I. Authorized Version. 39 as the language in which alone the Scriptures might be read, had been the great badge of servitude, even as the Latin habits of thought and feeling which it promoted had been most important helps to the continuance of this servitude, through long ages. It lay deep then in the essential conditions of the conflict which they were maintaining, that the Reformers should develope the Saxon, or essentially national, element in the language; while it was just as natural that the Roman Catholic translators, if they must render the Scriptures into English at all, should yet render them into such English as should bear the nearest possible resemblance to that Latin Vulgate, which Rome with a wisdom that in such matters has never failed her, would gladly have seen as the only version of the Book in the hands of the faithful.* Let me again, however, recur to the fact that what our Reformers did in this matter, they did without exaggeration; even as they have shown the same wise moderation in matters higher than this. They gave to the Latin element of the language its rights, though they would not suffer it to encroach upon and usurp those of the other. It would be difficult not to believe, * Where the word itself which the Rhemish translators employ is a perfectly good one, it is yet instructive two observe ho often they draw on the Latin portion of the language, where we have drawn on the Saxon,-thus corporal' where we have 'bodily' (1 Tim. iv. 8), 'coadjutor' where we have 'fellow-worker' (Col. iv. II), 'prescience' where we have 'foreknowledge' (Acts ii. 23), 'dominator' where we have 'Lord' (Jude 4), 'cogitation' where we have thought' (Luke ix. 46), 'fraternity' where we have 'brotherhood' (1 Pet. ii. 17), 'senior' where we have 'elder' (Rev. vii. 13), 'exprobrate' where we have 'upbraid' (Mark xvi. 14). even if many outward signs did not suggest the same, that there is an important part in the future for that one language of Europe to play, which thus serves as connecting link between the North and the South, between the languages spoken by the Teutonic nations of the North and by the Romance nations of the South; which holds on to and partakes of both; which is as a middle term between them.* There are who venture to hope that the English Church, having in like manner two aspects, looking on the one side toward Rome, being herself truly Catholic, looking on the other toward the Protestant communions, being herself also protesting and reformed, may have reserved for her in the providence of God an important share in that reconciling of a divided Christendom, whereof we are bound not to despair. And if this ever should be so, if, notwithstanding our sins and unworthiness, so blessed an office should be in store for her, it will be no small assistance to this, that the language in which her mediation will be effected is one wherein both parties may claim their own, in which neither will feel that it is receiving the adjudication of a stranger, of one who must be an alien from its deeper thoughts and habits, because an alien from its words, but a language in which both must recognize very much of that which is deepest and most precious of their own.+ * See a paper, On the Probable Future Position of the English Language, by T. Watts, Esq., in the Proceedings of the Philological Society, vol. iv. p. 207; and compare the concluding words in Guest's Hist. of English Rhythms, vol. ii. p. 429. Fowler (English Grammar, p. 135): The English is a medium language, and thus adapted to diffusion. In the Gothic I. Jacob Grimm on English. 41 Nor is this prerogative which I have just claimed for our English the mere dream and fancy of patriotic vanity. The scholar most profoundly acquainted with the great group of the Teutonic languages in Europe, a devoted lover, if ever there was such, of his native German, I mean Jacob Grimm, has expressed himself very nearly to the same effect, and given the palm over all to our English in words which you will not grudge to hear quoted, and with which I shall bring this lecture to a close. After ascribing to our language ' a veritable power of expression, such as perhaps never stood at the command of any other language of men,' he goes on to say, 'Its highly spiritual genius, and wonderfully happy development and condition, have been the result of a surprisingly intimate union of the two noblest languages in modern Europe, the Teutonic and the Romance. It is well known in what relation these two stand to one another in the English tongue; the former supplying in far larger proportion the material groundwork, the latter the spiritual conceptions. In truth the English language, which by no mere accident has produced and upborne the greatest and most predominant poet of modern times, as distinguished from the ancient classical poetry (I can, of course, only mean Shakespeare), family it stands midway between the Teutonic and the Scandinavian branches, touching both, and to some extent reaching into both. A German or a Dane finds much in the English which exists in his own language. It unites by certain bonds of consanguinity, as no other language does, the Romanic with the Gothic languages. An Italian or a Frenchman finds a large class of words in the English, which exist in his own language, though the basis of the English is Gothic.' may with all right be called a world-language; and, like the English people, appears destined hereafter to prevail with a sway more extensive even than its present over all the portions of the globe.* For in wealth, good sense, and closeness of structure no other of the languages at this day spoken deserves to be compared with it--not even our German, which is torn, even as we are torn, and must first rid itself of many defects, before it can enter boldly into the lists, as a competitor with the English.' + * A little more than two centuries ago a poet, himself abundantly deserving the title of 'well-languaged,' which a contemporary or near successor gave him, ventured in some remarkable lines timidly to anticipate this. Speaking of his native English, which he himself wrote with such vigour and purity, though deficient in the passion and fiery impulses which go to the making of a first-rate poet, Daniel exclaims : And who, in time, knows whither we may vent To enrich unknowing nations with our stores? The greatness of our style is now ordained? What powers it shall bring in, what spirits command, And what fair ends may thereby be attained?' Ueber den Ursprung der Sprache, Berlin, 1832, p. 50. Compare Philarète Chasles, Études sur l'Allemagne, pp. 12–33. II. English as it might have been. 43 LECTURE II. ENGLISH AS IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN. WE E have seen that many who have best right to speak are strong to maintain that English has gained far more than it has lost by that violent interruption of its orderly development which the Norman Conquest brought with it, that it has been permanently enriched by that immense irruption and settlement of foreign words within its borders, which followed, though not immediately, on that catastrophe. But there here suggests itself to us an interesting and not uninstructive subject of speculation; what, namely, this language would actually now be, if there had been no Battle of Hastings; or a Battle of Hastings which William had lost and Harold won. When I invite you to consider this, you will understand me to exclude any similar catastrophe, which should in the same way have issued in the setting up of an intrusive dynasty, supported by the arms of a foreign soldiery, and speaking a Romanic as distinguished from a Gothic language, on the throne of England. I lay a stress upon this last point-a people speaking a Romanic language; inasmuch as the effects upon the language spoken in England would have been quite different, would have fallen far short of those which actually found place, if the great Canute had succeeded in founding a Danish, or Harold Hardrada a Norwegian, dynasty in England |