77. tively few in numbers, have adopted the language of the vanquished. Thus, when the Romans settled in the Celtic provinces of Europe, entirely occupying the towns, and driving the natives into the thinly inhabited country, they substituted for the old Celtic, not, indeed, as Gibbon states, the language with little variation* of Virgil and Cicero; but a colloquial jargon, afterwards distinguished from the Latin classic+ idiom, and also from the Teutonic dialects, by the title of the Romana rustica. When the Teutonic tribes afterwards settled in these countries, they conformed, from the comparative smallness of their numbers, to this prevailing dialect. In England, on the contrary, the Saxons, taking possession, through repeated invasions, of the greater part of the island, and driving the old inhabitants into the mountainous and poorer districts, introduced, with an entire new race, an entirely new language. * Gibbon's Decline and Fall, vol. i. p. 60, oct. + Hallam, Introduct. to Lit., vol. i. pp. 27 and 31. Perhaps, also, from the comparative rudeness of their language. Co-existing with colloquial Latin in the Celtic provinces of Gaul and Spain, was a Latin literature, which must have tended to render the speech of the most educated classes more uniform than that of the Teutonic invaders. |