they came? What was the process that enabled them to find a place in and to strike deep root into our English soil? Did the learned men—the monks and the clergy-make a selection of words, write them in their books, and teach them to the English people? Nothing of the sort. The process was a much ruder one-but at the same time one much more practical, more effectual, and more lasting in its results. The two peoples-the Normans and the English-found that they had to live together. They met at church, in the market-place, in the drilling field, at the archery butts, in the courtyards of castles; and, on the battle-fields of France, the Saxon bowman showed that he could fight as well, as bravely, and even to better purpose than his lord -the Norman baron. At all these places, under all these circumstances, the Norman and the Englishman were obliged to speak with each other. Now arose a striking phenomenon. Every man, as Professor Earle puts it, turned himself as it were into a walking phrase-book or dictionary. When a Norman had to use a French word, he tried to put the English word for it alongside of the French word; when an Englishman used an English word, he joined with it the French equivalent. Then the language soon began to swarm with "yokes of words"; our words went in couples; and the habit then begun has continued down even to the present day. And thus it is that we possess such couples as will and testament; act and deed; use and wont; aid and abet. Chaucer's poems are full of these pairs. He joins together hunting and venery (though both words mean exactly the same thing); nature and kind; cheere and face; pray and beseech; mirth and jollity. Later on, the Prayer-Book, which was written in the years 1540 to 1559, keeps up the habit: and we find the pairs acknowledge and confess; assemble and meet together; dissemble and cloak; humble and lowly. To the more English part of the congregation the simple Saxon words would come home with kindly association; to others, the words confess, assemble, dissemble, and humble would speak with greater force and clearness. -Such is the phenomenon called by Professor Earle bilingualism. "It is, in fact," he says, "a putting of colloquial for

mulæ to do the duty of a French-English and English-French vocabulary." Even Hooker, who wrote at the end of the sixteenth century, seems to have been obliged to use these pairs; and we find in his writings the couples "cecity and blindness," "nocive and hurtful," "sense and meaning."

34. Losses of English from the Incoming of Norman-French. (i) Before the coming of the Normans, the English language was in the habit of forming compounds with ease and effect. But, after the introduction of the Norman-French language, that power seems gradually to have disappeared; and ready-made French or Latin words usurped the place of the home-grown English compound. Thus despair pushed out wanhope; suspicion dethroned wantrust; bidding - sale was expelled by auction; learning-knight by disciple; rime-craft by the Greek word arithmetic; gold-hoard by treasure; book-hoard by library; earth - tilth by agriculture; wonstead by residence; and so with a large number of others.-Many English words, moreover, had their meanings depreciated and almost degraded; and the words themselves lost their ancient rank and dignity. Thus the Norman conquerors put their foot-literally and metaphorically-on the Saxon chair,1 which thus became a stool, or a footstool. Thatch, which is a doublet of the word deck, was the name for any kind of roof; but the coming of the Norman-French lowered it to indicate a roof of straw. Whine was used for the weeping or crying of human beings; but it is now restricted to the cry of a dog. Hide was the generic term for the skin of any animal; it is now limited in modern English to the skin of a beast.-The most damaging result upon our language was that it entirely stopped the growth of English words. We could, for example, make out of the word burn-the derivatives brunt, brand, brandy, brown, brimstone, and others; but this power died out with the coming in of the Norman - French language. After that, instead of growing our own words, we

1 Chair is the Norman-French form of the French chaise. The Germans still call a chair a stuhl; and among the English, stool was the universal name till the twelfth century.

adopted them ready-made.-Professor Craik compares the English and Latin languages to two banks; and says that, when the Normans came over, the account at the English bank was closed, and we drew only upon the Latin bank. But the case is worse than this. English lost its power of growth and expansion from the centre; from this time, it could only add to its bulk by borrowing and conveying from without-by the external accretion of foreign words.

35. Losses of English from the Incoming of Norman-French. (ii) The arrestment of growth in the purely English part of our language, owing to the irruption of Norman-French, and also to the ease with which we could take a ready-made word from Latin or from Greek, killed off an old power which we once possessed, and which was not without its own use and expressiveness. This was the power of making compound words. The Greeks in ancient times had, and the Germans in modern times have, this power in a high degree. Thus a Greek comic poet has a word of fourteen syllables, which may be thus translated

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Meanly-rising-early-and-hurrying-to-the-tribunal-to-denounce-anotherfor-an-infraction-of-the-law-concerning-the-exportation-of-figs."1

And the Germans have a compound like "the-all-to-nothingcrushing philosopher." The Germans also say iron-path for railway, handshoe for glove, and finger-hat for thimble. We also possessed this power at one time, and employed it both in proper and in common names. Thus we had and have the names Brakespear, Shakestaff, Shakespear, Golightly, Dolittle, Standfast; and the common nouns want-wit, find-fault, mumblenews (for tale-bearer), pinch-penny (for miser), slugabed. In older times we had three-foot-stool, three-man-beetle 2; stonecold, heaven-bright, honey-sweet, snail-slow, nut-brown, lily-livered (for cowardly); brand-fire-new; earth-wandering, wind-dried, thunder-blasted, death-doomed, and many others. But such words as forbears or fore-elders have been pushed out by ances

1 In two words, a fig-shower or sycophant.

2 A club for beating clothes, that could be handled only by three men.

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tors; forewit by caution or prudence; and inwit by conscience. Mr Barnes, the Dorsetshire poet, would like to see these and similar compounds restored, and thinks that we might well return to the old clear well-springs of "English undefiled,” and make our own compounds out of our own words. He even carries his desires into the region of English grammar, and, for degrees of comparison, proposes the phrase pitches of suchness. Thus, instead of the Latin word omnibus, he would have folk-wain; for the Greek botany, he would substitute wort-lore; for auction, he would give us bode-sale; globule he would replace with ballkin; the Greek word horizon must give way to the pure English sky-edge; and, instead of quadrangle, he would have us all write and say four-winkle.

36. Losses of English from the Incoming of NormanFrench. (iii) When once a way was made for the entrance of French words into our English language, the immigrations were rapid and numerous. Hence there were many changes both in the grammar and in the vocabulary of English from the year 1100, the year in which we may suppose those Englishmen who were living at the date of the battle of Hastings had died out. These changes were more or less rapid, according to circumstances. But perhaps the most rapid and remarkable change took place in the lifetime of William Caxton, the great printer, who was born in 1410. In his preface to his translation of the 'Eneid' of Virgil, which he published in 1490, when he was eighty years of age, he says that he cannot understand old books that were written when he was a boy-that "the olde Englysshe is more lyke to dutche than englysshe," and that “our langage now vsed varyeth ferre from that whiche was vsed and spoken when I was borne. For we Englysshemen ben borne ynder the domynacyon of the mone [moon], which is neuer stedfaste, but euer wauerynge, wexynge one season, and waneth and dycreaseth another season. This as regards time.-But he has the same complaint to make as regards place. "Comyn englysshe that is spoken in one shyre varyeth from another." And he tells an odd story in illustration of this fact. He tells about certain merchants who were in a ship " in Tamyse" (on the

Thames), who were bound for Zealand, but were wind-stayed at the Foreland, and took it into their heads to go on shore there. One of the merchants, whose name was Sheffelde, a mercer, entered a house, "and axed for mete, and specyally he axyd after eggys." But the "goode-wyf" replied that she "coude speke no frenshe." The merchant, who was a steady Englishman, lost his temper, for he also coude speke no frenshe, but wolde have hadde eggys; and she understode hym not." Fortunately, a friend happened to join him in the house, and he acted as interpreter. then the goode wyf sayde that she understod hym wel." And then the simple-minded but much-perplexed Caxton goes on to say: "Loo! what sholde a man in thyse dayes now wryte, eggës or eyren?" Such were the difficulties that beset printers and writers in the close of the fifteenth century.

The friend said that "he wolde have eyren;

37. Latin of the Fourth Period.—(i) This contribution differs very essentially in character from the last. The Norman-French contribution was a gift from a people to a people-from living beings to living beings; this new contribution was rather a conveyance of words from books to books, and it never influenced -in any great degree-the spoken language of the English people. The ear and the mouth carried the Norman-French words into our language; the eye, the pen, and the printingpress were the instruments that brought in the Latin words of the Fourth Period. The Norman-French words that came in took and kept their place in the spoken language of the masses of the people; the Latin words that we received in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries kept their place in the written or printed language of books, of scholars, and of literary men. These new Latin words came in with the Revival of Learning, which is also called the Renascence.

The Turks attacked and took Constantinople in the year 1453; and the great Greek and Latin scholars who lived in that city hurriedly packed up their priceless manuscripts and books, and fled to all parts of Italy, Germany, France, and even into England. The loss of the East became the gain of the West. These scholars became teachers; they taught the Greek