ENGLISH L A N G U A G E 397 he lov-eth ; but in the plural lov-en is interchanged with lov-e, as rhyme or euphony requires. So in the plural of the past we love-den or love-de. The infinitive also ends in en, often e, always syllabic. The present participle, in Old English -ende, passing through -inde, has been con founded with the verbal noun in -ynge, -yng, as in Modern English. The past participle largely retains the prefix y- or i- t representing the Old English ge-, as in i-ronne, y-don, run, done. Many old verb forms still continued in existence. The adoption of French words, not only those of Norman introduction, but those subsequently introduced under the Angevin kings, to supply obsolete and obsolescent English ones, which had kept pace with the growth of literature since the beginning of the Middle English period, had now reached its climax ; later times added many more, but they also dropped many that were in regular use with Chaucer and his contemporaries. Chaucer s great contemporary, William Langland, in his Vision of William concerning Piers the Ploughman, and his imitator the author of Pierce the Ploughman s Crede (about 1400) used the Old English alliterative versification for the last time in the south. Rhyme, had made its appear ance in the language shortly after the Conquest if not already known before; and in the south and midlands it became decidedly more popular than alliteration ; the latter retained its hold much longer in the north, where it was written even after 1500 : many of the northern romances are either simply alliterative, or have both alliteration and rhyme. To these characteristics of northern and southern verse respectively Chaucer alludes in the prologue of the " Persone," who, when called upon for his tale, said " But trusteth wel ; I am a sotherne man, I cannot geste rom, ram, ruf, by my letter, And, God wote, rime hold I but litel better : And therfore, if you list, I wol not glose, I wol you tell a litel tale in prose." The changes from Old to Middle English may be summed up thus: Loss of a large part of the native vocabulary, and adoption of French words to supply the blank ; not infre quent adoption of French words as synonyms of existing native ones ; modernization of the English words preserved, by vowel change in a definite direction from back to front, and from open to close, a becoming o, o tending to oo, u to ou, ea to e, e to ee, ee to 1, and by advance of consonants from guttural to palatal; obscuration of vowels after the accent, and especially of final a, o, u to e; consequent con fusion and loss of old inflexions, and their replacement by prepositions, auxiliary verbs, and rules of position ; aban donment of alliteration for rhyme ; and great development of dialects, in consequence of there being no standard or recognized type of English. But the recognition came at length. By the reign of Edward III., French was so little known in England, even in the families of the great, that about 1350 "John Cornwal, a maystere of gramere, chatingede ]>e lore in gramere scole and construccion of [i.e., from] Freyusch into Englysch;" 1 and in 1362-3 English by statute took the place of French in the pleadings in courts of law. Every reason conspired that this " English " should be the mid land dialect. It was the intermediate dialect, intelligible, as Trevisa has told us, to both extremes, even when these failed to be intelligible to each other ; in its south-eastern form, it was the language of London, where the supreme law courts were, the centre of political and commercial life ; it was the language in which the "VVycliftite versions had given the Holy Scriptures to the people ; the language in which Chaucer had raised English poetry to a height of 1 Trevisa, Translation of tfiyd?n ft f of i/chrontcon. excellence admired and imitated by contemporaries and followers. And accordingly after the end of the 14th century, all Englishmen who thought they had anything to say worth listening to said it in the midland speech. Trevisa s own work was almost the last literary effort of the southern dialect ; henceforth it was but a rustic patois, which the dramatist might use to give local colouring to his creations, as Shakespeare uses it to complete Edgar s peasant disguise in Lear, or which 19th century research might disinter to illustrate obscure chapters in the history of language. And though the northern English proved a little more stubborn, it disappeared also from literature in England ; but in Scotland, which had now become political ly and socially estranged from England, it continued its course as the national language of the country, attaining in the 15th and 16th centuries a distinct development and high literary culture, for the details of which readers are referred to the article on SCOTTISH LANGUAGE. The 15th century of English history, with its bloody French war abroad, and Wars of the Roses at home, was a barren period in literature, and a transition one in language, witnessing the decay and disappearance of the final e, and most of the syllabic inflexions of Middle English. Already by 1420, in Chaucer s disciple Hoccleve, final e was quite uncertain ; in Lydgate it was practically gone. In 1450 the writings of Pecocke against the Wycliffites show the verbal inflexions in -en in a state of obsolescence ; he has still the southern pronouns lier and hem for the northern their, them: " And here-a^ens holi scripture wole fat men schulden lacke fe coueryng which wommen schulden haue, & thei schulden so lacke bi fat fe heeris of her heedis schulden be echorne, & schulde not growe in lengfe doun as wommanys heer schulde growe "Also here-wifal into fe open si^t of ymagis in open chirchis, alle peple, men & wommen & children mowe come whanne euere fei wolen in ech tyme of fe day, but so mowe fei not come in-to f e vce of bokis to be delyuered to hem neif er to be red bifore hem ; & f erfore, as for to soone & ofte come into remembraunce of a long mater bi ech oon persoon, and also as forto make fat ]>e mo persoones come into remembrauuce of a mater, ymagis & picturis serven in a specialer maner fan bokis doon, fou^ in an ofer maner ful substanciali bokis seruen better into remembrauncing of fo same materis fan ymagis & picturis doon ; & ferfore, fouj writingis seruen weel into remem brauncing upon f e bifore seid fingis, jit not at fe ful : Forwhi fe bokis han not fe avail of remembranncing now seid whiche ymagis han." 2 The change of the language during the second period of Transition, as well as the extent of dialectal differences, is quaintly expressed a generation later by Caxton, who in the prologue to one of the last of his works, his translation of Virgil s Eneydos (1490), speaks of the difficulty he had in pleasing all readers : " I doubted that it sholde not please some gentylmen, whiche late blamed me, sayeng, y* in my translacyons I had ouer curyous termes. whiche coud not be vnderstande of comyn peple, and desired me to vse olde and homely termes in my translacyons. And fayn wolde I satysfy euery man ; and so to doo, toke an olde boke and redde therin ; and certaynly the englysshe was so rude and brood that I coude not wele vnderstande it. And also my lorde abbot of Westmynster ded do shewe to me late certayn euydences wryton in olde englysshe for to reduce it in to our englysshe now vsid. And certaynly it was wreton in suche wyse that it was more lyke to dutche than englysshe ; I coude not reduce ne brynge it to be vnderstonden. And
- Skeat, Specimens of English Literature, p. 49, 54.
