LECTURE IV.

ON THE HISTORY IN WORDS.

LANGUAGE, evetters are still stranger

ANGUAGE,being ever in flux and flow, and,

existing only for the ear and as a sound, we might beforehand expect would prove the least trustworthy of all vehicles whereby the knowledge of the past has reached our present; that one which would most certainly betray its charge. In actual fact it has not proved so at all. It is the main, oftentimes the only, connecting link between the two, an ark riding above the waterfloods that have swept away or submerged every other landmark and memorial of bygone ages and vanished generations of men. Far beyond all written records in a language, the language itself stretches back, and offers itself for our investigation-'the pedigree of nations,' as Johnson calls it *—itself in its own independent existence

*This statement of his must be taken with a certain amount of qualification. It is not always that races are true to the end to their language; external forces are sometimes too strong. Thus Celtic disappeared before Latin in Gaul and Spain. Slavonic became extinct in Prussia two centuries ago, German taking its room; the

IV.

English History.

125

a far older and at the same time a far more instructive document than any book, inscription, or other writing which employs it. The written/ records may have been falsified by carelessness, by vanity, by fraud, by a multitude of causes; but language never deceives, if only we know how to question it aright.

Such investigations as these, it is true, lie plainly out of your sphere. Not so, however, those humbler yet not less interesting inquiries, which by the aid of any tolerable dictionary you may carry on into the past history of your own land, as attested by the present language of its people. You know how the geologist is able from the different strata and deposits, primary, secondary, or tertiary, succeeding one another, which he meets, to arrive at a knowledge of the successive physical changes through which a region has passed; is, so to say, in a condition to preside at those past changes, to measure the forces that were at work to produce them, and almost to indicate their date. Now with such a language as the English before us, bearing as it does the marks and footprints of great revolutions profoundly impressed upon it, we may carry on moral and historical researches precisely analogous to his. Here too are strata and deposits, not of

negroes of Hayti speak French, and various American tribes have exchanged their own idioms for Spanish and Portuguese. See upon this matter Sayce's Principles of Comparative Philology, pp. 175-181.

gravel and chalk, sandstone and limestone, but of Celtic, Latin, Low German, Danish, Norman words, and then once more Latin and French, with slighter intrusions from many other quarters and any one with skill to analyse the language might, up to a certain point, re-create for himself the history of the people speaking that language, might with tolerable accuracy appreciate the divers elements out of which that people was made up, in what proportion these were mingled, and in what succession they followed, one upon the other.

Would he trace, for example, the relation in which the English and Norman occupants of this land stood to one another? An account of this, in the main as accurate as it would be certainly instructive, might be drawn from an intelligent study of the contributions which they have severally made to the English language, as bequeathed to us jointly by them both. Supposing all other records to have perished, we might still work out and almost reconstruct the history by these aids; even as now, when so many documents, so many institutions survive, this must still be accounted the most important, and that of which the study will introduce us, as no other can, into the innermost heart and life of large periods of our history.

Nor, indeed, is it hard to see why the language must contain such instruction as this, when we a little realize to ourselves the stages

IV.

Saxon and Norman.

127

by which it has reached us in its present shape. There was a time when the languages which the English and the Norman severally spoke, existed each by the side of, but unmingled with, the other; one, that of the small dominant class, the other that of the great body of the people. By degrees, however, with the reconciliation and partial fusion of the two races, the two languages effected a transaction; one indeed prevailed over the other, but at the same time received a multitude of the words of that other into its own bosom. At once there would exist duplicates for many things. But as in popular speech two words will not long exist side by side to designate the same thing, it became a question how the relative claims of the English and Norman word should adjust themselves, which should remain, which should be dropped; or, if not dropped, should be transferred to some other object, or express some other relation. It is not of course meant that this was ever formally proposed, or as something to be settled by agreement; but practically one was to be taken and one left. Which was it that should maintain its ground? Evidently, where a word was often on the lips of one race, its equivalent seldom on those of the other, where it intimately cohered with the whole manner of life of one, was only remotely in contact with that of the other, where it laid strong hold on one, and only slight on the other, the issue could

not be doubtful.

In several cases the matter

was simpler still it was not that one word expelled the other, or that rival claims had to be adjusted; but that there never had existed more than one word, the thing which that word noted having been quite strange to the other section of the nation.

Here is the explanation of the assertion made just now—namely, that we might almost reconstruct our history, so far as it turns upon the Norman Conquest, by an analysis of our present language, a mustering of its words in groups, and a close observation of the nature and character of those which the two races have severally contributed to it. Thus we should confidently conclude that the Norman was the ruling race, from the noticeable fact that all the words of dignity, state, honour, and preeminence, with one remarkable exception (to be adduced presently), descend to us from them-' sovereign,' 'sceptre,' 'throne,' 'realm,' royalty,' 'homage,' 'prince,' 'duke,' 'count,' ('earl' indeed is Scandinavian, though he must borrow his countess' from the Norman), 'chancellor,' 'treasurer,' 'palace,' ' castle,' 'hall,' 'dome,' and a multitude more. At the same time the one remarkable exception of 'king' would make us, even did we know nothing of the actual facts, suspect that the chieftain of this ruling race came in not upon a new title, not as overthrowing a former dynasty, but claiming to be in the