ENTILISII, the language spoken by the people of England, and their de scendants in India, North America, and the British colonies. The ancient Inn gunge of Britain is generally allowed to have been the same with that of the Qnulo ; this island, in all probability, having been first peopled from Gallia, as both Caesar and Taeitns prove by many strong and conclusive arguments. Julius Caesar, sometime before the birth of our Saviour, made a descent upon Britain, though he may be said rather to have discovered than conquered it : but, about the year 45, in the time of Claudius, Aulus Plautius was sent over with some ltriman forces, by whom two kings of the Britons, Codignnus and Caraetneus, were both signally defeated : whereupon a Ro man colony was planted at Malden in Essex, and the southern parts of the island were redueed to the form of a Ho man province. Britain was subsequently conquered as far north as the friths of Ditiubarton and Edinburgh, by Agricola, in the time of Domitian ; and a greet number of the Britons, in the conquered part of the island retired to the western part, called Wales, where their language coutinned to be spoken without any for eign admixture. The greatest pert of Britain being thus bottom(' a Boman province, the Boman legions, who resided in Britain fir ;deice two hundred years, molonbteilly disseminnted the Lai in utngne ; and the people being afterwards governed by laws written in Latin, it must have necessarily followed that the language would undergo a. eonsideralde change. In fact, the British tongue con firmed, for seine time, mixed with the provincial Latin; but at length, the do (dining state of the Roman empire ren dered the aid of the Roman legions ne cessary at home, and on their abandoning the island, the Snots anti Picts took the opportunity to attack and harass South Britain: upon which, Vortigern, the king, about the year 440, called the Saxons to Iris assistance, who coming over with several of their neighboring tribes, re pulsed the Scots and Picts, and went rewarded for their services with the 1811 of Thanet, and the whole county of Kent Growing at length too powerful, and no being contented with their allotment they dispossessed the inhabitants of al the country on the east site of the Ser ern ; and thus the British language was in a great measure destroyed, and that of the Saxons introduced in lieu of it. What the Saxon tongue was long before the Conquest, via. about the year 700, may be seen in the most ancient manu script of that language, which is a gloss on the Evangelists, by bishop Eadfride, in which the three first articles of tho Lord's prayer run thus: " Uren fader this arth in 'merlins, sic gehalgind thin noma, so symeth thin ric. Sic thin willa sue is heofrms, and in eortho, Le." In the beginning of the ninth century, the Danes invaded England, and getting it footing in the northern and eastern parts of the country, their power gradually in creased, and in about two hundred years they became its solo masters. lly this means the ancient English obtained a tincture of the Danish language: but their government, being of no long confirm :am°, did not make so greet an alteration in the Anglo-Saxon, as the next revolu tion, when the whole lend, A D. 1057, was subdtted by William the Conqueror, I hike ,,f Normandy, in France : for the Nor mans, as a monument of their conquest, endeavored to make their language as generally received as their commands: and thereby the English language be came an entire medley. About the year
900, the Lord's prayer in the aneient An glo-Sa Xirn, read ns follows: "Thu tare fader the cart on ileetestiv, si thin nama gebalgod ; etnne thin rice si thin Willa on eort ban swa, suit on heofnuni, ,to" And, about the year 1150, pope Adrian, en Englishman, tints rendered it in rhyme : "Urn Ilider in heaven rich, Thy name be hat tel ever hell.
Thee bring us thy niched Ithaca: Ale hit in heaven rdoe, Ever in yearth bourn it also, &c." It confirmed to undergo various mula tions, till the year 1537, when the Lord's prayer was thus printed: "0 ours father which art() in heven, halowed be thy name : let thy kingdoms come, thy will • be fulfiled as well in erth as it. is in heron ; geve us this Jaye in dayly bred, &c." Here, it may be observed, the dic tion is brought almost to the present standard, the chief variations being only in the orthography. By these instances, many others that might be given, it appears, that the Anglo-Saxon language, which the Normans in a great measure despoiled and rendered obsolete, had its beauties, was significant :mad emphatical, and preferable to what, they substituted for it. " Great, verily," says Camden, "was the glory of our tongue, before time Norman Conquest, in this, that the old • English could express, most aptly, all the conceptions of the mind in their own tongue, without borrowing from any." Of this he gives several examples. After the Conquest, it was ordained that all law proceedings should he in the Norman language ; and hence the early records and reports of law cases came to be written in Norman. But neither royal authority, nor the influence of courts, could absolutely change the vernacular language. After an experiment of three hundred years, the law was repealed ; and since that period, the English has been, for the most part, the official as well as the common language of the na tion. Since the Norman invasion, the English has not suffered any shock from the intermixture of conquerors with the natives of England ; but the language has undergone great alterations, by the disuse of a large portion of Saxon words, and the introduction of words from the Latin and Greek languages, with some French, Italian, and Spanish words. These words have, in some instances, been borrowed by authors directly from the Latin and Greek ; but most of the Latin words have been received through the medium of the French and Italian. For terms in the sciences, authors have generally resorted to the Greek ; and from this source, as discoveries in science demand new terms, the vocabulary of the English tongue is receiving continual augmentation. It has, also, a few words from the German and Swedish, mostly terms in mineralogy ; and commerce has introduced new commodities of foreign growth or manufacture, with their for eign names, which now make a part of our language. It may then be stated, that the English is composed of, 1st, Saxon and Danish words of Teutonic and Gothic origin. 211,1, British or Welsh, which may be considered as of Celtic origin. 3rd, Norman, a mixture of French and Gothic. 4th, Latin. 5th, French. 6th, Greek. 7th, A few words directly from the Italian, Spanish, Ger man, and other languages of the conti nent. 8th, A few foreign words, intro duced by commerce, or by political or literary intercourse. Of these the Saxon words constitute our mother tongue. The Danish and Welsh also are primi tive words, and may be considered as part of our vernacular language.