# The Sources of Standard English/Chapter IV - The Inroad of French Words into England

CHAPTER IV.
the inroad of french words into england.
The nearer we approach 1303, the more numerous become the French words, upon which the right of En­glish citizenship was being bestowed. In the Thirteenth Century the greatest change that ever revolutionised our tongue was made. A baleful Century it was, when we look to English philology; though a right noble Century, in its bearing on English politics and English architecture. The last word suggests a comparison: if we may liken our language to a fine stone building, we shall find that in that wondrous age a seventh part of the good old masonry was thrown down, as if by an earthquake, and was withdrawn from mortal ken. The breach was by slow degrees made good with bricks, meaner ware borrowed from France; and since those times, the work of destruction and reparation has gone on, though to a lesser extent than before. We may put up with the building as it now stands, but we cannot help sighing when we think of what we have lost.
Of old, no country was more thoroughly national than England: of all Teutonic lands she alone set down her annals, year after year, in her own tongue; and this went on for three Centuries after Alfred began to reign. But ​the grim year 1066, the weightiest year that England has seen for the last twelve centuries, has left its mark deeply graven both on our history and on our speech. Every time almost that we open our lips or write a sentence, we bear witness to the mighty change wrought in Eng­land by the Norman Conqueror. Celt, Saxon, Angle, and Dane alike had to bow their heads beneath a grind­ing foreign yoke. It is in English poetry that we can trace the earliest change. Poetry always clings fast to old words, long after they have been dropped by prose; and this was the case in England before the Conquest. If we take a piece of Old English prose, say the tales translated by Alfred, or Ælfric's Homilies, or a chapter of the Bible, we shall find that we keep to this day three out of four of all the nouns, adverbs, and verbs em­ployed by the old writer; but of the nouns, adverbs, and verbs used in any English poem, from the Beowulf to the song on Edward the Confessor's death, about half have dropped for ever. From Harold's death to John's grant of the Charter, English prose did not let many old words slip. But it was far otherwise with Eng­land's old poetic diction, which must have been arti­ficially kept up. Of all the weighty words used in the Song on the Confessor's death, as nearly as possible half have dropped out of our speech. In the poems written a hundred years after the Conquest, say the rimes on ​the Lord's Prayer published by Dr. Morris, the propor­tion of words of weight, now obsolete, is one-fifth of the whole, much as it is in English prose of that same date. In the poem of 1066, nearly fifty out of a hundred of these words are clean gone; in the poem of 1170, only twenty out of a hundred of these words cannot now be understood. I think it may be laid down, that of all the poetic words employed by English Makers, nearly one-third passed away within a hundred years of the Battle of Hastings. Henry of Huntingdon makes laughable mistakes, when he tries to turn into Latin the old English lay on Brunan­burgh fight, though its words must have been in the mouths of poets only fourscore years before his time. English poetry could not thrive without patrons; and these, the Abbots and Aldermen who thronged the Win­chester Court of old, had been swept away to make room for men who cared only for the speech of Rouen and Paris. The old Standard of English died out: if chronicles were written at Peterborough, or homilies still further to the South, they were compiled in corrupt English, at which Bede or Alfred would have stared. As to English poetry, its history for one hundred years is all but a blank. Old legends of England's history, it is true, such as those that bear on Arthur or Havelok, were dressed up in verse; but the verse was French, for thus alone could the minstrel hope that his toil would be rewarded. In 1066, England's King was praised in good ringing English lines, that may have been shouted ​by boisterous wassailers around the camp fires on the eve of Hastings; sixty years later, England's Queen was taught natural history in French verse, and was complimented therein as being ‘mult bele femme, Aliz numée.’ About a hundred years after the battle of Hastings, an English writer gave the names of the wise English teachers of old, Bede, Cuthbert, Aidan, Dunstan, and others; he then complained how woefully times were changed — new lords, new lore:
[Nu is] þeo leore forleten. and þet folc is forloren. nu beoþ oþre leoden. þeo læ[reþ] ure folc. and feole of þen lorþeines losiæþ. and þat folc forþ mid.
The speech of the upper and lower classes in Eng­land, for two hundred years after 1066, was almost as distinct as the Arve and the Rhone are when they first meet. We see, however, that a few French words very early found their way into English. A shrewd observer long ago told us how ox, sheep, and swine came to be called beef, mutton, and pork, when smoking on the board. Treading in his steps, I venture to guess how our bluff forefathers began their studies in the French tongue. We may imagine a cavalcade of the new aristocracy of England, ladies and knights, men who perhaps fought at Hastings in their youth; these alight from their steeds at the door of one of the churches, ​that have lately arisen throughout the land in a style unknown to Earl Godwine. The riders are accosted by a crowd of beggars and bedesmen, who put forth all their little stock of French: ‘Lady Countess, clad in ermine and sabeline, look from your palfrey. Be large of your treasure to the poor and feeble; of your charity bestow your riches on us rather than on jogelours. We will put up our orisons for you, after the manere and custom of our religion. For Christ's passion, ease our poverty in some measure; that is the best penance, as your chaplain in his sermon says. By all the Confessors, Patriarchs, and Virgins, show us mercy.’ Another speech would run thus: ‘Worthy Baron, you have honour at Court; speak for my son in prison. Let him have justice; he is no robber or lecher. The sergeants took him in the market; these catchpoles have wrought him sore miseise. So may Christ accord you peace at the day of livreison!’ Not one of these forty French words were in English use before the battle of Hastings; but we find every one of them set down in writing with­in a century after that date, so common had they then become in English mouths. Those of the needy, who knew but little French, must have learnt at least how to bawl for justice, charity, mercy, on seeing their betters. The first letter of the word justice shows that a new French sound was taking root in England. The words Emperice and mercy, used in these times, brought in new hissing sounds; the s in English came already quite often enough. ​
In the Homilies of 1160 we trace a new change. Foreign proper names had hitherto unbendingly main­tained their Latin form in England. They were now being corrupted, owing to French influence; at pages 47 and 49 we find mention of Jeremie and Seint Gregori, At page 9 we see both the old form folc of Iudeus and the new form þe Giwis (Jews). Maria and Jacobus now become Marie and Jame. French words were being brought in most needlessly; thus we read at page 51, ‘crabbe is an manere (kind) of fissce.’
In the Essex Homilies, the French is seen elbowing out the Latin from proper names. Andreas and Mattheus become Andreu and Matheu: this eu we English could never frame our mouths to pronounce aright. What was of old written leo is turned into leun (lion); œlmesse into almes; marma into marbelstone (page 145). We find pay, mend, blame, and wait: these four are perhaps the French verbs that now come oftenest into our common use. Deciple replaces the old learning knight. An intruding letter is seen in z, (mazere is found at page 163). This z did not become common in England for nearly three hundred years. Layamon wrote his long poem the Brut about 1205; but, though this was mainly a translation from the French, he seldom employs a French word, and hardly ever without good reason. Orrmin is still more of an Englishman in his scorn for outlandish words. About this time, the days of King John, one-fifth of the weighty words in a passage are such as have become obsolete in our day. Under John's grandson, this ​proportion was to be woefully altered. The only thing that could have kept up a purely Teutonic speech in England would have been some version of the Bible, a standard of the best English of the year 1200. But this was not to be; Pope Innocent III. and his Prelates had no mind to furnish laymen with weapons that might be so easily turned against the Church. We have missed much; had Orrmin given us a good version of the Scriptures, our tongue would have had all the flexibility of the New English, and would have kept the power of compound­ing words out of its own stores, the power that be­longed to the Old English.
The Ancren Riwle, written about 1220, is the fore­runner of a wondrous change in our speech. The proportion of Old English words, now obsolete, is therein much the same as it is in the writings of Orrmin and Layamon. But the new work swarms with French words, brought in most needlessly. What could we want with such terms as cuntinuelement, Deuleset (God knows), belami, misericorde, and cogitaciun? The author is even barbarous enough to give us the French sulement, where we should now write only. I set down a short sample, underlining the foreign words. ‘Heo weren itented, and þuruh þe tentaciuns ipreoved to treowe champiuns, and so mid rihte ofserveden kempene crune.’ Many a word, embodied in the English Bible and Prayer Book three hundred years later, is now found for the first time in our tongue. These words were accented in the ​French way, on the last French syllable; the usage held its ground for four hundred years. Indeed, it still rules us when we pronounce urbane and divine. A new vowel sound now first made itself heard in England; we find in the Ancren Riwle words like joie, noise, and despoil. This French invader was in process of time to drive the old English pronunciation of home-born words out of polite society; our lower classes indeed may sound bŷle (pustula) as our forefathers did, but our upper classes must call it boil, A well-known French name is seen as ‘Willam’ (p. 340), and it is still often pronounced ‘Willum.’ We find alas for the first time: this is said to be a compound of the English eala and the French helás; alack was to come later. The author of the Ancren Riwle foreshadows the inroad that French was to make even into the English Paternoster; in page 26 he translates, ‘dimitte nobis debita nostra,’ by ‘forʓif us ure dettes, al so ase we vor­ʓiveð to ure detturs.’ He uses the word mesire, where we should say Sir; Salimbene, who was born in Italy about the time that the Ancren Riwle was compiled, tells us that the Pope was always addressed by the Romans as, ‘Tu, Messer;’ and that the Emperor Fre­derick II. received the same title from his Southern Italians. When we find the word cruelte, we see at once that England has often preserved French words in a more uncorrupt shape than France herself has done. ​We must turn to page 316, if we would know the source of ‘to make a fool of myself;’ we there find, ‘ich habbe ibeon fol of me sulven’ (concerning myself). In page 46 we find mention of ‘a large creoiz;’ this shows that the adjective was getting the meaning of magnus as well as of prodigus. The French creoiz was not to drive out the Danish kross; though the English rood was unhappily to vanish almost entirely. Many technical words of religion come in, such as silence and wardein; at page 42 we see the stages in the derivation of a well-known word, antiphona, antempne, antefne; anthem was to come later. At page 192 may be found the phrase gentile wummen. We light upon spitel (hospital) and mester, afterwards corrupted into mystery, a confusion with the Greek word. At page 202 we see the source of ‘he is but a poor creature;’ for the term cowardice is there said to embrace the poure iheorted. The old French garser (page 258) supplied us with the word garses, that is, gashes. The old English caser (Cæsar) was altered into kaiser, a word lately brought to life again in our land by Mr. Carlyle. The letters ea had taken such fast root in the West, that even French words had to suit themselves to this peculiarly English combination; in page 58 we find our well-known beast. We light upon the source of our Jewry, as Judæa is sometimes translated in our Bible, when we read at page 394 that God ‘leide himsulf vor us ine Giwerie.’ The first letter, a sound borrowed from France, shows us how we came to soften the old brig into bridge. At page 44 we ​see the French crier beginning to drive out the old English gridan. These kindred words are often found alongside each other in this Century; and unhappily it is usually the French one that has held its ground. It is now and then hard to tell whether some of our com­monest words are home-born or of French growth, so great is the confusion between the Teutonic words brought to the Thames by Hengist, and the kindred words brought to the Seine by Clovis and afterwards borne across the channel by William the Conqueror. The kinsmanship in meaning and sound must have bespoken a welcome in England for these French strangers that follow.
| Old English | French | Old English | French |
| Acofrian | Recouvrir | Heard | Hardi |
| Astundian | Estonner | Hasti | Hastif |
| Abeatan | Abattre | Hereberg | Herbier |
| Alecgan | Aloyer | Hurlen | Hareler |
| Ange | Anguisse | Yrre | Ire |
| Bigalian | Guiler | Lafian | Laver |
| Biwreʓen | Bitraie | Laga | Lei |
| Brysan | Briser | Lagu | Lac |
| Cempa | Cham­pioun | Line | Ligne |
| Cempa | Cham­pioun | Logian | Loger |
| Ceosan | Choisir | Miðla (Ice­landic) | Mesler |
| Dareð | Dard | Miðla (Ice­landic) | Mesler |
| Eaþ | Eise | Nefe | Neveu |
| Feorme | Ferme | Flatr (Ice­landic) | Plat |
| Feorren | Forain | Flatr (Ice­landic) | Plat |
| Frakele | Fraile | Priss (Ice­landic) | Pris |
| Fy^lan | Defouler | Priss (Ice­landic) | Pris |
| Geard | Gardin | Ric | Riche |
| Gote | Gouttière | Rypere | Robeor |
| Wise | Guise | Solian | Soillier |
| Gesamnian | Assembler | Spendan | Despender |
| Staðol | Estable | Weardan | Guarder |
| Strið | Estrif | Westan | Guaster |
| Teld | Tent | Wyrre | Guerre |
| Trahtnian | Traiter | | |
If it be true, as some tell us, that the mingling of the Teutonic and the Romance in our tongue make ‘a happy marriage,’ we see in the author of the Ancren Riwle the man who first gave out the banns. He was, it would seem, a Bishop, well-grounded in all the lore that Paris or Rome could teach; and he strikes us as rather too fond of airing his French and Latin before the good ladies, on whose behalf he was writing. For sixty years or so no Englishman was bold enough to imitate the Prelate's style, at least, in a book. Those who weigh English authors of this age will find that, if we divide the Thirteenth Century into three equal parts, the first division will take in writers who have eight or ten obso­lete English words out of fifty; the writers of the middle division have from five to seven obsolete English words out of fifty; and the writers of the last division have only three or four obsolete English words out of fifty. ​Our store of homespun terms was being more and more narrowed. Compare Layamon's Brut with Robert of Gloucester's poem; we are at once astounded at the loss in 1300 of crowds of English words, though both writers were translating the same French lines. It is much the same in the language of religion, as we see by comparing the Ancren Riwle with the Kentish sermons of 1290, published by Dr. Morris. Now comes the question, what was the cause of the havock wrought in our store of good old English at this particular time? One-seventh of the Teutonic words used here in 1200 seems to have altogether dropped out of written composition by the year 1290: about this fact there can be no dispute. In the lifetime of Henry III., far more harm was done to our speech than in the six hundred years that have followed his death. I shall now try to answer the ques­tion just asked; I write with some diffidence, since I believe that I am the first to bring forward the forth­coming explanation. I draw my bow; it is for others to say if I hit the mark.
Few of us have an idea of the wonderful change brought about in Latin Christendom by the teaching of St. Francis. Two Minorite friars of his Century, the one living in Italy, the other in England, give us a fair notion of the work done by the new Brotherhood, when it first began to run its race. Thomas of Eccle­ston and Salimbene throw a stronger light upon its ​budding life time do all the documents published by the learned Wadding in his Annals of the Minorites. Italy may claim the Founder; but England may boast that she carried out his work, at least for fourscore years after his death, better than any other land in Christendom. She gave him his worthiest disciples; the great English Franciscans, Alexander de Hales, Adam de Marisco, Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus, and Occam, were unequalled by any of their brethren abroad, with the two exceptions of Buenaventura and Lulli. Some of these men sought the mainland, while others taught in their school at Oxford: under the new guidance the rising University shot up with giant's growth, and speedily outdid her old rival on the Seine. The great Robert himself (he was not as yet known as Lincolniensis) lectured before the brethren at Oxford. English friars, being patterns of holiness, were held in the highest esteem abroad; when reading Salimbene's work, we meet them in all kinds of unlikely places throughout Italy and France: they crowded over the sea to hear their great countryman Hales at Paris, or to take a leading part in the Chapters held at Rome and Assisi. The gift of wisdom, we are told, overflowed in the English province.
It was a many-sided Brotherhood, being always in con­tact with the learned, with the wealthy, and with the needy alike. The English Friar was equally at home in the school, in the bower, in the hovel. He could speak more than one tongue, thanks to the training bestowed upon him. We may imagine his every-day life: he spends his morning in drawing up a Latin letter to be ​sent to the General Minister at Oxford or Paris, and he writes much as Adam de Marisco did. The friar of this age has no need to fear the tongue of scandal; so in the afternoon he visits the Lady of the Castle, whose dearest wish is that she may atone for the little weaknesses of life by laying her bones in the nearest Franciscan Church, mean and lowly though it be in these early days. He tells her the last news of Queen Eleanor's Court, points a moral with one of the new Lays of Marie, and lifts up his voice against the sad freaks played by fashion in ladies' dress. Their talk is of course in French; but the friar, having studied at Paris, remarks to himself that his fair friend's speech sounds somewhat provincial; and more than a hundred years later we are to hear of the school of Stratford atte Bowe. In the evening, he goes to the neighbouring hamlet, and holds forth on the green to a throng of horny-handed churls, stalwart swinkers and toilers, men who earn their daily bread by the sweat of their brows. They greedily listen when addressed in the uncouth English of their shire, English barely understood fifty miles off. Such burning words they never hear from their parish-priest, one of the old school. The friar's sermon is full of pro­verbs, tales, and historical examples, all tending to the improvement of morals.
A new link, as we see, was thus forged to bind all classes together in godly fellowship; nothing like this ​Franciscan movement had been known in our island for six hundred years. The Old was being replaced by the New; a preacher would suit his tales to his listeners: they cared not to hear about hinds or hus­bandmen, but about their betters. He would therefore talk about ladies, knights, or statesmen; and when dis­coursing about these, he must have been almost driven to interlard his English with a few French words, such as were constantly employed by his friends of the higher class. As a man of learning, he would begin to look down upon the phrases of his childhood as somewhat coarse, and his lowly hearers rather liked a term now and then that was a little above their understanding: what is called ‘fine language’ has unhappily always had charms for most Englishmen. It would be relished by burghers even more than by peasants. The preacher may sometimes have translated for his flock's behoof, talking of ‘grith or pais, rood or croiz, steven or voiz, lof or praise, swinkeldom or tricherie, stead or place.’ As ​years went on, and as men more and more aped their betters, the French words would drive out the Old En­glish words; and the latter class would linger only in the mouths of upland folk, where a keen antiquary may find some of them still. So mighty was the spell at work, that in the Fourteenth Century French words found their way into even the Lord's Prayer and the Belief; the last strongholds, it might be thought, of pure En­glish. It was one of the signs of the times that the old boda made way for the new prechur; prayer and praise both come from France.
But the influence of the friars upon our speech was not altogether for evil. St. Francis, it is well known, was one of the first fathers of the New Italian; a friar of his Order, Thomas of Hales, wrote what seems to me the best poem of two hundred lines produced in English before Chaucer. This ‘Luve ron,’ addressed to a nun about 1250, shows a hearty earnestness, a flowing dic­tion, and a wonderful command of rime; it has not a score of lines (these bear too hard on wedlock) that might not have been written by a pious Protestant. Hardly any French words are found here, but the names of a string of jewels. English poets had hitherto made but little use of the Virgin Mary as a theme. But her worship was one of the great badges of the ​Franciscan Order; and from 1220 onward she inspired many an English Maker. However wrong it might be theo­logically, the new devotion was the most poetical of all rites; the dullest monk is kindled with unwonted fire, when he sets forth the glories of the Maiden Mother. To her Chaucer and Dunbar have offered some of their most glowing verse.
The first token of the change in English is the ever-waxing distaste for words compounded with prepositions. After 1220, these compounds become more and more scarce, though we have kept to this day some verbs which have fore, out, over, and under prefixed; those beginning with to (the German zer) lived on for a long time before waning away. We have a second copy of Layamon's Brut, written, it is thought, soon after 1250. Scores of old words set down fifty years earlier in the first copy of 1205 had become strange in the ears of Englishmen; these words are now dropped altogether. Some French words, unknown to Layamon, are found in this second copy.
We have an opportunity of comparing the old and the new school of English teachers, as they stood in the Middle of this Century. We find one poem, written shortly before 1250, about the time that Archbishop Edmund was canonized: this must have been composed by a churchman of the good old St. Albans' pattern, a preacher of righteousness after Brother Matthew's own heart. The rimer casts no wistful glance abroad, but appeals to English saints and none others; he strikes hard at Rome in a way that would have shocked good Franciscans. He is an exception to the common ​rule; for the proportion of English words, now obsolete, in his lines is as great as in those of Orrmin. Most different is another poem, written in a manuscript not later than 1250. The Maker may well have been a Fran­ciscan; he pours out his wrath on priests' wives and on parsons; he handles the sins of Jankin and Malkin in most homely wise. He has some French words that he need not have employed, such as sire and dame instead of father and mother; his proportion of obsolete English is far less than that which we see in the lines of his brother-poet. I suspect that the Ancren Riwle (it still exists in many copies) must have been a model most popular among the friars, who perhaps did much to bring into vogue the French words with which it swarms.
About the year 1290, we find Churchmen becoming more and more French in their speech. Hundreds of good Old English words were now lost for ever, and the terms that replaced them, having been for years in the mouths of men, were at length being set down in manuscripts. The Life of a Saint (many such are extant, written at this time) was called a Vie. In that version of the Harrowing of Hell which dates from the aforesaid year, the transcriber has gone out of his way to bring in the words delay, commandment (this comes twice over), and serve: all these are crowded into five lines. Still more remarkable are the few and short Kentish sermons, translated from the French about the same time, 1290. Never were the Old and the New ​brought face to face within narrower compass. We see the old Article with its three genders, se, si, þet (in San­scrit sa, sâ, tat), still lingering on in Kent, though these forms had been dropped everywhere else. On the other hand, we find about seventy French words, many of which, as verray, defenden, signefiance, orgeilus, commencement, were not needed at all. When reading the short sentence, ‘this is si signefiance of the miracle,’ our thoughts are at one time borne back to the abode of our earliest fore­fathers on the Oxus; at another time we see the fine language of the Victorian penny-a-liner most clearly foreshadowed. After 1290, we hardly ever find a passage in which the English words, now obsolete, are more than one-seventeenth of the whole; the only exception is in the case of some Alliterative poem. This fact gives us some idea of the havock wrought in the Thirteenth Century.
But the friars of old did not confine themselves to preaching; all the lore of the day was lodged in their hands. Roger Bacon's life sets before us the bold way in which some of them pried into the secrets of Nature. One of the means by which they drew to themselves the love of the common folk was the practice of leechcraft; in the friars the leper found his only friends. The best scientific English treatise of the time of Edward the First is ‘the Pit of Hell,’ printed by Mr. Wright: this also deals with the shaping of the human frame. There are in it about 400 long lines, containing forty French ​words: among them are air and round. It is strange to contrast the language of this with the obsolete English of a treatise on Astronomy, put forth three hundred years before, and printed in the same book of Mr. Wright's.
To these early forefathers of our leechcraft we owe a further change in our tongue. There are many English words for sundry parts and functions of the human frame, words which no well-bred man can use; custom has ruled that we must employ Latin synonyms. The first example I remember of this delicacy (it ought not to be called mawkishness) is in Robert of Gloucester, writing about 1300. When describing the tortures in­flicted by King John on his subjects in 1216, and the death of the Earl Marshal on an Irish field in 1234, the old rimer uses Latin terms instead of certain En­glish words that would jar upon our taste. But a leech who flourished eighty years after Robert's time is far more plain-spoken, when describing his cures, made at Newark and London. Indeed, he is as little mealy-mouthed as Orrmin himself. It was not, however, ​until very late times that perspiration replaced in polite speech the English word akin to the Sanscrit swêda, or that belly was thought to be coarser than stomach.
Architecture was another craft in which the clergy took the lead; Alan de Walsingham by no means stood alone. English words were well enough, when a cot or a farm-house was in hand; but for the building of a Castle or a Cathedral, scores of French technical words had to be called in: at Canterbury, William the En­glishman doubtless employed much the same diction as his predecessor, William of Sens. Indeed, the new style of building, brought from France more than a hun­dred years before the time of these worthies, must have unfolded many a new term of art to King Edward's masons at Westminster. In our own day, the great revival of Architecture has led to a wonderful enlarge­ment of diction among the common folk; every work­ing mason now has in his mouth scores of words for the meaning of which learned men forty years ago would have searched in dictionaries.
The Preacher in his religious or secular character was not the only importer of French words. We must now consider three other agents who helped forward the great change — the Lady, the Knight, and the Lawyer.
Paris and Rouen were the oracles of the fair sex. These cities supplied articles of dress, wherewith the ladies decked themselves so gaily as to draw down the ​wrath of the pulpit. One preacher of 1160 goes so far as to call smart clothing ‘the Devil's mousetrap;’ yellow raiment and blanchet (a way of whitening the skin) seem to have been reckoned the most dangerous of snares to womankind, and therefore also to mankind. In the Essex Homilies an onslaught is made upon the Priest's wife and her dress; we hear of ‘hire chemise smal and hwit, hire mentel grene, hire nap of mazere.’ The Ancren Riwle does not dwell on this topic of dress so much as might have been expected; only a few French articles are there mentioned. A little later, the high-bred dames are thus assailed:
Þeos prude levedies Þat luvyeþ drywories And brekeþ spusynge, For heore lecherye, Nulleþ here sermonye Of none gode þinge.
In the days of Edward I., we find scores of French words, bearing on ladies' way of life, employed by our writers. Many were the articles of luxury that came from abroad; commerce was binding the nations of Christendom together. The English chapman and monger now withdrew into low life, making way for the more gentlemanly foreigner, the marchand. Half of our trades bear French names; simple hues like red and blue do well enough for the common folk, but our higher classes must have a greater range of choice; hence come the foreign scarlet, vermilion, orange, and others. ​
The Knight had three great pleasures — war, hunt­ing, and cookery. He at first lived much apart from the mass of Englishmen; but the mighty struggle of the Thirteenth Century knit fast together the speakers of French and of English, the high and the low. One of the first tokens of this union is the Ballad on Lewes fight; it may have been written by some Lon­doner, who uses a few French words, such as might have been picked up in the great Earl Simon's tent. Six years earlier, the Reformed Government had thought it worth while to publish King Henry's adhesion to the new system, in English, as well as in French and Latin. In the reign of Henry's son, the work of amalgamation went on at full speed. From this time dates the revival of the glories of England's host, which has seldom since allowed thirty years to pass without some doughty deed of arms, achieved beyond our borders; for there were but few quarrels at home henceforward. Now it was that a number of warlike French romances were Englished, such as the Tristrem, the Havelok, the Horn, and, above all, the renowned Alexander. Legends about King Arthur were most popular; the Round Table became a household word; and the adjective round grew to be so common, that it was in the end turned into a preposition, as we find in the Alexander. The word adventure, brought from ​France, was as well known in England as in Germany. Our per aventure, having been built into the English Bible centuries later, is likely to last. Old Teutonic words made way for the outlandish terms glory, renown, army, host, champion. England was becoming, under her great Edward, the most united of all Christian kingdoms; the yeomen who tamed Wales and strove hard to conquer Scotland looked with respect upon the high-born circle standing next to the King. What was more, the respect was returned by the nobles: we have seen the tale of the Norfolk farmer at page 200; and this, I suspect, could hardly have happened out of England. France has always been the country that has given us our words for soldiering — from the word castel, brought over in 1048, to the word mitrailleuse, brought over in 1870. Englishmen of old could do little in war but sway the weighty axe or form the shield-wall under the eye of such Kings as Ironside or Godwine's son; it was France that taught us how to ply the mangonel and trebuchet. Many hunting terms, borrowed from the same land, may ​be found in the Sir Tristrem. Several of the French words used in cookery may be read in the Lay of Havelok, who himself served for some time as a swiller of dishes: we here find pastees, wastels, veneysun, and many other terms of the craft; our common roast, boil, fry, broil, toast, grease, brawn, larder bear witness as to which race it was that had the control of the kitchen.
We have spoken of the Lady and the Knight; we now come to the Lawyer. The whole of the Govern­ment was long in the hands of the French-speaking-class. Henry II., the great organiser of English law, was a thorough Frenchman, who lived in our island as little as he could; the tribunals were in his time re­formed; and the law-terms, with which Blackstone abounds (peine forte et dure, for instance), are the be­quest of this age. The Roman law had been studied at Oxford even before Henry began to reign. The Legend of St. Thomas, drawn up about 1300, swarms with French words when the Constitutions of Clarendon are described; and a charter of King Athelstane's, turned into the English spoken about 1250, shows how many of our own old law terms had by that time been supplanted by foreign ware. Our barristers still keep the old French pronunciation of their technical word recórd; the oyez of our courts is well known. ​The Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester, compiled about 1300, abounds in the words of law and government borrowed from France, words that still keep their hold upon us. The Sir Tristrem, translated in the North about thirty years earlier than Robert's work, is most interesting as giving us more than 200 French terms of war, hunting, law, leechcraft, religion, and lady's dress.
The mischief was now done; we must not be hard on Colonel Hamley, or on Blackstone, or on the com­pilers of the Anglican Prayer Book, or on the describer of a fashionable wedding in the Morning Post, or on the chronicler of the Lord Mayor's feast, or on the Edi­tors of the Lancet and the Builder, for dealing in shoals of foreign terms; nearly six hundred years ago it was settled that the technical diction of their respective crafts must to a great extent be couched in French or Latin. There were about 150 Romance words in our tongue before 1066, being mostly the names of Church furniture, foreign plants, and strange animals. About 100 more Romance words got the right of English citizenship before the year 1200. Lastly, 800 other Romance words had become common with our writers by the year 1300; and before these came in, many hundreds of good old English words had been put out of the way. Fearful was the havock done in the Thirteenth Century; sore is our loss: but those of us ​who love a Teutonic diction should blame, not Chaucer or Wickliffe, but the Franciscans of an earlier age; they, if I guess aright, were the men who wrought the great change in our store of words. The time of King Henry the Third's death is the moment when our written speech was barrenest; a crowd of English words had already been dropped, and few French words had as yet been used by any writer of prose or poetry, except by the author of the Ancren Riwle; hitherto the out­landish words had come as single spies, henceforward they were to come in battalions. I have already touched upon the French expressions that came in about 1300, and are now so common in our mouths; such as ‘he used to go.’
These strangers, long before the Norman Conquest, had been forced to take an English ending before they could be naturalized. In the Twelfth Century, some of them took English prefixes as well; we find not only a word like maisterlinges, but also bispused. In Layamon's poem of 1205, we see our adverbial ending tacked on to a French word, as hardiliche. In the Ancren Riwle, a few years later, we find French adjectives taking the English signs of comparison, as larger and tendrust. In the last decade of the Thirteenth Century, French words were coming in amain. The Alexander (published by Weber), and Robert of Gloucester's Chronicle, both of which belong to this date, swarm with foreign terms, the bricks that were to replace our lost stone. It was now not only nouns, verbs, and adverbs that came hither from France; we see, in Robert's Chronicle (page 54), save used to express prœter: ‘save lym and lyf.’ He ​also shows us the first germ of our new word because. In page 24, he tells us that the Humber was so called, ‘for þe cas þat Homber . . . þer ynne adreynt was.’ He has also that most curious compound pece-mele. A new idiom is found in the Life of Becket, at page 40: ‘he upe the poynte was to beo icast.’ A still greater change is seen in the Alexander; the French word round, which had not taken root in England much before 1300, was used as a Preposition:
‘This is round the mydell erd.’ — Page 29.
In the Life of Becket this word takes an English prefix, and becomes around. A great change was coming over England about the year 1300, from the Severn to the Wash; the old Teutonic sources of diction had been sadly dried up and could no longer supply all her wants; Germany was to have a happier lot, at least in speech. Nothing can more clearly set forth the inroad of the French than the following sentence, which is made up of words in the every-day use of the lowest among us:
‘Of course I immediately just walked quite round the second of the walls, because perhaps it might have been very weak.’
We should find it hard to change these foreign words in italics for Teutonic equivalents, without laying ourselves open to the charge of obsolete diction. England, too careless of her own wealth, has had to draw upon France even for prepositions and conjunc­tions. After reading such a sentence as the one above, we are less astonished to find words like face, voice, dress, flower, river, uncle, cousin, pass, touch, pray, try, glean, ​which have put to flight the commonest of Teutonic words. Strange it is that these French terms should have won their way into our hovels as well as into our manor houses.
I give a few instances of Manning's use of French words; his lines on Confirmation show plainly how much foreign ware we owe to the clergy. He sticks pretty close to the French poem he was translating, as in page 107, une cote perece is Englished by a kote percede; and this gives us some idea of the number of new words that must have been brought in by translators. We see the terms verry (verus), oure (hora), prayere, anoynt, age, renoun, morsel, tryfyl, savyoure, straitly, in vein (frustra), bewte, usurer, valeu, a fair, affynyte, sample, trespas, spyryt, revyle, moreyne (pestis), pestelens, veniaunce, hutch, tremle. It may be laid down, that in his diction this writer of 1303 has more in common with us of 1873 than he had with any English poet of 1250.
A few other changes must be more specially pointed out. Hitherto Englishmen had talked of cristendom, but Robert (page 346) speaks of crystyanyte.
He has dropped the old word syfernes, and translates the kindred French sobreté by soberte, our sobriety.
He has both verement and verryly: the first in its foreign adverbial ending points to mind, the second in its English adverbial ending points to lic (body). In page 149 charyte stands for alms, coming from the French line, la charite luy enveia. In the same page, nycete stands for folly. ​
In page 56, joly stands for riotous, as is seen by the context:
Yyf a man be of joly lyfe.
This French jolif is said to come from the Yule of the conquerors of Normandy.
In page 75, we see the word party get its modern sense:
Þys aperyng, yn my avys, Avaylede to boþe partys.
In page 228, there is a piling up of French and En­glish synonyms:
On many maner dyvers wyse.
In page 273, en le qeor is turned into yn þe chaunsel.
In page 276, we find our county court, when he trans­lates the French:
Secular plai, cum est cunte. . . . . . . Lay courte, or elles counte.
In page 100, escharnir is translated by scorn, the word used by Orrmin a hundred years earlier. ​
In page 323, we see the beginning of what was to become a well-known English oath:
‘Ye,’ he seyde, ‘graunte mercy.’
In page 95, we see a sense that has been long given in England to the French word touch, ‘to speak of:’
Y touchede of þys yche lake.
In page 109, we see how liquid consonants run into each other:
What sey ʓe, men, of ladyys pryde, Þat gone traylyng over syde?
This in the French is trainant. Thus Bononia became Bologna, and Lucera was sometimes written Nucera.
In page 229, single is opposed to unmarried; simples hom is translated by sengle knave.
In page 4, we see how in the Danelagh French words as well as English underwent clipping. The French enticer loses its first syllable; and our lower orders still use this maimed verb:
Þe fende and oure fleshe tysyn us þerto.
We saw how seventy years earlier espier became spy in Suffolk.
In page 9, a French impersonal Verb appears, ‘to repent him.’
In page 72, we see the unhappy French word, which has driven out the true English afeard, at least from polite speech. Fu tant affraie is there turned into he was a frayde. In this poem we also see the French ​peyne driving out the English pine. At page 325, we light on the old coverde (convaluit); and at page 222, we see the new French form, recovere. But Robert writes ‘to new,’ not ‘to renew.’
In page 30, les tempestes cesserent is translated by tempest secede; we have long confounded the sound of c with that of s. In page 358, we see that our g had been softened in sound, for Robert writes the word mageste (majestas). In this way brig got the sound of bridge.
In page 7, Robert translates the deable, the supposed idol of the Saracens, by maumette and termagaunt: both of these are as yet masculine in gender; Layamon had used them earlier.
In page 77, we see terme eslu, certein, nome, turned into a certeyn day of terme. But this certain was not used as an equivalent for quidam until Chaucer's time.
Our bard finds it needful to give long explanations in English rime of the strange words mattok, sacrilege, and miner (pages 31, 266, 331).
I have kept the greatest changes of all to the last; in page 321 we find a French Participle doing duty for a Preposition,
Passyng alle þyng hyt haþ powers.
And in page 180,
My body y take þe here to selle To sum man as yn bondage.
This bondage is the first of many words in which a French ending was tacked on to an English root. So barren had our tongue become by the end of this ​unlucky Thirteenth Century, that we had to import from abroad even our terminations, if we wanted to frame new English nouns and adjectives. We were in process of time to make strange compounds like godd-ess, for­bear-ance, odd-ity, nigg-ard, upheav-al, starv-ation, trust-ee, fulfil-ment, latch-et, wharf-inger, king-let, fish-ery, tru-ism, love-able, whims-ical, talk-ative, slumbr-ous. What a falling off is here! what a lame ending for a Teutonic root!
Desinit in piscem mulier formosa superne.
We were also to forget the good Old English ad­jectival isc or ish, and to use foreign endings for proper names like Alger-ine, Gael-ic, Syri-ac, Chin-ese, Wykeham-ist, Wesley-an, Irving-ite, Dant-esque. Cromwell in his despatches talks of the Lincoln-eers.
By-and-by French prefixes drove out their English brethren, even when the root of the word was English; we are now doomed to write embolden and enlighten, and to replace the old edniwian by renew. Mistrust has been almost wholly driven out by distrust. We have happily two or three Teutonic endings still in use, when we coin new adjectives and nouns; one of these is ness. It had English rivals in full vigour at the end of the Fourteenth ​Century, but they have now dropped out of use; what our penny-a-liners now call inebriety might in 1380 be Englished not only by Chaucer's dronkenesse, but by Wickliffe's drunkenhede, by Mire's dronkelec, and by Gower's drunkeshepe. Our lately-coined pigheadedness and longwindedness show that there is life in the good old ness yet. Such new substantives as Bumbledom and rascaldom prove that dom is not yet dead; and such new adjectives as peckish and rubbishy show a lingering love for the Old English adjectival endings.
More than one Englishman might when a child have given ear to the first Franciscan sermons ever heard in Lincolnshire, and might at fourscore and upwards have listened to the earliest part of the Handlyng Synne. Such a man (a true Nævius), on contrasting the number of Romance terms common in 1300 with the hundreds of good old Teutonic words of his childhood, words that the rising generation understood not, might well mourn that in his old age England's tongue had become strange to Englishmen. But about this time, 1300, the Genius of our language, as it seems, awoke from sleep, clutched his remaining hoards with tighter grip, and thought that we had lost too many old words already. Their rate of disappearance between 1220 and 1290 had been ​most rapid, as may be seen by the Table at the end of this Chapter; some hundreds of those left were un­happily doomed to die out before 1520, but the process of their extinction was not speedy, as the same Table will show. After 1300, the Franciscans began to for­sake their first love; one of the earliest tokens of the change was the rearing in 1306 of their stately new London Convent, which took many years to build, and where hundreds of the highest in the land were buried. It arose in marked contrast to the lowly churches that had been good enough for the old friars, the first dis­ciples of St. Francis. Their great lights vanished from Oxford; the most renowned name she boasts in the Fourteenth Century is that of their sternest foe. About 1320 they were attacked in English rimes, a thing un­heard of in the Thirteenth Century. We now learn that a friar Menour will turn away from the needy to grasp at the rich man's gifts; the brethren will fight over a wealthy friend's body, but will not stir out of the cloister at a poor man's death; they
‘wolde preche more for a busshel of whete, Than for to bringe a soule from helle out of the hete.’
These rimes were written about the date of Wickliffe's birth. The Franciscans had by this time done their work in England, though they were to drag on a slug­gish life in our shires for two hundred years longer. Curious it is, that the time of their fiery activity ​coincides exactly with the time of England's greatest loss in a philologer's eyes.
Robert of Brunne began his Handlyng Synne, as he tells us, in 1303; he must have taken some years to complete it. We possess it, not as he wrote it, but in a Southern transcript of 1360 or thereabouts; even in this short interval many old terms had been dropped, and some of the bard's Norse words could never have been understood on the Thames. The transcriber writes more modern equivalents above those terms of Robert's, which seemed strange in 1360. I give a few speci­mens, to show the change that went on all through the Fourteenth Century:
| Robert of Brunne, in 1303. | His Transcriber, about 1360. | Robert of Brunne, in 1303. | His Transcriber, about 1360. |
| Gros | Dred | yerne | desyre |
| wlatys | loþeþ | rous | boste |
| wede (insanus) | made | qued | shrewe |
| wryʓtes | carponters | aywhore | ever more |
| were | kepe | wurþ þe | most |
| mote (curia) | plete | weyve | forsake |
| ferly | wndyr | gate | wey |
| cele | godly | loþe | harme |
| byrde (decet) | moste | he nam | he ʓede |
| estre | toune | he nam | he toke |
| yrk | slow | stounde | tyme |
| mayn | strenkþ | rape | haste |
| harnes | brayn | kenne | teche |
| grete | wepte | tarne | wenche |
| whyle | tyme | bale | sorow |
| yn lowe | fyre | rous | proud wordys |
| layþ | foule | aghte | gode |
| fyn | ende | hals | nek |
| þarmys | guttys | swyer | nek |
| mone | warne | cuntek | debate |
| warryng | cursing | hote | vowe |
| mysse | fayle | ferde | ʓede |
| wonde | spare | raþe | sone |
| dere | harme | flytes | chydeþ |
| teyl | scorne | y-dyt | stoppyd |
| tyne | lese | syde | long |
| pele | perche | awe | drede |
| myrke | derke | dryghe | suffre |
| seynorye | lordshyp | wlate | steyn |
Some of Robert's words, that needed explanation in 1360, are as well known to us in 1873 as those where­with his transcriber corrected what seemed obsolete. Words will sometimes fall out of written speech, and crop up again long afterwards. Language is full of these odd tricks. It is mournful to trace the gradual loss of old words. This cannot be better done than by comparing three English versions of the Eleven Pains of Hell: one of these seems to belong to the year 1250, another to 1340, another to 1420. Each successive loss was of course made good by fresh shoals of French words. Steady indeed was the flow of these into English prose and poetry all through the Fourteenth Century, as may ​be seen by the following Table. I take from each author a passage (in his usual style) containing fifty substantives, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs; and this is the proportion in which the words are employed:
| | English Words that are now Obsolete | Romance Words |
| Old English Poetry, before 1066 | 25 | — |
| Old English Prose, before 1066 | 12 | — |
| Orrmin and Layamon, about 1200 | 10 | — |
| Ancren Riwle, about 1220 | 9 | — |
| Genesis and Exodus, Bestiary, about 1230 | 8 | — |
| Owl and Nightingale, about 1240 | 7 | — |
| Northern Psalter, about 1250 | 6 | — |
| Proverbs of Hending, about 1260 | 5 | — |
| Love song (page 156), about 1270 | 4 | 1 |
| Havelok, Harrowing Hell, about 1280 | 4 | 2 |
| Robert of Gloucester, about 1300 | 3 | 4 |
| Robert Manning, in 1303 | 2 | 6 |
| Shoreham, about 1320 | 3 | 3 |
| Auchinleck Romances, about 1330 | 3 | 4 |
| Hampole, about 1340 | 3 | 5 |
| Minot, about 1350 | 3 | 6 |
| Langland, in 1362 | 2 | 7 |
| Chaucer (Pardoner's Tale), in 1390 | 2 | 8 |
| Pecock in 1450 | 1 | 10 |
| Tyndale, in 1530 | — | 12 |
| Addison, in 1710 | — | 17 |
| Macaulay, in 1850 | — | 25 |
| Gibbon (sometimes) | — | 44 |
| Morris (sometimes) | — | 3 |
* ↑ Substantives, adjectives, adverbs, and verbs, I call ‘weighty words;’ they may alter, while the other parts of speech hardly change at all. I cannot see the use of counting, as Marsh does, every of and the and him, in order to find out the proportion of home-born English in different authors.
* ↑ Morris, Early English Homilies, First Series, I. 55 (Early English Text Society). I gave a specimen at page 77.
* ↑ Wright, Popular Treatises on Science, p. 74.
* ↑ Page 5 of the Worcester manuscript, referred to at page 84 of this work.
* ↑ They may be found in the Saxon Chronicle and in the First Series of Homilies (Early English Text Society).
* ↑ See the Paston Letters (Gairdner), I. 510.
* ↑ Page 236 of the Camden Society's edition. I have not under­lined proved, as that foreign word was in use before the Norman Conquest.
* ↑ One of these words, accented in the French way, is preserved in the old rimes, ‘Mistress Mary, quite contrāry.’
* ↑ Schoolboys may call irritare ‘to ryle;’ the grave Lord Keeper Guildford and his brother Roger North pronounced it roil.
* ↑ We have kept the good old French empress; the French lost the word and had to go straight to the Latin for imperatrice.
* ↑ This phrase, Thackeray tells us, was admired by Miss Honeyman more than any word in the English vocabulary.
* ↑ This has only a transitive sense.
* ↑ The verb strive most likely comes from some overlooked strithan, as Theodore becomes Feodor in Russian. The Perfect in the Ancren Riwle is strôf and a French word in English always takes a Weak Perfect.
* ↑ Cloth of gold, do not despise, Though thou be matched with cloth of friese. Cloth of friese, be not too bold, Though thou be matched with cloth of gold.
* ↑ The fifty words to be reckoned should be only substantives, adjectives, adverbs, and verbs.
* ↑ An Old English Miscellany (Early English Text Society), p. 26.
* ↑ The work of the Englishman is in Monumenta Franciscana, published by the Master of the Rolls; that of the Italian is in Monumenta ad Provincias Parmensem et Placentinam pertinentia, to be found in the British Museum.
* ↑ This last sentence I take from Salimbene, who describes the new style of preaching practised by the friars his brethren. Italy and England must have been much alike in the Thirteenth Century in this respect.
* ↑ Our humbler classes now prefer the fictitious adventures of some wicked Marquis to all the sayings and doings of Mrs. Gamp or Mrs. Poyser.
* ↑ I take the following sketch from Middlemarch, III. 156 (pub­lished in 1872): — ‘Mr. Trumbull, the auctioneer . . . was an amateur of superior phrases, and never used poor language without immediately correct­ing himself. “Anybody may ask,” says he, “anybody may interro­gate. Any one may give their remarks an interrogative turn.” He calls Ivanhoe “a very superior publication, it commences well.” Things never began with Mr. Trumbull; they always commenced, both in private life and on his handbills, “I hope some one will tell me — I hope some individual will apprise me of the fact.”’ Many of our early Franciscans must have been akin to Mr. Trumbull. Our modern penny-a-liners would say that the worthy auctioneer was a master of English, and a better guide to follow than Bunyan or Defoe.
* ↑ How often does the word predicai (prædicavi) occur in the journal of the Franciscan, who afterwards became Sixtus V.!
* ↑ Old English Miscellany, p. 93 (Early English Text Society). Dr. Morris thinks that the friar wrote in Latin, which was afterwards Englished.
* ↑ Old English Miscellany, p. 89.
* ↑ Do., p. 186.
* ↑ Page 36 of Dr. Mall's edition.
* ↑ Old English Miscellany, p. 26 (Early English Text Society).
* ↑ That is, leaving out of the calculation all but the ‘weighty words.’
* ↑ Popular Treatises of Science, p. 132.
* ↑ On this head there is a great difference between Germany and England. Teutonic words that no well-bred Englishman could use before a woman may be printed by grave German historians. See Von Raumer's account of the siege of Viterbo in 1243, Geschichte der Hohenstaufen. Of course I know that this does not prove Germans to be one whit more indelicate than Englishmen; custom is everything.
* ↑ John Arderne's Account of himself, Reliquiæ Antiquæ, I. 191. Charles II. was the best bred Englishman of his time, yet he writes to his sister: — ‘Poor O'Nial died this afternoon of an ulcer in his guts.’ — Curry's Civil Wars in Ireland, I. 308. So swiftly does fashion change!
* ↑ The clergy were also great engineers in war, as we read in the accounts of the Crusades against the Albigenses and Eccelin da Romano. The renowned Chillingworth wanted to play the same part at the siege of Gloucester in 1643.
* ↑ Homilies, First Series, p. 53.
* ↑ Homilies, Second Series, p. 163.
* ↑ Old English Miscellany, p. 77.
* ↑ Many French words must have been brought in, simply for the sake of the rimes, literally translated; thus in the Floriz and Blauncheflur of about 1290: — ‘þanne sede þe burgeis þat was wel hende and curtais.’
* ↑ Our word adventurer seems to be sinking in the mire. A lady told me the other day that she thought it unkind in Sir Walter Scott to call Prince Charles Edward ‘the young Adventurer.’ Thus, what but sixty years ago described a daring knight, now conveys to some minds the idea of a scheming knave. It is a bad sign for a nation, when words that were once noble are saddled with a base meaning. Further on, I shall call attention to the Italian pœnitentia and virtus.
* ↑ The Editor of Sir John Burgoyne's Life, in 1873, complains of the poverty of the English military vocabulary, when he talks of a coup de main and an attaque brusquée, Vol. II. 346. Even so late as 1642, we were forced to call in French and German engineers, at the outbreak of the Civil Wars.
* ↑ Those who administered the law were either churchmen or knights.
* ↑ Kemble, Cod. Dip., v. 235. We here find grantye, confirmye, and custumes. We are therefore not surprised to learn, that few or none in 1745 could explain the old English law terms in the Baron of Bradwardine's charter of 1140, ‘saca et soca, et thol et theam, et infangthief et outfangthief, sive hand-habend, sive bak-barand.’
* ↑ It was once my lot to treat of a code of law; I find, on looking over my book, that at least one half of my substantives, adjectives, adverbs, and verbs dealing with this subject, are of Latin birth; so impossible is it for the most earnest Teuton to shake off the trammels laid on England in the Thirteenth Century.
* ↑ This French word has had a most curious history in England. Nice stood for foolish down to about 1580; then it came to mean precise; and a hundred years ago it got the meaning of pleasing. Mrs. Thrale, in Miss Burney's Diary, is the earliest instance I can recollect of any one using nice in the last-named sense, in free every­day talk. The young lady of our time who is helped through her hoop at croquet by some deft curate, thinks to herself, ‘O nice creature!’ These are the very words that Chaucer, in his Second Nun's Tale, puts into the mouth of St. Cecilia, when that most out­spoken of maidens wishes to call the Roman governor ‘a silly brute.’ Nice is now applied to a sermon, to a jam tart, to a young man; in short, to everything. The lower classes talk of ‘nice weather.’ We have become mere slovens in diction; the penny-a-liners now write about ‘a splendid shout.’
* ↑ Bowyer, in Robert of Gloucester, may descend from some over­looked English bog-er, though ier is a French ending; there may be a confusion between the two endings. The worst compound I ever met with was mob-ocracy. I half fear to point it out, lest the penny-a-liners should seize upon it as a precious jewel. What a difference does the Irish ending een make when added to squire!
* ↑ In this last word the old Teutonic ending isc has gone from Germany to Italy, then to France, and at last to England.
* ↑ Other roots, with all these four endings, may be found in Strat­mann's Dictionary.
* ↑ As to the speech of religion, compare the Creed at page 138, with the description of Charity at page 198; yet there are but sixty years between them. In later times, Caxton says that he found an amazing difference between the words of his childhood and those of his old age: Hobbes and Cibber must have remarked the same, as to turns of expression.
* ↑ Political Songs (Camden Society), p. 331. Churchmen, lawyers, physicians, knights, and shopkeepers are all assailed in this piece.
* ↑ Happy had it been for Spain if her begging friars, about the year 1470, had been as sluggish and tolerant as their English brethren.
* ↑ Multa renascentur quæ jam cecidere, cadentque Quæ jam sunt in honore vocabula, si volet usus.
* ↑ Old English Miscellany (Early English Text Society), pp. 147, 210, 223.
* ↑ I give specimens of the two last in my Seventh Chapter. They seem to be writing in two languages that have little in common.