have been at work upon it, moulding and shaping it into the forms which it now wears, bringing it into the conditions under which it now exists.

At the same time various prudential considerations must determine for us how far up we will endeavour 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 proper place not merely in that smaller 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 yield to it that devotion almost of a life which, followed out to the full, it would require, have yet an intelligent interest in their mother tongue, and desire to learn as much of its growth and history and construction as may be fairly within their reach. To such I shall suppose myself to be speaking. I assume no higher ground than this for myself.

I know, indeed, that some, when invited at all to enter upon the past history of the English

I.

THE PAST EXPLAINS THE PRESENT.

7

language, are inclined to answer-To what end such studies to us? Why cannot we leave them to a few antiquaries and grammarians? Sufficient to us to know the laws of our present English, to obtain an acquaintance as accurate as we can with the language as we now find it, without concerning ourselves with the phases through which it has previously past.' This may sound plausible enough; and I can quite understand a real lover of his native tongue, who has not bestowed much thought upon the subject, taking up such a position as this. And yet it is one which is wholly untenable. A sufficient reason why we should occupy ourselves with the past of our language is, that the present is only intelligible in the light of the past, often of a very remote past indeed. There are in it anomalies out of number, 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; not to say that, unless we possess some such knowledge of the past, we cannot 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.*

* Littré (Hist. de la Langue Française, vol. ii. p. 485): Une langue ne peut être conservée dans sa pureté qu'autant qu'elle est étudiée dans son histoire, ramenée à ses sources, appuyée à ses traditions. Aussi l'étude de la vieille langue est un élément

The plan which I have laid down for myself in these lectures will be as follows. In this my first I shall invite you to consider the language as now it is, to decompose some specimens of it, and in this way to prove, of what elements it is compact, and what functions in it these elements 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, a marriage giving to it advantages which no other of the languages of Europe enjoys. Having thus before us the body which we wish to submit to scrutiny, and having become acquainted, however slightly, with its composition, I shall invite you in my next to consider with me what this actual language might have been, if that event, which more than all other put together has affected and modified the English language, namely the Norman Conquest, had never found place. In the lectures which follow I shall seek to institute from various points of view a comparison between the present language and the past, to point out gains which it has made, losses which it has endured, and generally to call your attention to some of the more important changes through which it has passed, or is at this present passing.

I shall, indeed, everywhere solicit your attention not merely to the changes which have been in time past effected, but to those also which at

nécessaire, lequel venant à faire défaut, la connaissance du langage moderne est sans profondeur, et le bon usage sans racines.

I.

ALTERATIONS UNOBSERVED.

9

this very moment are going forward. I shall not account the fact that some are proceeding, so to speak, under our own eyes, a sufficient ground to excuse me from noticing them, but rather an additional reason for so doing. For indeed these changes 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, to veil their operation, that, save by a very few, they will commonly pass wholly unobserved. Loud and sudden revolutions attract and even compel notice; but revolutions silent and gradual, although with issues far vaster in store, run their course, and it is only when their cycle is nearly or quite completed, that men perceive what mighty transforming forces have been at work unnoticed in their very midst.

Thus, in this matter of language, how few aged persons, let them retain the fullest possession of their faculties, are conscious of any serious 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 assumed to remember clearly and well for sixty years back; and it needs less than five of these sixties to bring us to the age of Spenser, and not more than eight to set us in the time of Chaucer and Wiclif. No one, contemplating this whole term, will deny the immensity of the change

within these eight memories. And yet, 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. It is not the less sure, con

sidering the multitude of words which have fallen into oblivion during these four or five hundred years, 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.*

* See on this subject the deeply interesting chapter, the twentythird, in Sir C. Lyell's Antiquity of Man, with the title, Origin and Development of Languages and Species compared. I quote a few words: Every one may have noticed in his own lifetime the stealing in of some slight alterations of accent, pronunciation, or spelling, or the introduction of some words borrowed from a foreign language to express ideas of which no native term precisely conveyed the import. He may also remember hearing for the first time some cant terms or slang phrases, which have since forced their way into common use, in spite of the efforts of the purists. But he may still contend that "within the range of his experience" his language has continued unchanged, and he may believe in its immutability in spite of minor variations. The real question, however, at issue is, whether there are any limits to this variability. He will find, on further investigation, that new technical terms are coined almost daily, in various arts,