ANGLO-SAXON AND LATIN.

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Shall we therefore conclude that these are the proportions in which the Anglo-Saxon and Latin elements of the language stand to one another? If they are so, then my former proposal to express their relations by sixty and thirty was greatly at fault; and seventy and twenty, or even eighty and ten, would fall short of adequately representing the real predominance of the Saxon over the Latin element of the language. But it is not so; the Anglo-Saxon words by no means outnumber the Latin in the degree which the analysis of those passages would seem to imply. It is not that there are so many more Anglo-Saxon words, but that the words which there are, being words of more primary necessity, do therefore so much more frequently recur. The proportions which the analysis of the dictionary, that is, of the language at rest, would furnish, are very different from these which I have just instanced, and which the analysis of sentences, or of the language in motion, gives.

The notice of this fact will lead us to some very important conclusions as to the character of the words which the Saxon and the Latin severally furnish; and principally to this: that while the English language is thus compact in the main of these two elements, we must not for all this regard these two as making, one and the other, exactly the same kind of contributions to it. On the contrary, their contributions are of very different character. The Anglo-Saxon is not so much, as I have just called it, one element of the English language, as the foundation of it, the basis. All its joints, its whole articulation, its sinews and its ligaments, the great body of articles, pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions, numerals, auxiliary verbs, all

smaller words which serve to knit together and bind the larger into sentences-these, not to speak of the grammatical structure of the language, are exclusively Saxon. The Latin may contribute its tale of bricks, yea, of goodly and polished hewn stones, to the spiritual building; but the mortar, with all that holds and binds the different parts of it together, and constitutes them into a house, is Saxon throughout. I remember Selden, in his Table-Talk, using another comparison, but to the same effect: "If you look upon the language spoken in the Saxon time, and the language spoken now, you will find the difference to be just as if a man had a cloak which he wore plain in Queen Elizabeth's days; and since, here has put in a piece of red, and there a piece of blue; and here a piece of green, and there a piece of orange-tawny. We borrow words from the French, Italian, Latin, as every pedantic man pleases."

I believe this to be the law which holds good in respect of all composite languages. However composite they may be, yet they are only so in regard of their words. There may be a medley in respect of these, some coming from one quarter, some from another; but there is never a mixture of grammatical forms and inflections. One or other language entirely predominates here, and everything has to conform and subordinate itself to the laws of this ruling and ascendant language. The Anglo-Saxon is the ruling language in our present English; while that has thought good to drop its genders, even so the French substantives which come among us must also leave theirs behind them; as in like manner the French verbs must renounce their own conjugations, and adapt

ONE GRAMMAR PREDOMINANT.

*

31

themselves to ours." I believe that a remarkable parallel to this might be found in the language of Persia, since the conquest of that country by the Arabs. The ancient Persian religion fell with the government, but the language remained totally unaffected by the revolution, in its grammatical structure and character. Arabic vocables, the only exotic words found in Persian, are found, as I understand, in numbers varying with the object and quality, style and taste of the writers; but pages of pure, idiomatic Persian may be written without employing a single word from the Arabic.

At the same time the secondary or superinduced language, even while it is quite unable to force any of its forms on the language which receives its words, may yet compel that to renounce a portion of its own forms, by the impossibility which is practically found to exist of making them fit the new-comers; and thus it may exert, although not a positive, yet a negative, influence on the grammar of the other tongue. It has been so, as is generally admitted, in the instance of our own. "When the English language was inundated by a vast influx of French words, few, if any, French forms were received into its grammar; but the Saxon forms soon dropped away, because they did not suit the new roots; and the genius of the language, from having to deal with the newly-imported words in a rude state, was induced to neglect the inflections of the native ones. This, for instance, led to the introduction of the s as the universal termina

* W. Schlegel (Indische Bibliothek, vol. i., p. 284): "Coëunt quidem paullatim in novum corpus peregrina vocabula, sed grammatica lin guarum, unde petita sunt, ratio perit.”

tion of all plural nouns, which agreed with the usage of the French language, and was not alien from that of the Saxon, but was merely an extension of the termination of the ancient masculine to other classes of nouns.'

If any of you should wish to convince yourselves, by actual experience, of the fact which I just now asserted, namely, that the radical constitution of the language is Saxon, I would say, try to compose a sentence, it need not be more than of ten or a dozen words, on any subject you please, employing therein only words which are of a Latin derivation. You will find it impossible, or next to impossible, to do it; whichever way you turn, some obstacle will meet you in the face. And while it is thus with the Latin, whole pages might be written, I do not say in philosophy or theology or upon any abstruser subject, but on familiar matters of common everyday life, in which every word should be of Saxon extraction, not one of Latin; and these pages, in which, with the exercise of a very little skill, all appearance of awkwardness and constraint should be avoided, so that it should never occur to the reader, unless otherwise informed, that the writer had submitted himself to this restraint and limitation in the words which he employed, and was only drawing them from one section of the English language. Sir Thomas Browne has given several long paragraphs so constructed. Take, for instance, the following, which is only a little fragment of one of them: "The first and foremost step to all good works is the dread and fear of the Lord of heaven and earth, which through the Holy Ghost

* J. Grimm, quoted in the Philological Museum, vol. i., p. 667.

CONNECTING WORDS SAXON.

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enlighteneth the blindness of our sinful hearts to tread the ways of wisdom, and lead our feet into the land. of blessing." This is not stiffer than the ordinary English of his time. I would suggest to you at your leisure to make these two experiments. Endeavor first to compose a sentence of some length, choosing freely your subject, from which every word which the Saxon has contributed to our tongue shall be rigidly excluded: you will find it at least, if I may judge by my own experience, wholly beyond your power. On the other hand, with a little patience and ingenuity you will be able to compose a connected narrative of any length you please into which no word from the Latin shall be admitted, in which none but Saxon shall be employed.

While thus I bring before you the fact that it would be quite possible to write English, foregoing altogether the use of the Latin portion of the language, I would not have you therefore to conclude that this portion of the language is of little value, or that we could draw from the resources of our Teutonic tongue efficient substitutes for all the words which it has contributed to our glossary. I am persuaded that we could not; and, if we could, that it would not be desirable. I mention this, because there is sometimes a regret expressed that we have not kept our language more free from the admixture of Latin, a suggestion made that we should even now endeavor to keep under the Latin element of it, and remove it as far as possible out of sight. I remember Lord Brougham urging upon the students at Glasgow as a help to writing good English, that they should seek as far as possible *Works, vol. iv., p. 202.