In tracing the causes which melted down the Anglo-Saxon into the Ohl-English, we have not once alluded to the influences supposed to have been exercised by the French language. The popular notions on this subject are, we believe, most erroneous. Had Harold been the conqueror at Hastings, the Anglo-Saxon must have perished, just as the Old-German perished in Germany, and the Old-Norse in Denmark. The victory of William merely hastened by a few years an event that was inevitable. The use of Norman-Romance as the court language of England rendered unfashionable a literature already too weak to stern those changes to which the language of a busy adventurous people is peculiarly liable • and thus far the Norman conquest may be considered as having in the destruction of the Anglo-Saxon. But the vulgar notion, that it produced a mixed language, a jargon composed half of English and half of French, is wholly at variance with the manuscript literature of that period. The Onnulum, in which all the peculiar features of the Old-English are developed, and not a trace of the Anglo-Saxon can be found, is almost as free from Gallicisms as any of our manuscripts written before the Norman-French existed. The same may be said of most of the Old-English manuscripts of the 13th century, and it is not till v, e approach the latter half of the 19th cen tury that we find those " cart-loads" of French words poured into the Language, of which Skinner complains so loudly. We must reluctantly agree with this writer, in charging upon Chaucer much of the mischief resulting from these importations—not that he first introduced, but that his authority chiefly sanctioned them. The learned hut pedantic writers of the Elizabethan era, and, at a later period, Johnson, followed his example.
Baring noticed the changes which converted the Anglo-Saxon into the Old-English, we will now call the reader's attention to a subject of rather difficult inquiry--its local dialects. It is abundantly clear that the Romanis looked upon all the Gothic races as forming but one people, and as speaking the same language ; but a comp:sr-hem of the Anglo-Saxon with the Mceso-Gothic, as well as the analogy of other languages, may convince us that even thus early there were dialects, and these dialects have now been acted upon by various influences for nearly 2000 years, till they have at last arranged themselves into four great familiere—the Northern, the English, the Low-Dutch, and the Iligh-Dutch. Now we have ample proof that the Sere came from the corner of the Cimbric Chersonesus, and that they were only separated by the Elbo from the Netherlands, or flat alluvial country, where the Low-Dutch was spoken. We know also that the Engle came from the eastern coast, and that they were separated from the Danish islands merely by a narrow arm of the sea. We might then expect that in the counties colonised by the Engle we should find many peculiarities of the Northern languages, and in the counties colonised by the Sexe much that reminded us of the Netherlandish or Low-Dutch. We believe the Northern and Southern dialects of our
island have been at all times distinguished by such peculiarities, but so few early records have come down to us written in the pure dialect of our northern counties, that it is only by comparing them in the second or Old-English stage of their progress that we can form any just notion of their distinguishing features. Perhaps these are best seen iu the conjugation of the verb. The following table may show us how closely the inflexions which distinguish our northern dialect agree with those of a Swedish conjugation :— localities mentioned in his poem belong to the north of Worcester shire ; and he was, beyond doubt, an inhabitant of Areley-Regis near Stourport in that county. If he used the dialect of the neighbourhood (and this must be assumed till the contrary be shown), the Southern dialect must have prevailed over the whole of Worcestershire, and the men of that shire must have been Sexe iu aud not, as hitherto supposed, a colony of Engle. Perhaps a line drawn from the north of Essex to the north of Worcestershire would pretty accurately define the portions of the island respectively colonised by the Eugle and the Sexe.
The origin of the Midland dialect may admit of the following explanation. Neither natural obstacles nor political divisions ever separated the Northern and the Southeru dialects. During the hep tarchy, Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire belonged to Mercia, aud not to the kindred race of the West-Sexe • and when the Danes held possession of the north of England, the of Warwick and North ampton, and generally that of Leicester also, were united in the closest ties with the Southern countries. This fellowship seems to have led, at a very early period, to the use of an intermediate dialect, which would naturally be encouraged by the vast numbers that flocked from all parts of the country to the universities. The Reve's Tale' affords us a specimen of the ridicule which attached to the forms of Northern speech, and we know that the speech of the Southern was treated with just as little ceremony in the north of England. (See Towneley Mysteries?) Hence we may understand the progress made by the intermediate dialect, and are prepared for the conclusion, to which we are led by an examination of our Old-English manuscripts, no less than by the express declaration of a contemporary philologist. Higden, who lived in the 14th century, ranges our provincial dialects under three heads, the Northern, the Midland, and the Southern ; and this division seems to have been generally recognised by our autiqua ries, for in our catalogues we find some manuscripts noticed as belonging to our Southern dialect, others as belonging to the Northeru, while many of them, exhibiting the marked peculiarities of ueither dialect, are passed over without remark.