of the Prioress in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales) the French spoken in England; and in his prose tract entitled The Testament of Love he speaks with contempt. of such of his countrymen as still continued to "speke their poysy mater" in that foreign tongue; adding, "Let, then, clerkes endyten in Latyn, for they have the propertye in science and the knowledge in that facultye, and lette Frenchmen in their Frenche also endyte their queynt termes, for it is kyndly [natural] to theyr mouthes; and let us shewe our fantasyes in such wordes as we learneden of our dames tonge,”—that is, what we now call our mother tongue, the tongue we learn from our mothers.

The proportion of words of French derivation in the English, not only of Chaucer, but of the generality of Chaucer's contemporaries, in that, for instance, of Mandevil and Wiclif, is far too large to be accounted for except on the hypothesis that the vocabulary of the one language had then been flowing into the other for a considerable time.

It is probable that this process had been going on almost from the birth of the English language and of English literature, properly or distinctively so called, that is to say, from the middle of the thirteenth century. It was the natural consequence of the relative position of the two languages and the two literatures, the one (the English) mainly the offspring and imitator of the other (the French), and seeking to make itself acceptable to the same community the most influential portion of which had so long patronised its predecessor.

The English language, probably, would not have acquired the ascendancy so soon as it did if it had not thus assumed a partially French guise or character, and

so enabled itself the more easily to become a substitute for French, and to win its way with the most cultivated class of readers.

It was, no doubt, principally through the medium of literary compositions that French words were at first introduced into the English language. Many of the earliest works written in English were translations, more or less free, from the French; and the translator would in many cases have every temptation to retain an expressive term in his original, rather than to beat his brains in attempting to find or to fabricate a vernacular equivalent. A French word introduced now and then would be an impediment to no reader, and would by many or most be regarded as rather ornamental.

At the same time the intrusion of words formed from the French was, probably, facilitated by the brokendown or uncemented condition of the English language at this date, which disabled it from producing new terms, when wanted, out of its own resources as readily as the regular Saxon, with its more inflectional structure, might have done.

XIX. Our modern standard English, in so far as it is of Saxon origin, as it is fundamentally and for much the greater part of its substance, appears to have grown out of a dialect formed in the Midland Counties by such an intermixture of the Northern and Southern dialects as rejected the more remarkable peculiarities of both.

THE question of the origin of standard English forms the subject of an interesting disquisition by Mr. Guest, which will be found in the History of English Rhythms, ii. 187-207.

It is founded in part upon a passage (already referred to) in the Latin Chronicle of Ralph Higden, written about or shortly before the middle of the fourteenth century, in which, after stating that the English had originally among them three different dialects, southern, midland, and northern, - but that, having become mixed first with Danes, and afterwards with Normans, they had in many respects corrupted their own tongue, and now affected a sort of outlandish babble, Higden goes on:- In the above threefold Saxon tongue, which has barely survived among a few country people, the men of the east agree more in speech with those of the as being situated under the same quarter of the heavens-than the northern men with the southern.

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Hence it is that the Mercians or midland Englishpartaking, as it were, the nature of the extremes understand the adjoining dialects, the northern and the southern, better than those last understand each other. The whole speech of the Northumbrians, especially in Yorkshire, is so harsh and rude, that we southern men can hardly understand it."

The country of the northern dialect, or dialects, Mr. Guest extends as far south as to the Thames. That the dialects spoken to the north of that river possessed a common character, which long distinguished them from the southern dialects, he thinks may be shown even at the present day. The inflections of the northern verb, in particular, differ from those of the southern : The pres. ind. was, in the southern, Ich hop-e, Thou hop-est, He hop-eth, We, Ye, Hi hop-eth; in the northern, I hop-es, Thou hop-es, He hop-es, We, Ye, Hi hop-es: the second per. sing. perf. ind. was, in the southern, Thou hoped-est; in the northern, Thou hoped-es: the second per. sing. pres. imper. was, in the southern, Hop-eth ye; in the northern, Hop-es ye: the pres. infin. was, in the southern, To hop-en; in the northern, To hop-e. In the northern inflections, Mr. Guest holds, we may detect those of a conjugation which is fully developed in the Swedish. Then, after noticing other peculiarities,

* The name of Mercia, or the March, was given to that one of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms which bordered on the Welsh territory, and which in its greatest extent came to include all the middle of England, or (with the exception of Wales in the west, and East Anglia in the east) the whole range of country between the Trent and the Ribble in the north, and the Thames and the Bristol Avon in the south.

he proceeds: — “It is a curious fact that both our universities are situated close to the boundary line which separated the northern from the southern English ; and I cannot help thinking, that the jealousies of these two races were consulted in fixing upon the sites. The histories of Cambridge and Oxford are filled with their feuds; and more than once has the king's authority been interposed, to prevent the northern men retiring, and forming within their own limits a university at Stamford or Northampton. The union of these two races at the university must have favoured the growth of any intermediate dialect; and to such a dialect the circumstances of the country, during the ninth and tenth centuries, appear to have given birth. While the north was sinking beneath its own feuds and the ravages of the Northman, the closest ties knit together the men of the midland and the southern counties; and this fellowship seems to have led, among the former, to a certain modification of the northern dialect. The change seems to have been brought about, not so much by adopting the peculiarities of southern speech, as by giving greater prominence to such parts of the native dialect as were common to the south. The southern conjugations must, at all times, have been familiar (at least in dignified composition) to the natives of the northern counties, but other conjugations were popularly used, and in the gradual disuse of these, and other forms peculiar to the north, the change consisted."

By these and other reasons Mr. Guest is led to the conclusion "that in the middle of the fourteenth century there were three great English dialects-the northern, the midland, and the southern;" and he thinks "that,