modern English, the ideas which address themselves to the emotions, and those which bring man into relation with the great objects of nature and with the sentiments of simple existence, will be found to derive their linguistic representatives, to a great extent, from the Teutonic tongue. The conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity, which took place in the sixth century, brought them into contact with more intellectual forms of life and with a higher type of civilization: the transfer of their religious allegiance from Thor, Woden, Tuisk, and Freya to the Saviour, while it softened their manners, exposed their language to the modifying influences of the corrupt but more civilized Latin literature of the Lower Empire; and gave rapid proof how improveable a tongue was that in which they had hitherto produced nothing, probably, but rude war-songs and sagas like that of Beowulf. A very varied and extensive literature soon arose among the Anglo-Saxons, embracing compositions on almost every branch of knowledge, law, historical chronicles, ecclesiastical and theological disquisitions, together with a large body of poetry in which their very peculiar metrical system was adapted to subjects derived either from the scriptures, or from the mediaval lives of the saints. The curious, but rather tedious, versified paraphrase of the Bible by Cadmon-generally attributed to the middle of the seventh century-was long considered to be one of the most ancient among the more considerable Saxon poems; but the discovery of the manuscript of the Lay of Beowulf, to which we have just alluded, has furnished us with a specimen of Anglo-Saxon poetry decidedly more ancient, as well as far more interesting; inasmuch as, having been composed in all probability at a period anterior to the general conversion of the race to Christianity, it is free from any traces of that imitation of the rhetorical style of the lower Latinity which prevents Cædmon from being a good representative of the national literature of his race. This poem, the picturesque vigour of which gives it a right to be placed among the most interesting monuments of early literature, is not inferior in energy and conciseness to the Nibelungen-Lied, though undeniably so in extent of plot and development of character. The subject is the expedition of Prince Beowulf, a lineal descendant of Woden, from Suffolk to Durham, on the adventure of delivering the king of the latter country from a kind of demon or monster which secretly enters the royal hall at midnight, and destroys some of the warriors who are sleeping there. This monster, called in the poem the Grendel, is probably nothing but the poetical personification of some dangerous exhalations from a marsh, for it is represented as issuing from a neighbouring swamp, and as taking a refuge in the same abode when, after a furious combat, Beowulf succeeds in driving it back, wounded to the death, into the gloomy abyss. The description of the voyage of Beowulf in his "foamy-necked" ship

along the "swan-path" of the ocean, of his arrival at the foreign court, and his narrative of his own exploits, are in a very similar style to the ancient Scandinavian Sagas. The versification of this, as well as of all Saxon poetry in general, is exceedingly peculiar; and the system upon which it is constructed for a long time defied the ingenuity of philologists. The Anglo-Saxons based their verse not upon any regular recurrence of syllables, still less upon the employment of similarly sounding terminations of lines or parts of lines, that is, upon what we call rhyme. With them it was sufficient to constitute verse, that in any two successive lineswhich might be of any length-there should be at least three words beginning with the same letter. This very peculiar metrical system is called alliteration.*

The language in which these works are composed is usually called Anglo-Saxon; but in the works themselves it is always styled English, and the country England, or the land of the Angles. The term Anglo-Saxons is meant to distinguish the Saxons of England from the Saxons of the Continent, and does not signify the Angles and Saxons. But why English became the exciusive appellation of the language spoken by the Saxons as well as the Angles, is not altogether clear. It has been supposed by some writers that the Saxons were only a section of the Angles, and consequently that the latter name was always recognized among the Angles and Saxons as the proper national appellation. Another hypothesis is, that as the new inhabitants of the island became first known to the Roman see through the Anglian captives who were carried to Rome in the sixth century, the name of this tribe was given by the Romans to the whole people; and that the Christian missionaries to Britain would naturally continue to employ this name as the appellation both of the people and the country. Some modern writers have proposed to discard the term Anglo-Saxon altogether, and employ English as the name of the language, from the earliest date to the present day. But, as has been already observed in a previous work of the present series, “a change of nomenclature like this would expose us to the inconvenience, not merely of embracing within one designation objects which have been conventionally separated, but of confounding things logically distinct: for, though our modern English is

For an account of Anglo-Saxon verse see the 'Student's Manual of the English Language,' p. 387, and for a fuller account of Anglo-Saxon literature, see Notes and Illustrations (A).

For further particulars see the Student's Manual of the English Language,' pp. 14, 15. It is there shown that the common account of the impo sition of the name of England upon the country by a decree of King Egbert, is unsupported by any contemporaneous or credible testimony; and that the title of Anglia or Anglorum Rex, is much more naturally explained by the supposition that England and English had been already adopted as the collective names of the country and its inhabitants.

built upon and mainly derived from the Anglo-Saxon, the two dialects are now so discrepant, that the fullest knowledge of one would not alone suffice to render the other intelligible to either the eye or the ear." For all practical purposes, they are two separate languages, as different from one another as the Italian from the Latin, or the present English from the German.

For a long period the Saxon colonization of Britain was carried on by detached Teutonic tribes, who established themselves in such portions of territory as they found vacant, or from which they ousted less warlike occupants; and in this way there gradually arose a number of separate and independent states or kingdoms. This epoch of our history is generally denominated the Heptarchy, or Seven Kingdoms, the names of the principal of which may still be traced in the appellations of our modern shires, as Essex and Northumberland. As might easily have been foreseen, one of these tribes or kingdoms, growing gradually more powerful, at last absorbed the others. This important event took place in the ninth century, in the reign of Egbert, from which period to the middle of the eleventh century, when there occurred the third great invasion and change of sovereignty to which the country was destined, the history of the Anglo-Saxon monarchy presents a confused and melancholy picture of bloody incursions and fierce resistance to the barbarous and pagan Danes, who endeavoured to treat the Saxons as the Saxons had treated the Celts. The only brilliant figure in this period is the almost perfect type of a patriot warrior, king and philosopher, in the person of the illustrious Alfred; whose virtues would appear to posterity almost fabulous, were they not handed down in the minute and accurate records of a biographer who knew and served him well. The two fierce races, so obstinately contending for mastery, were too nearly allied in origin and blood for their amalgamation to have produced any very material change in the language or institutions of the country. In those parts of England, principally in the North and East, as in some of the maritime regions of Scotland, where colonies of Danes established themselves, either by conquest or by settlement, the curious philologist may trace, in the idiom of the peasantry and still more clearly in the names of families and places, evident marks of a Scandinavian instead of an Anglo-Saxon population. As examples of this we may cite the now immortal name of Havelock, derived from a famous sea-king of the same name, who is said to have founded the ancient town of Grimsby, so called after Grim in the story. As to memorials of the Saxons, preserved in the names of men, families, or places, or in the less imperishable monuments of architecture, they are so numerous that there is hardly a locality in the whole extent of England where a majority of the names is not pure and unaltered Saxon; the whole mass of the middle and lower classes of the population bears unmis

takeable marks of pure Saxon blood: and the sound and sterling vigour of the popular language is so essentially Saxon, that it requires but the re-establishment of the now obsolete inflexions of the Anglian grammar, and the substitution of a few Teutonic words for their French equivalents, to recompose an English book into the idiom spoken in the days of Alfred.

§ 6. It would be, however, an error to suppose that all the words of Latin origin found even in the earlier period of the English language were introduced after the introduction into England of the Norman-French element; that is to say, after the conquest of the country by William in the eleventh century. For a long time previous to that event the cultivation of the Latin literature in the monasteries and among the learned, as well as the employment of the Latin language in the services of the Church, must have tended to incorporate with the Saxon tongue a considerable number of Latin words. Alfred, we know, visited Rome in his youth, acquired there a considerable portion of the learning which he unquestionably possessed, and exhibited his patriotic care for the enlightenment of his countrymen by translating into Saxon the "Consolations" of Boëthius. The Venerable Bede, and other Saxon ecclesiastics, composed chronicles and legends in Latin, and we may therefore conclude that, though the sturdy Teutonic nationality of the Anglo-Saxon language guarded it from being corrupted by any overwhelming admixture of Latin, yet a considerable influx of Latin words may have become perceptible in it before the appearance of Normans on our shores. It is also to be remarked that the superior civilization of the French race must have exerted an influence on at least the aristocratic classes; and the family connexions between the last Saxon dynasty and the neighbouring dukes of Normandy, of which the reign of Edward the Confessor furnishes examples, must have tended to increase the Gallicizing character perceptible in Anglo-Saxon writings previous to the Conquest. In tracing the influence of that mighty revolution on the language, the institutions, and the national character of the people, it will be advisable to advert separately to its effects as regarded from a political, a social, and a philological point of view.

The most important change consequent upon the subjugation of the country by the Normans was obviously the establishment in England of the great feudal principle of the military tenure of land, of the chivalric spirit and habits which were the natural result of feudal institutions, and lastly, of the broad demarcation which sepa. rated society into the two great classes of the Nobles and the Serfs. It is unnecessary to say that the Feudal institutions, which lay at the bottom of all these modifications, were totally unknown to the original Saxons who established themselves in England, and were indeed utterly repugnant to that free democratic organization of

society which they brought with them from their native Germany, and which Tacitus shows to have universally prevailed among the primitive dwellers of the Teutonic swamps and forests. The Scandinavian pirates, who carried devastation over every coast accessible to their "sea-horses,” and who, under the valiant leadership of Hrolf the Ganger, wrested from the feeble and degenerate successors of Charlemagne the magnificent province to which they gave their own North-man appellation, adopted, from the force of circumstances, that strong military organization which could alone enable a warlike minority to hold in subjection a more numerous but less vigorous conquered people. Like the Lombards in Italy, like a multitude of other races in different parts of the world and in different historical epochs, they found feudal institutions an indispensable necessity of their position; and what had been forced upon them at their original occupation of Normandy they naturally practised on their irruption into England. But as the invasion.of William was carried on under at least a colourable allegation of a legal right to the inheritance of the English throne, his investiture of the crown was accompanied by a studied adherence to the constitutional forms of the Saxon monarchy; and it was perhaps only the obstinate resistance of the sullen sturdy Saxon people, that at length wearied him into treating his new acquisition with all the rigour of a conquering invader. The whole territory was by his orders carefully surveyed and registered in that curious monument of antiquity which still exists, entitled Domesday Book: the severest measures of police, as for example the famous institution of the Curfew (which was, however, no new invention of William to tyrannize over the enslaved country, but a very common regulation in feudal states), were introduced to keep down the rising of the people; the territory was divided into 60,000 fiefs; the original Saxon holders of these lands were as a general rule ousted from their estates, which were distributed, on the feudal conditions of homage and general defence, to the warriors who had enabled him to subjugate the country; vast tracts of inhabited lands were depopulated and transformed into forests for the chase, and the higher functions of the Church and State were with few exceptions confided to men of Norman blood. The natural consequence of such a state of things, when it continued, as it did in England, through the reigns of the long series of Norman and Plantagenet sovereigns, was to create in the country twe distinct and intensely hostile nationalities. The Saxon race gradually descended to the level of an oppressed and servile class; but being far superior in numbers to their oppressors, they ran no risk of being absorbed and lost in the dominant people. The high qualities, too, of the Norman race, qualities which made them greatly superior in valour, wisdom, and intellectual activity, to any other people then