the forces which have been at work upon it, moulding and shaping it into the forms which it now wears.

At the same time, various prudential considerations must determine for us how far up we will endeavor to trace the course of its history. There are those who may seek to trace our language to the forests of Germany and Scandinavia, to investigate its relation to all the kindred tongues that were there spoken; again, to follow it up, till it and they are seen descending from an elder stock; nor once to pause, till they have assigned to it its place not merely in respect of that small group of languages which are immediately round it, but in respect of all the tongues and languages of the earth. I can imagine few studies of a more surpassing interest than this. Others, however, must be content with seeking such insight into their native language as may be within the reach of all who, unable to make this the subject of especial research, possessing neither that vast compass of knowledge nor that immense apparatus of books, not being at liberty to dedicate to it that devotion almost of a life which, followed out to the full, it would require, have yet an intelligent interest in their mothertongue, and desire to learn as much of its growth, and history, and construction, as may be reasonably deemed within their reach. To such as these I shall suppose myself to be speaking. It would be a piece of great presumption in me to undertake to speak to any other, or to assume any other ground than this for myself.

I know there are some who, when they are invited to enter at all upon the past history of the language, are inclined to make answer: "To what end such

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studies to us? Why can not we leave them to a few antiquaries and grammarians? Sufficient to us to know the laws of our present English, to obtain an accurate acquaintance with the language as we now find it, without concerning ourselves with the phases through which it has previously passed." This may sound plausible enough; and I can quite understand a real lover of his native tongue, supposing he had not bestowed much thought upon the subject, arguing in this manner. And yet indeed such argument proceeds altogether on a mistake. One sufficient reason why we should occupy ourselves with the past of our language is, because the present is only intelligible in the light of the past, often of a very remote past indeed. There are anomalies out of number now existing in our language, which the pure logic of grammar is quite incapable of explaining; which nothing but a knowledge of its historic evolutions, and of the disturbing forces which have made themselves felt therein, will ever enable us to understand. Even as, again, unless we possess some knowledge of the past, it is impossible that we can ourselves advance a single step in the unfolding of the latent capabilities of the language, without the danger of committing some barbarous violation of its very primary laws.

The plan which I have laid down for myself, and to which I shall adhere, in this lecture and in those which will succeed it, is as follows: In this my first lecture I will ask you to consider the language as now it is, to decompose with me some specimens of it, to prove by these means of what elements it is compact, and what functions in it these elements or component

parts severally fulfil; nor shall I leave this subject without asking you to admire the happy marriage in our tongue of the languages of the North and South, an advantage which it alone among all the languages of Europe enjoys. Having thus presented to ourselves the body which we wish to submit to scrutiny, and having become acquainted, however slightly, with its composition, I shall invite you to go back with me, and trace some of the leading changes to which in time past it has been submitted, and through which it has arrived at what it now is; and these changes I shall contemplate under four aspects, dedicating a lecture to each-changes which have resulted from the birth of new, or the reception of foreign, words; changes consequent on the rejection or extinction of words or powers once possessed by the language; changes through the altered meaning of words; and lastly, as not unworthy of our attention, but often growing out of very deep roots, changes in the orthography of words.

I shall everywhere seek to bring the subject down to our present time, and not merely call your attention to the changes which have been, but to those also which are now being, effected. I shall not account the fact that some are going on, so to speak, before our own eyes, a sufficient ground to excuse me from noticing them, but rather an additional reason for doing this. For indeed changes which are actually proceeding in our own time, and which we are ourselves helping to bring about, are the very ones which we are most likely to fail in observing. There is so much to hide the nature of them, and indeed their very existence, that, except it may be by a very few,

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they will often pass wholly unobserved. Loud and sudden revolutions attract and compel notice; but silent and gradual, although to issue perhaps in changes far greater and deeper, run their course, and it is only when their cycle is completed or nearly so, that men perceive what mighty transforming forces have been at work unnoticed in the very midst of themselves.

Thus, to apply what I have just affirmed to this matter of language—how few aged persons, let them retain the fullest possession of their faculties, are conscious of any difference between the spoken language of their early youth and that of their old age; that words and ways of using words are obsolete now, which were usual then; that many words are current now, which had no existence at that time! And yet it is certain that so it must be. A man may fairly be supposed to remember clearly and well for sixty years back; and it needs less than five of these sixties to bring us to the period of Spenser, and not more than eight to set us in the time of Chaucer and Wiclif. How great a change, how vast a difference in our language, within eight memories! No one, overlooking this whole term, will deny the greatness of the change. For all this, we may be tolerably sure that, had it been possible to interrogate a series of eight persons, such as together had filled up this time-intelligent men, but men whose attention had not been especially roused to this subject—each in his turn would have denied that there had been any change worth speaking of, perhaps any change at all, during his lifetime. And yet, having regard to the multitude of words which have fallen into disuse during these four or five

hundred years, we are sure that there must have been some lives in this chain which saw those words in use at their commencement, and out of use before their close. And so, too, of the multitude of words which have sprung up in this period—some, nay, a vast number, must have come into being within the limits of each of these lives. It can not then be superfluous to direct attention to that which is actually going forward in our language. It is indeed that, which of all is most likely to be unnoticed by us.

With these preliminary remarks I proceed at once to the special subject of my lecture of to-day. And first, starting from the recognised fact that the English is not a simple but a composite language, made up of several elements, in the same way as we are a people made up of Anglo-Saxons and Anglo-Normans, with not a few accessions from other quarters besides, I would suggest to you the profit and instruction which we might derive from seeking to resolve it into its component parts—from taking, that is, any passage of an English author, distributing the words of which it is made up according to the languages from which we have drawn them; estimating the relative numbers and proportions which these languages have severally lent us; as well as the character of the words which they have thrown into the common stock of our tongue.

Thus, suppose the English language to be divided into a hundred parts: of these, to make a rough distribution, sixty would be Saxon; thirty would be Latin (including, of course, the Latin which has come to us through the French); five would be Greek. We